Taken with You(21)
“I’ve already told you you’re not my type.”
“And, again, we’ve already established you’re not mine. I generally like my women to be more sturdy.”
“Sturdy?” She stepped back and he realized he’d made a critical mistake. “What the hell kind of word is that? We’re not furniture.”
Maybe sturdy wasn’t the best word, but he couldn’t think of a better one. “You know, women who like being outdoors and don’t worry about breaking a nail.”
She rolled her eyes. “Sorry to be wicker in your rock maple fantasy world.”
He leaned against the counter, one eyebrow arched. “How come it’s perfectly okay for you to tell me I’m not the kind of man you’d date, but when I say it about you, you get offended?”
“It’s a character flaw. I have a lot of them, so you don’t want to be around me.”
“I don’t, huh?”
“You don’t. And you should stop touching my neck, too.”
“I see.” And he did. “You want me to go away because you don’t trust yourself to resist me.”
“I can almost feel your ego sucking the air out of the room.”
“Let me ask you a question. If the first time you ever met me was the day I did the safety class, would that have changed things?” When she hesitated, he smiled. “Be honest.”
“Okay, yes. If that was the first time I ever met you, I probably would have already gotten you to ask me out while making you think it was your idea.” She held up her hand to signal she wasn’t finished. “But, I can’t forget the version of you I met in the woods.”
“You do realize that was the tail end of a two-week vacation, right? Just me, my dog and my dad in a cabin in the woods?”
“I get that. It’s not so much the appearance that’s the issue. It’s the fact you obviously love being outside and doing all that outdoorsy stuff. Hunting and fishing and playing in the mud and all that.”
He laughed. “Playing in the mud?”
“You know what I mean. The four-wheeling and all that.”
“I love being outside, yes. I didn’t become a game warden accidentally. As a matter of fact, I really don’t like being inside at all. The only good reason to be in a house is indoor plumbing, heat and not having mosquitoes attacking your ass while you’re having sex.”
“You couldn’t pay me to have sex outside.” She paused, then cleared her throat. “Of course, you can’t pay me to have sex anywhere because I’m not a hooker. It would be awkward if I was since you’re a law enforcement officer. Trust me, the new game warden citing the town librarian for prostitution would probably be the biggest scandal in Whitford history.”
“I love the way you babble when you’re nervous. It’s cute.”
“Cute?” She made a sour face. “If I agree, can this conversation be over?”
“Yup.”
“Fine. I’ll go on a date with you. Your kind of date.”
Oh, the sweet thrill of victory. “Awesome. Be ready to go about four-thirty.”
“That’s a little early for supper, isn’t it? And the library’s open until five.”
“In the morning. Tomorrow morning. Four-thirty a.m.” The way her eyes widened made him chuckle. He knew she was going to balk, but he was counting on her pride to keep her from backing out entirely.
“I have to work.”
“I have tomorrow off and you’ll be back in plenty of time to get ready, especially since you don’t have to work until ten. Which must be nice, by the way.”
She laughed on her way out the door. “You’re probably going to want to take that nap if you’re getting up before four-thirty.”
“I’ll be ready. Don’t be late.”
When she was gone, he looked down at Bear. “Don’t look at me like that. It’s just one date.”
ELEVEN
THE LAST TIME Hailey remembered being awake—deliberately and fully clothed—at four-thirty in the morning, she’d been in college. And it had been a case of still up rather than got up.
It wasn’t her best time, that was for sure. And Matt hadn’t given her any clues as to where they were going, so she’d spent ten minutes glaring at her closet over the rim of her coffee mug. They probably weren’t going dancing or to a movie before dawn. Knowing Matt, it involved being outside, so she settled for jeans.
Bundled into a fleece pullover, hat and gloves to ward off the early morning chill, she stood at her counter and drank coffee until she heard Matt’s truck start. Then, because the idea of hanging her naked ass over a log to pee was nothing short of ludicrous, she went to the bathroom again.
