Warm Nights in Magnolia Bay

by Babette de Jongh

  “I don’t know about Georgia,” Quinn said, “but Wolf thinks you’re crazy.”

  “I know.” Abandoning the cup idea, Abby dipped a washcloth into the sudsy water and reached out to wipe Wolf’s face. She got one good swipe in before he backed out of her reach. “But we’ve put up with his dirt-tracking, stinky self long enough. Now that he’s coming inside so much, he needs to learn about baths. Also, he’s scheduled to be neutered this week, and I refuse to take a dirty dog to the vet.”

  Quinn chuckled. “I understand your motivation; I’m just not sure you’re going about it the right way.”

  Abby squeezed out the washcloth. “Let’s hear your bright idea, then.”

  Quinn eased into the small bathroom and peeled his shirt off over his head. “Dogs,” he ordered. “Out.”

  The dogs ran out and Quinn closed the door, turning the lock just in case. Now that Reva was back at the farm and the estate was a construction zone, privacy was hard to come by.

  Reva, Mack, Edna, President Tammy, Mayor Wright, and a few other folks on the shelter’s planning committee had all been known to just show up and walk on into the pool house, hollering for Quinn to show them the latest progress on the shelter. But they had an official tour for the shelter’s planning committee scheduled in a few hours, so Quinn figured he and Abby were safe for now. But he jiggled the bathroom doorknob to make sure the lock was secure.

  Abby held the damp washcloth to her naked breasts. “What are you doing?”

  He skimmed his jeans and underwear down his legs in one motion and stepped out of them. “It’s step one of my bright idea.”

  Her hazel eyes went round at his audacity—and hopefully his anatomy, too, which left no doubt of his intentions. “First, you and I take a bath.”

  “I know you know how to take a bath, Quinn.” She scooted to the end of the tub. “It’s the dog I’m trying to convince. And I’m not sure you and I will both fit in here.”

  “Oh, yeah,” he promised, “we’ll fit.”

  He climbed in, practically on top of her, sending a tidal wave of water over the tub’s rim. She giggled. “How does this get the dog clean, exactly?”

  “I promise I’ll bathe Wolf later,” he said in between kisses. He had planned to bathe the dog before the meeting, anyway. Abby’s little peep show was just a happy accident. “I’m working up sufficient motivation, because I know it won’t be easy.”

  Abby scooted down and adjusted their position; with her hips cradling his, he quickly found the opening he sought and plunged inside. His mighty thrust pushed Abby upward; her back skidded against the wet porcelain tub, making a squeaking sound. Her involuntary “Oof,” wasn’t quite the reaction he was hoping for, either. He held her shoulders still and tried again, but this time, even more water sloshed over the rim of the tub, and Abby laughed. “Maybe we should try the bed?”

  An hour later, Abby snuggled under the covers and smiled at the sounds of Wolf whining, Quinn cursing, and water splashing in the bathroom. Georgia had trotted over to Reva’s at the first sign of doggy bathtime.

  Finally, the alarming sounds coming from the bathroom died down, followed by the more soothing sound of the hairdryer. Abby dozed a little, dreaming of the house plans she and Quinn had been brainstorming together. He hadn’t exactly asked her to marry him, but they were definitely planning a future together. Now that the shelter’s construction was nearly complete, Quinn’s permission to live at the pool house would also be coming to an end. Reva had offered Quinn a half-acre out behind Bayside Barn that he could build a cabin on, but he and Abby had also been discussing whether to rent, buy, or build somewhere else. Nearby, but not quite so underfoot.

  Abby had just drifted from dreaming of floor plans to dreaming for real when the bedroom door burst open. She sat up and clutched the bedspread to her naked breasts, then relaxed when she saw Quinn and Wolf standing there. Both wore satisfied grins on their faces, and Wolf—whose soft fur looked like a clean, fuzzy cloud after his bath, blow-dry, and brush-out—sported a new collar that jingled when he moved.

  “Who’s the most handsome boy ever?” Abby asked, holding her hand out to Wolf.

  Quinn looked down at his wet jeans and bedraggled shirt. “Not me, I guess.”

  Abby laughed as she kissed Wolf’s clean-smelling head. “Not you this time. Correct. But you’re still welcome in my bed if you get out of those wet clothes first.”

