Chapter Four

“Ninny!” Katie glared at her reflection in the steamy bathroom mirror as she brushed her teeth. What had she been thinking, kissing Luke Gates?

The answer was that she had never let rational thought enter the equation. She’d sensed he was about to kiss her in the pickup, had felt the darkened cab seem to shrink, but she hadn’t had the guts, the nerve or whatever-you-wanted-to-call-it to open the damned door and slide out of the truck before his lips had touched hers and the world had changed forever.

Worse yet, she’d spent all night thinking about her reaction, remembering the feel of his hands as he’d taken her face between his palms and gazed into her eyes while his lips had pressed so passionately against hers. Oh, Lord, here she was, thinking about it all over again, feeling tingly inside and stupidly wondering if he’d ever kiss her again. She grasped the sides of the sink for support and mentally counted to ten before letting out her breath.

“Get a grip, Kinkaid,” she said to the woman staring back at her in the mirror. “You don’t know a thing about this guy.” She leaned under the faucet and rinsed her mouth.

Steadfastly she told herself that she wasn’t going to be swayed by one intimate gesture. She had too much to think about today, the first being her son.

Josh was still sleeping—the result of watching television until the wee hours of the morning. She’d checked on him, seen that his leg was still elevated, and changed the bag of ice that had long since melted. Blue whined to go outside and Katie obliged, filling his water dish and pouring dog food into his bowl on the back porch. Butterflies and bees flitted through the flowers that grew along the edge of the garage and two wrens flitted to a stop on a sagging bit of her gutter. She smiled to herself and told herself it was only sane that she should move.

Buying this little house had been difficult, a real stretch for her. She’d borrowed the down payment from her mother and convinced the previous owner, an old man who had been moving to California to be with his eldest daughter, to accept a contract with her. No sane banker would have loaned her a dime at the time.

But she’d proved herself by paying promptly each month and this little cottage had been her home ever since. She sighed. Now she and Josh were going to move. She supposed it was long overdue and the repairs that she’d put off—painting the interior, replacing windowpanes, cleaning the gutters and shoring up the sagging garage—would have to be done for the next tenant.