Here Comes Trouble Page 0,5

motorcycle–riding, road-weary, hunky rider in black chaps with a sweet ass and perfectly maintained cuticles…Yeah, that was not your typical inn guest. She might not ever find out what he was all about, but there was definitely a story.

That was actually, in part, her attraction to wanting to be an innkeeper. As a child, growing up in a small resort town in the middle of the Rockies, she’d always looked up at airplanes flying overhead and wondered where the passengers inside were going, what adventure or journey they were embarking on…or returning from. Of course, in her youthful fantasies, the stories were always fantastical. Nothing so mundane as a burned-out businessman heading back from a boring meeting on the coast. But, even in her far more mature, far less naïve forty-year-old mind, she still found people endlessly fascinating and wondered what their story was, what path they were on. As someone who provided a way station along that path, she’d get to find out.

Like the group who’d stayed through the holidays. Three couples, each in their late twenties, all of whom had begun dating each other while in college together, had reserved rooms to attend the wedding of the fourth couple in their college quartet. Two of the couples were simply enjoying the reunion and time spent catching up, but the third woman had confided in Kirby that she was hoping that watching two of their oldest and dearest friends tie the knot would prompt her significant other to finally pop the question. Kirby had kept her opinion on the likelihood of that happening to herself, but she’d enjoyed the confided secret nonetheless.

Not that she was nosy—okay, she totally was, but she didn’t pry. Not exactly. Mostly because she didn’t have to. She’d grown up inside a ski resort, and had literally done every job conceivable along the way, from cleaning rooms and working registration, to busing tables and even running the ski lifts. One thing she’d learned was that if she was friendly and outgoing, and tried to make her guests feel at home—a feeling that she hoped her bed-and-breakfast-style inn would encourage—people talked, chatted, and generally shared far more with her, a complete stranger, than they sometimes did with those in their own party.

She looked at Mr. Hennessey’s license and wondered what his story might involve. Why was he such a long way from home…and where was he going from here? Why did he have such a big wad of cash? Had he gambled big in Vegas and won? Except he lived there according to his license. Had he stolen the money? And why had he biked cross-country instead of hopping a plane? Was he on the run? Or merely taking a long road trip, seeing the country? Plus, why did a guy wearing dusty biker leathers have the hands of a Wall Street investment banker?

She laid the paper down and entered all the information into the computer…and wondered if he’d be here long enough for her to find out.

Chapter 2

Brett Hennessey just needed a place to stop.

And think.

He was tired. Tired of running, tired of not knowing what the best course of action was, tired of worrying about the people he cared about. His life had never been normal, but he thought he’d finally gotten a handle on balancing the expectations that had been placed on him. Somehow, over the past six months, it had all spun out of control. He wasn’t even sure when it had begun unraveling, really. So many little threads, he supposed. Threads he’d let go and ignored because they annoyed him and he hadn’t wanted to deal with the bullshit they presented. None of them particularly important, in and of themselves, but collectively, they’d all seemed to unravel completely at once.

Easy to say now that he should have spent a little more time on the annoying bullshit part as it had come along, but he’d never been good at that part. He’d told them all that. The sponsors, tournament directors, media agents, casino owners, television producers. Repeatedly. They’d told him to hire people to handle the details. Delegate. But he wasn’t comfortable with having people counting on him for their personal livelihood. Hell, he hadn’t been all that crazy about earning his own livelihood that way. Not to mention the fact that the idea of people hanging around him all the time, looking over his shoulder, waiting to see if he would win big again, and thereby get to keep their jobs,