Ella was not thrilled to meet her hunky neighbor for the first time by being stuck in his doggy door and having to get unstuck by him pushing her rear end through it but she hadn’t had a choice.

She and her Labrador retriever, Charlie, were inside the neighbor’s house, and within moments of getting to her feet from his dining room floor and grabbing Charlie to keep him from attacking, there he was.

He looked even better up close than he had from the distance of her kitchen window, where she’d watched him prepare for his jog every morning but good looks didn’t matter to Charlie. The moment he saw him, the dog went into a frenzy of barking.

“Shh, Charlie! Be quiet,” Ella commanded as she smiled nervously, held out her free hand and introduced herself properly.

Her neighbor accepted her hand, warily keeping an eye on Charlie as he did. “Wu Chun.”

Ella had some difficulty ignoring the lightning bolts that the touch of his hand sent sizzling up her arm.

“I’m so sorry about this,” she said. “Charlie was chasing a squirrel and he jumped the fence and then forgot the squirrel and ran in here. I didn’t know what else to do but try to get him out. I love him, but he’s not very friendly with strangers.”

“No, he doesn’t seem too friendly,” Wu Chun agreed.

“He used to be. It isn’t his fault that he’s skittish now but I couldn’t leave him for you to find when you got back from your run. He might have bitten you.”

Wu’s expression turned curious. “How did you know I was out for a run?”

“I saw you leave when I let Charlie out.” Ella had prepared that excuse in advance in case she was caught spying on him one of these mornings. Then she added, “It was a pretty short run.”

“I forgot my cell phone and came back for it.”

“Ah.”

Ella had been planning to approach this man the next day, at any rate, and now that she was there she thought maybe she should broach the subject she’d wanted to talk to him about rather than waiting.

“I’ve never seen your dog outside,” she said as a segue.

“I don’t have a dog. The door was put in for the pets of someone else who lived here for a while.”

Ella was dying to know if “the someone else” had been male or female, but she couldn’t ask. Instead she said, “But you have been around dogs in the past?”

“Unfortunately.”

Uh-oh. Not a good sign. “You don’t like them?”

“I used to like them. Then I had my fill.”

That didn’t improve things much but Ella was in such a bind. “Could you get unfilled for a really short time?”
Something about the way she said that made him smile. If she’d thought he looked good before, it was nothing compared to the way a grin lit up that face.

“Could I get unfilled?” he repeated.

“It’s just that I saw the doggy door and figured you must like animals and I had a favor to ask.”