  “Technically, it’s my bed,” Quinn said, but he quickly complied and slipped between the sheets.

  Wolf, who’d only recently begun sleeping in the house at night and had never gotten on the furniture despite Georgia’s bad example, leaped onto the bed and rolled onto his back, thumping his tail and grinning up at Abby. She obligingly petted his belly. “What are you doing on this bed, mister?”

  “He wants you to admire his new collar and tags,” Quinn said, leaning back against the pillows.

  “Very pretty,” Abby said, still rubbing the dog’s belly.

  “No,” Quinn said. “He wants you to really admire them.”

  Abby sat up to get a better look at the cluster of jingling tags on Wolf’s new collar. First, the new rabies tag Mack had given them when Wolf finally allowed him close enough to give the injection. Behind that, another tag shaped like a heart. Abby read the engraving: MY NAME IS WOLF. IF I’M LOST…

  Abby turned the tag over, and gasped. “Oh, Quinn.”

  Behind the tag, a diamond engagement ring sparkled from the tag’s O-ring.

  And the other side of the tag read, Please call my people, Abby and Quinn Lockhart (followed, of course, by their phone numbers). “Oh, Quinn,” she said again.

  “I was sort of hoping for a more definite answer,” Quinn joked. But a small, lost note in his voice reminded Abby that like Wolf, Quinn had only recently learned to trust those he loved not to betray him.

  Abby worked the engagement ring off the O-ring and slipped it onto her finger. Then she shifted the sheets and climbed right on top of her fiancé’s warm, naked body. “Yes,” she said, straddling him. “Yes, I will marry you, Quinn Lockhart.”

  Then she kissed him, long and slow, before drawing back to stare into his beautiful blue-jean-blue eyes. “And do you want to know why I’ll marry you?”

  He grinned. “Because I’m extremely good-looking and independently wealthy?”

  She shook her head. “Nope.” She held her hand up and admired the way the diamond caught the light from the window and threw sparkles of colored light onto the ceiling. “Guess again.”

  “Because you love me?”

  “Yes.” And she would keep saying it, even after she knew for sure that he truly and completely believed it. “Because I love you.”

  * * *

  Wolf sat with Georgia outside the closed bedroom door, listening to all the sighs and giggles and groans coming from inside. Georgia sniffed his still-damp ears and gave a happy tail wag. “You’ll have to go roll in something to get rid of that shampoo smell. I know where there’s a dead frog one of the workmen ran over in the driveway.”

  Wolf smiled and swished his tail along the floor. “That’s okay. I don’t mind smelling like this, if it makes my people happy.” My people. He still couldn’t quite believe it, but the shiny new tags that jingled on his new collar made it feel at least a little bit more real. “And when you’ve been carrying around a bathtub full of dirt for as long as I have, it feels good to finally get clean.”

  “Yes, but…” Georgia shivered. “The smell of shampoo reminds me of baths, and I hate baths.”

  He licked her silly little face. “If you hate baths, you should try to stay clean instead of rolling in dead. I’m looking forward to sleeping in the bed now, like you do.”

  “Whose bed you gonna sleep in?” She sat up on her haunches to lick his lips. “You gonna sleep in my bed with Reva, or in theirs?” She turned an e
ar toward the closed door. “Their bed is kind of loud and jumbly. Ours is quieter.”

  Wolf cocked his head to listen. There was a lot of squeaking going on in Abby and Quinn’s bedroom. It sounded like they were hopping up and down on the bed. Why they would do that made no sense to Wolf, but then people were mysterious creatures who seemed to do a lot of strange things for no good reason. “Maybe I’ll try all the beds before making a decision.”

  Quinn had installed a doggy door in the gate between the two properties and in the sliding glass door of the pool house, and Wolf could fit—just barely—through the dog door to Reva’s house, so he could go where he pleased. No one ever chased him away anymore, and in fact, everyone in both houses told him often that they loved him, and that he was welcome to stay. It had been a long journey from fear to trust, and he knew he still had some work to do to fully understand with his mind what he already knew in his heart to be true.

