Page 14

Almost like this was home. Like he belonged here—but something in him shied away from that. Look what had happened the last time he’d let himself imagine he had a home. He’d had twenty-four hours to leave it all behind, that was what.

Finn forced himself to pay attention to the ceremony that had his mother—who should have lost her romantic notions decades back—dabbing at her eyes.

Knox was dressed in cowboy finery, crisp Wranglers and a cowboy hat, as befit a Montana groom. His bride was beautiful, the way all brides were, but Dr. Ramona Taylor looked particularly perfect with her blonde hair down and cowboy boots on her feet beneath her white dress.

Ramona and Knox held hands and couldn’t stop grinning at each other while the oldest Carey brother, Harlan, stood between them and acted the part of officiant. His wife, Kendall, was standing off to the side with her toddler on one hip, wearing a dress that made it plain that they were expecting baby number two.

Also off to the side, old Zeke Carey held the baby Knox and Ramona had adopted while the rest of the Carey grandchildren did their best to stand still. This meant a lot of fidgeting. Though even the new twins that Rosie and Ryder Carey had brought into the world last Christmas kept it together, so that had to be some kind of good omen.

It was a quick, sweet, meaningful ceremony, and the bride and groom kissed.

The whole town, all gathered on the patio, clustered inside the restaurant, and spilling out onto the road, cheered. The musicians who’d been playing soft little melodies before the ceremony kicked it into gear and made it clear they were a band. The party began.

Finn wandered around, sometimes with his siblings and sometimes on his own, introducing or reintroducing himself to his neighbors and getting to know this community even better.

He found himself thinking about Kitty’s dismissive comments about ranching, particularly when he found himself talking to the actual ranchers who worked the land on this far side of Copper Mountain. There wasn’t much he liked talking about more, given that ranching had been his life for so many years. He stood for a long while in a semicircle with horse rancher Colton Dean, cattle ranchers Harlan and Boone Carey, alpaca ranchers Jay Martin and his son Benedick, and a man named Killian Kendrick who ranched cattle farther out in the hills and was as close to an actual Wild West outlaw as any man Finn had ever met before. They stood around trading stories, bemoaning rising costs in all areas, and generally sharing their thoughts on the work they did that had to be a labor of love, always.

Because the land always did as it pleased, in the end.

And even though he got more than one offer to come check out the land in question, maybe see if they could put their heads together on a project or two, something was different inside of Finn these days. He supposed it could be as simple and as complicated as that betrayal that he imagined he’d be nursing a while yet.

He’d never expected to leave Colorado. He’d never wanted to. He’d mourned Jimmy Grant, and likely always would, but there was no recapturing what he thought he’d had there.

Then again, maybe he’d needed to leave to realize that though he loved the work he’d done down on the Bar G, it was something he’d fallen into, not something he’d chosen.

Maybe he wasn’t so much a rancher, he thought then, as a man who’d worked a ranch. A key difference. Maybe he needed to view this time in Cowboy Point not just as an opportunity to get to know his family, but to really ask himself—for the first time since he was eighteen—what it was he really wanted.

And then, like it was choreographed or maybe just fate, he turned his head and saw Kitty standing there near one of the food tables that she’d clearly just restocked.

Finn had felt her eyes on him all throughout the afternoon. Right now, she was frowning intently in the direction of another food table, that one laden with her signature pizzas on a variety of different cake stands.

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.