Chapter One #2
So she had no choice here but to bite her tongue, and it hurt. “I don’t know what to say to that,” she managed to say.
“I know you think I’m a silly old woman,” Izzy said with a laugh, but also with enough direct eye contact that Kitty was completely aware that her friend knew that no one who had ever met Izzy had ever thought for even one moment that she was anything like a silly old woman.
Quite the opposite. “But Alessandro and I are aligned on this. I’m so sorry if that’s disappointing, my dear. ”
She didn’t look particularly sorry. Izzy patted Kitty’s hand, and then continued on down the path that branched off toward her house.
Leaving Kitty standing there on the dirt road that wound back from the street and branched off to Izzy and Alessandro’s house on the right and hers farther back and to the left.
With no earthly idea what to do with herself.
“I did not see this coming,” she muttered out loud to the pine trees and the watching mountains all around.
But that felt a little too much like self-pity, and she didn’t do that.
She wheeled around and marched herself back toward the street, thinking that she would do what any reasonable person would do when essentially sucker punched of a morning.
She would head across the street, order herself the fluffiest French toast that Tennessee Lisle could whip up, and eat each and every one of her feelings until they were drowned in too much sugar and fried dough.
Then, when she was done, she would see if she could think her way out of this unforeseen pickle, because it was that or find a husband.
Kitty almost laughed at that, out loud like a loon, because she wouldn’t have the faintest idea how a person went out looking for husbands.
She was more likely to convince one of the local grizzlies to pose as a husband.
She could source the most tender and fragrant rosemary to change a pizza from good to sublime, but she didn’t have the slightest idea where to source a whole man.
Kitty charged for the road, her eyes on the diner across the street and her mouth already watering for that French toast feelings removal, when she suddenly seemed almost to slam straight into a brick wall.
It took her a moment to register that it was not a wall.
It was Finn Patrick, who had been in town now about six months or so, and right now she was entirely too aware of the way he studied her.
With that unnervingly big hand of his cupped around her elbow, which had somehow kept her both from plowing into him and from falling down thanks to the impact.
Finn Patrick… bothered Kitty.
He was a newcomer, which was part of it.
A newcomer and part of the Lisle family, which led some folks to view him a little less harshly than they viewed most of the new residents who turned up.
Maybe it was because he’d decided to stay in the middle of winter instead of the gorgeous, glorious summers that turned too many heads and led to many a hasty rethink come the darkness.
Maybe it was simply because his sister Helena was the one who’d brought that coffee cart to town a couple years back and nobody in Cowboy Point could imagine life without it now.
Either way, something about the easy way folks had accepted him and that brother of his who slunk around like a boneless cat who knew too much about everyone he looked at, rubbed Kitty the wrong way. Men in general, it had to be said, rubbed Kitty the wrong way.
But this man was different.
Sometimes she could swear she caught him looking at her, though Kitty could not think of a single good reason why he would be doing that, and that bothered her.
Sometimes, when he wasn’t even in the room, she would find herself conjuring up images of his wide shoulders or that fascinating dark hair of his that he wore close cropped, almost like he wanted to draw more attention to his intense eyes and that mouth of his that was always curving.
Always so amiable, so friendly, but all it took was a single glance to see that everything else about him was fashioned from steel.
People thought he was friendly because of that smile. But she knew better.
That bothered her too.
But what really bothered her today was that she could feel the warmth of his hand penetrate through the fabric of the sweater she was wearing, and it felt a whole lot like he had the palm of his hand pressed against her bare skin. And also that his palm was some kind of radiator, it seemed so hot.
It was shocking.
Equally shocking was the fact that she’d never been this close to him before. She had never liked tall men much, because they were always looming around and silly women slung themselves at their feet simply because they apparently mistook such men for trees.
Kitty had never been so afflicted. But there was something about having to tip her head back to look up at this man that… bothered her.
Particularly because, from this angle, she could not help but study that sharp, square jaw of his that bothered her even more.
She felt all the breath leave her body in a kind of rush that she also found she did not like at all.
