by Anne Harper
“Do you like college football, Quinn?”
That made his eyebrow dart up.
“I do, though I can’t say I’ve watched a lot of it this season.”
Nell shook her head.
“Well, Mr. Elliot does. He watches every game he can, sometimes even two at a time. Like most people around here, it’s a religion to him. One he’s devout in.” She paused, seemingly to choose her next words carefully. “No one faults him for that passion but, after his wife passed a few years back, he kind of became louder. In general.”
“Louder?” She’d said the word like it was a placeholder for another word she definitely wanted to avoid.
“He…found a good method of distancing himself from others and kind of became a recluse. He only talks to a few people on the regular, especially since his son lives out in Chicago.”
Quinn didn’t understand what point she was trying to get to, or why cans of beer were involved.
“So he’s a grouch with no family in town and likes it that way,” he summarized for her.
Nell nodded. “Basically. But—” Quinn chanced a look at the woman as he took the last right to get onto the road that led to Bluebell Cabin. The barely there glow of the night sky didn’t show Nell’s expression softening, but Quinn heard the gentle shift in her tone when she spoke again. “Sometimes when his team is playing, he gets a little edgy. And if they’re not doing well? Well, he gets a little loud.”
Now Quinn was catching on.
“And I’m assuming Mr. Elliot lives near Bluebell Cabin. And his team isn’t doing too hot right now.”
“You nailed it, Boss.”
Quinn shifted in his seat a little, not at all liking how she kept calling him Boss or Boss man. He didn’t know why he didn’t like it, just that he didn’t.
“Okay, so instead of calling the cops, we’re going to his place to give him beer? Sounds a bit questionable to me.”
Nell sighed. It was her most common one. Small but not entirely frustrated. Yet.
“That’s what I was going to do the first time I went out there after we got a complaint about him cursing up a storm on his back porch one Saturday. But then I talked to the man and realized why there had never been complaints about him before.”
“Why? Did his team get a new head coach who wasn’t up to snuff?”
“No,” she said, lightly laughing. Then her tone changed again. It was as soft as a feather. “It was because he’d always watched the games with his wife.” Quinn didn’t expect it but that softened him, too.
“So, despite him pushing everyone away in the last few years, sometimes all he needs is some company to make him agreeable again,” Nell continued. “Especially if his team isn’t doing too hot.”
“Someone to share a beer with,” Quinn ventured.
Nell nodded. Then she directed him away from the drive to Bluebell Cabin and up to another drive opposite. It was a dirt path that took them around and then through a dense section of woods. Quinn would have never seen the road had it not been pointed out to him.
“He just needs some company every now and again. Someone to yell at the TV with,” she said. Out of his periphery, he saw her shrug. “So that’s what I do. Have a beer, have a cuss, and covertly see how he’s doing in between all of the yelling about ‘are the refs blind,’ ‘did you see that load of bull,’ and my favorite, ‘you’ve gotta be kidding me!’”
“So this is what the star drawn on the Bluebell Cabin file was for,” he realized. “This is Bluebell’s quirk. A lonely man yelling at his TV in the woods because his football team is losing.”
“Welcome to small-town living, Boss. We’re a little bit country and a lot swayed by cheap beer and good company.” Nell sighed again. This time it wasn’t small. “Usually I follow the games a lot closer just in case, but I completely spaced on it today. I’m sorry we got some complaints.”
This would have been the perfect opening to ask who the man in the car was but Quinn could hear the regret and worry in her words, and he didn’t like either pressing down on her.
“If you ask me, it sounds like you’re the only one around here trying to do good by Mr. Elliot. No need to apologize for that.”
He heard her move as she turned toward him, but Quinn kept his focus on the road. It led them around another turn and then they were staring at a break in the trees and a small house in the distance. Again, Quinn never would have known about the house had he not been pointed toward it.
He parked behind an old Ford but didn’t cut the engine right away. A NO TRESPASSING sign in the front yard caught his attention and made him instantly wary.
