But no,” she said softly, “I definitely don’t mind you staying.”
Then she pulled his head down and kissed him, hoping he felt the commitment he was wanting from her. Because while she might be thoroughly confused on his plans for his future, she knew the one thing she absolutely wanted in hers.
Chapter 16
Brett worked on the sauce while Kirby chopped vegetables. “This is kind of how I imagined it would be. When I let myself think about things like that. As a kid, I mean.”
Kirby looked up from her studious attempt at slicing tomatoes. “Like what would be?”
“Home life. Partnership life.”
“I take it you didn’t have this kind of life, then? Fixing dinners in the kitchen, that sort of thing?”
He shook his head and stirred the sauce again. “I grew up in and around casinos.”
“We’re more alike than you think. I grew up in a ski resort.”
“Your folks ran one?”
She shook her head. “No, I got abandoned in the restroom of one.”
His eyes popped wide and he stopped stirring. “What? When? How old were you?”
“Old enough to walk, but too little to remember any of it.”
“What happened?”
“Well, it was a small resort town, and one of the ladies that worked in the food concession part took me in. The closest protective services kind of thing was hours away in Denver, so…” She shrugged. “They kind of adopted me. Not formally or anything. But someone made sure I had food and a place to sleep. Dottie was in her sixties- she was the first one to take care of me-and eventually got to where she couldn’t really keep up. Then I stayed with-” She tilted her head. “Gosh, I don’t even know the whole list at this point, but honestly I really lived at the resort. I was kind of like the mascot or something.”
“And no one ever came and got you out of there?”
She shook her head. “Honestly, Brett, it’s not hard to fall through the cracks when no one knows you exist.”
“They never found out who your mother was?”
“No. When I was thirteen and all angst-ridden like most teenagers, I thought about trying to figure it out, but since I wasn’t formally abandoned no search had ever been done and that many years later it was doubtful anyone would ever figure it out. One thing that was for sure was that she never came back to find out.”
“Did you wish that she would?”
Kirby went back to slicing tomatoes. “When I was really little, and I figured out how families were supposed to work from watching the folks who came to stay at the resort, I used to wonder, make up stories, and think if I just stayed there she’d always know where to find me.” Kirby slid the chopped tomatoes onto the top of the tossed salad greens. “But eventually I got over that. Along with the fairy tale that one of the rich, foreign families would come to stay at the resort would fall in love with me and insist that I come back home with them. To their castle, of course. I’d have a title, at least. And my own pony.”
She laughed and shook her head. “Honestly, for the most part, I liked how I grew up. I mean, there were times when I was ashamed a little, or felt bad.” She smiled over at him. “They used to dress me from lost-and- found stuff, and I remember thinking that if I could just get two mittens that matched, then people wouldn’t know I came from an untraditional home.” She laughed. “Like that was the only clue.”
Brett was listening, certain his mouth was still hanging open. It was hard to believe this bright, articulate, witty, gorgeous woman had grown up in such a vagabond lifestyle. Maybe that explained her self-assurance. And also why she might have stayed with her former lover for so long, with only a promise of a ring.
“You could have easily passed for royalty,” he said, unthinkingly uttering the first thought that had come to mind.
She looked surprised for a moment, then glanced away again, blinking a few times.
He sat his spoon down and crossed the kitchen, laying his hand over her wrist until she put the knife down, then turned her into his arms and tipped up her chin. “I always thought you were.”
“Would that be when I was hanging from a tree, or when I had a kitten attached to my midsection?”
He smiled and leaned down to kiss her. “Always.”
When he lifted his head a few moments later, she had that bemused look on her face again. Like she was trying hard to figure out if it was okay or not. If he was okay or not. He knew, without doubt, she was attracted, and she’d made it clear, up in the shower, that she was happy he was going to stick around a while, but since they’d come down to start making dinner, he’d catch her looking at him with this considering look in her eyes.
Which made the anxious knot in his stomach only wrench more tightly as he imagined telling her the rest of the news he’d only begun upstairs. She wanted him, but maybe only temporarily. And his thoughts were already racing well past that.
But maybe, given what she’d just revealed, and how her last love affair had gone, maybe she simply refused to think in anything but temporary measures. What she’d started here, what she’d built was clearly meant to last, to be a solid future. But perhaps she saw that future alone. She’d said as much, early on.
Would she take a chance? Play the hand despite the odds?
“I have a pretty unconventional background, too,” he reminded her.
“Did your parents run a casino?” she asked, smiling as she rephrased his earlier question.
“Actually, my mother was a showgirl. I haven’t a clue who my father was.” Her gaze sharpened on his and he suddenly realized why she’d gone back to chopping vegetables as she’d told him about her childhood. Clearly she’d long since come to terms with how she’d been raised, and she had even spoken about it pretty fondly. But that didn’t mean it was easy to share with someone else. Perhaps someone whose opinion might matter to her.
And as much as that thought brought a little unknotting to the anxiety he was feeling, it didn’t help that he had to bear his soul in the same way with her. He’d also come to terms with it, but it mattered to him what she would think. “She was also a prostitute. And a drug addict.”
Kirby’s mouth shaped a little “o” and her eyes filled with sadness. “Was it just the two of you?”
He nodded. “Until I was about nine. Then we moved into the boarding house, the one Vanetta runs, that I told you about. Vanetta couldn’t do much at the time, but she went easier on my mom when she couldn’t come up with rent. She’d stopped performing by the time I was twelve. Her lifestyle was taking a toll on her body and her looks, at least by her bosses’ standards. By then I was already playing cards, working odd jobs at the casinos to make money. Mom, uh…well, there were more men coming around. Vanetta put a stop to that when she found out, but that just meant that Mom was gone all the time instead. I’d have to go find her…” he trailed off, realizing that Kirby didn’t need to hear the gory details. It was bad enough that he’d had to deal with finding a parent who’d oftentimes been left beaten up, or was strung out. He didn’t think back to those days much, if at all, anymore. “She died when I was fourteen. Overdose. Vanetta kind of did what your friends at the resort did. Made sure I had food, clothes, that I went to school, though that was never a chore. I loved school.”
“Me, too,” Kirby said, the light of true kinship in her eyes. “It was the most normal thing in my world. And taught me how big the real world really is. It gave me such a better perspective of what my possibilities were. I would have stayed there twenty-four-seven if I could have.”
“That’s exactly how I felt. Well, there and at the casino. Even though I knew the latter part probably wasn’t healthy, it was home for me.”
“Maybe the resort wasn’t quite the same, in terms of not being so great an environment for a child. But I know what you mean, it was home to me, too.”
“Except I never left the casino life, while you grew up to build your own version of home.”
She laughed. “Right, where people still come and go and nothing is permanent. But a permanent home for me, I guess.”
He leaned back to look into her eyes. “We do what we know. I know cards. You know resorts.”
She lifted a shoulder. “Makes sense, I guess.”
“If things had gone differently with…what was his name?”
