Page 48

Then he took her by the hand and led her around to the tailgate where he picked her up again and settled her there.

“I can walk,” she said, though she was missing her frown and her voice was a lot quieter than usual. A lot like she found all of this as hushed and holy as he did.

“You can,” he agreed. “But why should you?”

She looked flustered and he liked that. Maybe too much. Because as usual, just looking at her—even in the dark—set his whole body humming.

Her hair was up in that messy bun that she loved so much. She hadn’t changed out of her adorable pajamas, but she had thrown a big flannel shirt on top and had stuck her feet into a pair of clunky, deeply efficient sandals that could likely be used to climb mountains, herd cattle, and ford streams.

The contrast between the cuteness and the pragmatism made him want to get his mouth on her. All over her, the way it always did. Because he didn’t understand how any one woman could be that practical and that pretty all at once.

Or taste the way she did. Like sugar no matter how much she frowned at him.

He swung himself up and sat next to her on the tailgate. Then he swung his legs a little bit as they both looked out into the sweet stretch of darkness.

Kitty didn’t say anything. That was fine with Finn, because he knew it was his turn.

“When I met Jimmy Grant in Colorado, I saw my whole life laid out in front of me,” he found himself telling her. “I learned everything there was to know about running that ranch, because I wanted to run it the way he did. Just the way he did, and I did that for years. I would have stayed there forever, don’t get me wrong. I never had the slightest intention of leaving. I probably wouldn’t have, if his sons hadn’t forced me out before his body was cold.”

He didn’t like that memory any better than he ever had, but he found that telling her about it made it hurt a little less.

“Just as an aside,” Kitty whispered fiercely, “I hate them.”

That made it even better. Not that it was a cure—some things couldn’t be fixed, only carried—but it made it bearable, somehow. Finn had the sense that the more he shared with her, the better it all would be.

Because if both of them carried it, whatever it was, it couldn’t help but get lighter.

He felt her hand sneak across the tiny space between them and curl over his. And it was such a tiny thing, he thought. Just a touch of a hand out here in the mountains where no one could see them, no one was near, and no one would know.

But Finn knew that she loved him.

And to him, it felt like the world.

“I’ve had half a year to wander around different plots of ranch land, looking for something that felt the way it did when I was eighteen,” he told her, letting the weight and warmth of her hand steady him as he talked about this thing he hadn’t wanted to talk about. Not with anyone else. “It never occurred to me that I wasn’t going to find it, because it’s taken me too long to realize that the thing that mattered when I was eighteen was that a good man who didn’t know me from a can of paint took me in and treated me like I was family.” He flipped his hand so he could hold hers. “I can’t tell you what that meant to me, back then, as a kid with a father who’d never wanted anything to do with him, to meet a man who acted like I was his son from the start.”

He shook his head, because he hadn’t said something like that out loud. Not in a long time. Not since Jimmy had died. Beside him, Kitty made a low sort of noise that sounded to him like encouragement.

So he kept going. “And it wasn’t until you came barreling into me right there on the main road that I began to understand what it was that I was missing,” he told her. “It’s not only the land that I love. It’s not the ranching, or all the fences that need fixing, as you like to put it.”

“I’m sure it’s more involved,” she murmured, but fell silent when he turned to look at her directly.

“It’s about family, Kitty. I couldn’t find anything that works for me, because I knew that I wasn’t looking for anyone but myself and that’s just not enough to make it to the winters, and the terrible seasons, in a thousand ways that anything that depends on weather and luck can break you.” He searched her face, softer in the dark but no less distinct to him. “If you’re not building something that can last, that can feed the people you love and matter to those who come after you, then what are you doing?”

He pulled her closer then, but it wasn’t close enough. So he dealt with that by picking her up and pulling her over him until she was kneeling astride him. And she settled into place, gazing down at him with those hazel eyes gleaming.

And Finn thought the dark didn’t matter at all, because he would be perfectly able to see her if he was blindfolded. She was the same beacon of light she’d always been. She had caught his attention six months ago simply by stepping out of the kitchen and into the light behind the counter in her restaurant, and that hadn’t changed.

If anything, she’d only gotten brighter the better he got to know her.

He figured by the time they were old and rickety—and he intended to get old and rickety right here beside her—she’d outshine the sun.

“I don’t know what the hell love is,” he told her in a fierce whisper, pressing a kiss to her forehead, her cheek. “You don’t either. How would we?”

She smiled, and then he felt her hands move to stroke their way along his jaw. “I can’t help thinking that at least one of us should. For safety reasons, if nothing else.”

“We’re going to be just fine,” he told her, and he was aware that his words came out sounding a whole lot more like vows. Far above them, the summer stars stood as witness, bright in the sky yet not nearly as luminous as Kitty was. “We can work together to make this whatever we want it to be. It doesn’t matter that we don’t know what it’s supposed to be like, it only matters that we make sure it’s what we want. Exactly how we want. Are you ready for that?”

He kissed her once, then again, and held her close. “Because I have to tell you, Kitty, I can’t think of anything I’d like to do more than build a whole life. With you.”