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“I’m tired,” Kitty blurted out. “I want to go to bed.” She rethought that immediately. “To sleep.”

“Don’t start this off by lying to me, Kitty,” Finn said, and even though his gaze was that same intense blue as before, he sounded amused. “You might be tired and you might want to go to bed, but not because you want to sleep. Don’t forget you’ve been coming home to me every night this summer. Would you call what happens every night restful?”

She felt herself flush at that and couldn’t believe that this man had that effect on her. Still. Worse, it didn’t seem to be lessening the more time she spent with him. If anything, it was going in the opposite direction.

Her body, of course, knew exactly what they did every night and was already soft and ready for him.

“I’m not going to have this discussion on a street,” she said, very primly, as if what really mattered right here, in this moment, when there was no one around anyway was decorum.

“Of course not,” he replied, and as usual, she hated how calm he was. Though tonight, she was pretty sure that she could see a different sort of tension in him. It was there in the way he held his shoulders and that same intensity in his gaze. “I’m here to walk you home.”

It would be churlish if she broke into a run and left him behind here, and she did not want to make it clear to him that he was getting under her skin. That what he’d said earlier had thrown her. Not that she should have worried about that. They’d made a deal and he was talking about breaking it.

That was simple. That had nothing to do with any feelings she might have had. That was just a fact.

And the truth was, Kitty had already decided that she didn’t like feeling like this. She didn’t like feeling so much. She didn’t like the way her whole heart jumped in her chest when she saw him, every single time she saw him. She didn’t like that he made her feel silly, and that she flushed all the time, and that sometimes, instead of thinking about what new thing she could cook or new combinations of ingredients she could put together to surprise people, she found herself daydreaming about Finn instead.

About his hands, often. And always that mouth of his.

Not to mention those wildly blue eyes that made her shiver, just thinking about them.

They walked together in the warm summer night. The sun was going down a little earlier now, moving them closer to winter every night. They rounded the restaurant, then headed slowly up the dirt drive to the house.

Kitty kept waiting for him to say something. To mount some kind of argument to support what he’d already told her, but he didn’t. He just did what he always did. He met her at the end of the night and took her home.

And as she thought that, as she registered what he was doing, she felt her heart jolt inside her chest and a kind of terrifying warmth take her over. Not a flush. This was different.

This felt bone deep.

Worse than that, it felt inevitable, like her body had already come to a fateful decision without discussing it with the rest of her.

Kitty did not like this at all.

Finn walked into the house the way he always did, and it occurred to her to wonder how he’d managed to make it feel as if he’d always lived here. As if he was as much a part of this house and her family as any of them.

How had she missed that while it was happening? Why hadn’t she noticed how dangerous it was?

Though even if she had, she knew she wouldn’t have done anything about it. She would have rationalized it away because it sold the pretend marriage. It gave their sudden marriage legitimacy.

It was a nightmare.

They walked upstairs the way they always did. When they got up there, though they had lately taken to falling into bed together immediately as if they’d been apart for months, she muttered something about a kitchen mishap and threw herself into the shower.

She half expected him to come in after her, because he obviously could tell she was trying to avoid him, but he didn’t.

So she showered. And she stayed in there far too long, because her fingers were pickled all over again when she finally got out. She took an excessive amount of time getting into the pajama set he always took off her again in moments.

Then she finally had to force herself to leave the bathroom, only to find him the way she’d found him that first night, so long ago now. Lying on the bed, reading, looking completely relaxed while she was… fretting.

Kitty couldn’t cope.

“I need to talk to my sisters about something,” she said in a rush, and then bolted from the room before he could call her on it.

She padded downstairs and found her sisters on the cozy couch in the den, eating popcorn and watching television together. When she plopped herself down between them they shifted automatically, making room as if it was second nature. Because it was.

Because whatever else happened, they always had this. They always had and they always would.

Kitty didn’t understand why, tonight, it made her feel like crying.