Warm Nights in Magnolia Bay Babette Jongh (best romance ebooks .txt) 📖

But he couldn’t accept that kind of closeness with humans. Not yet.

Maybe not ever.

* * *

Early that Friday morning, Abby turned the faucet, but nothing happened. She set her toothbrush on the edge of the sink and turned the faucet again—off, then on, then off. Nothing.

Quinn’s reminder to check the mail rang in her ears, along with Reva’s reminder of the water company’s tendency to cut the water off first and ask questions later. “Shit.”

Knowing already that she’d done this to herself, she maneuvered the scooter into the living room toward the alcove that had once been a closet but now served as Reva’s office space. Abby had been avoiding the accumulated stack of mail on the rolltop desk. Ever since her life with Blair had gone to hell, opening the mail made Abby nervous, as if each envelope might contain bad news or a bill she couldn’t pay.

At the beginning of their live-in relationship, she had thought it sweet that he paid all the bills so she could concentrate on taking care of him and Emily. But over time, his insistence on handling anything involving money evolved into hypervigilance over every penny Abby spent, then every minute she spent away from home. As her autonomy seeped away, her relationship with Emily grew even more precious, and for a very long time, she told herself that the good times outweighed the bad. But all his subtle reminders that she wouldn’t be able to survive financially without him had deep tentacles that hadn’t yet released her.

Life just didn’t seem safe anymore.

“Look at this,” she muttered to herself. Her hands were shaking as she leafed through the stack of envelopes. “Stupid.” She tossed bulk-mail advertisements into the recycle bin and set anything official-looking aside. Water bill; a bright-pink slip shining through the cellophane window. “Shit.”

She ripped the envelope open. Cutoff date…she glanced at the calendar that hung above the desk…today.

Quinn came in from the patio, scratching his head. “Abby? The water in the barn isn’t—”

“Yes.” She flapped a hand at him. “I know. I forgot to pay the water bill.”

He smirked. “I seem to remember telling you to check that stack of mail several days ago.” Standing there with his dirt-smeared hands on his hips, he shouldn’t have been smirking, but he did have a point. “How long since you’ve paid the water bill?”

She huffed at him and flapped a hand again. She wasn’t about to tell him that the answer to that question was never. “We can use the water at your place until I get this sorted out.”

“That’s fine for the animals, but I can’t see you loving a hose bath any better than Georgia does.”

She scowled at him.

“Come on,” he coaxed with a grin. “That was supposed to be funny. This isn’t the end of the world.”

She ignored him. “They won’t let you pay online.”

“And they don’t take credit cards, either,” he added, “because I tried to set up auto-pay from my credit card account, and they don’t do that.” His grubby fingers took the bill from her, and he looked it over, reading the fine print. “We’ll have to drive into town. You have to pay in person before they’ll turn it back on. It doesn’t say whether they’ll take a check or cash. But knowing them, it’ll only be one, not the other.”

“Well, hell.” Abby needed to get over her idiotic avoidance of going through mail. It would’ve been so much easier to pay the bill before it came due. It wasn’t like she didn’t have access to Aunt Reva’s account, which could easily afford the water bill, a mere $32.98. Reva had taken Abby to the bank and given her signatory privileges so she could write any checks she needed to. She even knew the PIN of the account, for which Reva had given her a debit card. “Let’s just go now and get it done. I’ll take a shower and brush my teeth later, when they’ve turned the water back on.”

Quinn set the bill aside. “I’m not done with the morning chores yet. I’ve at least got to feed all the animals their breakfast, and I can run a hose through the fence from my place to yours to give everyone fresh water. Meanwhile, please go through the rest of this stack and see if anything else needs to be dealt with sooner rather than later.”

Abby felt like a chided child, and she knew she deserved it. She moved the desk chair out of the way and sat on the scooter instead. “Okay.”

While Quinn finished the chores, she turned the stack of mail upside down and worked from oldest to newest. She wrote out checks to all the utility departments—the electric bill was overdue, too, and would also have to be paid in person—and opened an official-looking envelope from the city courthouse.

Cordial invitation to present your case at a town hall meeting…

“Present your case?” Abby scanned through a bunch of legalese and blah, blah, blah.

…to determine whether it is in the best interest of the city of Magnolia Bay to extend your establishment’s permission to keep farm animals within the city limits.

Abby’s mouth went dry, and her heart tried to explode out of her chest. “What?” She scanned the letter again. Her fingers were really shaking now. This was bad.

Quinn came inside. “What?”

“I don’t know.” Abby held out the letter and shook it at him. “I don’t know what’s going on. This seems serious.” He took the letter, and she wrung her hands while he read through it. His face flushed a dull red, and his hand started to shake, too. Shit. Shit. She should have gone through the mail every single day, instead of leaving it all till now. “I’ve fucked up, haven’t I?”

Adrenaline prickled her skin and stung her sinuses. She wanted to cry, to sob, to scream. God, she’d fucked up everything so badly, the way she always did. Sticking her