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

head in the sand, leaving everything until past the last minute, so afraid of making a mistake that she failed to do anything at all. “I should have told Reva about this. I should have read it a long time ago. When does it say…?”

He continued to scan the letter. His face was flushed, his jaw clenched, his hands gripping the pages as if their contents affected him, too.

“I’m so glad you’re here. I’d be freaking out even more if I’d been here all by myself right now.” Knowing that she wasn’t in this alone gave her strength and courage. She clutched his arm. “When is it? What time?”

He shook out the front page and put it behind the others. “It’s today. This afternoon at the Magnolia Bay Municipal Courthouse. It’s a town hall meeting about whether Bayside Barn should be able to keep farm animals in the city limits.”

She’d already read that part—twice—but when she heard Quinn say it out loud, another shock of fear coursed through her. “Bayside Barn won’t be able to exist without the animals. This place is all about the animals, about teaching people how important they are to us.” She looked up at him, begging for reassurance she knew he couldn’t give. “Why would they do this? Was it something I did? Something I did wrong?”

“I doubt it.” His reply sounded offhand and meaningless; he couldn’t know any more than she did until he finished reading the letter.

She tried to be quiet and let him absorb the message, but couldn’t stop herself from wailing, “Why is this happening?”

“It looks like there’s been a petition going around, and a bunch of people have signed it.”

Abby’s skin crawled. Mildred had said something about those people coming to their door and being turned away.

“Our neighbor on the other side called to complain about our cat.” And shit, Abby had forgotten to ask Quinn to go over there with a live trap. “But she ended up being really nice once I explained that it wasn’t Reva’s cat that was bothering her.” Abby felt as if she were drowning, going under in a tidal wave of trouble over which she had no control. “I just don’t know who would’ve done this.”

Her whole body felt ice-cold, encased in a fear so dense and impenetrable that it stopped her breath. He took her in his arms, making her feel so safe and protected. “Shhh,” he said, his voice a soft shushing sound, a lullaby of comfort. “Shhh. Don’t worry. Whatever it is, we’ll take care of it.”

“How?” she wailed. “Do you think I should call Reva?”

“I don’t think there’s anything she can do right now. But maybe you should call some of the volunteers that help out on field trips. See if any of them can meet us at the town hall. It’ll look better if we have a crowd on our side.”

“We could have had a crowd if I’d opened the mail sooner.”

His arms tightened around her. “Let’s not worry about what’s over and done with. Let’s think about what to do now.”

She nodded. “I’ll call Edna.” Just the thought of having the kind woman’s stalwart support calmed Abby, though she still felt like a panicked swimmer whose chin kept dipping below the waterline. “Just hold me first.”

He rocked her in his arms, and though her leg fell asleep from its position on the scooter, and a pins-and-needles feeling from lack of circulation coursed from her toes to her hips, she clung to his steady strength and let him hold her until she could breathe again.

Chapter 19

While Abby showered at Quinn’s place with her cast wrapped in a plastic trash bag, he tried for the umpteenth time to call Delia and find out what the hell was going on. But of course, true to form, she wasn’t answering. Not his phone calls, and not his texts.

Maybe this whole thing wasn’t his fault. When Delia had failed to respond to his messages, he told himself that she hadn’t done what he asked and was therefore ignoring him.

Part of him hoped that the neighbors on the other side of Bayside Barn had complained and started the petition, but another part knew better. Unless they had complained to the city long before they complained to Abby—which didn’t make sense—there wouldn’t have been enough time for them to circulate a petition and set up a town hall.

“Quinn?” Abby called out from the bathroom. “Help.”

“Coming.” He nudged the door open and went inside, where Abby fought with the scooter’s handlebars, which were jackknifed between the wall and the bathroom cabinet.

“Everything’s all cattywampus.” She hopped backward and held on to the towel bar, giving him better access to the scooter.

“Wow, you’re really stuck.” He wrestled the scooter into a forward-facing position, all the while ignoring the fact that only two tiny scraps of thin, see-through fabric hid her most interesting parts from view. And those two scraps—thong panties and a barely there bra—were more of a distraction than an actual cover-up. “Okay. Here you go.”

Instead of climbing onto the scooter, Abby wrapped her arms around his neck. She leaned against him, all warm and willing and smelling of soap and shampoo and mint toothpaste. “I don’t know what I’d do without you right now. I’m so lucky that you moved next door to my aunt when you did.”

She kissed him, roaming her hands up and down his back in a way that made him wish they had more than a half hour to get out of this house and on the way to the courthouse. Her fingers tunneled through his hair, and she grabbed hold, tilting his head for a deeper kiss.

He obliged by kissing her as deeply as she was kissing him, but at the same time, he felt his face fire up with shame and embarrassment. He might not be the cause of this problem they were about to face, but then again, he might. Would the answer be revealed at the town