He was angry, Kathleen thought, as she pulled to a stop behind him, and watched him hop out of his truck.

      Well, who could blame him? The most noticeable thing about his vehicle now was the two-foot high S H I printed on the side of it.

      Still, she didn’t have much experience dealing with angry men. And certainly not ones who looked like this. Even with that menacing scowl on his face as he waited on the sidewalk outside the gate of a yard, Evan Atkins was gorgeous.

      He looked like a young Redford, with his corn silk and wheat colored hair, though his grayish-blue eyes held none of Redford’s boyish charm, only a hard and intimidating hint of ice and iron. His features were chiseled masculine perfection—high cheekbones, straight nose, wide mouth, firm lips, a strong chin.

      He was average height, maybe five-eleven, but the breadth of his chest and shoulders had left her with the impression of strength and leashed power. He was narrow at his stomach and hip, and his long, blue jean-encased legs looked as if they’d wrapped themselves around a lot of horses. And probably quite a few other things, too.

      Kathleen decided Evan Atkins was not a safe man for her to be around. Lately she had noticed that her mind wandered off in distinctly naughty directions with barely the slightest provocation. Part of being old, she was sure. Not just old, but an old spinster.

      She was kidding herself. It was because of Howard announcing his intention to marry someone else. Hope quashed.

      “Thank you,” she called to him, half in and half out of her car. “Is that the house? I can manage now.”

      He didn’t budge.

      The house was hidden behind a tall hedge. Throughout the long drive here she had been so eager to see the accommodations that came with her new job. Now she had to get past the guard at the gate. Now she wasn’t nearly as interested in that house as she had been a thousand miles ago. He had a kind of energy about him that made everything else seem to fade into the distance, uninteresting and unimportant.

      “Three days is too long to drive,” she muttered to herself.

      “Auntie Kathy, you’re getting old,” Mac informed her, an unfortunate confirmation of her own thoughts. “You’re talking to yourself.” He glanced at the man standing at the gate, wriggled deeper into his seat in the car and turned a page of his comic book.

      She made herself get all the way out of the car, and walk toward Evan.

      “Really,” she said, “Thank you. You don’t have to—”

      He held open the gate for her. The opening was far too narrow to get by him. She practically touched him. She caught a whiff of something headier than the lilacs blooming in wild profusion around the yard.

      “I’m sorry about your truck,” she said, nervously. “Mac decided he was going to hate it here the minute I told him we were moving. I think he can get himself run out of town on a rail.”

      “I guess if this town could survive me as a twelve-year-old, it’ll survive him.”

      She realized she liked his voice, deep and faintly drawling, and something else.

      “How did you know? Twelve?”

      “Just a guess. Where are you coming from, ma’am?”

      She realized what the “something else” was in his voice. It was just plain sexy. The way he said ma’am, soft and dragged out at the end, made her tingle down to her toes. She snuck a glance at him. It occurred to her he was younger than she. That should have made his raw masculine potency less threatening, somehow, but it didn’t.

      “Vancouver,” she said. “We’re relocating from Vancouver.”

      “That’s one hell of a relocate.”

      “Yes, I know.” Though he didn’t ask, she felt, absurdly, that she had to defend herself. “The ad for the position at the Outpost said this was a great place to raise a family.”

      He snorted at that.

      “Isn’t it?” she asked, desperately.

      “Ma’am, I’m the wrong person to ask about families.”

      “Oh.” She snuck a glance over his broad shoulder at the house, and tried not to feel disappointed. It was very old, the whole thing covered in dreadful gray asphalt shingles. The porch looked droopy.

      Feeling as if she was trying to convince herself she had not made a horrible mistake, she said, “Vancouver is starting to have incidents with gangs. There are problems in the schools. Children as young as Mac are becoming involved in alcohol and drugs.”

      Of course she was not going to tell him the whole truth, her life story. That her boss, Howard, whom she’d once been engaged to, was going to marry someone else.

      A little smile twisted his lips. “You don’t say?”

      She bristled. “You’re not suggesting my nephew might be involved in such things just because of that incident with your truck, are you?”

      “No, ma’am. I don’t know the first thing about your nephew, except he seems to have a talent for spelling. But I know I wasn’t much older than that when I first sampled a little home brew, right here in Hopkins Gulch.”

      She stared at him, aghast.

      “Kids as wild as I was find trouble no matter where they are,” he said, apparently by way of reassurance.

      “And are you still wild, Mr. Atkins?” she asked. Too late, she realized she sounded as prissy as an old maid librarian.

      He seemed to contemplate that for a moment, his eyes intent on her. “Life has tamed me some.”

      There was something vaguely haunted in the way he said that, something that made him seem altogether too intriguing, as if the steel and ice in his eyes had been earned the hard way.

      She reminded herself, sternly, that she was completely unavailable to solve the puzzle of mysterious men, no matter how compelling they might be. She had a boy to raise. When her sister had died, Kathleen had vowed she would give that job her whole heart and soul. Howard had broken their engagement over her decision, and after that she had decided that Mac didn’t need the emotional upheaval that seemed to be part and parcel of relationships.

      It really wasn’t until Howard had announced his engagement a month ago at the office that she had realized she had held the