Page 27

As she sat there, feverishly trying to think up the perfect story that would appeal to her sisters most, she felt too much heat sweep over her body.

Maybe it was imagining sneaking around with Finn. Maybe it was wondering what it would be like if they kissed a whole lot more than they had. Maybe it had something to do with the way he had traced his thumb over her lips, and dragged it a little, and how was it that she could feel that as if he was doing it right now?

Somehow, as she sat there casting around for the right thing to say, she felt herself getting hotter and redder and she thought she might even have broken out into some kind of sweat.

And her sisters sat across from her, staring at her, their eyes widening by the second.

Kitty tried to clear her throat, but no matter how many times she ordered herself to just dive in. To forge forward. To just say something, for God’s sake, it didn’t work.

She couldn’t.

“Oh,” Indy said, eventually.

Kitty realized her hands were shaking as she lifted them up to press against her cheeks.

Flannery’s mouth had actually dropped open. “Wow,” she said, though whether in reply to Indy or just in general, Kitty couldn’t tell.

“Kitty,” Indy said after a moment, “have you ever—”

“I don’t really want to talk about this,” Kitty managed to say then. She pushed back from the table, but that was worse, because she wasn’t sure that she could stand. As if she had come down with some horrendous flu in the past three minutes, except she didn’t feel sick.

She didn’t feel sick at all.

“So we will be closing the restaurant,” Flannery said, matter-of-factly. “Because you will not be eloping alone, Kitty Bennett. Obviously. We’re the Bennett sisters. We don’t leave anyone behind.”

Kitty wasn’t sure how she escaped the rest of the conversation, or maybe it was just that she didn’t remember the rest of it, too busy being scandalized by her own body’s reaction.

She decided to text her book club best friends the elopement news, so she could control her reaction to their responses. Which came immediately.

And in the meantime, she marched herself down to Dr. Ramona’s clinic and climbed up the back stairs to knock on Finn’s door. She was determined to… settle this, or herself.

But when he opened the door and gazed down at her with all that impossible blue, plus that gleam in his eyes, she felt that same shuddering take over again. That and all the heat.

“I feel I need to warn you that my sisters have discovered our elopement, and insist upon showing up for us,” she told him. Stiffly.

She would tell her friends that it was a family thing. That would keep this nightmare from growing any bigger.

“Feeling more like a wedding than an elopement,” Finn said, but he didn’t sound angry about it. His big frame filled the doorway, but he stepped back. “You want to come in?”

Kitty did not. At all. She stared behind him into the cozy kitchen and shook her head. “No. Absolutely not.”

“Absolutely not,” he echoed. “That’s pretty definitive for someone who wants me to move in with her in a week’s time, isn’t it?”

“I don’t see how those two things relate,” Kitty said crossly. “I’m just letting you know.”

“It’s just as well,” Finn said. “I also told my siblings what was up, and they also want to come.”

“What did you tell them?” Kitty demanded. This kept snowballing. Next thing she knew she’d be surrounded by the entirety of Cowboy Point while going through with this. Would she have to have a crowded divorce too?

Finn’s mouth curved and there was something about that that seemed to sneak all the way through her, like it was coiling around and around her organs.

“Raleigh assumed that you were pregnant,” he told her, conversationally, like he was just passing the gossip along and it wasn’t about them. “Helena had something to say, but is mostly convinced that we’ve been sneaking around. Cat shares that conviction, Dallas seems to feel a little protective on your behalf, and Tennessee just laughed. So did Matilda.”

He leaned against the doorjamb, and there was something about a man who exuded the kind of authority that he did leaning all the time. There was something discordant about it. Or maybe that was just how she was interpreting it. It just seemed like he was trying to pretend that he was relaxed when he wasn’t. When his whole body said something else.

But she didn’t want to stand here parsing him.

“That’s not so bad, I guess,” she muttered.