Chapter Four #2
The music was playing. The band was getting the crowd excited—or more excited—as the afternoon wore on. There were already people dancing in the middle of the patio space, where the Bennett sisters had cleared away some of the tables.
It seemed like the most natural thing in the world for him to make his way through the crowd to her.
So natural he didn’t question himself, he just did it.
He stopped before her, she frowned up at him, and Finn was grinning immediately.
“I hope you’re enjoying yourself,” she said, but sharply, in a voice that suggested she hoped no such thing. That she rather hoped the opposite, in fact.
Why he found this so cute was a mystery, but he did.
“I’m about to,” he told her.
Then he reached out and took her hand.
He’d meant to do it, there was no pretending otherwise, but what Finn wasn’t prepared for was the punch of sensation that went through him like a shock when he felt her skin against his.
Better yet, he saw it go through her, too.
“What are you doing?” she asked, those hazel eyes widening in what might have been shock. But shock laced with a kind of awareness that sent his own humming in response.
“I thought we ought to get a dance in,” he drawled. “As a prelude.”
And he found he enjoyed it far too much when he rendered her speechless. When her perfect mouth actually dropped open.
Finn tugged her with him out to the throng of people dancing. He was aware of the attention on them from different sides, but he didn’t mind it. He couldn’t care too much about that kind of thing, because the only attention he cared about was Kitty’s.
He pulled her into his arms and she didn’t resist him at all, but he could feel her trembling slightly. She ended up with one palm against his chest and managed to make it seem as if she was only grudgingly allowing him to hold the other in his, tucked up between them.
“You’re making a scene,” she told him.
Scolded him, really.
“What I’m doing is laying the groundwork,” he replied, easily. “What did you think was going to happen? You were just going to move in with me and we were going to tell everyone we were married and that was going to be that? I thought you wanted this to be believable.”
Kitty clearly did not like her plans being challenged. His problem was that he found the umbrage she wasn’t trying that hard to hide adorable too.
Especially when she sniffed at him. “First of all, I will not be moving in with you. The entire purpose of this charade is to own the property I’m already living on, so you will be moving in with me.
And second, is this happening? Is this your way of saying yes?
Have you ever heard of a direct answer?”
“You want me moving in with you and your two sisters?”
That did not sound like an ideal situation to Finn.
Though even as he thought that, it occurred to him that having her sisters around might work in his favor.
Because surely Kitty intended to sell this marriage to them the way she wanted to sell it to her landlords and everyone else—meaning she couldn’t make him sleep on the couch, could she?
And that meant that the sleeping arrangements might turn out to be a whole lot cozier than he suspected she intended. He certainly wasn’t going to point that out.
“Kitty,” he said, and he shook his head slightly, as if she was disappointing him. “You can’t ask a man to marry you and then critique the way he answers, can you?”
“You have a lot of rules about a situation I don’t think you’ve been in before.” Her brows furrowed even more deeply than before. “Or have you?”
“I’ve been propositioned many times, Kitty, I assure you.” Finn laughed, and there must have been some heat in it, because he could see her cheeks flush. “Not all of those propositions involved marriage, but I like to think I left a lasting good impression just the same.”
Despite the reddening of her pretty face, she didn’t take his bait. “Okay. Great. Then it shouldn’t take you all this dithering to make a decision.”
And the thing was, it made no sense. He knew that. It was also almost unbearably adorable to him. She was. This whole situation was ridiculous, and yet she was acting as if he was the one who’d done something wrong. Or was behaving badly.
Accusations that had never been made against his character in all of his days.
Maybe that was why he pulled her closer, so she was nestled against his chest. So she had to tip her chin up to look him in the eye.
And the thing he couldn’t get past was that every new thing he discovered about Kitty Bennett, every little detail, made him like her more.
He had just been thinking that he needed to look for a new thing. That he needed to figure out what he really wanted.
What would it hurt to let this woman mix him up in her bizarre little plan? The truth was, he had a fairly powerful hunger for her as it was. He wasn’t the kind of man who was easily or quickly satisfied. He liked to take his time. He liked to take it slow.
Marriage meant things to a lot of folks, he knew that.
Some of them took it very seriously. But he’d been raised with the distinct and personal understanding that taking it seriously wasn’t true of everyone.
That some people thought that vows meant nothing and that marriages were disposable, especially when they were real.
So maybe it made a twisted kind of sense that he should find himself involved in this with her. Maybe it was like he gave off some kind of scent. Like Kitty had intuitively understood that he was the perfect person to conduct a fake relationship with.
After all, he had intimate knowledge of that kind of thing, didn’t he? He’d grown up watching that play out in real time.
And while something in him didn’t really care for that assessment of the situation, the rest of him was far more wrapped up in the fact that he was holding her in his arms. They were swaying to the music and he could feel her body against his.
He liked the way her hair was so shiny in the lights strung up above them.
He liked the way she smelled. He liked the way her breasts felt pressed against his chest, round and tempting.
He liked her hand in his too, like she fit a little too well.
One song ended, another started up, and when she made as if to move away he tugged her back in close. Closer, maybe.
“People are going to notice,” she said, shaking her head at him.
“Kitty,” he drawled, because he liked saying her name, “that’s the point.
” She opened her mouth to argue, but he shook his head.
“We want to make them wonder. How do we know each other well enough to dance like this? Have we been sneaking around since I came to town? Do we have a relationship that nobody knows about?”