  He had everything a dog could want now: the safety and security of being welcomed into not just one family but two, and the freedom to go where he would within those boundaries drawn by love. He had a large extended family that loved and accepted him, including the heart of that family, a funny little dog who loved him beyond measure, even though she wouldn’t always share the tennis ball. It didn’t matter which bed, or even which house he decided to sleep in. He had time to decide. He had time to truly learn what Georgia had been trying to tell him all along.

  He belonged.

  He could stay.

  If you’ve fallen in love with the Welcome to Magnolia Bay series, read on for a sneak peek at book two:

  Magnolia Bay Memories

  Available November 2021 from Sourcebooks Casablanca

  Adrian Crawford parked his new Lexus LC 500 convertible at the loneliest corner of the new animal shelter’s gravel parking lot, far from the handful of other vehicles, and even farther from the centuries-old oaks that draped their scaly, fern-covered branches over the new chain-link fence.

  The construction/renovation of the shelter had progressed significantly since his last visit a week ago. The old craftsman-style home’s exterior facelift was complete. Quinn Lockhart, Adrian’s old college buddy and the contractor in charge of the project, had already put up the new sign by the entrance. The sign, hand-made with carved lettering painted bluebird-blue on a butter-yellow background, matched the new paint and trim on the old house.

  A bit bright for his taste, but as a business consultant working pro-bono for the non-profit shelter, it wasn’t his place to argue with the three women in charge of this project. And Quinn was so crazy-in-love with the trio’s leader, Abby Curtis, that he probably wasn’t thinking straight.

  “Furrever Love,” Adrian scoffed. “What kind of name is that for a business?” The unfortunately cutesy name the women had chosen for the shelter arched across the top of the sign in a curlicue font they had agonized over for hours. Beneath that, in more sedate lettering: MAGNOLIA BAY ANIMAL SHELTER.

  Adrian pushed the button to close the car’s top. He left the windows open a few inches to keep the car’s interior from baking in the Louisiana summer sun, then exited the car, pointing the key fob to lock the car with a quiet but satisfying blip-blip.

  “Gang’s all here.” Quinn’s truck was parked by the outdoor dog runs, where the sound of heavy machinery droned. Reva—the organizing force behind the shelter even though her niece, Abby, was officially in charge—lived at the farm next door. Abby and Quinn were living on-site in the old estate’s pool house until the shelter’s grand opening, so unless Quinn was making a hardware store run, they were always here.

  “Well, almost all here.” Heather’s car, he noticed as he walked toward the house, was conspicuously absent.

  Typical. Heather Gabriel was just about always late. Adrian couldn’t help but wonder why Abby and Reva thought they could trust her to be in charge of the day-to-day operations when she couldn’t even make it to their weekly 4:00 p.m. meetings on time.

  Reva’s dog, Georgia, trotted across the parking lot, coming toward him with a proprietary air. She was a funny-looking combo of dog breeds—a short, long dog with a thick speckled coat of many colors and a white-tipped tail that curved over her back. Her brown eyespots drew together in a concerned frown as she sniffed his jeans and then the treads of his new Lowa hiking boots. When she had completed her inspection, she looked up at him with a “State your business and I’ll decide if you can come in” attitude.

  He bent to pet Georgia’s head. “I’m here to brainstorm with the team about another grant proposal for funding, if you must know.”

  Then he scoffed at himself. Quinn, Abby, Reva, and Heather all talked to animals like they were human. Now he was doing it, too. “Assimilation is nearly complete,” he told Georgia in his best imitation of The Borg.

  Georgia stiffened and growled at something behind Adrian. He turned and looked, then bolted to his feet. The scruffy old black-and-white tomcat who’d been hanging around the area was walking tightrope-style along the top of the chain link fence near Adrian’s car. “Don’t you do it…”

  He could tell by the direction of the cat’s gaze that he was about to jump from the fence to the hood of Adrian’s brand-new, never-been-scratched car. “No!” He started running, but the cat was already gathering itself for the leap. “Bad cat!”

  Too late.

  Georgia took off like an avenging army of one, galvanized into action and ready to tell the cat what-for, announcing her intention with a high-pitched, yodeling bark.

  The cat was already in mid-leap with front paws extended, body stretched out, back toes spread, when he spotted the dog barreling toward him. Eyes wide, mouth frozen in a grimace of fear, the cat twisted in midair to go back the way he’d come. Too late.

