Warm Nights in Magnolia Bay by Babette Jongh (best fantasy books to read TXT) 📕

Without chores to do, she had poured an early glass of wine (five o’clock somewhere, right?) and settled into one of the wicker chairs on the front porch with her foot propped on a pillow-topped ottoman and Griff on her lap.

From her comfy chair, Abby could see one small sliver of the road in front of the house: the bit that included the end of Reva’s driveway, the end of Quinn’s driveway, and his rusted-out mailbox. A fancy red convertible zoomed past both driveways, slammed on brakes with an audible squealing of tires, then backed into Reva’s drive for a three-point turn that narrowly missed Quinn’s already-bent mailbox pole. The car stopped with the driver’s door roughly even with the mailbox.

The top was down, so it was easy to see—in fact, impossible not to see—the driver, a beautiful (from behind, anyway) woman with long, dark hair and olive skin. Sean’s mother, Melissa, of course. She appeared to be texting, her head tilted down as she focused on the phone in her lap. Then, her chin came up and she glanced around idly, first at the cat’s-claw forest, then toward Quinn’s battered mailbox. Looking back over her shoulder and then into the rearview mirror, she opened the mailbox and peeked inside, then slammed it shut.

“Nothing in there,” Abby muttered to herself. It was Sunday, after all. “Miss Snoopy Pants.”

Stella, the new kitten, hopped onto the porch rail and stared down at Georgia, who had decided it was more fun to toddle around in the shrubbery and snoop under the porch than to sit with Abby. With the front half of the old farmhouse on pier-and-beams and the back addition on a raised concrete slab, there was a lot of naked space under the old part of the house.

“You’d better not be digging under there,” Abby warned. Georgia gave a happy barroo! from an under-the-porch spot directly under Abby’s chair, and Griff stiffened in her lap.

Abby stroked his shaved head. “Poor buddy.” A week after the attack, he still looked like a battered prizefighter, with one eye half-closed (scratched cornea) and multiple stitched cuts on his neck, back, chest, and face, plus one really long laceration on his fat, hanging-down belly. Mack had shaved down all of Griffie’s long, luxurious fur to make sure he didn’t miss any hidden lacerations. The stitches would come out in three days, and the fur was beginning to grow in, a downy-soft covering of peach fuzz on the cat’s porcelain-pink skin.

Quinn and Sean came into view, walking up Quinn’s drive toward Melissa’s parked car. Sean turned to his dad and said something, and Quinn clapped him on the shoulder. The second he got in the car, Melissa drove off like she’d just robbed a bank and needed to make a quick getaway. Quinn raised his hand to wave goodbye, but there was no way Sean could’ve seen it.

“Bitch.” Abby took another sip of wine. “She could’ve waited for them to say goodbye.”

Quinn stood there for a minute, looking sad and lost.

“Poor guy.”

Georgia barreled around the corner of the porch, her little feet on the wood planking sounding like horse’s hooves. She leaped onto Abby’s lap, carelessly shoving Griffin aside and spilling Abby’s wine.

“Rude!” Abby swiped at the splat of wine that had landed on her bare thigh. “And covered in dirt!” Georgia’s face, feet, and belly were a dark, orange red. “Where have you been digging?”

Georgia gave a triumphant barroo! and wagged her tail, clearly satisfied with herself and the world in general.

“Get down.” Abby set her now-empty glass aside and shooed Georgia onto the porch. “You bad girl. You’re gonna get a bath.”

Abby had cleaned the floors earlier—not an easy feat pushing a vacuum cleaner while also depending on the knee-scooter for balance. No way was she letting Georgia walk across her clean floors on those feet. “Hope you enjoy getting a cold water-hose bath, ’cause that’s what it’s gonna be.” She stood. “Let’s go to the barn.”

Bathing Georgia was usually a quick half-hour task, including brushing and drying her. This, Abby knew, would take a good hour or more. “But it’s gotta be did,” she said to herself. (Like cursing, deliberately incorrect grammar usage often made her feel better about the unfairness of life.)

She got down the steps by sitting and scooting down one step at a time while easing the folded scooter along with her, step by step. At the bottom, she used the porch rail for balance, stood on her good foot and opened the scooter. With trepidation in her heart, she mounted her unruly steed and began the long and dangerous trek across the front yard, down the drive, and over the flagstone path to the barn.

The damn scooter—she really ought to give it a name; a horrible, terrible name, something like Hannibal—tried to kill her at least a dozen times a day. It instilled a false sense of security by gliding like an ice skater across the manicured grass, but on the gravel drive, it dug ruts and threatened to tip sideways whenever it encountered a rock that didn’t slide merrily out of its way. And the flagstone walkway, forget about it. If it wasn’t the flagstone’s uneven surface tripping her up, it was the deep and treacherous pit of pea gravel sucking her down.

But she made it to the barn, finally, and said a prayer of thanks for smooth concrete flooring. Georgia, who’d been right beside her all the way, hung back when Abby scootered into the horse-washing stall, clearly suspicious of its heavy-duty coiled-up hose and top-of-the-line multifunction spray nozzle.

Georgia eyed Abby for a second, then turned and trotted to the barn’s open door. Not doing this, the dog’s demeanor declared.

“Yes, you will, too,” Abby said, her voice hard. “Get over here.”

Abby took bottles of horse shampoo and conditioner off the shelf and set them down on the rubber-mat flooring next to the drain, which emptied into a buried 55-gallon drum with holes