Chapter Seven #3
He led her into the Marietta courthouse, separating them from the group, and that was better too. Because when it was just the two of them, he certainly affected her in weird ways too, but she could also focus on the plan that had made all of this happen in the first place.
“Are you so sure about this course of action?” Finn asked her, his blue eyes serious. And even more beautiful than usual.
“I’m always sure,” she replied.
“I know this to be true about you,” he said, with a laugh. “All right then. Let’s do it.”
And then, holding on to him, Kitty could admit that it was a bit more jolly to have family around. It wouldn’t have been her choice, but her sisters had insisted on the dress, and the hair, and all the rest of it. Helena and Cat had come with flowers, so that Kitty could have a bouquet.
Then Jenny and Peyton insisted on taking pictures, and the whole thing suddenly felt a little more serious than it had when she thought it up.
After the ceremony, Kitty would have been happy to drive right back home, open up the restaurant, and get to work. But she was completely overruled. By everyone else.
They went to a restaurant in Marietta, where she and Finn were pressed together in one of the two large booths the group took over, and Kitty found that her stomach felt…
unsettled. And the only thing she could really concentrate on was the way Finn’s thigh pressed against hers.
That and she seemed unduly focused on the way he used his hands.
Her throat felt tight, and every time she caught that bright blue gaze of his, she felt her cheeks get hot.
“You okay?” he asked her at one point, in an aside that no one else could hear, because that was how close they were sitting. And also he was her husband.
“Fine. Why wouldn’t I be fine?”
“Just checking in, Kitty,” he said, with what would have been a smile, but it didn’t quite make it to his mouth.
When Kitty looked away, she saw her sisters and his sisters watching them. And then all exchanging significant glances in a way she didn’t like at all.
She told herself it was a relief when the meal was finally over and everyone piled into their various vehicles, leaving her to drive back up to Cowboy Point with Finn. Her brand-new husband. Who was moving into her house. Her room.
He had given her a ring during their brief, succinct exchange of vows. She hadn’t thought about rings at all, but it turned out he’d gotten one for himself, too. And they matched.
There was something about that that seemed to join that spiraling sensation inside of her.
She found herself playing with the ring on her finger, even though it was nothing gaudy or attention seeking.
It was just a gold band. As she sat in the passenger seat of his truck, he glanced over and saw her messing with it.
“I figured the simpler, the better,” he said. “Since you always have your hands in dough.”
“Yes,” Kitty said. “I do. I didn’t think about rings. This one is perfect.”
“I’m glad you like it.”
And the look Finn slid her then hit different. It took her breath away. At first she told herself it shouldn’t have that effect, that she was overreacting, but even if that was true it didn’t stop what she was feeling.
There was something so… patient, and knowing, about the way he was looking at her.
It made her feel hunted, somehow. Her heart seemed fluttery inside her ribs.
Her whole body seemed to be misfiring. She felt a little bit weak, a little bit shivery, and it was like electric shocks kept zinging through her without warning.
She had the strangest notion that he understood exactly what was happening to her and was aware of each one of those bizarre sensations, but just wasn’t telling her what they were.
Maybe he was waiting for her to ask, but something in her refused to let her do that. Like it would be giving him too much information. Like she would be telling on herself.
She had to force herself to take a deep breath, then let it out, and she had to focus a whole lot on how she was breathing to try to get herself to calm down.
But it didn’t really work.
It was a gorgeous day. Beautiful, summery, and truly, the best Montana had offered. The drive out of Marietta was steep and winding, but this time of year, that just meant that there were stunning views in all directions.
When they crested the hill, just shy of Copper Mountain’s peak, Cowboy Point waited there, laid out before them like the pretty little postcard that it had looked like to Kitty when she’d first taken this drive seven years ago.
Today she was driving back into town with a husband. Something she would have said would never have happened. She’d never had the slightest interest in marriage.
In fact, she had to remind herself, she still didn’t. Somehow, between the yellow dress and the flowers and a happy little lunch with their families, she’d forgotten that none of this was real.
She tried to get her head on straight as they drove down the hill into Cowboy Point, and Finn drove past the clinic, straight to the drive that led up to her house. Their house now, for the next year.
Kitty got out of the truck and he got out of it with her. And when he went around to pull things out of the back, she blinked at him in confusion.
That patience seemed to glow in him, and therefore in her, too. “If I’m moving in, Kitty, I do need to have my things.”
“Oh,” she said. “Right.”
And she could have sworn that he was biting back laughter again as he followed her into the house.
Her sisters had gone straight to the restaurant, so Kitty was all alone in the house with this man. This man she had married. And was now entirely too aware of as she led him up the stairs to the third floor and into what her sisters called the attic apartment.
The stairway came up in the middle. Her bedroom was off to the left and to the right there were a few more rooms. They all flowed in together and Kitty used all of them.
She kept her computer and a desk in one of them, and then another one was something of a sitting room with comfortable chairs and bookshelves.
There was a den downstairs, but sometimes she liked to be on her own up here with her books.
She definitely had not thought enough about what it would feel like to have a man in this space with her.
“You’re a lot taller than me,” she said, looking at how much closer the ceiling was to his head than to hers.
Finn looked up, then extended his arm overhead. And while he couldn’t fully extend that arm, at least he wasn’t in danger of hitting his head.
“All the more reason to find a little more of those wide-open spaces, I guess,” was all he said.
She was married to him. That seemed to stick in her, and once again she could barely breathe, so she backed away.
And she was entirely too aware of the knowing way he watched her do it, like he’d expected nothing less. Kitty didn’t like that—but she didn’t do anything to change it, either.
“I’ll leave you to get comfortable here,” she told him. “I want to make sure my sisters have everything they need at the restaurant. You should unpack. Take over the space however you want, as we’ll be sharing it. For a year.”
His blue eyes were like fire when they met hers. “Yes,” Finn said. “A year.”
She wasn’t at all sure why that seemed to settle in her the way it did then, like some kind of warning. Or threat.
Or maybe, she thought as she ran down the stairs as if something was pursuing her when she knew nothing was, not even him, it was more of a promise.
And somehow, that was worse.