He was just pulling up to the curb in front when Hailey walked out of her house. She wiggled the handle to make sure the door was locked, and then walked toward Matt’s truck. She liked that he got out and walked around to open her door for her. And he’d either cleaned his truck last night or he was the neatest guy she’d ever ridden shotgun with. There was more tech equipment than she’d seen in other trucks, but not so much as a gas receipt in the console.
“No travel mug?” he asked once he was in the driver’s seat.
“I figure there’s a good chance there’s no indoor plumbing where we’re going.”
“And yet you’re here anyway.”
“I said I would.”
He grinned and put the truck in gear. “It’ll be worth it. I promise. Well, as long as we don’t get stood up.”
“Whoa. Stood up? I’m willing to put up with you at freaking dark o’clock, but this isn’t exactly social hour for me.”
“Trust me.”
It was a good thing she did trust him because it wasn’t long before he’d steered down a network of dirt back roads she’d never find her way out of alone. But when he pulled over in what was little more than a wide spot in a glorified cow path, she gave him a skeptical look.
“We have to go the rest of the way on foot,” he said.
“It’s still pretty dark out there. I mean, I’m not afraid of the dark or anything, but I think we know I’m not exactly at my best in the wilderness.”
“This is hardly the wilderness.”
He didn’t laugh at her, but she could hear the amusement in his voice and it got her back up a little. Maybe she wasn’t going to win a Miss Rugged Outdoors pageant any time soon, but she wasn’t some hothouse flower, either.
She was already out by the time he walked around the truck, and she plastered what she hoped was an optimistic smile on her face. It was early, though, so she couldn’t be sure.
He had a backpack slung over his arm and, after locking the truck, he held out his other hand. “Ready?”
She slid her hand into his, thankful the glove would act as a buffer between her skin and his. It was one thing to acknowledge to herself they had sexual chemistry, but holding hands seemed so...intimate. Romantic.
“How come you didn’t bring Bear? It seems like a walk in the woods would be right up his alley, no matter what ungodly hour it is.”
“He’s a great dog—probably the best I’ll ever be blessed with—but he’s still a dog. You’ll see.”
It was eerie, walking through the woods while it was still too dark to see into the trees around them, but Matt’s fingers laced through hers gave her comfort. He walked the barely there path with confidence, occasionally pulling on her hand to guide her around a hole or rock, or warn her of an exposed root.
But when the path came to a dead end at a rock face, she decided she’d let him steer the ship long enough.
“Nice walk, but I guess you took a wrong turn somewhere. If we head back now, we can call dibs on the first pot of coffee at the diner.”
He pointed up toward the top. “I didn’t take a wrong turn. Up you go.”
“I draw the line at scaling cliff faces before breakfast.”
Raising his arm over his head, Matt set the backpack on top of the rock. “Cliff face? Really?”
“Fine. A very small cliff.”
“Put your foot there.” He pointed to a crack in the boulder. “Grab the lip of the rock and then swing your leg up and over.”
“Maybe it’s not Mt. Katahdin, but I’m not as tall as you.”
“I’ll give you a boost if you need one.”
Hailey put her hands on her hips. “Did you drag me out here at the butt crack of dawn just to get your hands on my ass?”
The innocent wide-eyed look was ruined by the tilting corners of his mouth. “Pretty drastic measures, don’t you think?”
A little, since they both knew if he put his hands on her ass on any given day, she wouldn’t push him away. Not hard, anyway. “You go first.”
“No, ma’am. Trust me, you’d rather have me give you a boost from below than drag you up over the edge by your wrists.”
“There’s no way around it?”
“No, and daylight’s coming.”
With a melodramatic sigh, Hailey lifted her leg to shove the toe of her sneaker into the crack. After a couple of big hops, she was able to grab the edge of the boulder, and then she tried to figure out how to get her other leg up there.