“This Mr. Elliot isn’t the kind of man who comes out with a shotgun, ready to defend his property from strangers, right?”
“Not if we get out and yell who we are first.” Nell was teasing, but somehow it just put Quinn on edge. He was ready to jump out of the car with his hands up when another thing happened that he hadn’t expected.
Nell reached over and took his hand in hers. It was still cold from her cradling the beer cans.
“And Quinn? There’s something you need to know before we go out there.” Every part of Quinn was at attention. It was all he could do not to trace her dark lips with his eyes. Those same lips quirked up into a smirk. Nell’s words had been gentle earlier and now he knew that they matched her skin. Soft. “In these here parts, we say ‘Roll Tide.’”
…
Mr. Elliot came outside red-faced and grumbling. When he saw Nell, that grumpiness didn’t disappear, but it did switch gears. He gave her a tight nod, then gave Quinn a wholly suspicious glare.
“Who’re you?” the older man snarled. He had his crimson Tua Tagovailoa number 13 jersey on and the Troy University ball cap that had belonged to his wife flattening his gray hair. That was par for the course for him on a Saturday, as was the baseball bat in his hand when he went to greet guests. The bat he lowered when he’d seen Nell but he’d stopped from dropping it at the sight of Quinn.
Nell stepped in. “Mr. Elliot, this is Quinn Hannigan.” She placed her hand on Quinn’s arm as if to show the older man that he meant no harm. “He runs Heart in Hand now, so I thought it would be nice to come out and introduce him to you.”
Mr. Elliot still seemed skeptical. He looked her up and down in a matter-of-fact way.
“Why are you so dolled up?”
Nell knew the man to be a sweetheart, just as she knew him to be blunt when his frustration was showing, so she sidestepped the truth and went right for his heart.
“Well, I was out at dinner and saw the score and just knew I had to come out here and talk about it. I mean, did you see that ridiculous holding call right at the end of the second quarter? I swear, some of these refs must be getting paid off.”
Mr. Elliot didn’t miss a beat.
He put the bat down by his front door and then threw his arms out in exasperation.
“I’m more fuming at the calls they’re not making! If that wasn’t targeting in the first quarter, then my name ain’t Anthony Elliot!”
Nell squeezed Quinn’s arm, sensing the danger of a tantrum from Mr. Elliot waning. At least one aimed at them. She eyed the six-pack that she’d handed off to Quinn when they had gotten out of the car. It was his turn to do some schmoozing.
He pulled out a smile that made Nell forget for a moment that she was there for a work-related cause. Quinn was a damn good-looking man.
“We better get back to it before half time is over then,” he said, all smooth. He held out the beer and that was that. Mr. Elliot was a kid on Christmas. He led them inside, talking about second-quarter teams and the commentators’ bias and then transitioned to his well-worn recliner in the small living room. Quinn sat on the only other available spot, an equally well-worn couch. Or, should she say, love seat. Nell’s dress rode up a little as her thigh slid against hi
s jeans when she sat down next to him. It took the facts that Quinn was a good-looking man with some fine-feeling lips and started to burn them against her skin. Nell could feel the tightness of his leg, the strength in them, even through the denim. Readjusting to try and put more space between them only made the situation worse. If she’d been Olly, the bottom of her Spanx would have already been showing. Instead, it was her bare skin seemingly craving the man next to her.
Heat started to pulse between the contact, her stomach, and somewhere it shouldn’t have at all in an instant.
It was all Nell could do to remember that they weren’t alone, that they were there for work, and that she needed to rein in the pull she was feeling toward the man.
All thanks to his dang leg pressed up against hers.
“You don’t have to stay now that you’ve met him,” Nell whispered after trying to slyly yank her hem back down while hiding her blush. “If you were in the middle of something when Donavon called, you can head back. I don’t mind staying and can call a cab to get home.”
