Stray Hearts by Jane Graves Page A

softly. “I’ll think of something.”
    After another long silence, Matt finally stood up. “Well. I guess I’d better get Rambo back to the shelter.” He removed Kay’s belt from the dog’s collar and handed it to her. Then he got a thoughtful look on his face. He glanced up at the second floor window, then back to Kay. “You know, this is a big house. I have a spare room. It’s a mess right now, but I can clean it up.”
    “What?”
    “You can put most of your stuff in storage and bring the necessities here. After a few months you’ll have enough money for another apartment.”
    “You mean, you want me to move in?”
    “Why not?”
    Kay stared at him dumbly, at a total loss for words. “Well, because I...I can’t just jump right into something like that. I mean, I barely know you.”
    “When do you need to move?” Matt asked.
    “Uh, Saturday if I can. But—”
    “Okay. I’ll have the room cleaned out by then.”
    “Now, wait a minute! Hold on! I never actually said yes!”
    “Oh, yeah. You’ve got all those other options to consider.”
    She had no other options to consider. But move in with Matt?
    All at once she realized how dangerous that could be. He seemed to be making the offer in the most platonic way possible, but sitting here with him on this bench with nothing else present but the moonlight and a very large dog, Kay forgot for a moment that he was a veterinarian and saw him only as a man. A very attractive man. A very attractive man who would be just down the hall if she moved in with him, tempting her to think about him even more than she already did when she needed desperately to stop those thoughts. He was clearly the wrong man for her. A broke veterinarian—how mortified would her family be if she brought home one of those?
    She’d completed only eighteen hours at the shelter, and she'd have to save up a lot of money before she could look for another apartment. If she moved in with Matt, it might be a long stay. She decided right then: no matter how much her body said yes , it was time for her brain to say no .
    “You don’t know me either, Matt,” she told him, trying a different approach. “I’m a pain to live with. Really. I stay up late. I eat dinner in front of the television. I clean house only when the mood strikes. I leave my underwear soaking in the sink, and I sing in the shower. Show tunes. Loud. And I’m so nasty first thing in the morning even the nice people on Good Morning America won’t talk to me.”
    Matt smiled broadly. “Me too. See you Saturday.”
    He turned and dragged Rambo through the rain toward the shelter, leaving Kay standing dumbfounded on the porch.
    So there it was. She was moving in with Matt.
     
     Good lord, Forester, what were you thinking?
    Matt gave Rambo a quick towel dry and put him back in his cage, all the while lambasting himself for the incredibly stupid thing he’d just done. With painful clarity, he imagined the leap in logic Robert Hollinger would make if he found out he and Kay were living together. He’d assume there was more involved than a roommate/landlord relationship. Hollinger’s plans for revenge clearly didn’t include such a thing, because that might imply that Kay wasn’t being punished enough. It didn’t matter if they were actually involved or not. If Hollinger even thought they were, the Dorland Grant was history.
    If only he’d had the good sense to keep his mouth shut and let Kay fend for herself, he wouldn’t be in this mess right now. But she’d looked so helpless standing there on his front porch, telling him she was broke and had no place to go. The invitation had been out of his mouth before he even realized it. She was the one woman on earth he needed desperately to avoid, and he’d just invited her to move in with him. How incredibly stupid was that?
    He’d just have to make sure Hollinger never found out.
    Unfortunately, Robert Hollinger wasn’t his only worry right now. What about the room