“A little.” Katie’s heart drummed a bit faster and she mentally berated herself for letting his innate sex appeal get to her. What did she care if he was tall and lean and irreverently intriguing? She’d met a lot of men in her lifetime—a lot—who were just as good-looking, rebelliously charming and sensual as this guy.

Hadn’t she?

“Looks like a lot of trouble to me.”

“I guess. It just died on me,” she said as he bent to look under the hood.

“And it was runnin’ fine before?”

“No, not really.” Standing next to him, her bare shoulder brushing against his forearm, she explained how the car had been giving her fits and starts over the past six months. “It zips along just fine, then something goes wrong. I have a mechanic or one of my brothers fiddle around with it and it finally begins to run again. Or, worse yet, it stops on me and with enough prayer and sweat I manage to get it going again, only to take it into the service station where it purrs like a kitten.” She slid the convertible a spiteful glance. “Then the mechanics can’t find anything wrong with it.” Frustration burned through her veins. “It’s what you might call ‘temperamental.’”

“Maybe it’s just old and worn-out. How many miles you got on her?”

“Two-hundred-and-twenty-some thousand, I think,” she said with a shrug.

He let out a long, low whistle. “As I said, she’s just tired. Think how you’d feel if you’d gone that far.”

“Sometimes it feels as if I have,” she grumbled, and frowned at the engine.

“Get inside and try and start it,” he suggested.

“It won’t go anywhere.”

He cast her a look she couldn’t comprehend. “Maybe not, but I’ll get a better feel for it if I’m watching the engine attempt to turn over.”

“Okay. Okay.” She climbed into the car, twisted the ignition and heard the engine grind laboriously.

“Again,” he ordered and through the crack where the hood was raised she saw his arms reach deep into the cavern that housed the engine. She pumped the gas and turned the key again. Grinding. Slower and slower, then nothing.

Three more times she tried before he slammed the hood down in frustration. “She’s dead.”

“I knew that much.”

He eyed the sky, judging the daylight. “I think I’d better drive you back to town and we can call a tow truck.”

“Wonderful,” she muttered sarcastically, but reminded herself that at least she wasn’t stranded or alone.

She hoisted herself into the passenger side of his truck, an older model with new seat covers and a thick layer of dust. Both windows were open and as Luke steered the rig onto the empty road, late-summer evening air streamed inside, tangling Katie’s hair and cooling her skin.