Page 11

Kitty was not handling it well. But Flannery had reminded her that she needed to keep it together, so that was what she did throughout the rest of the dinner service.

If she was waiting for Finn to appear, looking around the restaurant far more often—and more closely—than she usually did, well. She had to think that was an improvement on daydreaming about throwing things.

It was not until she was back at the house later that night, climbing into her bed on the top floor beneath the eaves, that she realized he really, truly wasn’t going to show up.

The amount of disappointment she felt about that was entirely too extreme.

It actually kept her awake until she could hear the birds singing in the new morning.

She didn’t see Finn until Wednesday, in fact, when he sauntered into the restaurant like he didn’t have a care in the world to meet the rest of his family for their weekly dinner.

He was early. And Kitty felt a kind of electric shock go through her when he turned his head and looked straight at her. As if he knew she was there, peering out the window that let the customers see back into the kitchen.

She wanted to jump away, and maybe even hide, but she didn’t. She wanted to look away, but she didn’t do that either. Instead, she stared back at him and felt the strangest sensation prickle all through her when his mouth slowly curved. It was that same kind of low trembling that she had felt before, only now she felt it everywhere.

And it was worse, somehow.

Kitty decided to interpret it as outrage.

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.