Quinn’s lips quirked up at the corner. He gave her a quick once-over.
“Between the two of us, I feel like you might have been the one in the middle of something.”
Nell’s face heated, mostly because her simple answer of going out with her sisters now had a Wren attached, thanks to those same sisters.
“After everything that’s happened, I thought I deserved a little grub and glamour.” It was true enough. “Though, I guess I didn’t actually get to the grub part.”
“You can take my car and I’ll stay,” Quinn offered. “Get yourself some food, and I can take a cab home.”
It was a touching offer. One that got a small laugh from Nell.
“First the card and chocolate, then punching Keith McHaulty, and now offering me your rental? You better watch out. That’s not exactly loner territory.”
Quinn rolled his eyes, all dramatic, but he was still doing that smile-smirk make-you-want-to-stare thing again. Nell held out her hand.
“Now, pass me a beer and buckle up, Boss.” She motioned to the TV. “If you thought I was loud and embarrassing at that restaurant, I’m about to blow your damn mind.”
Chapter Eleven
Nell’s high heel was missing. Quinn had mud smeared across the right side of his face. Somewhere in the woods around them, a pig screamed out.
How had they gotten here, exactly?
“This is insane,” Quinn wheezed out, trying to get to his feet again. The mud on his face was from an earlier fall. Since then, they’d both been slipping and sliding around. The thunder that had started before they’d made their way out to Mr. Elliot’s had turned into a quick but effective thunderstorm during the last quarter of the football game.
Which hadn’t been a problem.
It was when Nell’s brother Leon had called to ask a favor shortly before the game had ended that the downpour turning his neighbor’s yard and surrounding land into a muddy field of despair that the problems had started.
“And don’t you say this is a small-town-living thing,” Quinn added on before Nell could say just that. He motioned wide. The floodlights from the house and the headlights from his rental weren’t doing much for where they were at the tree line. “Chasing down a rogue baby pig in the middle of the night after going through a flash flood and watching two quarters of a college football game with a superfan in his eighties is not normal for any locale.”
Nell waved him off.
“This is weird, I’ll give you that, but I wouldn’t say insane per se.”
“What, then? It’s insane-adjacent?”
Quinn was in a huff. Wiping the mud off his face had only resulted in smearing it. He looked like a man at war. The pig, very aptly named Wiggly, his enemy.
“We need to focus,” Nell reminded him. “If he gets too far off into the woods, then we’ll never find him.”
Quinn made a grumpy noise but didn’t push back. Instead he shook his shoulders, hunched over, and peered out in the direction of the last little squeal. Nell had taken her other high heel off when the first had been sucked off her foot by one of several mud pits across the yard. Wiggly’s aging owners had both grown up on farms and tended their land better than they did their side yard. It was the Wild West of sludge and shoe-stealing quicksand. What Quinn didn’t know yet was, after they got their curly-tailed target secured, they’d switch their prime objective to finding the missing pump.
“There he is.” Quinn’s words were low, but they were all excitement.
Nell followed his gaze to the tree line. Sure enough, a small pink blob stepped out.
“Maybe he’s bored of running around,” Nell said, voice just as low.
Wiggly put his snout into the air. Mrs. Langdon, the pig’s owner, said no matter what, he only ever listened for one thing. Food.
Amen, little buddy. Amen.
“Or he’s hungry.”
Quinn reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of saltine crackers. He’d made several disapproving noises when he’d put them into his jeans as incentive in the first place.
“You want some?” he asked Wiggly, taking a tentative step forward. “Come on. Come to me for some snacks.”
Nell fought the absolute bulldozing urge to say “that’s what she said” and watched instead as her boss started to throw crackers at a pig.
What a night.
Wiggly didn’t take the bait at first but then, slowly, started to make his way to the trail of saltines. Quinn gave Nell a quick look. His eyes were wide and he kept nodding to the trees. He was trying to tell her something.
