“Oh, crap. The quilts and bedspreads, they’re still out back. I need to bring them in.”
“You want some help?”
She lifted up on her toes and kissed him. “Why don’t you go pour the wine and start reheating the food. It won’t take me long.”
Yeah, he thought as he kissed her back. Definitely lifetime material. Better than he’d ever thought possible. “Okay,” he said, his body stirring again as he watched her walk around the outside of the house toward the back of the property. He spent about two seconds contemplating following her around back and getting at least one of those blankets dirty all over again, but it was getting colder by the second. “Dinner. Then play.” He took the steps two at a time, put the helmets on the registration desk, slung his jacket over the newel post at the base of the stairs, and then headed straight for the kitchen.
He was smiling as he entered the room and was thinking that maybe he’d snag one of the blankets and start a fire in the front parlor fireplace, turn dinner into a little fireside picnic, but stopped in his tracks when he spied Kirby through the kitchen window.
She was standing in the backyard, hand over her mouth, looking at what was left of her freshly aired antique quilts and spreads. All of which were in shredded ribbons.
Something went hard and cold inside his chest. He was simultaneously furious at whoever had invaded her property, whoever had destroyed a single thing she’d worked so hard to get…and sick almost to the point of puking over the unavoidable suspicion that crawled right back into his gut.
No. This wasn’t happening. Not again. He thought he was done with that, that he’d left it back in Vegas. That whoever thought this was the right way to get his attention had figured out they were wrong when, instead of caving in, he’d packed up and left town for good.
One face floated through his mind. Maksimov’s smug expression as Brett had turned him down flat, like he’d known something that Brett hadn’t known. Like…he was going to stir up the shit all over again until Brett agreed to another deal. The thing was, he couldn’t understand why they thought this was the way to get what they wanted? Whatever it was they thought he could bring to their table, or any promoter or casino owner’s table for that matter, regardless of his celebrity when it came right down to it…he was just one guy. It wasn’t worth this kind of aggravation. For him or for them. That was the one part he couldn’t figure out.
But no matter who had been behind the problems back in Vegas, he’d never thought trouble would follow him here.
He pushed through the door to the porch and let himself out the screen door. She looked over to him as he crossed the yard to the clothesline. “I guess we need to call Thad,” she said. “File a vandalism report. Was anything done inside? Was it still locked up?”
“Door was locked, nothing looks out of place inside. At least on the main floor. Kirby-”
“Who would do this?” she asked, clearly at a total loss. “We don’t really have a lot of school-age kids around here. And certainly not any kind of gang problems. I mean…what, a hoard of Clemson’s maniacal kitties? What?” She looked back at the shredded quilts and sort of slumped in on herself. “These were antiques. They…you can’t replace these. I spent a full year hunting these down.”
She sounded more sad than pissed, though he suspected the latter would show up eventually. “Kirby, I need to tell you something.”
“I guess I shouldn’t take them down until Thad can come and file an official report,” she said, not hearing him, too upset by what had happened to pay attention to anything other than what was going through her own mind.
She had her arms wrapped around her middle, and Brett suspected that was as much to console herself as it was to ward off the rapidly cooling evening air. He wanted to hold her, console her himself, but he had to tell her first. She might not want him anywhere around her after he told her what he knew. Or suspected, anyway. He should have told her the rest of the reason why he’d left Vegas when she’d told him about Maksimov booking a room. He just hadn’t thought it really mattered.
He walked over to her and pulled her arms from where they were crossed. “Come here.” She walked into his arms, and that’s when he could feel her shaking. “Let’s go inside, okay? We’ll call the deputy and go ahead and heat up some food.”
“I can’t eat.”
“Okay. But let’s get out of the cold.”
She nodded against his chest and willingly let him steer her inside. He noted that she didn’t look back at the destruction. Once they were in the kitchen, she moved away from him and slipped out of her jacket, still clearly upset. It didn’t make him any happier to have to tell her the rest, but she had to know.
“Kirby, before you call Thad, there’s something I need to tell you.”
She had already started toward the cordless that sat on the counter, but paused to look at him. “Shouldn’t we get this reported as soon as possible? It will be dark soon and I’d like to see if he can get right over here and take a look. I mean, I’m racking my brain, but even crotchety old Clemson would never do something like this. And unless he’s breeding a whole new kind of barn cat over there, I don’t think they’re responsible, either.” Then her expression lightened. “Do you think it could have been some kind of animal? I mean, I can’t imagine what kind, but-”
“No, Kirby, I don’t think it was an animal. Not the four-legged kind anyway. I…I think I might know who did this.”
She started to respond, then stopped as the rest of what he was saying sunk in and snapped her mouth shut again.
“When I left Vegas, there were a few other reasons why I left.”
Her eyebrows lifted. “What? Are you saying someone is after you? Oh, my God, Brett. Why didn’t you-”
“I didn’t think it would follow me.” He crossed the room in three strides, but she folded her arms across her chest, barring him. He respected that. Hated it, but didn’t push. She deserved to hear the rest. “It hasn’t, actually. But now I’ve brought the world of poker here, and I guess that problem came with it. I’m sorry. If I thought-” He broke off as her expression changed from one of honest confusion and concern to that shuttered look he hadn’t seen in quite some time now. He silently swore and vowed right then that as soon as Thad was done here and he was reasonably certain Kirby was okay left here by herself, he was heading to the resort. Maks wasn’t going to touch another person he cared about.
“What kind of trouble?” she asked, a carefully blank tone in her voice.
“I-when I stopped playing, when I retired, not everyone was happy about it. I was the poster boy for a lot of big events and it drew money to the tables, both during the event itself and before and after, just from the publicity of it. I was the biggest name and the easiest money to be made, promotionally speaking. So I know it wasn’t a great day for promoters and casino owners when I stepped down. There aren’t many others with the easy name recognition that I had and it will likely be a while before someone dominates the sport.” He lifted a hand. “I’m not saying any of this to toot my own horn, just-”
“No,” she said quietly, “I know you’re not like that. Just…go on.”
“So, there were a series of…events. Set up to look like accidents, but after a while, it was too coincidental to have all those things happening to me. Or to people I cared about.” Her shoulders slumped then and he couldn’t help it, he grasped her folded elbows and tugged her closer. “Kirby, we could never prove anything; the police chalked it up to bad luck. The running joke was all the ridiculous luck I’d had during my career had flipped on me when I left the sport. But I-I didn’t want anything bad happening to anyone I cared about. And I needed time and some space to figure out what I was going to do. So I took off, figuring if it was one of the folks hounding me to come back, then they’d either follow me or let up once and for all.”