Warm Nights in Magnolia Bay by Babette Jongh (best summer books .TXT) 📗

relaxation was swamped by the happy shrieks of children running and playing next door. And, good God, was one of the little heathens climbing the hedge-covered chain-link fence between the two properties?

Quinn stood and stalked to the hedge, which some grimy-faced young boy had just managed to conquer. The kid’s triumphant gap-toothed grin faltered a fraction when his eyes locked with Quinn’s hostile gaze. “Hello, misther,” the kid lisped as his spindly body draped over the hedge’s bowing branches. “Don’t be mad. I’m just playin’ around.”

“How ’bout you just play around on the other side of the fence where you’re supposed to be? I’d hate to have to tattle to your teacher.”

The kid looked over his shoulder and back again. “You don’t know my teacher.”

“Wanna bet?” Quinn pulled his cell phone from his back pocket and started punching in random numbers. “I know her well enough to know that she’ll make you sit by yourself in the bus for the rest of the day while everyone else gets to have fun at the farm.”

The boy’s eyes opened wide. “Please, misther. Don’t tell her. Don’t…” He backpedaled and fell off the hedge with an “Oomph.”

Quinn stepped onto a sturdy low-hanging branch and looked over the hedge to make sure the kid hadn’t been hurt when he fell. Apparently not; all churning elbows and trailing shoelaces, he was sprinting back to the safety of the group.

Quinn hopped off the hedge, then chuckled and took a sip of his beer.

But his mirth was short-lived. If the current commotion next door was any indication, no matter how much money, time, and effort he sank into this place, the perfect buyer he had imagined would never materialize. He had thought that it would be a recently retired couple. His mind’s eye conjured the visual of a stout man who enjoyed fishing and a plump woman who enjoyed gardening.

The man would launch his aluminum fishing boat from the adjacent dead-end street that ended in a cracked concrete boat ramp—or from their own private boat dock if Quinn managed to acquire the waterfront land. The woman would sit by the pool and read romance novels. She’d use a monogrammed shovel from Restoration Hardware to plant daylilies in the estate’s rich, well-drained soil, an ideal mix of sand and silt washed up from the bay for the last hundred years.

Quinn was pretty sure that neither of those imagined retirees would be enthused about the idea of baby outlaws climbing the hedge, falling into the pool, and drowning so the kids’ parents could sue them for everything they’d worked for all their lives.

He sat in the folding stadium chair and kept an eye on the empty hedge. Feeling antsy and unfulfilled, haunted by the image of the perfect retired couple and the futility of renovating a property they’d never decide to purchase, he made a quick decision. No time for making a list of pros and cons; something had to be done. It had to be done now, and it might require drastic measures.

Chapter 3

Quinn had invested everything in this plan to move here and rebuild his reputation, his life, and his relationship with his son. He could have turned his back on the past, bought a condo in the Keys, and left all his regrets behind. But one thing—one person, his son, to be exact—held him back. If there was any small sliver of a chance that he could be a part of Sean’s life, he had to take it.

He dialed the realty office, and some peon answered on the second ring, her voice way too chirpy for his taste. Blah, blah, blah—he held the phone away from his ear until she got to the important part: “How may I help you?”

He might have unloaded some of his frustration on the poor receptionist, but whatever. Anyway, within minutes he was speaking with the agent who’d sold him this piece-of-shit property.

“Delia,” he roared. “Were you aware…” He went off on her about how he’d gambled everything on his plan to flip this property and make a sorely needed profit. She knew all this already, but it felt good to vent.

To her credit, she listened and said nothing but “Um-hmm, I hear you,” until he’d worn himself out talking.

He needed a win. Goddammit, he’d been doing nothing but losing for so long, he needed—no, he deserved—a win. “Look,” he finished. “I won’t be able to flip this estate—and you won’t be able to make the commission you’d been hoping for on the resale—unless we get rid of the petting zoo next door. What do you propose to do about this problem?”

She talked for a while about zoning and variances and grandfathered permissions to keep livestock on land that had been annexed into the city of Magnolia Bay.

“I don’t care about any of that.” He took another healthy swig of beer. “I just want you to fix the problem. Call City Hall. Circulate a petition. Do whatever you have to do. Just get that damn zoo gone. I have to be able to sell this place to a nice retired couple who can afford to buy it.”

“Quinn, I’ve known you for almost a year.” Had sex with him a few times, too. “And I know you don’t really mean what you’re saying right now. Can’t you just talk to your neighbor and work it out?”

“You want me to go over there and say, ‘Pretty please, stop making your living the way you have been for the last decade or so?’ How well do you think that’ll go over?”

Delia whined about the time and effort and red tape involved in rescinding grandfathered permissions to keep farm animals in the city limits.

“I don’t care,” he said again. “You showed me this place on a quiet Sunday afternoon, and I’ll bet you scheduled the showing then for a reason.”

“Aw, Quinn, come on. Stop being dramatic.”

“Come on yourself, Delia. You never even answer your phone on the weekends. I should have known something was