Taken With You Read Online Free PDF Page A

screen. Hailey swallowed some iced tea and answered it. “Hey, new mommy. How’s it going?”
    “Right now, it’s quiet. Which means right now is the greatest moment of my life.”
    Hailey laughed. “Oh, come on. Sarah’s almost seven weeks old now. You don’t have the hang of it yet?”
    “What I have figured out is that little Sarah Rose loves to sleep on her daddy’s chest. Poor Mitch has been trying to signal to me he has to pee for a half hour now, so I’m avoiding eye contact.”
    “Didn’t you tell me he has to start traveling again next week?”
    Paige’s sigh was loud over the phone. “He’s trying to keep it to a minimum but yeah, he has to go out of town next week.”
    “Maybe you could get one of those man dolls people use to cheat their way into carpool lanes.”
    “Mitch would probably like to think it wouldn’t be the same. Hey, aren’t you supposed to be paddling around in a canoe or something right now? I remember something about Liz covering for Tori because Tori and you were going on some kind of adventure hike. Then I was wondering if I hallucinated that because I only sleep five minutes a day now and I’d never heard your name and hiking used in the same sentence before, but I know Liz worked today.”
    “Let’s pretend it was a postpartum hallucination.”
    “Ooh, that good? Tell me. And tell me every single detail very, very slowly because Mitch won’t interrupt me while I’m on the phone. As soon as I hang up, quiet time’s over.”
    Hailey told her every detail she remembered, pausing every once in a while so Paige could laugh at her or lecture her about new boots and trusting homemade concoctions from internet sites.
    “Wait, tell me again about the guy that found you? Do you think he lived in the woods?”
    Hailey realized she might have overplayed the poor guy’s Deliverance factor a little. Or a lot. “He said it was a camp, I think. And he said his family goes there.”
    “So he wasn’t a weird hermit guy, then?”
    “He had a satellite phone.”
    “Oh, well then. There you go.”
    “That’s what Tori said. I have no idea if hermits have satellite phones. But he heard me call him Jeremiah Johnson.”
    “Jeremiah Johnson was kind of hot.”
    Hailey rolled her eyes, even though Paige couldn’t see her. “No. Robert Redford, playing him in the movie, was kind of hot. In real life, I think Jeremiah Johnson was probably pretty gross.”
    “In the movies, the guy who comes to the rescue is never pretty gross.”
    Gross was a bit harsh. So the guy needed to be reacquainted with hot, soapy water and a razor blade. And laundry detergent. Those were all things that could be fixed. Underneath all that, he’d had a great body, a voice she could imagine would make reading the phone book out loud sexy, and there was something about his eyes. He had really pretty eyes. Brown, but lighter than hers, and thick eyelashes.
    In the background, Hailey could hear Sarah start winding up to a full shriek and Paige sighed. “I bet he woke her up on purpose.”
    “Go kiss Sarah for me and let your husband pee. Call me if you get bored or you need a break while Mitch is on the road, okay?”
    They hung up and Hailey finished the rest of her iced tea. Next up was a long soak in a hot bubble bath.
    And she’d put on an audiobook, too, to keep her mind from straying yet again to how jealous she was of her best friend. All of her friends, actually. They were all living happily ever after, while she was still waiting for her prince to come.
    She wished she could be more like Tori. Tori had no interest in being anybody’s wife and intended to live the rest of her life having torrid and temporary love affairs with any guy who tickled her fancy, and then moving on before the fancy-tickling turned sour.
    While Hailey figured Tori just hadn’t met the guy who’d change her mind yet, she admired the principle. Even a torrid and temporary love affair would be enough at this point in her