Chapter Five #2
“Finally,” she said with a laugh. “Way to go Kitty. You have to know that every single woman in this town has been panting around after that man since he turned up. But apparently you and he have an understanding.”
“You could say that,” Kitty agreed, because she had to agree.
But she felt as if she was having an out of body experience.
Because she could tell that the impression she was giving her sister was diametrically opposed to what was actually happening.
The more she blushed and stammered and acted unlike herself, the more her sister was clearly assuming that she was having exactly the kind of wild, hot, passionate affair with Finn Patrick that she was one hundred percent not having.
Everything in her wanted to rise up and address this misunderstanding, but she knew she couldn’t. And that even if she did, her sister wouldn’t believe her.
This was exactly the impression that she ought to have been leaving.
She just hadn’t expected that it would feel so… Well. That it would bother her so much, the same way that he did.
She was still fuming about that later, after she got dressed and walked over to the Farm & Craft Market, because she liked to get there bright and early every Saturday all summer long so she could prep with fresh ingredients and come up with specials on the spot.
But as she walked the aisles that the vendors had made with their tents, and there were so many more of them this year than the year before, she couldn’t lose herself in the thrill of finding the fresh ingredients that just spoke to her.
The ingredients that made it clear that they needed to become a part of one of her ideas, even if she hadn’t been looking for them specifically.
It wasn’t that the farmers hadn’t produced tempting produce all around, because they had. It was that everyone was looking at her funny.
Something that it took her a little while to notice, because generally speaking, Kitty didn’t pay too much attention to other people. Or what they were doing. It was easy enough to do, because most of the time, they weren’t really paying attention to her anyway—just her food.
But today they were definitely watching her.
Not intensely, not really. But she caught a lot of considering glances thrown her way from almost every stall she passed.
As if maybe everyone had woken up this morning, thought back on the wedding reception, and had finally remembered exactly who Kitty had been dancing with, after all.
Having never been the center of any kind of small-town commotion before, Kitty found she didn’t really like it.
She and her sisters had always avoided being the topic of the gossip mill here in town.
She’d never heard their names whispered by the usual suspects, or the outright disgust at full volume from some others.
But Kitty could see that she was definitely the subject of speculation today.
It was another out of body experience—but she decided that entertaining it or reacting to it in any way would only make it worse, so she didn’t. But she had to focus a whole lot harder on picking out fresh ingredients than she usually did.
She spent the rest of the morning and the whole of the afternoon not only running the usual Mountain Mama lunch service, but prepping for dinner too, so that her sisters could simply slip ready-made pies into the oven when necessary.
And if anyone wanted something special, they would have to come back when Kitty was there.
It was okay to tell people that, she knew. Unless they were tourists who were just passing through, they always came back.
There was a typical rush around five PM, because country folks like country hours, and Montanans like to enjoy the whole of their long evenings, and then she hurried back to the house to shower. So that she didn’t smell like pizza dough.
And apparently she didn’t want to look like someone who worked in a pizza shop either, because she found herself pawing through her closet, trying to find something to wear that sent the right message.
Except she didn’t know what the message was.
What she did know was that she had entirely too many freaking pairs of overalls, and apparently not a single outfit that would look good on a date that she expected would be witnessed by entirely too many people who knew her. And Finn, for that matter.
Kitty had to sit down for a moment on the end of her bed, take a deep breath, and get her bearings.
It took longer than it should have, and that irritated her.
When she finally felt as if she could get up again, she went over to the closet once more and, this time, she managed to find something that she thought might actually do the trick.
She thought a whole dress would be overkill, but she slipped on a long skirt she’d bought at the insistence of her sisters but had never worn.
And instead of piling big, long layers on top of it, the way she was inclined to do, she tugged on a T-shirt she normally only wore beneath things.
It was a little too tight, she thought. But when she looked in the mirror, she could see that the shapes the two pieces made together were pretty, even if they weren’t what she would call her.
Finn had asked for pretty, and he was right. She should be seen to be making an effort. Otherwise, no one would ever believe that they liked each other enough to get married. Much less as quickly as she thought they should.
Kitty thought that it was kind of funny that liking each other was a prerequisite, given that her own parents had seemed to despise each other from their much-discussed toxic start in high school, but still.
She let her hair down so it fell in long waves past her shoulders.
She couldn’t bring herself to mess around with makeup, because she was always afraid she would poke herself in the eye with a mascara stick.
And she didn’t like perfume, either. But she grew herbs on her windowsill, so she went and crushed some rosemary between her fingers and then rubbed the oil on the insides of her arms and behind her ears.
She even put on earrings, which was a huge concession on her part, because she always became a little too aware of the fact that she was wearing metal shoved through her flesh, and sometimes it was impossible to think about anything else.
But they dangled a bit and caught the light, and she thought that was pretty, too.
She slid her feet into her favorite sandals, then kicked them off again, because they were hiking sandals. Functional, but not exactly date worthy.
Kitty looked through her closet again, but could find nothing at all that she would consider date worthy in the least. Because she didn’t date.
It shouldn’t have surprised her that she had nothing suitable.
She went down the stairs to Indy’s room, and helped herself to her sister’s shoes.
Indy and Flannery liked to say that it was so much fun that they all were the same shoe size and were roughly the same dress size as well, because that meant they had two wardrobes.
The joke, Kitty was well aware, was that nobody was breaking down doors to get to her wardrobe. Something she hadn’t really cared about until today.
She took a pair of Indy’s fancier sandals, and while she was there, helped herself to one of those filmy little scarves that Indy liked to wear, tossing them carelessly over her shoulders or around her neck so that she always looked somehow Bohemian and sophisticated at once.
Kitty didn’t look like either of those things, but when she wound the scarf around her neck, she liked it.
