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

Georgia joined in, and Wolf thought how beautifully her voice blended with his. His howl was low and mournful for all he’d lost and all he didn’t understand. Hers was high-pitched and beautiful with the blended sounds of love and worry and contrition. In the melodious tones of her howl, he heard her joys and her sorrows, her hopes and her dreams of the future. Her howl contained everything he already knew and loved about her, and everything he hoped he’d one day have the chance to learn. Every note was so beautiful it made his heart ache.

The see-through door slid open with a screech worse than a barn owl’s, and Quinn—the first one, not the other—ran out and passed Wolf without even looking. He didn’t say anything, but just kept running like he knew where to go, and it turned out that he did. Wolf followed at a loping run, with Georgia hustling right behind him as fast as her little legs could go.

At the barn’s opening, Quinn yelled, “Dammit, Abby. What the hell?”

“I’m sorry,” she whined. “I…” Wolf didn’t hear anything after that except a melody of human whining sounds (Abby’s) and human angry sounds (Quinn’s) that made no sense to him.

Georgia had already absconded, and Wolf didn’t see any benefit in staying, either, so he followed her scent to the den he’d dug under the front porch.

“What’s wrong?” Wolf asked Georgia. “I think she’s okay. Are you okay?”

Georgia shivered and hid at the back of the den. “I knew I shouldn’t run. I knew I shouldn’t pull. But I was scared and I couldn’t help it. I pulled, and she fell over. I’ve hurt her.”

“I think she’s okay,” he repeated. He curled himself around his friend from behind and tried to absorb her shivering.

“I did wrong.” Georgia backed up against him. “I know I did wrong.”

He knew how that felt. “It’s okay. I’ll take care of you. If we have to, we can run away together. I’ll take care of you.”

“I don’t want to leave.” Georgia showed Wolf how much she loved her home, and how much she loved Reva, whom she felt she’d betrayed. “I hurt Abby, but I didn’t mean to.” Georgia’s shivering came in short, violent bursts. “I was supposed to take care of her. I didn’t mean to hurt her.”

Wolf didn’t have any good advice to help Georgia with her regrets, her fears, or her worries. If he had, he wouldn’t have been exiled from his family and banished to the forest. All he could do was curl himself around her and try to comfort her until her shivering subsided and she finally fell asleep.

* * *

Abby sat next to the folded-up scooter in the middle of the barn aisle. She held a rolled-up lead rope in her hand.

Quinn knelt beside her. “What happened? What the hell are you doing out here by yourself? Why didn’t you wait for me?” He realized he was yelling, and not giving Abby a chance to respond. He took a breath and let it out. “Are you okay?”

The corners of her truly luscious lips tilted upward. “I’m butt-hurt, but other than that, I’m fine.”

Quinn opened the scooter and set the safety latch, then rolled it back and forth. “Good as new.” He helped her up and put her and the scooter in an out-of-the-way spot next to the hose connector. He took the lead rope from her and hung it with the others. Georgia’s collar—still fastened—hung from the lead rope’s snaffle. He unclipped it and tossed it in her lap. “Why is Georgia’s collar attached to a lead rope?”

She turned off the spigot. “I was trying to bathe her. And you know what? The wolf dog came out here. He looked at me and then ran off.”

Hands on hips, Quinn gave her a pointed look for trying to change the subject. “And how’d the scooter end up halfway across the barn if you were bathing her in the wash stall?”

“My stupidity.” Abby blushed. “Like I said, I was trying to bathe Georgia, and she was trying to avoid getting a bath. So I stupidly clipped the lead rope to her collar and tied the rope to the scooter’s handlebars. She got away from me, taking the scooter with her.”

He shook his head. “You.” He pointed at her. “You need a keeper. Do you think you can manage to sit right here”—he pointed at the floor under the scooter—“in this spot, without moving, while I feed the animals?”

“Yes, sir.” The expression on her pretty, heart-shaped face seemed sincere and contrite.

But he didn’t like her placating tone, nor the fact that she’d tacked on the word sir, which made it seem like he was being unreasonable, which he was not. He shoveled the animals’ food into buckets. What if he’d been away from his house? What if this had happened after feeding time when he’d already gone back to the pool house? What if she’d been really hurt? She might have lain here for hours, in pain, without any way of getting help. “Did you even bring your cell phone out here with you? Not that it works under this metal roof anyway.”

“Yes, I did. My phone is in my back pocket. If I’d been hurt, I would have called you for help.”

He scoffed. “Unless you’d been knocked unconscious when your hard head hit the concrete.”

“Are you saying I’m hardheaded?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying.” She didn’t have a comeback for that, so he finished setting up the stalls with food and water in silence. He glanced over at her once. She was scrolling through her phone, pretending disinterest. Fine.

“I’m going to bring the equines in now. Stay put.”

“Yes, sir.” She didn’t look up from her phone.

Bringing in the equines was easy; Quinn left their stall doors open, then opened the gate to their pasture. They all knew where to go, no problem.

The problem was Abby’s hardheaded insistence on doing stupid things—her words, not