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He pulled her into his arms and she didn’t resist him at all, but he could feel her trembling slightly. She ended up with one palm against his chest and managed to make it seem as if she was only grudgingly allowing him to hold the other in his, tucked up between them.

“You’re making a scene,” she told him.

Scolded him, really.

“What I’m doing is laying the groundwork,” he replied, easily. “What did you think was going to happen? You were just going to move in with me and we were going to tell everyone we were married and that was going to be that? I thought you wanted this to be believable.”

Kitty clearly did not like her plans being challenged. His problem was that he found the umbrage she wasn’t trying that hard to hide adorable too.

Especially when she sniffed at him. “First of all, I will not be moving in with you. The entire purpose of this charade is to own the property I’m already living on, so you will be moving in with me. And second, is this happening? Is this your way of saying yes? Have you ever heard of a direct answer?”

“You want me moving in with you and your two sisters?”

That did not sound like an ideal situation to Finn. Though even as he thought that, it occurred to him that having her sisters around might work in his favor. Because surely Kitty intended to sell this marriage to them the way she wanted to sell it to her landlords and everyone else—meaning she couldn’t make him sleep on the couch, could she?

And that meant that the sleeping arrangements might turn out to be a whole lot cozier than he suspected she intended. He certainly wasn’t going to point that out.

“Kitty,” he said, and he shook his head slightly, as if she was disappointing him. “You can’t ask a man to marry you and then critique the way he answers, can you?”

“You have a lot of rules about a situation I don’t think you’ve been in before.” Her brows furrowed even more deeply than before. “Or have you?”

“I’ve been propositioned many times, Kitty, I assure you.” Finn laughed, and there must have been some heat in it, because he could see her cheeks flush. “Not all of those propositions involved marriage, but I like to think I left a lasting good impression just the same.”

Despite the reddening of her pretty face, she didn’t take his bait. “Okay. Great. Then it shouldn’t take you all this dithering to make a decision.”

And the thing was, it made no sense. He knew that. It was also almost unbearably adorable to him. She was. This whole situation was ridiculous, and yet she was acting as if he was the one who’d done something wrong. Or was behaving badly.

Accusations that had never been made against his character in all of his days.

Maybe that was why he pulled her closer, so she was nestled against his chest. So she had to tip her chin up to look him in the eye.

And the thing he couldn’t get past was that every new thing he discovered about Kitty Bennett, every little detail, made him like her more.

He had just been thinking that he needed to look for a new thing. That he needed to figure out what he really wanted.

What would it hurt to let this woman mix him up in her bizarre little plan? The truth was, he had a fairly powerful hunger for her as it was. He wasn’t the kind of man who was easily or quickly satisfied. He liked to take his time. He liked to take it slow.

Marriage meant things to a lot of folks, he knew that. Some of them took it very seriously. But he’d been raised with the distinct and personal understanding that taking it seriously wasn’t true of everyone. That some people thought that vows meant nothing and that marriages were disposable, especially when they were real.

So maybe it made a twisted kind of sense that he should find himself involved in this with her. Maybe it was like he gave off some kind of scent. Like Kitty had intuitively understood that he was the perfect person to conduct a fake relationship with.

After all, he had intimate knowledge of that kind of thing, didn’t he? He’d grown up watching that play out in real time.

And while something in him didn’t really care for that assessment of the situation, the rest of him was far more wrapped up in the fact that he was holding her in his arms. They were swaying to the music and he could feel her body against his. He liked the way her hair was so shiny in the lights strung up above them. He liked the way she smelled. He liked the way her breasts felt pressed against his chest, round and tempting.

He liked her hand in his too, like she fit a little too well.

One song ended, another started up, and when she made as if to move away he tugged her back in close. Closer, maybe.

“People are going to notice,” she said, shaking her head at him.

“Kitty,” he drawled, because he liked saying her name, “that’s the point.” She opened her mouth to argue, but he shook his head. “We want to make them wonder. How do we know each other well enough to dance like this? Have we been sneaking around since I came to town? Do we have a relationship that nobody knows about?”

“No one will believe any of that.”

“They don’t need to believe it, they just need to wonder about it,” he said, as if he’d done this before. He hadn’t. What he had done is live in small towns before, so he knew how they worked. “Because I’m guessing you’re not looking for a long, drawn-out courtship, are you?”

“Courtship?” Kitty echoed. “There will be no courtship. There will be no sneaking around. Or any of the other things you said. We just need to get the job done.”