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“Oh,” Indy said after a moment. “Okay.”

She sounded surprised. Amazed, even. Maybe thrilled, too.

“It’s not a big deal,” Kitty said, almost desperately, but Indy was shaking her head.

“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.