Read Online Taken With You by Shannon Stacey - Free Book Online Page B

yard and what wasn’t.
    “Gotta go out, boy?” Another woof, so he walked into the kitchen and opened the back door.
    Bear shot out onto the small deck, sniffing as fast as his nose allowed, then ran into the yard like a maniac. Matt watched him for a minute, but then realized his neighbor was out in her backyard.
    There was a garden shed at the back of the property, just before the tree line, and the doors were opened. It looked like she was checking garden hoses. She had a couple of them spread out on the ground, with one still coiled, and she kept bending over to check areas that had probably been kinked for leaks.
    It wasn’t a bad view. She was wearing jeans that hugged her curves and he found himself watching her progress down the first hose. Every time she bent over, he got a little more appreciation for living next door to the town’s librarian.
    When she walked back to start the other hose, he looked back to his own yard and realized his dog was gone.
    “Bear!” Through the corner of his eye, he saw Hailey spin around, her head coming up. “Bear!”
    She started to run and, before he could make sense of what was happening, she caught her foot in the garden hose and went ass over teakettle.
    * * *
    H AILEY STARED UP at the sky, trying to process how she’d ended up flat on her back in the grass with her head pounding, her breath coming up short in her chest, and her knee screaming in protest of whatever had just happened.
    “Hailey!”
    Hearing her name shouted killed any hope he was going to do the polite thing and pretend he hadn’t seen her less than graceful fall. Sure enough, just a few seconds later, he was on his knees next to her.
    “Are you hurt?”
    “Just my dignity. And I’m not sure I had much to spare as it was.” He chuckled, bending forward so she had no choice but to look into his face. Such a handsome face with concerned eyes. “I’m okay. I only see one of you, thank God. One of you is enough.”
    “Too bad you didn’t damage that funny bone of yours when you fell. Why did you take off running like that?”
    “When a game warden is yelling ‘Bear!’ like a maniac, normal people panic.”
    Matt sat back on his heels, a chagrined expression on his face. “Bear is my dog’s name.”
    She turned her head and saw a big black Lab sitting at the edge of her yard, his head cocked to the side as if he was trying to figure out why a grown woman was lying in the grass. “How original.”
    “I found him when he was just a baby. He was a black fur ball with huge paws, stuck in some puckerbrush, and when I got him out, he nuzzled me for a few seconds and then tried to rip my coat to shreds to get to the crackers in my pocket. Name seemed to fit.”
    As if he knew they were talking about him, Bear walked over to sit next to Matt. Both of them staring at her was just weird, so Hailey pushed herself up until she was sitting, too. When she held out her hand, the dog skipped the sniffing and getting to know you stage and bumped his head under her palm for a good scratch.
    “I didn’t know you had a dog,” she said.
    “He’s been with my dad this past week. The long commute meant being away longer hours than usual, plus I didn’t want him to wander off in the chaos of moving.” He ruffled the dog’s fur, then wrapped his arms around him when Bear threw himself against his chest. “I missed you, too, buddy.”
    Hailey couldn’t take it. The obvious love the man had for the dog he’d rescued as a puppy was too much. How was she supposed to keep her guard up when they were so damn adorable?
    She managed to push herself to her feet, intending to put some distance between herself and the pair, but her knee protested her weight and she winced. Shifting her weight to her other foot, she eyeballed the distance to her door. Her backyard had never looked so big before.
    “Let me help you.”
    “You never miss an opportunity to be the Good Samaritan, do you?”
    “It’s a gift. Although