Warm Front

by Patricia McLinn

  First, Darcie worried that construction in the main house had become too much of an imposition on him.

  Since most of the time he’d spent in the guest room had been sleeping and the construction crew didn’t work then, that hadn’t been a problem.

  Zeke started to get that stubborn look that meant he’d been presented with a change he didn’t like. So Quince launched into a long, involved recounting of how this came about to give his friend time to adjust.

  Darcie eyed him a couple times in a way that made him wonder what she was thinking. Or if she saw more than he would have liked.

  That wasn’t an issue with Zeke.

  When Zeke’s stubbornness started to fade, Quince wrapped up his tale.

  “…so striking up a conversation with Everett Hooper in the café at lunch when I got in from Chicago has turned out great all around.”

  “Everett’s a good guy,” Zeke said. “Don’t know Anne well, but she’s doing work for Jennifer at the dealership, isn’t she, Darcie?”

  “Yes. Jen says she’s terrific with the books — always on time and never an error. But their farm’s pretty far out.”

  “Not that far from the Zeke-Tech site,” Quince pointed out.

  “That’s smart,” Zeke said. “As long as you have what you need there.”

  “You mean water, heat, indoor plumbing?”

  “Good connections for phone and Internet,” Zeke clarified. “You can live without the rest.”

  “It’s going to need to get out that way soon anyway. It’s prime real estate, being between town and our site.”

  Darcie didn’t look convinced. “A farm, Quince? I don’t see you on a farm.”

  “I consider it educational.”

  Zeke frowned. When he spoke it was clear his concerns weren’t about Quince being on a farm. “She’s kind of pretty. Anne Hooper.”

  “She is.”

  Zeke’s frown deepened. He seemed to be waiting for Quince to say more. Quince calmly met his look with silence.

  “He’s worried you’ll lose your heart.” Beneath Darcie’s dryness rested a lot of fond amusement. “And then you might not be available whenever he wants you.”

  “He gave Vanessa a good shove in that direction. She’s not working as much now that she’s with Josh. Haven’t heard him complaining about that.”

  “That,” Darcie said before her husband could answer, “is because Vanessa made Zeke work more, always pestering him — his word, not mine — with annoying things like the company’s bottom line and financial well-being. But you’re an entirely different story, since you do work he might otherwise have to contend with.”

  “It’s not only that,” Zeke grumbled.

  The other two laughed.

  “Hey,” he protested.

  Darcie kissed him on the cheek. “We know. You’re truly worried he might lose his heart.”

  “No need to worry. You know I don’t lose my heart.”

  “You did.” Zeke muttered. “Once.”

  Quince was aware of Darcie’s laser attention. But he was an old hand at this.

  “That’s why it won’t happen again,” he said lightly.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Thinking about that conversation on his way back, he focused on the farm element.

  Actually, the idea of a farm appealed to Quince the instant Everett mentioned it in the café.

  Fields of corn — even in their current winter-stubble state — should provide plenty of mental elbow room. Plus, it was something completely new. Something he knew nothing about.

  Maybe that combination would soothe the itch he’d been feeling for a while.

  So when the casual conversation at the café’s counter had turned into a specific offer from Everett, Quince said yes immediately — pending approval of Everett’s great-nephew’s widow and Quince’s approval of the room.

  Quince had approved the room — big windows flanking the headboard, showing sweeps of corn stubble that looked as if it went on forever — before Anne’s return.

  He wasn’t at all sure, however, that he had her approval.

  He breathed a little easier on that point when he returned with his stuff and she let him in. No warm words of greeting, but she did open the door.

  “I suppose we’ll have to get you a key,” she said, stepping back for him to enter.

  “That would be good,” he said mildly.

  With Everett downstairs watching television, Quince now was putting his clothes in the closet and drawers while Anne insisted on “seeing to” the bedroom and bathroom.

  As far as he could tell, “seeing to” meant cleaning what looked to already be immaculate spaces.

  He didn’t begrudge the old man staying downstairs — he had a bad leg that clearly made climbing stairs uncomfortable. Plus, Quince guessed Everett came from a generation — and a mindset — that wouldn’t have made him particularly successful at housework.

  But Anne Hooper was clearly worn out.

  Her eyes were slightly puffy. She blinked slow and often, as if fighting against the lids’ longing to close. Each movement had a slice of hesitation before it, making him think she was exerting her will to activate her muscles.

  He tried to talk her out of this cleaning.

  She ignored him — he was being his most charming, too — and kept going.

  At least now that she’d finished vacuuming the drapes, he could ask questions.

  “How much help do you have here?”

  “Help?” She gave no sign of being familiar with the concept.

  “With the farm,” he said, to narrow the discussion. “Everett says you run the place.”

  “Does he?” She sounded oddly pleased.

  “Yeah, but you must have some help — hired hands? Or…?” He had no idea what else.

  “Neighbors pitch in if they can at harvest. Everett helps where he can.”

  He waited, but she said no more. “That’s it?”

  She shrugged. “Most farmers don’t have a whole lot more. Farming’s the ultimate do-it-yourself project.”

