Chapter Six #2
If anything, she looked baffled that he didn’t understand that.
But he let that go as they settled into their menus and ordered their dinner.
Finn had seen more than one table turn to look a little more closely at them during all of this, so once their order was taken he leaned forward and picked up Kitty’s hand.
And he could feel the jolt that moved through her as her gaze snapped to his.
“We should probably talk about how you see this all working,” he said. “As I’m assuming you have a plan, don’t you?”
“I always have a plan.”
He nodded at her. “Then tell me. I like an informed decision.”
“I thought with the kissing and the arm around the shoulders, and now this handholding, you’d already made up your mind.” Her head tipped a little bit to one side, and her gaze narrowed as she looked at him. “Haven’t you?”
“Whatever we decide, I think it can’t hurt to get out here and drum up the kind of interest we want in this,” he replied easily. The furrow between her eyes deepened. “We might as well not waste a public opportunity.”
“I told you the plan already,” she said. “It hasn’t changed. We elope. We do the married thing. Izzy and Alessandro change their minds and all is well. Simple, really.”
He could see that she believed that. But if it was really all that simple, Finn would have told his family what he was doing tonight. He hadn’t.
And it wasn’t like he hadn’t had the opportunity.
His phone had been blowing up all day.
Helena had texted, at an appalling early hour, Since when do you dance, Finn?
Not sure anyone would call that dancing, Raleigh had replied.
Never seen Kitty Bennett dance with anyone, Dallas had chimed in.
That’s because Kitty is a genius in the kitchen, but not exactly sociable, Cat had texted. But I guess Finn changed her mind?
Finn must have the family charm, Tennessee had replied, and that was really a step too far, because Tennessee usually pretended he didn’t see the group chat. Especially now that he and Matilda were together.
Finn had decided that it was his day to pretend he didn’t know about the group chat either. And by the time he saw Helena in person that afternoon, he’d been ignoring it to such an extent that he was considering turning his phone off altogether. Or maybe throwing it off the nearest mountain.
Did you lose your phone? His sister had asked immediately. Because of course she had. Because Helena was merciless.
I wish, he’d grumbled.
He’d promised his mother that he would help her out up at Helena’s little cabin on the hill beneath the old, renovated lodge.
Helena had found the cabin when she’d come to Cowboy Point, and now Peyton was living with her.
Finn had stayed there himself before he’d found his apartment.
Raleigh’s trailer was still out in the driveway, but what he did there was his own business.
Or so he liked to keep telling everyone.
Finn had only just finished with a list of chores his mother had provided him, for she had gone off to spend the afternoon with Jenny Lisle. If the two of them were surprised they got along so well, they didn’t show it. Maybe only Finn still stopped and marveled that they could be friends at all.
But in that moment, he wasn’t concerned with what his mother was off doing. Because Helena looked like she was gearing up for a nice long conversation that Finn really didn’t want to have.
What are you doing? his sister had asked.
I’m organizing your toolbox, he had replied, evenly.
Before you say it, I know you don’t have a toolbox.
I got you one. I know that you know perfectly well how to use each and every tool inside of it.
So there should be no particular reason that you save up four hundred chores for Mom to make me do.
Helena had curled herself up in the corner of her couch, and had regarded him with a complete lack of the sort of hero worship and awe that he would have preferred she display, him being her wise older brother and all.
I’m pretty sure she just felt sorry for you, Helena had said.
She’s worried you don’t seem to have anything to do.
And it was a lucky thing that Finn had spent so many years keeping tight control of his temper. Because he hadn’t liked anything that Helena was saying. Especially because she’d said it so matter-of-factly.
His little sister was a menace. He was also aware that she was beautiful, though he and Raleigh always found that kind of entertaining.
They didn’t really need to worry about the wrong kind of men pushing up on their sister.
She was prickly enough on her own. One benefit of being raised by a conman, they had always thought, was that Helena could see one coming from a mile away.
She wasn’t the least bit afraid to make a grown man cry.
Finn would just prefer it not be him.
For a moment he didn’t say anything. He’d finished carefully packing up the toolbox that he’d driven all the way down to Marietta to get for her, so she could stow it here at her cabin where she’d been nice enough to put up the whole family when they’d come to meet the Lisles with her.
I take it you want a response to that, he’d finally said, when he was done. I know you take great pleasure in throwing punches just to see where they land.
You’ve been here in Cowboy Point for half a year, Helena had said, mildly enough, but her blue eyes had been locked on him.
Raleigh’s been tending bar at the Copper Mine.
Mom’s been talking about helping out at the Feed Store.
But as far as I can tell, my older brother who spent his life talking about work ethic and the importance of keeping busy is just… flailing.
I am not flailing, and have never flailed.
He’d turned to face her, because he could see her all too easily from the kitchen that opened up into the living room where she’d been sitting, watching him closely.
Much too closely and with a seriousness he didn’t much care for.
If you asked me to flail right now, I wouldn’t be able to do it. I think you know that.
I think you’re depressed, Helena had said, and she’d clearly meant that to land the way it did. Like a stone. And who could blame you? You had your whole life taken away from you. Without warning.
I don’t talk about this, Finn had replied, evenly. I don’t want to talk about this.
She’d made a face as if to say, See? Depressed.
Finn didn’t think he was depressed. But he could understand why she thought he might have been.
He cleared his throat. I appreciate what you’re trying to do here, Helena.
Really I do. First of all, if I want to take a year off, that’s what I’m going to do.
