Warm Nights in Magnolia Bay, Babette Jongh [book club books txt] 📗

He used a big magnet to find nails and screws and an assortment of tools in the tall grass beyond the pool. By the time Abby pulled up next door, he had set up a heavy-duty stand of work lights, removed the damaged section of wire fencing, and pulled up the bent metal posts. With the late-afternoon sunlight slanting through the straggly trees on his side of the fence, the lights weren’t needed yet. Whether they’d need them at all depended on how helpful Abby could be.

He wasn’t holding out much hope. Women, in his experience, only got in the way when there was real work to be done. If she decided to wander off and make lemonade, he hoped she put a liberal amount of vodka in it.

Abby backed Reva’s car up to the gap and got out pulling on a new-looking pair of work gloves. “The smallest roll they had was a hundred feet. I was on my knees praying that the guys at the store would be able to fit it in the trunk. It’s gonna be a bitch to lift; we’ll have to do it together.”

“Ya think?” Unable to resist showing off, he lifted the roll out easily and carried it to the wooden corner post where they would begin the run. The wooden posts were concreted into the ground every sixteen feet and interspersed with two cheaper metal posts between each wooden one. The old metal posts were bent and rusted; he had tossed them on top of the tangled pile of wire in the fenced pasture beyond.

He went back to the truck for the new metal posts and dumped the whole bunch on the ground near the work area. “I rolled up what’s left of the old fencing and tied it with baling string. It’s in a pile over there”—he nodded in the general direction—“along with all the old posts. I’ll take it all to the metal-recycling place on my way to work tomorrow.”

“Thank you.” She put a hand on his arm and leaned toward him. He thought she might kiss him, but she didn’t. “I really appreciate all your help.”

Georgia appeared from somewhere to supervise the operation, sniffing the tools and fencing material, then toddling off to eat grass, or poop, or do whatever it was dogs did when they had nothing to do.

Abby and Quinn worked together well. He jabbed the prong end of a metal post into the ground, then she held it while he used the post driver to hammer it deeply into the ground. She held the fence roll against a wooden post while he nailed the wire to the post with U-shaped nails. He used the come-along to pull out the slack in the wire, and they both worked together to fasten the wire to the metal posts with specially shaped fencing clips. He snipped the wire at the end of the run while she held the roll taut to keep the raw edges from snapping back.

No lemonade-making miss, he thought appreciatively. Knowing that he was in danger of doing more appreciating than he should, he said the first thing he could come up with that had nothing to do with Abby’s sweet smile, her glowing cheeks, or her curvaceous body. “You really should replace the rest of this fence line. The part that runs through the hedge is pretty much rusted out.”

“I don’t know if Reva wants us to do that,” Abby said, sounding worried. “Wouldn’t we have to cut down the hedge first?”

“We’d have to trim it back pretty drastically,” he agreed. “But the goats have already gone some distance toward completing that project. I didn’t notice that they were in my yard until they’d already had a grand old time unloading my truck and chomping on the hedges.”

“I’m glad they stayed in your yard. If they’d gone as far as the cat’s-claw forest, we might never have seen them again.”

“Damn. I didn’t think of that.” He grinned at her and started gathering tools. “I locked them and the donkeys up in the barn instead of shooing them across the road. Too bad.”

“You don’t mean that,” Abby chided. It was clear she thought he was too nice to chase her aunt’s wandering goats away, when in fact he just hadn’t thought of it.

“Don’t fool yourself; I may not be as nice as you think I am.” He unplugged the work lights and rolled up the extension cord. It hadn’t gotten dark enough for the lights to be useful, but Quinn hadn’t known how long the fence-mending would take. Abby had been much more helpful than he’d anticipated, and the work had gone smoothly.

Once they’d cleared away all the tools and stashed the unused wire in the barn’s storage room, Abby invited Quinn to dinner. But they’d done that yesterday, and look how that had almost turned out. He’d better go back to being the friendly neighbor on the other side of the fence. “Thanks, but I’ve got a lot of work to do next door. I’m installing new flooring in the master bedroom.”

Since Sean wasn’t coming after all this weekend, Quinn had decided to sleep in Sean’s room this week—the only room he’d finished—and complete the renovations in the rest of the pool house. If he worked every evening this week, he could have the whole place done—except regrouting the vintage floor tiles in the kitchen. Those bitches would take forever.

“I understand you’re busy,” Abby said. “But would you at least let me fix you a plate? I’ll bring it over so you can eat while you work.”

There wasn’t any way he could decline a hand-delivered dinner without seeming rude, and even though he wasn’t interested in a relationship, he wanted Abby to like him. “Sure, that’ll be great. Thanks.”

When she delivered a foil-covered plate an hour or so later, he set the plate on the coffee table and invited her in for a glass of wine, but