She made it down to the main floor of the rickety old house right at six. And she didn’t have to look at a clock to know what time it was. She heard the sound of boots on the front porch.
Sure enough, a decidedly male knock followed shortly after. It was… imperative. Authoritative and unapologetic. When she realized that she was attributing character judgments to the sound of someone knocking, she ordered herself to stop.
Kitty blew out a breath and was forced to accept the uncomfortable fact that she was, it turned out, a little nervous. She couldn’t think of any other way to describe that fizzy sort of feeling inside of her that made even the breath she took feel a little raggedy.
She disliked this feeling intensely, she told herself, so she marched herself toward the front door and threw it open. And there he was.
Finn Patrick, blocking out the evening light.
He had dressed up too, she could see. He wore jeans, the way men here always did, but she could see that they were nicer jeans. Not working jeans. And his cowboy boots didn’t look the least bit scuffed up. Like they were his good pair, or something.
Most telling of all, he had a blue denim shirt tucked in to his jeans, which made her aware of too many things at once.
That belt of his, with the gleaming silver buckle that drew attention to a place it was not polite to look.
To say nothing of those wide, wide shoulders.
And the blue shirt itself, which made his eyes nothing short of spectacular.
“I think we should kiss,” she said.
Blurted out, really.
For a moment, Finn only stared at her, looking something like shocked. Then those blue eyes of his lit up with all that laughter again. “I thought I had to take you out to dinner first.”
“I just think that we should get used to kissing,” she said, because she hadn’t meant to say that but she had, so now she needed to defend it. “That way you can kiss me in public, and there won’t be any surprises. Like at dinner tonight.”
He considered her in that way that made her skin feel too tight. “Do you often find that kissing comes with a whole lot of surprises?”
Kitty didn’t know how to answer that. She scowled at him. “I’m not any happier about this than you are. But I think we have to accept the kissing as part of the package.”
It seemed to take him a moment to collect himself, but when he did, he nodded. Soberly. Too soberly, she thought. “I see your point.”
“So I figure we might as well practice here a little bit, and then go to dinner, so we’ll know what we’re getting into.”
“Yes,” he said in that same tone. “It’s always better to rehearse. To get the kinks out, you could say.”
Kitty would never have said that. But he seemed to find that particularly entertaining. She could see that unholy amusement in his eyes all over his face.
She scowled harder at him, but he didn’t move.
It took him a moment, then he seemed to understand that he needed to do something, because she watched his mouth curve.
He moved closer and Kitty thought he was going to simply lean down and put his mouth on hers, making it simple and easy and getting it over with quickly. That was what she would have done in his position. What she would have done in another second if he hadn’t gotten the ball rolling.
But Finn didn’t do that.
Instead, he… crowded her. He put one hand on the doorjamb and the other on her face, making everything in her body seem to riot. His hand gripped her chin, and then, suddenly, she couldn’t think about anything at all but the way he levered himself towards her and guided her mouth to his.
And then licked his way into her mouth.
That wasn’t all he did. She could feel his tongue find its way inside, until it stroked hers and made her tremble.
His hand and his mouth seemed to work together, and she felt the strangest and wildest sensations crash through her.
She felt shaky and exhilarated and like everything inside of her was being shaken up like it was in some kind of blender.
Still he kissed her, in that slow, steady, methodical way. He kissed her as if this was the entire point of the evening. As if this wasn’t any kind of rehearsal at all.
As if he could stay here and kiss her forever.
Kitty could feel her entire body respond to that thought with unbridled enthusiasm.
She could feel the blood in her veins, and a soft, hot ache between her legs.
She could feel a delicious, demanding heat coiling around and around inside of her.
It made her want to do things she didn’t even understand, like press herself against him.
She must have moved her hands at some point, because they were gripping his chest, her palms flat against the wall of muscle, her fingertips digging into the soft fabric of his shirt.
He kissed her so long, so thoroughly, that when he pulled away she felt as if her entire system had short-circuited.
Her cheeks felt as if they were a flaming, burning hot red. Her breasts hurt, for some reason. She wasn’t entirely certain that her legs would hold her up if he stepped away from the doorjamb.
Luckily, when he pulled back, he only pulled back a little and kept his face close to hers. And there was a look in those blue eyes of his that she’d never seen before. She couldn’t have explained it.
But she could feel it.
It was all that intensity wrapped up in too much blue. It was the kind of look that seemed to be as much inside her as in front of her.
Finn didn’t say anything. She wondered if he could hear the racket of her heartbeat as it thundered inside of her. She wondered exactly how red her face was. She had no idea what expression she could possibly be wearing or what he might see there.
His gaze moved as if he was tracking all of those details and more. The hand on her face moved so he could rub his thumb over her lips, like he was memorizing their shape. And somehow that left her feeling shaky. Everywhere.
“What do you think?” Finn asked, and his voice sounded a little more gravelly than before.
Kitty was still so close to him, and she could taste him in her own mouth, and she could see the exact moment when something else kindled in his gaze.
Amusement, once again. “Should we practice a little more?”
Kitty actually forgot that she had called for this rehearsal. She swallowed hard and almost asked him to explain—but then it came back to her.
And for the first time, maybe in her whole life, she had to force herself to frown at someone. “No,” she said, maybe too quickly. “I think this rehearsal means it will be a success when we take it wide.”
“Glad to hear it.”
“Yes. Well.” She cleared her throat. “We better go now. We wouldn’t want to be late.”
It seemed to take Finn an eternity to straighten up. When he did, there was something in his gaze, the set of his mouth, that made what seemed to be an all-new heat inside of her… burst into flame.
She held her breath.
“No,” Finn drawled, while she tried to tell herself that his voice was just a voice, that it did nothing at all inside of her, “we sure wouldn’t want that.”