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Kitty also thought that the valley was remarkably beautiful. She and her sisters had covered a lot of ground in their traveling years. They’d seen a lot of places out there. But very few of them, in her opinion, could stand up to Cowboy Point.

Particularly at this time of year, when the weather was closer to fine by the day and full summer was so close.

“How long are you planning to stay here?” she asked him.

There was laughter in his blue gaze then. “Is there a requirement? Do I have to be here a certain amount of time before I can comment on how it looks?”

She found that thread of laughter in his voice bothered her too. Everything about the man bothered her. But beggars could not be choosers.

“You don’t strike me as a permanent resident,” she said.

“You’re just saying that because you prefer the bear,” Finn Patrick drawled. “And I’m not going to mount any defense of men, but unlike bears, some men actually settle down. Are known for it, in fact. It’s how the West was won and all that.”

Kitty thought western expansion was a little more complicated than men wandering about and settling where they liked, but that wasn’t what they were talking about. She couldn’t afford to get distracted. “Your family’s here now, sure. But who’s to say that any of you will really put down roots here?”

“Are you running me out of town, Kitty?” Finn asked, and his voice was even lower than before.

This was a problem because she could feel the way he said her name. It made that place deep inside of her tremble all over again, and a lot worse this time.

“Not at all,” she said. “I have a proposition for you, that’s all.”

“That sounds salacious,” he said, and that time he really did commit to the drawl. And much as she found amiable, friendly, companionable Finn Patrick bothersome, slow-talking cowboy Finn Patrick was no better.

In fact, it was worse.

Some people sat with a plan. They refined it over and over again, ironed out all the kinks, and made certain that it was the right thing to do. Kitty, on the other hand, had been blessed in this life with the gift of certainty.

Once she made up her mind, it was done.

And so far, that approach to planning had served her well.

So it was the easiest thing in the world to let all the sudden, possibly questionable ideas in her head swirl around and coalesce and leap into full form. She could see it all spool out before her as if it had already happened.

And there was no denying it. It would solve all of her problems in one fell swoop.

“It’s not salacious at all,” she assured him.

His hand was still so hot on her elbow. His jaw was undeniably perfect, which was a bothersome fact all its own.

But she could see it all so clearly in her head, so she forged straight ahead, despite all the ways this man bothered her. “I’m just wondering if you’d consider marrying me?”

Chapter Two

“That escalated quickly,” Finn Patrick drawled in reply to what might not have been a salacious proposition, but one that left him reeling all the same.

He dropped his hand from Kitty’s arm, reluctantly. He liked touching her—more than liked it—but unless he’d had some kind of concerning mental break right here in front of Mountain Mama Pizza, the woman he’d been obsessed with since he’d come to Cowboy Point had just proposed to him.

“Let me tell you why I think this is a good idea,” Kitty said at once.

She was frowning up at him, which at least confirmed that he wasn’t off with the fairies somewhere. She really had asked him to marry her.

And the thing about Kitty Bennett was that she was always frowning. If he’d been asked, back before he’d begrudgingly followed his family here, he would have said that it was entirely impossible that he would find himself tangled in knots by a woman who always had that damned furrow between her eyebrows.

Finn liked bright, happy women. He liked big smiles and soft words, not deep frowns and shouted orders from behind busy counters.

But then again, Kitty had some spectacular eyes. They were hazel—the kind of hazel that changed colors depending on what she was wearing. Or maybe her mood. Maybe even the position of the stars, for all he knew.

What he did know was that tracking those different shades had become something of a spiritual exercise where he was concerned.