“Hell.” He attempted to read the rest of the paper, but his mind kept straying back to Katie and her stubborn fixation on becoming some kind of hotshot ace reporter. In Bittersweet, Oregon. Fat chance. No wonder she wanted to jump feet first into this Isaac Wells mystery.

He drained his bottle, then slammed it down on a nearby table. Try as he might, Luke couldn’t forget the fact that she was getting crank calls and weird letters.

Dog-tired and irritated as all get-out, Luke slapped the copy of the Rogue River Review onto the table and shoved himself to his feet. Knowing he was about to make a huge mistake, he kicked off his boots and stormed into the bathroom.

He yanked off his T-shirt and dropped it onto the floor. What the devil was Katie thinking? Why did she insist upon stirring up trouble? Muttering under his breath about hardheaded career women who had more guts than brains, he twisted on the shower faucet and stripped out of his jeans.

In the past two days he’d half expected her to show up at his ranch again, half wanted it. Anytime he’d heard a rig slow at the end of the lane, he’d felt an unlikely rush of adrenaline, experienced a clenching in his gut, only to end up disappointed when she didn’t appear.

Whether he wanted to admit it or not, there was something about that little spitfire of a woman that got under a man’s skin—well, at least his skin.

“Man, you’ve got it bad, Gates.” Disgusted with that particular thought, he stepped under the shower spray and sucked in his breath. Hot water splashed against his chest and ran down his torso. As he scrubbed the dirt, sweat and smell of horse dung from his body, he told himself that Katie Kinkaid was off-limits. Way off-limits. She was the kind of woman who could turn a man’s head around, and he needed no part of that. None. And yet ...

Annoyed, he scrubbed until the dirt under his fingernails had washed away and all the lather that swirled down the drain was white. Why did he care what Ms. Kinkaid did? It wasn’t as if she was someone special in his life. As a matter of fact, she wasn’t in his life at all. Heretofore he’d helped her out of a jam with her car and her kid, and had made the mistake of kissing her. She’d shown up on his doorstep asking about Dave. That was it. So what if she wrote articles about hermits who disappeared? Who cared that the man had decided to contact her? It wasn’t any of his business.

Oh, yeah? What if she’s the mother of Dave Sorenson’s kid? What then? It sure as hell is your business.