style="font-size:15px;"> 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, would have driven him bonkers. There were already too many people, too much noise, too much…everything in his life.
It was true, he had a knack for cards. He’d grown up in Vegas casinos, literally, so of course he knew how to play poker. And yeah, when the Texas Hold’em craze had swept the nation, he’d swiftly become an attention getter, whether he’d wanted to be or not. He’d been a little—okay, a lot—younger than most back then, but he could hardly help that. It had been fun, in the beginning, sort of like a hobby. He’d been a kid, a minor, so there wasn’t much he could really do with his innate skills other than show them off.
It hadn’t been until later on that he’d started to think of it as a way to earn money. Even then he hadn’t pictured it as a career. At best, it was a way to pay for college a little faster than just banging nails and hauling lumber on the renovation jobs he worked on for his best friend’s dad. He definitely hadn’t counted on winning often enough to make it pay long term.
He’d been around the game his whole life, so he knew better than most that when it came to cards, the odds would always balance things out. Often. And usually not in your favor. The trick was respecting that, not getting greedy, and being willing to walk away with a little and never banking on winning a lot. That was one fundamental rule he’d never broken.
Or wouldn’t have, had it been necessary to heed it. Because when Brett Hennessey played, he tended to win. A lot. In fact, he won so often even he had begun to wonder what the hell was going on. Skill only accounted for so much, and nobody was that lucky. His life up to that point hadn’t exactly been blessed. Which, granted, had partly been what had endeared him to the poker crowd in the first place. Young kid, tough childhood, a bit of a rebel. At least that’s the way the sponsors played it. He didn’t see himself as a rebel so much as a survivor.
The day he’d hit twenty-one he’d been hot bait for every cable show producer and online gambling site on the planet. It had been a lot after a long time of not much. He’d had a hard time—an impossible time as it turned out—saying no to being given a chance. Any chance. But no matter how much he tried to keep things sane, he didn’t seem to have much say on where the white hot glare of the celebrity spotlight shined. And, for quite some time now, it had been shining on him.
He’d played his way through college, then grad school, and then figured that would be it. He’d call it even and walk away, having provided whatever the hell draw it was that he’d become in exchange for the chance to earn enough to better himself, better his life, give himself a chance to get up and finally out, once and for all. Win-win for both sides.
But it hadn’t exactly turned out like that. College was long in the past, his degrees were gathering dust, while what had originally been a way to pay off school loans had, nine years later, somehow become a way of life. A life he’d long since grown weary of, but had continued to participate in because it never seemed the right time to walk away. He was always left feeling like he was leaving someone in the lurch. Someone who had helped him out when he’d needed it. But he’d finally burned out, wised up…and walked away.
Which was when things had gotten really interesting.
That good luck charm that had been his constant companion for the past decade had abandoned him, and rather swiftly at that. He hadn’t really thought much about it at the time, not initially anyway, beyond being pissed off at the string of little incidences that had been more a nuisance than anything. He’d replaced the missing supplies on his current job site. Over the years, he’d never stopped banging nails, although his contributions to the renovation company his buddy, Dan, now owned, having taken it over from his father several years ago, hadn’t always been consistent during the craziest of times. But Dan had convinced him to take over one of his easier contracts while trying to sort out what he wanted to do with the rest of his life, and Brett had been happy for the distraction.
The missing materials
