Mr. H.O.A. by Carina Taylor (hot novels to read .txt) 📕

"I did," Bane practically cried. Couldn't say that I blamed him. Harold wasn't exactly the brightest crayon in the box. The backyard was fairly well lit—he should have clearly recognized Bane on sight. Apparently, he didn’t operate well under stress. "Nola, are you all right?"

I saw Bane's socked feet run toward me and then he was pulling the big fluffy thing off of me.

"I know this dog," Bane said as he held it by its collar.

I sat up and brushed some grass off of my legs. Bane lifted me back onto my feet while Harold pulled out his taser and pointed it at me.

"Don't worry, I'll take the suspect in. I already called for backup."

"Backup?" Bane growled. He swept my hair out of my face for me. "This is my wife! That's the prowler."

He pointed to the big white dog that looked familiar. In fact, he looked very much like Ian and Tori's big white dog, Mumford.

"Could you go drop him off where he belongs?" Bane asked.

"But it's one o'clock in the morning," Harold protested.

"And it's not our dog! That’s Ian’s dog."

"I'd be breaking the noise ordinance to knock on their door!"

"You're already breaking the noise ordinance; and stop pointing that thing at Nola!" Bane angrily shoved down Harold’s hand that held the taser pointing at me.

"This wouldn't happen in the army. When I was in the army—"

"Just take the dog home," Bane ground out. "We want to get some sleep."

Harold grabbed Mumford by the collar and led him out of the yard.

Bane grabbed my hand. "You okay?"

"Yes. Besides smelling like a dog who's been digging in all the neighbors’ trash."

Bane leaned closer to me and sniffed. "Hmm, you do smell a little."

I smacked him on his bare stomach. "Come on. Let’s go inside before your intruder comes back."

"Hey now. You don't have a lot of room to talk, miss I'm-being-followed-by-an-ax-murderer," he said with a chuckle.

"I wish you suffered from memory loss."

"You can be a little evil sometimes, can't you?" Bane asked as he led us back inside, locked the door, then replaced the iron curtain rod. His lean, muscular legs tensed when he leaned forward to rest the pole back on the braces.

"I'm—" I licked my lips. "I'm going to go jump in the shower if you've got everything handled in here."

He gave me a weird look over his shoulder, and I disappeared into the bathroom to try to wash away any sign of Mumford tackling me to the ground, as well as the fact that I'd been swinging a toilet plunger around. Maybe I should wash in bleach. I wondered if there would be any ill effects. Probably.

Regular soap would have to do.

I finished scrubbing down and jumped out of the shower, toweling off with the oversized large, fluffy towel. Dad had been thorough when he stocked this house. My heart twinged at the thought of fluffy towels. It was one of those strange conversations we’d had with my mother growing up. She wanted to replace all the towels with microfiber towels. Dad and I went on strike, because we loved the big fluffy ones.

With a sigh, I opened the door to the laundry room and opened the dryer I knew was full of my clothes.

Except it wasn’t. It was completely empty.

All the baskets were empty, and there were no clothes in sight. Bane the folding-fiend had struck again.

That was okay. Bane was likely already asleep; I could sneak out wrapped in the big towel, grab myself some pajamas and he would never be any wiser.

Wrapping the towel tightly around me, I tiptoed from the bright bathroom into the dark bedroom. As my eyes tried to adjust to the darkness, I stumbled into the dresser, the ottoman, then the shoe chest.

I paused, waiting for Bane to say something. I didn’t hear anything. I could see his form laying on top of the covers, but he didn’t move.

Finally, certain that he was still asleep, I made it to the second dresser where Bane kept his t-shirts. I didn’t feel like walking all the way across the house. I was tired, and I couldn’t wait to get snuggled into that comfortable bed again. All the excitement had exhausted me.

Resting a hand on the dresser, I counted down two drawers, finding the drawer I’d seen Bane pull a T-shirt from yesterday. I couldn't see much; my eyes still weren’t adjusted. But it shouldn’t be that difficult to find a shirt in the dark. I pulled the drawer out—too far; it turns out.

I tried to catch it, but it tumbled to the ground with a loud thump as it hit the carpet. A grunt came from the bed as Bane leapt up. He stood beside the bed, tense, looking for whatever had made the sound. His eyes landed on me.

"Holy..." I could see his eyes go wide—and they weren’t looking at my eyes.

I glanced down and gasped. When I’d tried to catch the drawer, I’d dropped the towel. I dropped to the ground in a frantic search for the missing towel. There was a distressed sound coming from Bane.

I smacked my hand against the drawer that sat on the floor. "Ouch!"

Cradling my throbbing hand against my chest, I shuffled around on my knees as I tried to find that towel—it was somewhere amid the spilled T-shirts.

Something that sounded like a gurgle sounded behind me, but I couldn’t stop to find out what it was. I was buck naked in front of Bane, and I swear that towel grew wings and flew off.

A set of hands grasped my arms, pulling me up to a standing position. Bane spun me around and threw something over my head.

"What—" I squawked.

But he yanked the T-shirt down over my head. His face looked strained as he frantically grabbed my left arm and shoved it through the hole, then repeated the action with my right.

"Thank—"

His quick jerk on the hem of the T-shirt cut off what I was going to say. He kept pulling it down