shifted his focus back to where it should belong. It was nice of her to cook him a meal, but he was here to catch his breath, do some thinking, and make some very important decisions. Kirby was nothing more than a distraction, an excuse to put off doing the hard thinking that needed to be done.
He caught her looking at him from the corner of his eye as he polished off another chicken breast. And he had to admit that, as distractions went, she was a pretty damn good one. He wanted to know the story of Kirby. Clearly there was one. Everyone had one. The more he knew about the guys sitting around the table with him, the better he was able to read them. Of course, he wasn’t trying to take Kirby’s money. Or play her, for that matter.
Play with her; now, that might be a different story.
In fact, after all the emotional angst and worry of the past few months, maybe that’s exactly what he needed. To just drop out, check out, take a break. Hadn’t Dan been telling him that very thing? Well, when he wasn’t telling him to get his ass back to Vegas, anyway. Take a vacation. Something he’d never done. Hell, he lived in vacation land, right? Of course Dan had mentioned beaches, blue water, and available, scantily clad foreign women…but Brett didn’t see where that was all that entirely different from home. Plenty of women looking for a good time there, too.
Brett wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but the idea of chasing after someone who was baiting the trap to be caught right from the get go, didn’t really appeal.
He purposely caught Kirby’s gaze as she reached for biscuit number four. He smiled. She flushed a little. His smile grew. No, what was appealing was a quirky, single, middle-aged innkeeper in the wilds of Vermont, who had no idea who he was or what to do with him. But she was thinking about it.
And so was he.
Chapter 5
Kirby was up early the next morning. Not because there was all that much that needed to be done. Which was unfortunate enough. But because she was tired of tossing and turning in her bed. Thinking about her only guest.
Dinner the night before had been a kind of excruciating gauntlet of arousal and denial, with her alternately thinking that there was no way she was imagining the sexual tension between them…and kicking herself for buying into the fantasy she was clearly so desperate to believe.
She’d refused Brett’s offer to help with the dishes after they’d finished eating, knowing there was no way she was going to make it through being that deep in his personal space without making a complete fool of herself.
So, he’d collected his sleepy kitten in a ball of cashmere, like it was something he did every night, and headed up to bed. And she’d spent the next hour scraping dishes and kicking herself for not being more of a risk taker. Because…what if she’d been right about the sizzling undercurrent?
She stared at her computer screen, which was open to her banking file…then sent a baleful glance at the stack of unpaid bills and smirked at herself. Oh, she was a risk taker, all right. She’d sunk everything she owned, along with everything the bank would give her, into her new business, her new life…and look where that was taking her. Maybe it was just as well she hadn’t jumped from frying pan to fire again.
She worked on believing that, which lasted for about…five seconds. Which was when she asked herself how she’d feel if Brett Hennessey checked out today. Would she be disappointed that she hadn’t taken at least a shot at finding out exactly what might be going on between them? Embarrassing or not? Because the “or not” option was pretty damn likely to end with a very worthwhile memory.
Pride dictated that she at least make a go at pretending that a one-night stand with anyone, even a white knight in black leather like Brett, would have been an unfulfilling waste of her time, that she valued herself more than that, required more than that. But who was she kidding? Hadn’t she come to Vermont, quite clear about what she wanted? Her own life, played by her own rules. And that didn’t include a long-term relationship where someone else would have any say in how she ran her life. Which was what overly tanned ski instructors and randy touring Italian and French ski racers were for.
And, okay, so she hadn’t exactly had the chance to take advantage of that last part. Not many European racing professionals dropping by to stare at ski runs covered in grass rather than snow. She could bide her time. After all, she’d been a little busy.
And so, here was her chance to make good on her promise to herself. Dropped, literally, right in her lap. She didn’t even have to figure out the part about how she was actually going to get the hot Swede in the tight racing suit to lust after her forty-year-old ass.
But, as it turned out, the reality of jumping into a hot, sweaty, deeply satisfying, purely sexual, short-term relationship wasn’t quite as casual, carefree, and easily entered into as her imagination had made it seem it would be.
That same imagination took a short detour from her banking crisis, as a series of images played through her mind. Vivid, highly detailed, quite erotic images. Nothing wrong with a little fantasizing. No risk there. Kirby had become quite fabulous at fantasizing about what she’d do if she could actually make herself do it. In fact, she was downright easy in her fantasies. And it sure beat the hell out of staring at a bank balance that wasn’t going to change no matter how long she scowled at it. Deciding which part of her rapidly mounting debt to toss Brett’s hundred-dollar bills at stood even less of a chance at distracting her. She could only spread them around so far, after all.
A far more entertaining use of her time would be imagining what it would be like to spread something else entirely. She lifted her coffee mug to her lips, deciding to extend her daydream for just a few more delicious moments, when there was a loud thwap, followed by a quick yowl and some serious swearing originating from somewhere in the back of the house.
She set the mug down as she shoved her chair back. “Now what?” She didn’t even give the bright sunshine a passing scowl as she scooted through the foyer.
Another string of swear words colored the warm morning air blue as she moved through the sitting room to the dining room. “Hello?” she called out.
“In here.”
“Brett?” She stopped on the threshold to the kitchen. “What are you doing?”
Her guest looked up from where he was crouched on the other side of the now screenless door leading to the porch. He was stretching mesh across the frame, or trying to. “I came down to see if I could grab a bottle of water, then saw the extra mesh rolled up on the porch—”
“I got it out this morning; I was going to work on that after I—” She broke off. He didn’t want to hear about her chore list. “You really didn’t have to do that.”
“I know,” he said, his expression tight. “Just trying to help out. You fed me dinner after all.”
She stepped into the kitchen. “I was listening for you to come down so I could offer you breakfast. I’m sorry I didn’t hear you on the stairs.” She resolutely forced herself not to blush as she was reminded where her head had likely been during that time. “There’s fresh coffee on, and I’ll be happy to make you some eggs, toast, I—” She stepped closer. “Are you okay?”
He shifted in his still-crouched position so she could see his back. And the kitten that was lodged there. “Fine. Until Vlad the Impaler here decided to launch herself from the plant stand to…well…” He very gingerly turned a bit more. “Would you mind—I’m afraid if I try to stand up, she’ll just dig in deeper.”
Kirby sprang into action. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t know you were—I thought you banged your thumb with a hammer or something.”
He lifted the staple gun. “No hammer. But I’m thinking of using this on something other than the screen here.”
“Right, right. I got it. I’ll get her. Just…” She ran her gaze around the back porch to find something to put around the kitten so it wouldn’t transfer claws from Brett to her. Her stomach was stinging in sympathy just