  His spine hit the hood of Adrian’s car with a loud thwump, then his body twirled like a corkscrew, all claws extended as he scrambled to get his balance.

  “No…” Adrian ran, but Georgia ran faster. She leaped up, scrabbling at the side of the car in an impossible effort to reach the cat. Never gonna happen; Georgia wasn’t even knee-high. But she didn’t know it, the cat didn’t know it, and none of that mattered to the previously shiny, immaculate finish of Adrian’s new car.

  “No, shoo, bad dog,” Adrian yelled. Why hadn’t he used the perfectly good fitted canvas cover that he’d left in the trunk of the car? “Get down, right now.” Why hadn’t he bothered to toss it over the car the second he got out? “Hush, dog.” He tried to push the dog away with his foot. “Get back. Go home.”

  The cat leaped up to the car’s convertible top and hissed down at the dog, who barked even more ferociously, moving to scratch a different area on the side of Adrian’s poor car. He snatched the little troublemaker up before she could do it.

  The little dog whined and squirmed, but couldn’t bark. The cat, frozen in a bowed-up caricature of a Halloween cat, stopped growling long enough to catch his breath. In the sudden cessation of noise, Adrian heard a sound behind him.

  Reva rushed up, all flowing hair and patchwork fabric; a prematurely gray hippie gypsy. She snatched Georgia out of his arms. “I’ll put her up,” she said. “See if you can grab the cat and bring him inside. We’ve been trying to catch him for weeks.”

  As Reva hurried back across the parking lot with her Birkenstocks scuffing along the gravel surface, Adrian took off his sunglasses and stood with his hands on his hips, surveying the damage. These scratches were not the sort that could just be buffed out with a good coat of Minwax. “Son of a bitch.”

  But there was nothing he could do about it now. He heaved a sigh and plowed his hands through his hair, then applied his business-consultant problem-solving skills to the situation. “Okay.” First things first. “Come here, cat.”

  He held his hands out to the cat and made kissy noises. The cat bowed up and backed away, growling low in his throat. “Naw, don�
��t be that way.” He softened his tone even further. “Come on, little man.” The cat was scrawny, but also a fully-grown tomcat with a big jug-head jaw. “Here, kitty, kitty.”

  The cat glared at him, so he used one of the tricks he’d heard Reva mention when she was talking to the shelter girls about taming wild cats. He half-closed his eyes, looking sleepily at the cat and blinking slowly. The cat settled onto his haunches, his glowing amber eyes not as wide-open as before.

  Well, fuck me, he thought. It worked.

  He started humming, not a tune, just random low tones.

  The damn cat started purring, and damn if he didn’t start doing that slow blinking thing, too.

  Which Adrian realized he had forgotten to keep doing, so he started it up again. His humming resembled a tune he’d heard his grandmother sing, so he added words to the tune: “What’s up, stinky cat?” The cat did stink. He smelled like dirt, motor oil, and cat pee. “Whoa, whoa, whoa… Come here, stinky cat; whoa, whoa, whoa…”

  The cat’s body tensed, raising up a fraction off his haunches as if preparing to run.

  Yeah, that shit wasn’t working, so he went back to humming. The cat settled back down. He didn’t seem inclined to move toward Adrian’s outstretched hands, but at least he wasn’t running or hissing or growling. So Adrian eased forward, then gently touched the cat, spreading his fingers lightly over the cat’s bony ribs.

  The cat’s purring stopped. Adrian kept his fingertips on the cat’s haunches, letting the skittish feline get used to him before he pushed the envelope any further. He did more of the blinking thing, still humming, and slowly began to stroke the cat’s scruffy, greasy, black-and-white fur. It seemed peppered with tiny scabs.

  No question, this dude was a fighter.

  Adrian eased his fingers farther along the cat’s back, then slowly, gently, dragged him forward. The cat resisted at first, but at some point in the process, he padded along the car’s hood toward Adrian, assisted by the gentle pressure Adrian kept applying. They seemed to have reached some sort of unspoken agreement. Making soothing sounds, not even a hum anymore, but a vibration in his throat that he could feel but barely hear, he gathered the reluctant cat into his arms.