  Quince’s farm experience was of the Old-MacDonald-Had-A variety. Even so, this struck him as a tough situation.

  One woman, with an elderly and partially disabled man trying to run a farm of — well, he had no idea what size.

  “How long have you been running the farm?” He could have kicked himself as soon as the words were out.

  Everett had said at the café that Anne took over when her husband died suddenly.

  “Three and a half years.”

  Her flat response gave no hint of emotional turmoil. But it didn’t welcome questions about the death that had necessitated her stepping in any more than Everett’s tone had at lunch.

  “Been on farms all your life?”

  “No.”

  “Where’d you grow up?”

  Silence followed that.

  He knew this tactic. It was the Zeke defense. He hadn’t let it defeat him as a freshman in college when they were randomly assigned as roommates. He sure wasn’t going to let it stop him now, with her.

  “Where did you grow up?” he repeated.

  “All over.”

  “All over where.”

  She gave an exasperated huff. “All over the world. My folks are Foreign Service.”

  “Yeah? That must have been exciting.”

  “It was—” She clamped her mouth closed.

  “It was what?”

  “Interesting.”

  Yeah, like that was what she’d started to say.

  “I bet it was. Glamorous, too, huh?”

  With her back to him she set down the bedside lamp she’d lifted to dust under with a clank. “No. It was mostly feeling like you never fit. Anywhere. Always surrounded by strangers. What do you do for Zeke-Tech, Mr. Quincy?”

  She clearly meant that to push back — you ask me nosy questions, I’ll ask you right back. He chose not to take it that way.

  “I’ll tell you if you’ll stop call
ing me Mr. Quincy.”

  She looked over her shoulder at him, a hint of wariness in her eyes. “You prefer Peter Quincy?”

  “I prefer Quince.”

  “It says Peter Quincy III on your check.”

  “I prefer Quince.”

  The hint of wariness in her turned to something he liked even less. Like she’d spotted something.

  “It’s self-preservation,” he said, deliberately deadpan. “I have this vision of there being a fire in the house and by the time you’d yelled, ‘Fire, Mr. Quincy!’ I’d be a cinder. Or a tornado’s coming and you holler, ‘Get in the storm cellar, Peter Quincy III!’ but by then I’m swirling around in the sky with a cow. But ‘Quince’ — now that’s short enough to get me out without being singed or sent to Oz.”

  She didn’t smile, but her expression eased.

  A little.

  “Okay, Quince. What do you do for Zeke-Tech?”

  “I’m COO — that’s Chief Operations Off—”

  “I know what a COO is. So you’re the one who helped Zeke start the company. The one who’s been his friend since college.”

  “Zeke and I roomed together, yeah, and I was around at the start.”

  She flicked him a look that seemed to doubt the sincerity of his modesty. But he meant it.

  Zeke was the creator. Vanessa Irish, the second person to join the company after him, was the business brain. Each was brilliant. Him? He was the conduit between their brilliance and the outside world.

  He put his empty suitcase in the center of the closet shelf. It took up a lot of room, but this way he could pull it out and be started packing in an instant.

  “Did you farm before here?”

  “No.”

  Anne had earlier pointed out a narrow closet in the bathroom with extra towels and supplies, now she took a set of sheets from it, and started to turn down the bedspread of the large bed.

  “There are already sheets on it,” he objected.

  “These are fresh.”

  “How much fresher than the ones already here?”

  “Enough to make a difference.”

  Oh, yeah, this woman was definitely stubborn.

  He went to the opposite side of the bed and folded the spread in an echo of her movements. “You look tired. Let me do this.”

  She stripped the pillow on her side and bundled the sheets while he struggled with one pillowcase. “I am tired. But you will not do this.”

  That caught his interest.

  Ninety-one out of a hundred women would have responded on the basis that his comment had been a criticism of their looks — whether a sarcastic “gee, thanks,” or a needy “I know, I look just awful,” or an incensed “you’d look tired too if you did everything I do.”

  Another eight women would have ignored his comment, either because they thought it was none of his business or they were too well-bred to respond.

  Anne Hooper had answered with plain, flat fact.

  “So you thought your uncle had brought me here as some sort of hired hand?”

  “No on both counts.” She snapped out the bottom sheet. He caught it and stretched one elasticized corner over the mattress and pad, drawing in a deep breath. It smelled like the last days of summer. A particularly nice smell as winter knocked at the house, trying to get in. “Everett is not my uncle. He is my late husband’s great-uncle. And I didn’t think he hired you as a hand. I thought he was presenting you as my potential husband.”

  Quince dropped his side of the sheet.

  Without looking up, she continued tucking.

  “Don’t worry, Mr. Quin— Quince. You wouldn’t have been the first and I’m very afraid you won’t be the last. There is nothing Everett wants more than to keep this farm. He’s lived here all his life. Generations of Hoopers have lived here. And he’s convinced the way to keep it is to get me married to a farmer.” She snapped open the top sheet, working efficiently. “In case you haven’t noticed, Everett Hooper is a stubborn man.”

  She had a homemade blanket spread across the bed now and was reaching for a comforter.

