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

What was she supposed to say about that? I’m sorry? I should have known better? Yes, she’d been stupid, but what good did it do for him to beat her over the head about it? “Well, I guess I’m just lucky.”

He stood and started gathering up plates and silverware. “I’m not sure I want to trust your luck to hold out any further.”

“And I’m not sure what you’re getting at.” She crossed her arms and leaned back against the scooter’s backrest. “I promise that I’ll try not to do anything stupid again, but I can’t promise not to be human. What do you want me to do?”

He took the stack he’d accumulated to the kitchen and set the dishes in the sink. “I want… No, I need…” His voice trailed off and he turned the faucet on. “I think you need more help here than you have right now.”

Abby turned around on the scooter. “I’m not going to tell my aunt to come back home.” She hopped into the kitchen and maneuvered the scooter between Quinn and the dishwasher. “This course she’s taking is very important to her. It’s something she has always wanted to do but put off for years. I won’t take that from her.” She held her hand out for the skillet he was scrubbing. “Give me that.”

He rinsed the skillet and handed it to her, and she stacked it in the dishwasher.

“I’m not suggesting that you ask your aunt to come back home.” He rinsed the sink and wiped it clean.

She dropped a pod into the dishwasher. “Well, what, then?” She held her breath for his answer; whatever it would be, it felt like something big.

He took a few haphazard swipes at the butcher-block counter with the dishrag, then turned to her. “I think I need to stay here—within shouting distance, at least—and take care of you until you get that cast off your foot.”

“Oh.” What was she supposed to think about that? “I’m not sure what to say.” Or even what to think. Abby had been sleeping in the guest room. He could stay in Reva’s room, but was that really necessary?

And more important, was it a good idea for her and Quinn to be that close? They would probably wind up in bed together if they started living in a pseudo-marriage situation. Alarm bells in her rational brain clanged, but the joyful peals of anticipation in her erogenous zones did their best to drown out any warning. “What sort of arrangement are you suggesting?”

Chapter 17

Quinn squeezed out the dishrag and spread it to dry over the central divide of the massive farm sink. (Melissa would have gone crazy over this huge antique cast-iron-and-porcelain sink; it was probably worth a couple thousand dollars.) He met Abby’s eyes and set aside a niggling sense that no matter what story he told himself about his desire to move in with Abby—temporarily of course—he might have some ulterior motive, such as getting her into bed with him. “I don’t want to come here one day and find that you’ve had some sort of accident and needed help I wasn’t here to give.”

“So,” she repeated, “what are you suggesting?” She closed the dishwasher door and got it running. The low hum of circulating water filled the empty space between them.

“I’m thinking I should move in here, with you. In case you need me.” He held his breath, partly hoping she’d say no, but mostly hoping she’d say yes.

“What about Sean? What about when he comes on weekends?”

“His next overnight stay won’t be for two weeks.” Quinn cleared his throat. He hadn’t actually thought that far ahead. Abby could stay at the pool house with him just as easily as he could stay at the farm. But Melissa would pitch a fit if Quinn had a woman staying over during Sean’s overnight visitation. Melissa didn’t want Quinn, but she didn’t want anyone else having him, either. “Two weeks is a long time. Your foot may be much better by then.”

Abby nodded, and Quinn noticed that a blush had spread over her cheeks. “Okay,” she said. “You can stay in Reva’s room. Go get your stuff.”

That was easier than he’d thought. “All right. What are you gonna do while I’m gone?”

“I’m going to go out on the front porch and call Georgia. It’s not like her to stay away so long, especially when there’s food involved.”

At the pool house, Quinn quickly assembled what he would need for the night. He could get more tomorrow. As he shoved his shaving kit down on top of everything else in his battered duffel, he wondered what the hell he was getting himself into. But he had already been spending a lot of time with Abby. Staying overnight, sleeping at opposite ends of the same house, wouldn’t make that much of a difference, would it? The more he thought about it, the more he figured that not much would change, really.

Two hours later, when Abby came out into her aunt’s living room with her dewy skin and her just-washed hair and her cropped pajama top and lace-edged tap pants, he knew that everything would change. He shifted position on the couch to cover his body’s strong involuntary reaction to her presence.

“Has Georgia not come in yet?” she asked. Her voice wobbled with worry, because it was clear that the little dog hadn’t made an appearance.

“Nope.” He muted the TV and patted the couch beside him, inviting her to sit. “Sorry. I tried to call her, too. Maybe she went across the street with the wolf dog.”

Abby sat beside him and took her cell phone from the scooter’s basket. “I have to ask Aunt Reva.”

Abby sent a text, and a few minutes later, the phone rang. He watched and listened while Abby told her aunt that Georgia had run off after a failed attempt to bathe her, and she hadn’t been seen since. She left out the part