Chapter Three #2
So she slammed her way out of the kitchen and marched herself right over to his table, but that didn’t help either. Because all he did was lean back in his chair and watch her come.
With a look in those blue eyes of his that she could neither read nor understand. What was more annoying was that she could feel it.
She stopped barely a foot away from him and crossed her arms furiously over her chest, and the longer she looked at him, the more she felt… All those things. All those confusing, impossible things, and she did not understand why this man bothered her the way he did.
“You’re late,” she told him, sounding strange and stiff and not like herself at all.
“I’m actually early.”
“I’m not talking about your dinner.”
“You’re right,” Finn said after a moment. “And I do know that I’m out past your deadline. But I’m going to have to ask you to be patient, Kitty. There are a number of factors involved. You understand.”
She did not understand. “What factors?”
“I haven’t married a stranger before, is the thing,” he said without hesitation, and his voice was steady and sure and seemed to resonate inside her.
And there was something about the intensity of that blue gaze on hers. She didn’t like it. It seemed to hook straight into all those strange sensations inside of her, and it wasn’t good. It definitely wasn’t good.
She found herself moving closer anyway. “I wouldn’t call us strangers.”
The curve in his mouth deepened. He didn’t lounge around like his brother, who often looked like he might slide out of a chair at any moment, but that didn’t make him any less problematic. It was still very clear how big Finn was. How wide those shoulders were.
More importantly, how carefully controlled he was despite that smile.
She told herself that was the part that mattered. Not the width of his shoulders.
“Patience, Kitty,” he said, his voice even lower than before, and she had the strangest notion that he could tell how that voice moved through her. How it settled inside her and sank deep into her belly, where it seemed to glow. “But if you find you can’t wait, you shouldn’t.”
He shrugged, then moved his hand. It was the smallest gesture, but he managed to take in the entirety of the restaurant that was already filling up.
They’d had a typical reversal of weather fortune over the weekend, but it was June, so the patio was open despite the snow and cold winds that had kept everyone shivering a couple of days ago.
Tonight it was cool, no longer frigid, and there were heaters out there.
Folks were clustered in around the tables with their coats on, determined to make it summer already.
They’d left the doors to the patio open, to keep the guests inside from getting too stuffy.
There was no reason she should feel so stuffy.
She turned and looked around anyway, even though she knew what the restaurant looked like at this time of day on a Wednesday in June.
“There are all manner of gentlemen here,” Finn was saying, sounding entirely too pleased with himself to her ear. “I’m sure one of them would be happy to see about meeting your requirements.”
Kitty looked back at him and she didn’t know when this had changed. When he had gone from the most expedient choice to the only one. She only knew that she had spent these past two weeks entirely too invested in him saying yes.
She made a low noise that was maybe not that low after all, because he laughed again.
And she really wished he would stop doing that. It… did things to his face that made all of that percolating and trembling seem to simmer even more wildly inside of her, and she didn’t like it. She absolutely did not like it.
“How long?” she asked him.
“I beg your pardon?”
“How long do you need to make up your mind?”
“Kitty,” he said, and there was a different look in those blue eyes now. Like different sunbeams and she could not understand it. Why it made her feel so… warm. “I can’t help but think that it’s beginning to seem like you chose me specifically.”
“You need to…” She cast around, exasperated. “Do you need a list of things about me? To help you make this decision?”
He was laughing again, though this time only with those damn eyes. “I think that would depend on the things.”
She scowled at him. “Fine. My name is Kitty. It’s not short for anything.
Not Katherine. Not Kathleen. Just Kitty.
I’m the oldest of my three sisters. We all have reddish hair, though neither of our parents do.
We don’t spend any time with our parents anymore, which is good for everyone involved, though we do send them a Christmas card every year.
Because we’re not hiding, just staying away.
” His laughter seemed to be spreading. Now he was clearly biting it back, and she didn’t understand why this was all so funny to him.
“My favorite color is green. Kelly green. Sometimes hunter green.”
“What about pine green?” Finn asked, that drawl in full gear now. “Or moss green? Or the much-maligned army green for that matter?”
“I don’t know why you need a list of these things or any things to make a decision,” she said in a rush, then. Though she couldn’t have said why it was his listing of colors that got under her skin like that. Only that it… itched. “It’s just a job.”
He shifted to lean forward then, his blue eyes so intense on her that it took her a moment to realize she was holding her breath.
“I’m not the kind of man who half asses a job, Kitty—not Katherine, not Kathleen.
” The curve in his mouth changed. That look in his eyes seemed sharper, suddenly.
Something like harder, though not in a way that made her think that he was angry.
This was something else. “I take pride in the work that I do or I don’t do it.
And as I told you before. I don’t make rash decisions. ”
She wanted nothing more than to demand that he tell her what that meant.
That he list off all the reasons he couldn’t immediately say yes.
She opened her mouth to do it, even while some little voice inside of her that sounded a lot like one of her sisters sounded an alarm, because surely she couldn’t be this wound up about his decision or lack of a decision. It didn’t make sense.
Kitty was saved from figuring out whether or not she was going to poke at him more, and possibly with her actual finger, because his sister walked up.
“Hi,” Helena Patrick said, looking back and forth between Finn and Kitty with a curious look on her face. “Did you order, Finn? I thought it was my turn this week.”
“Not at all,” Kitty said, maybe too loudly. She couldn’t tell anymore. It was like every sensor inside her was misfiring.
And Finn was absolutely no help. He sat there, smiling. In that comfortable, capable way of his that made her want to flip his table.
She did not, and felt deeply virtuous that she was able to restrain herself.
“I was discussing some of the upcoming specials with him,” Kitty told Helena.
“There’s a fig and prosciutto and hot honey situation that I haven’t put on the menu yet, with some local goat cheese to make it pop, and I think it really elevates the menu this summer.
Throw little arugula on it and you have the kind of pizza that ends up on social media. ”
She saw Finn grin at that. But Helena laughed. “You’re wasting all that on my brother,” she said, and rolled her eyes. “His palate is not the least bit refined.”
“My palate is perfect,” Finn retorted, still in that steady way of his. “In that I know exactly what I like and that’s what I have. Every time.”
Kitty didn’t understand the bizarre warmth that she was feeling, or the way it pooled in her.
She didn’t understand why she felt so strange and awkward as she muttered a goodbye and turned around, then hurried back into her kitchen.
Just like she didn’t understand why the only thing she could seem to focus on for the rest of the night was the way that Finn had talked to her, as if he was talking about something else altogether.
But she just couldn’t figure out what.
She toyed with the idea of going and propositioning a few of the other men in the restaurant that night, but she realized that she would be doing it for no good reason except that she thought—she was sure—that Finn didn’t think she would do it.
Worse, she knew that if any of them said yes, she would hate it.
She also pretended that she wasn’t watching Finn at his table, but she was. She noticed that he hung back when the rest of them left, and she couldn’t seem to help herself from wandering out to the counter as he came up.
By this point, Kitty had decided that she was glad she hadn’t gotten a little more intense with him. That was almost certainly the right move.
Yet for some reason, she had to bite her tongue as she stood there, gazing up at him.
He tapped his fingers on the counter, forcing her to notice—and not for the first time—how big his hands were. How tough they looked, like he could handle anything.
“Soon,” he said.
“I heard you before,” she managed to say without sounding too cranky. “Patience. I get it.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” he said, with his eyes crinkled up at the corners.
And she was sure she heard him laugh again as he walked away.
Because she could feel it inside her all the rest of the night.