  Part of him wanted to comment that it seemed to run in the family, except she and Everett weren’t related that way, and he had something more important to say.

  “To be clear, I’m not interested in getting married.”

  He heard the grimness in his voice and wondered at it. Usually, he handled the issue with considerably more grace and charm.

  Not that it came up every day, but over the years there’d been a few instances when he’d felt the need to be upfront with a woman on this topic.

  None of the other women he’d informed he was never going to marry had reacted the way Anne Hooper did now.

  She smiled.

  As she tossed one side of the bedspread in his direction, a slow genuine smile spread those soft lips and curved that generous mouth.

  He tugged the spread without looking at what he was doing.

  The smile created a shifting around her eyes, added light to them. Even her voice smiled when she spoke.

  “Even if you were interested in getting married, Quince, you’d be safe here. First, I’m not looking for any kind of relationship, much less marriage. And second, like I said before — you’re no farmer.”

  *

  The first morning, Peter Quincy returned to his room after breakfast, informing them he was going to work there using a mobile hotspot.

  But he was downstairs when she came in from the barn shortly before noon, after a daunting inventory of necessary equipment repairs. He held the door open for her as she came in.

  Then he resumed buttoning up a beautiful topcoat in apparent preparation to leave.

  The coat was as well-tailored as the suit he’d worn last night. Its charcoal gray fabric made her want to reach out and touch it.

  Not that she would with her work gloves on.

  Or off.

  “I was telling Everett that I’m going to need better connection,” Quince said to her. “I’ll take care of that — my expense and—”

  “We can’t—”

  “Already said yes, missy,” Everett interrupted triumphantly. “Man needs it for his business.”

  As if he knew all about it, despite refusing to have anything to do with computers, leaving all that to her.

  “I’m going into town now—” Quince started.

  “And I’m going with him.”

  Everett’s announcement didn’t surprise her. He had been eyeing that car out the window like it was the tastiest pastry in the bakery. Of course he was taking the first opportunity to ride in it.

  “—and I’ll get installation set up. You can always cancel it when I leave. But in the meantime it should help you, too. Need anything in town?”

  She declined and they were gone, while she stood in the middle of the floor.

  It made sense that he needed better connection. And it was generous for him to pay for it. Why did it make her feel uneasy?

  Almost as uneasy as his presence did.

  He hadn’t done or said anything to warrant it.

  He’d been a perfect gentleman last night. This morning he’d complimented the breakfast of bacon and eggs by word — “delicious” — and deed — eating seconds. He’d carried dishes to and from the table without being asked, loaded the dishwasher, and dried the bowl she’d hand-washed. Far, far more than Everett did.

  Still the uneasiness was there.

  Apparently, just because he was here.

  But she’d take some uneasiness for the rent he was paying.

  *

  By the morning of New Years Eve day, Hooper Farm was in the process of getting vastly improved Internet connection.

  Quince had known the hot spot wasn’t going to carry the load for good, but it was worse than he’d thought. As for the Hoopers’ setup, it felt like he should get out and hand-crank something or other to get it moving.

  He’d thought Zeke was going to have a stroke these past couple days, but everything would
be faster now that Larry was here.

  Quince had only misled the Hoopers a little about how he was getting improved connection. Instead of using a tech from the local company, he’d called on one of Zeke-Tech’s experts, who’d helped set up the newly complete computer lab Zeke-Tech built for the town and knew what was what in Drago.

  When they drove into town the other day, Everett had made the mild deception easier by gruffly announcing he wanted to be dropped off near the library. So Quince hadn’t needed to explain why he met with Larry.

  Only after Quince finished his business and picked up Everett for the trip back to the farm did he wonder what the other man had been doing. Especially after he’d caught a reflection of Everett’s face as he looked out the passenger window, and had seen the man smiling.

  But he hadn’t asked, because that might open the door to Everett asking questions, too.

  “Are you all coming to the New Year’s Eve party tonight at the computer lab?” Larry asked now, as he finished checking wiring in Quince’s room.

  “Sure,” Quince said.

  “No,” Everett said simultaneously, but with considerably more emphasis from the doorway.

  Quince looked past Larry, who gave a slight what-are-you-gonna-do roll of his eyes, to Everett. “Why not?”

  “Foolishness. Staying up to all hours of the night, drinking things you wouldn’t drink any other time, singing songs you wouldn’t sing any other time, kissing folks in front of a lot of other people. It’s—”

  “That last one’s a good reason to go.” Larry chuckled.

  “Bah,” Everett said.

  Apparently, he really meant it, because his lean, stubbled cheeks had picked up color.

  “We’ll I’m going,” Quince said as his phone announced an incoming text. “Sounds like fun.”

  “It should be,” Larry said. “Mrs. Richards and some of the other regulars at the computer lab have it all planned out. Including the food. Some of us might not have anybody to kiss at midnight, but nobody’ll go home hungry. You want the primary here or downstairs?”

  “Downstairs. Don’t want it in a guest room,” Quince said with divided attention as he responded to the text.

  Vanessa Irish, Zeke-Tech’s CFO and resident financial genius, was asking if she should bring a gift to the party tonight.