“I’m pretty sure the pig doesn’t know English,” she pointed out. “I think you can tell me what’s on your mind.”
Quinn rolled his eyes. “Flank him so he doesn’t go back into the woods.”
“Oh, right!”
Nell placed her surviving high heel on the stretch of ground beneath her that wasn’t half swamp pit and gave Quinn and Wiggly a wide berth. Mud squished up between her toes. Sweat rolled down the front and back of her dress. She had no doubt her hemline was flirting with the idea of giving up and showing everyone in the yard that she had gone with tasteful black lace panties.
But she was focused.
She was flanking.
According to Mrs. Langdon, Wiggly and his mother had been rescued and now lived the lives of domesticated pigs in their farmhouse. Wiggly’s mother was one hundred seventy pounds of love. Wiggly was only around fifty.
Fifty pounds might not seem a lot when it came to bags of money or chocolate, but when it came to a living and breathing fifty pounds that had already toppled over a full-grown man by plowing into his shins? Well, Nell wasn’t taking any chances.
She said a little prayer to her hemline to be kind and approached Wiggly from behind like a sumo wrestler approaching an opponent. Quinn gave her a look. He was out of crackers.
This was it.
This was what the last half hour had been building toward.
This was a tied-game rivalry with one second left on the clock.
Nell nodded that she was ready. Quinn started to walk forward, mimicking her stance.
“Here, Wiggly Wiggly,” Quinn sang. “Come to Daddy.”
That urge to say “that’s what she said” was too strong to stop. The words were forming, ready to embarrass her, within a second.
Thankfully, Wiggly distracted them both.
The pig gave a little squeal and darted at Quinn. The man stood his ground, hands outstretched. Nell ran behind, also ready to clamp down.
They needed to get Wiggly, since Mrs. Langdon couldn’t, and Leon, who she usually called for help, was out being fancy for work.
It was the neighborly and sisterly thing to do.
It was small-town living at its most country level, despite Quinn’
s refusal to believe it.
They had to catch the pig because it was the polite thing to do.
But what happened next? Well, it was nothing short of insane.
Nell and Quinn met each other in the middle, both managing to grab onto Wiggly’s front and backside at just about the same time. A victory followed quickly by all dignity leaving the scene.
The momentum was too much and the mud didn’t help. One hundred percent of the humans in the yard toppled over like a bowler had thrown a strike and they were the hapless pins.
The breath pushed out of Nell as she hit the ground, shoulder first.
“Don’t let him go,” Quinn said. Wiggly was wiggling between them, unamused.
The sound of a door opened and shut at the house next to them, mixed with squeals.
Then Nell felt it. The cold air and wetness on her left butt cheek.
Welp. Her hemline had finally decided to abandon ship.
Fancy panties, meet mud, the night air, a pig named after a grocery store, and my boss.
…
“He’s spirited, I tell you what.” Mrs. Langdon had a hand on her cane and was minding the cast on her left leg but giving every ounce of her annoyance to Wiggly the pig. Once they’d corralled and caught him, it had been light years easier to get him back into the pen that was attached to the back porch. Quinn carried the pig like he was a baby and deposited him on the ground just as carefully as you would one into a crib.
The gentle nature did nothing for the amount of mud covering them both.
“I was trying to get my shoes and the next thing I knew, he was a rocket out into the yard.” Mrs. Langdon shook her head and fixed Nell with a look of sheer appreciation. “I hate that you had to come out here, but tell your brother he’s a good man to set it up. And you two are sweethearts to break your date to help out.”
Quinn was going to correct her on the date front, but Nell smiled through the compliment.
“If Leon says you’re family, you’re family,” she answered. “We’d do it again if you needed.”
If it was earlier in the day, Quinn strongly believed the conversation would have stretched on for at least a half hour, all polite and “did you hears,” but as it was near midnight and they were covered in mud, Mrs. Langdon’s goodbye only stretched long enough for her to distribute towels.