“Are you all right?” Finn Patrick asked her, and there was that look in his astonishingly blue eyes that she’d seen before. Always aimed at her. A kind of… patience, maybe. “You nearly crashed right into me.”
But there was something else there too. There was something else, and it lit something inside of her, and made some part of her deep in her belly that she’d never felt before seem to tremble.
That was even more bothersome than all the rest.
It also didn’t help things that his voice was ridiculous. That low rumble, close enough to a drawl and clearly calculated to do exactly what it was doing to her.
What she wanted to do was yank her elbow out of his hands and walk away, so she could go face dive directly into a pile of French toast. Somehow, Kitty did not do that.
Because despite herself, her brain was spinning around and around an absolutely terrible idea.
So she studied this man instead. “I was paying entirely too much attention to where I was heading, and wasn’t aware of my surroundings.”
That wasn’t entirely true. She could have sworn he wasn’t there, and then he was brick-walling her from crossing the road. Almost as if he’d sprinted to intersect with her—
But that was foolish. Not only because she had never seen this man do anything but amble, so she very much doubted that he sprinted unless being pursued by some kind of predator.
“No problem,” he said and then he smiled at her, which made her frown. Which, apparently, only made that smile of his widen. “Though it does pay to be aware of your surroundings.”
“So I can fight off predators?” Kitty asked, perhaps a little bit tartly. She sighed. “Not all predators, of course, but I still choose the bear.”
“I get it.” His smile was entirely too bright for morning, she thought crossly.
As if he was trying to compete with the June sunshine.
“But I wasn’t thinking about predators, I was thinking more about this place.
” He moved his chin, and he only moved it a little, but somehow seemed to take in the whole of the valley. “It gets prettier by the day.”
Kitty also thought that the valley was remarkably beautiful. She and her sisters had covered a lot of ground in their traveling years. They’d seen a lot of places out there. But very few of them, in her opinion, could stand up to Cowboy Point.
Particularly at this time of year, when the weather was closer to fine by the day and full summer was so close.
“How long are you planning to stay here?” she asked him.
There was laughter in his blue gaze then. “Is there a requirement? Do I have to be here a certain amount of time before I can comment on how it looks?”
She found that thread of laughter in his voice bothered her too. Everything about the man bothered her. But beggars could not be choosers.
“You don’t strike me as a permanent resident,” she said.
“You’re just saying that because you prefer the bear,” Finn Patrick drawled. “And I’m not going to mount any defense of men, but unlike bears, some men actually settle down. Are known for it, in fact. It’s how the West was won and all that.”
Kitty thought western expansion was a little more complicated than men wandering about and settling where they liked, but that wasn’t what they were talking about.
She couldn’t afford to get distracted. “Your family’s here now, sure.
But who’s to say that any of you will really put down roots here? ”
“Are you running me out of town, Kitty?” Finn asked, and his voice was even lower than before.
This was a problem because she could feel the way he said her name. It made that place deep inside of her tremble all over again, and a lot worse this time.
“Not at all,” she said. “I have a proposition for you, that’s all.”
“That sounds salacious,” he said, and that time he really did commit to the drawl. And much as she found amiable, friendly, companionable Finn Patrick bothersome, slow-talking cowboy Finn Patrick was no better.
In fact, it was worse.
Some people sat with a plan. They refined it over and over again, ironed out all the kinks, and made certain that it was the right thing to do. Kitty, on the other hand, had been blessed in this life with the gift of certainty.
Once she made up her mind, it was done.
And so far, that approach to planning had served her well.
So it was the easiest thing in the world to let all the sudden, possibly questionable ideas in her head swirl around and coalesce and leap into full form. She could see it all spool out before her as if it had already happened.
And there was no denying it. It would solve all of her problems in one fell swoop.
“It’s not salacious at all,” she assured him.
His hand was still so hot on her elbow. His jaw was undeniably perfect, which was a bothersome fact all its own.
But she could see it all so clearly in her head, so she forged straight ahead, despite all the ways this man bothered her. “I’m just wondering if you’d consider marrying me?”