Here Comes Trouble Page 0,88

any assistance he sent Dan’s direction.

But that conversation had been definitively closed some time ago. Dan wouldn’t take handouts, as he called them, no matter how much Brett tried to explain that it would make him feel good to do something to repay the kindnesses Dan and his father had extended him throughout his teenage years.

And knowing that it was a dead issue, he was loathe to bring it up again now. But he could do something, he could help. It was hard not to offer. “Dan—”

“That’s not why I’m here, Brett,” he warned. “I’m fine.”

“Okay,” Brett said, though he thought it was anything but. “So, why are you here?”

“To talk some sense into my closest friend’s thick skull.”

Brett understood Dan’s frustration there, too. Dan wasn’t big on change, which was partly why his business didn’t thrive as much as it had under his father’s hand. Brett had tried to get him to be a bit more of a risk taker, to think bigger, see farther, but Dan was traditional in his approach to building his business. The problem was, Vegas wasn’t a traditional town. “You supported my decision to get out,” he said.

“Out of casinos, out of playing cards for a living, out from under the pressure the promoters were putting on you. But not out of Dodge all together.”

Brett sighed. Dan had been a part of his life for the entire duration of his poker-playing career, from the early rise, to the continued rise, to finally the retirement before he fell apart. But while his good friend had consistently told him that if he was miserable he should get out and find something else to do with his life, especially if his to do list included working for his good buddy, Dan had never really understood, not really, what it was about Brett’s career that had made him so stressed out, much less feel unfulfilled.

Of course, Dan would have taken full advantage of the perks, namely the ones who came with perky assets, which had been another bit of a friction between them. More than once Dan had tried to goad him into “sharing the wealth” as he termed it. Brett would have handed them all over to his buddy, gladly, but he wasn’t about to pimp for the guy and he wasn’t interested in double dating.

Not that Dan was hurting for female companionship, at least when he could make time for it. He was a bit shorter than Brett and stockier, but in that muscular, beefhead linebacker kind of way that women who wanted a big strong man to protect them really went for. And Dan was more than willing to give shelter. The shelter of his bed, anyway. He wasn’t exactly the go-to guy for long-term commitments. A holiday weekend would be considered a long relationship for him.

But while Dan might not have always been a stand-up guy where the opposite sex was concerned, he’d been absolutely loyal to Brett, even if they didn’t always see eye to eye. Brett always hoped Dan would find “the one” and jump off the merry-go-round of women he kept circling around him all the time, just as Brett had hoped “the one” would enter his own orbit at some point. At least when Brett did go out, it was with the hope it would last. He wasn’t sure Dan was interested in anything long term that didn’t come with dollar signs attached.

“I had to leave,” Brett said, retreading ground they’d been over many, many times. “You know that.”

“No, you know that. Or you think you do. A few spots of bad luck, and you freak out and think the Mafia or something is after you.”

“I didn’t freak out. And it wasn’t just a string of bad luck.”

“How the hell would you know? You don’t have bad luck.”

Brett felt his own temper edge up and worked to quell it. “I think I’ve had my share in my day, enough to know when it’s just fate and when someone has their hand in it. I did what I thought I had to do to protect the people I care about.” He lifted his hand to stop Dan’s rebuttal. “And even if those things hadn’t happened, I might have taken off anyway. I had a lot of thinking to do.”

“And you couldn’t have done that while swinging a hammer?”

“I tried that,” he reminded his friend. “And you have always known that my future was not down that path. Not full time. I