“No one will believe any of that.”
“They don’t need to believe it, they just need to wonder about it,” he said, as if he’d done this before. He hadn’t. What he had done is live in small towns before, so he knew how they worked. “Because I’m guessing you’re not looking for a long, drawn-out courtship, are you?”
“Courtship?” Kitty echoed. “There will be no courtship. There will be no sneaking around. Or any of the other things you said. We just need to get the job done.”
“My mistake,” he said, letting his drawl run away with the syllables. “I thought you were trying to sell this marriage as real. For as long as it serves you, anyway.”
As he watched, her face changed again, and he could have sworn that she was flustered. And he didn’t know how he knew that Kitty Bennett wasn’t usually flustered by much. He liked that he was the one who could make it happen.
“I do. You’re right.” She clearly didn’t like saying that, either. “But I don’t want to waste any time. I want to get right to it.”
“I guess my next question is, are you looking for something like this?” He jutted his chin around to take in the party on all sides of them. “A big wedding with the whole town?”
Kitty looked horrified. “Absolutely not. I told my sisters years ago that we should all elope. Weddings are a ridiculous waste of money. They’re not practical and they serve absolutely no purpose in the long run.
Think about it. They don’t have anything to do with the marriage.
They’re all about other people’s perceptions, not the couple themselves. ”
Finn didn’t disagree, so there was no reason that hearing Kitty say that should land in him strangely. He ignored it.
“I’m not sure today’s couple would agree with you on that one,” he said. After a moment of simply frowning at him, she followed his gaze to where Knox and Ramona were dancing close together, holding their baby girl between them and looking about as happy as two people could.
“That’s different,” Kitty said crossly, though she did not elaborate on how. “Anyway, no, I don’t want a party, I don’t want a fuss, I don’t want any nonsense.”
“Then I think you and I should have dinner,” Finn told her.
“It doesn’t matter where. Somewhere people around here will see us together.
We can talk logistics but I warn you, Kitty, you’re going to have to sell the romance of this a little better.
Most folks are sentimental. They don’t want to know that a relationship is for show. They want the real deal.”
Kitty looked up at him as if she didn’t understand what he was talking about.
“What exactly do you mean by that?” she asked, warily. “Because if you think that I’m going to crawl all over you in public, or make a fool of myself, you have another think coming. I will never do any of those things.”
He could feel his smile curve his mouth. “Why would you make a fool of yourself?”
“I won’t,” Kitty said. “That’s what I’m telling you.”
“I think maybe we could hold hands,” he said, and he couldn’t help but laugh while he said it. “And maybe you could try to look as if you like me. Just a little, that’s all. Just to sell this.”
“I don’t…” She never finished that sentence.
Instead, she stopped talking and she considered him for a moment, and he wondered if she was having the same odd sensation that he was—that they were all alone here. When he knew very well that they were not.
“Tomorrow night I was planning on going to that new restaurant in town,” she said instead of whatever she’d been about to say. “Crowded Table. I want to meet the new owners, but I also want to try the food. They’re having their soft open this weekend.”
“I thought you had to stay here and cook,” Finn said. “Pretty much every single day of every single week.”
“They can handle the restaurant without me for a night,” Kitty said, with a shrug. But her hazel eyes stayed intense on his. “You can come with me and we can kill two birds with one stone.”
“So romantic,” Finn murmured.
He expected Kitty to say something cross at that, but she didn’t. She only peered up at him. “There’s nothing romantic about this. You know that, don’t you? It doesn’t seem like you know that.”
“I understand that you’re hiring me to fulfill a position,” Finn agreed. “What I’m suggesting to you is that public perception of that position needs a little finessing. That’s all.”
“You can pick me up tomorrow at the restaurant,” she told him. “I’ll be doing my prep work.”
“I will pick you up at your house,” he countered. “You’ll be finished with the prep work, wearing something pretty.”
“You can be one thousand percent certain that I will not do either of those things, as I don’t like being told what to do,” she retorted.
“Kitty. Once again, I thought the point of this is making people believe that we’re actually having a whirlwind romance that can only end in marriage, and fast. So I’ll say it again.
I’ll meet you at the front door to your house.
You’ll be wearing something pretty. I won’t be able to keep my eyes off you.
The entire valley of Cowboy Point and all the hills around will be talking about it within the hour. More than they already are.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, that frown taking hold again.
The band slowed it down, so he pulled her closer. He wrapped his arms around her back and held her against his body, which he found he liked entirely too much. And he could see her wind up to start complaining—but maybe the heat that he could feel between them got to her, too.
Because as the singer sang passion and need, Kitty got quiet. That frown disappeared from between her eyes.
The eyes she couldn’t seem to pull away from his.
And as they swayed there together, surrounded by celebration and more than a few sideways glances, he felt her whole body tremble, then relax.
As if she couldn’t help herself.
A dreamy sort of look moved through those hazel eyes of hers, and he had the distinct impression that she had no idea that he could see it. Just like she had no idea what it did to him.
Whatever else Kitty was, she was potent.
And when the song ended, Finn bent down. He saw something like alarm flash across her face before he pressed a kiss right between her brows, right where a brand-new frown was already forming.
“Tomorrow night, Kitty,” he told her quietly. “I’ll be there at six.”
Then he challenged himself by doing the hard work of letting her go.