I can afford it. And maybe, this time, I thought I might take some time to think about what I want to do next.
Make some plans. Not rush into something I’ll need to figure out as I go along.
That was a poke at her coffee business, which she clearly understood—but she didn’t react. I still think you’re depressed, she said.
This conversation is rapidly depressing me.
Helena sighed. I’ve never known you to go this long without lecturing us all on the benefits of hard work and then giving us a demonstration. I can only assume it’s rapidly approaching a medical issue. Come on, Finn. Are you Mom’s handyman now? Is that what you’re doing with your life?
Finn had left the cabin before he could say things that he would regret.
Because he knew how this went. He was the oldest brother. The siblings could poke at him all day long, but if he responded in kind? They fell apart.
He’d driven his truck down the hill, and he could see Cowboy Point Lodge in his rearview mirror as he went, standing proud at the summit on the far hill facing Copper Mountain.
Rumor was it was finally opening this summer, possibly even soon.
He’d met the Stark brothers, and the assorted cousins—including Kitty’s friend Sara Jane—and had found himself wondering what it was like to have a family business like that.
Where everyone pitched in over generations whether they liked it or not.
He supposed the General Store was like that and he wondered if he’d end up working there too.
Somehow, it always felt like he shouldn’t ask.
Not only because he couldn’t really imagine himself stuck inside all day, but because that seemed like such a part of the Lisle family.
Like maybe they didn’t need grubby Patrick hands all over it.
And how could he blame them for that? He couldn’t. He didn’t.
His phone had buzzed, but he’d suspected that it was his sister. So he’d waited to look at it until he pulled into the driveway of the clinic, then drove around back so he could park beneath the big tree and keep out of the way of the doctor and her patients.
Even if he’d doubted she or they were there, the day after her wedding.
Only then had he looked at his messages. Sure enough, it had been a text from Helena.
You and Kitty look cute together, she had texted. And I don’t think she’s the kind of woman to put up with any kind of nonsense, so really, I like her for you.
He’d ignored that too.
But tonight he found that he liked her for him too, the way he’d suspected he would when he’d first set eyes on her within days of coming to Montana.
They ate their dinner and Finn ignored everything but Kitty herself, and discovered that it was a little too easy to talk to her.
It was too easy to find himself captured by the way she held her fork.
By the matter-of-fact way she talked about everything contrasted with the deeply, almost sensual way she reacted to what she was eating.
She told him every single flavor she tasted in every bite and he realized that she wasn’t kidding around. She really could taste every note, every hint of spice, every bit of the food’s essence. She experienced all of it like a full body, full contact experience.
Watching Kitty eat, he quickly realized, was mesmerizing.
Maybe it was also because she seemed to have no qualm about eating her fill, either, and that felt something like revolutionary to him.
Kitty ate with a joyful sort of relish. And it wasn’t like Finn had spent a lifetime paying close attention to how women ate, but he knew without having done any research that this wasn’t usual.
Every woman he knew had rules around food, or hung it all up on different sorts of morals. They should eat this, they shouldn’t eat that, or they could only have this other thing if they climbed a mountain or burned it all off at the gym.
Kitty just ate. And enjoyed every bite. And unlike pretty much every other thing he could think of her doing, when it came to food she was immediately passionate and only too happy to share.
She barely frowned as she put bites of things on his plate.
She offered him her fork. Every time the owners came by, she told them exactly how much she loved every single thing she was tasting, and he could see that they appreciated it.
More than that, they seemed delighted as she listed all the flavors she tasted and asked them about cooking times or particular tricks they might have gotten up to in the kitchen, until it almost felt as if he was watching people speaking a different language in front of him.
He realized at the end of the meal that he’d never been so turned on his entire life. Certainly not by something he’d previously considered even remotely erotic, like eating.
When they finally left Crowded Table, he felt something like drunk even though he’d had very little alcohol. It was her, he realized.
She was intoxicating.
Outside, it was still light, the sky in that particular shade of late-night summer blue.
“That was amazing,” Kitty said, with a deep sort of lusty sigh that seemed to hit him hard, or maybe the truth was, he was hard already.
“You are,” he told her, and then he couldn’t help himself any longer. He didn’t care that there were vehicles driving by and folks out on the road because no one liked to waste the light in summer.
He’d just had one of the most erotic experiences of his life sharing a meal with her.
He was only a man.
So he kissed her just the same as he would have if they were alone on her porch again.
He kissed her like that was a way to express his appreciation of the night they’d just had, where participating in her experience of the food at this restaurant felt intimate. Passionate.
All the things his sister was certain he didn’t feel, but he did.
Thanks to Kitty, he felt entirely too much.
When the kiss was done, when he pulled back and looked down at her to see her eyes closed and her cheeks bright red, Finn stopped pretending there was any kind of answer that he could give her.
Save one.
“Yes,” he told her, his voice sounding raw. Something like raspy, because he had the taste of her in his mouth again. “I will marry you, Kitty.”
Her eyes snapped open and all he could see there was a startled gold. “Really?”
“Really.”
Finn thought about what she’d said about moving into her house, and the way he felt right now, that suited him perfectly. In fact, he couldn’t wait. He didn’t need her to explain things to him any more than she already had.
He fully understood that the only way to get this woman into bed was to put a ring on her finger and move into her bedroom first.
Right now, it seemed like a bargain.
Especially when her whole face brightened and she smiled up at him without a trace of her trademark frown, like dawn was breaking at last.