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She watched the way his blue eyes changed as he gazed at her. The way they gleamed. Encouraging her to say it.

To just say it.

“I’m pretty sure I’ve been half in love with you since I laid eyes on you,” she told him quietly, and suddenly she wasn’t rushing. Suddenly she was able to speak every word with a calm that seemed to well up from deep inside of her. “I’m even more sure that the other half caught up quickly, this last month. And I think that normally that would be cause for some kind of celebration, or at least a sweet moment.”

Kitty shook her head. This was the harder part. Telling him that she loved him was terrifying, but this was worse.

But she made herself do it. “The trouble is, I don’t think I have the slightest idea what that means. I’ve never seen it, not up close. I don’t have a single kind thing to say about my parents, or the way they live their lives, or how they raised us. So I can’t even tell you what it’s worth, my thinking I’m in love with you.” She inhaled. “I guess I just thought that you should know.”

Finn moved then, rolling out of the bed with that offhanded athleticism of his and crossing to where she still stood in the doorway. He moved in close when he reached her so he could fit his palms to her cheeks, then he looked down into her face.

And Kitty wished she could figure out a way to tell him that the way he touched her warmed parts of her that she thought had gotten frostbite too long ago to count. But all she could do was melt.

God, the way he made her melt.

She looked up at him, reeling a little bit, and didn’t realize she was frowning until his mouth curved, and he smoothed his fingers over the furrow between her brows.

“Anyway,” she whispered, “I know you said you weren’t really into marriage either, and I know I didn’t react well when you told me that maybe you wanted to stick with this one, but I think—”

“Come with me on a little adventure,” Finn told her, cutting her off by running his fingers over her lips. “I want to hear everything you think. I do. But first I want to show you something.”

“It’s the middle of the night,” she whispered.

But Finn only smiled. And held out his hand.

And Kitty couldn’t think of a single thing to do but take it.

Chapter Eleven

He’d only been there once, in daylight, but Finn had no trouble finding the road into the canyon. It was easy enough to follow it up, and up, winding away from Cowboy Point. When they got to the same viewpoint where Dallas had seen his lighthouse, Kitty sighed a little from her place in the passenger seat.

Finn slowed so they could both look out over Cowboy Point at night. There were only a few lights on at this hour, but it was enough. It looked like some of the multitude of stars above them were falling to earth, and he felt that sense of rightness expand inside of him.

Like this really was the place he’d been looking for all his life.

And like it had taken losing the home he’d thought he had in Colorado to end up here, where he should have been all along.

Something he figured he’d explain to the woman who was the catalyst for this feeling before long.

He kept driving. And it should have been harrowing to follow such a winding, unmarked dirt road in the dark, but it wasn’t. It felt almost like a dream. Kitty was sitting beside him in his truck. There was country music on the radio, just mournful enough to suit the hour and the quiet.

And it was late. So late that he was pretty sure they’d get to see the sun rise before too long. But the sky was so clear and the stars were so bright that it wasn’t as dark as it could have been when he drove to the end of that dirt road, up in that pretty canyon, and the headlights of his truck swept over the overgrown fields and the ramshackle farmhouse that had inspired him to say what he’d said to Kitty in the restaurant earlier.

Beside him, he heard Kitty let out a breath.

“This is your farm,” she said softly.

“That’s the thing,” he told her. He pulled up in front of the farmhouse again and turned the truck off, letting the quiet in. “It’s not my farm. I’ve been spending months and months trying to find the right land to claim as mine, but nothing came together until I realized that I don’t want land. Not for me.”

“What do you mean?” she asked quietly.

And she’d told him she loved him. Something that hadn’t been easy for her—he’d seen that all over her as she’d stood there half in and half out of the bedroom. She’d shared herself with him in ways he’d imagined she might do years down the road, if ever.

Finn felt that he needed to meet her there.

He opened the door and swung out into the wee hour summer dark all around them. Then he went around the back of the truck and arranged a few things, leaving the tailgate down. Only then did he go around to Kitty’s side of the truck to pull her out.

And when he did, he held her against his body until he could see the heat in her eyes. He didn’t want to set her down on her own feet, but he did. Reluctantly.