Warm Front

by Patricia McLinn

  Especially after he insisted on increasing the rent he paid to cover meals.

  She put her head down and made for the outside circle of the crowd, threading a path that minimized the jostling.

  But as she reached the edge, a wave of people buffeted her. She braced herself against a wall. It was that or fall down.

  She’d get her bearings, and then she’d leave.

  “He does that a lot,” a female voice said.

  Anne swung her head around, and discovered Vanessa Irish sitting two chairs away.

  The Zeke-Tech CFO, intimidating in her own right as well as being a close friend of Quince’s, ranked in the 99.8 percentile of people Anne would have preferred not to deal with at this moment.

  Before she could construct an exit strategy, Vanessa continued.

  “Quince, I mean. That smoothing things over. Not leaving any awkward moments. Oh—” She frowned. “You don’t like that I noticed he did that for you with the red-faced man. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to. It’s because he’s done it so many times for me, that’s why I recognized it. But I shouldn’t have said anything to you. I’m too blunt.”

  She paused, looked into the crowd, and then her face transformed. The movement of muscles was small — a curving of the corners of her mouth, a lifting of her brows, a faint fan of laugh lines at her eyes — but it transformed her.

  “Some people like my bluntness,” she added simply.

  Anne followed the direction of Vanessa’s look and saw Josh Kincannon some distance away, talking with a pair of older women Anne knew by sight from around town.

  Apparently the rumor she’d heard about Vanessa and Josh was true.

  “But a lot of people don’t like it,” Vanessa went on, “so I’m sorry.”

  Maybe it was the apology, or the transformation of a moment ago, or that the woman was sitting on the edge of the room by herself…

  Rather to her own surprise Anne sat down, though she left a chair between them.

  “No problem,” she said.

  Vanessa looked at her very directly, then seemed to relax. “Good. It’s one of his duties for Zeke-Tech, you know — that smoothing-over — because neither Zeke nor I is a natural people-person.”

  “So it’s a habit he’s picked up from his job. Something he does all the time,” Anne concluded. That might be irksome, but understandable. And impersonal. “Probably not even aware he’s doing it.”

  Vanessa frowned in apparent serious contemplation. “I don’t think it was from the job. He was like that from the start — from the start of Zeke-Tech, I mean. That’s when we met, so I don’t know about before that. And I can’t imagine he’s not aware of it, because he doesn’t do it for everybody.”

  Anne’s lips parted to dismiss any notion that his most recent smoothing-over service had been anything other than tenant-landlord courtesy.

  But Vanessa grinned at that instant, and Anne realized the other woman’s comment hadn’t been directed at her. It was a statement of fact.

  “I’ve seen him leave people, uh, twisting in the wind.” Vanessa sounded like she was quoting, and when her gaze went to Josh again, Anne had a good idea of the source. “Sometimes I think he purposely adds to their discomfort. When he wants to make a point. Or he doesn’t like someone.” She gave Anne that direct look again. “But he likes you.”

  “Oh, no — it’s nothing like that. He rents a room at my house — Everett’s house. Hooper Farm. That’s all.”

  She’d said too much. She’d denied too hard.

  She saw that immediately, as speculation came into the other woman’s eyes. Speculation that hadn’t been there until Anne started running on at the mouth.

  Vanessa looked from Anne into the crowd again — not in Josh’s direction this time — then back to Anne.

  “I see.”

  “What are you two talking about so seriously?”

  Quince’s voice coming from behind her didn’t startle Anne, since she’d been forewarned by Vanessa’s look.

  But his taking the chair next to her, close enough to brush hips, did make her edge closer to Vanessa.

  “The farm where Anne lives,” Vanessa said. “Excuse me. It was nice talking to you, Anne. See you later, Quince.”

  With an expression that blended a frown and amusement, Quince watched her head toward Josh. “I think Vanessa’s picking up new skills.”

  “Skills?”

  She instantly regretted repeating his word, because it made him turn to her, examining her face.

  “Not so long ago, I told Vanessa she was a lousy liar, but I’m not entirely sure about that anymore,” he said slowly. “Were you two talking about the farm? Ah, I see — you wouldn’t tell me if I pulled your red fingernails out one by one with tweezers. Because — yes, don’t tell me, let me guess — it’s none of my business what you were talking about.”

  “It isn’t. And it wasn’t any of your business to butt into my conversation with Chitmell.”

  “I thought of it less as butting in and more as saving you from yourself.”

  She wished with all her might that she’d had the forethought to be holding a drink at that moment so she could fling it in his face.

  The glass, too.

  Okay, she wouldn’t have done that. But knowing she could have would have been so satisfying.

  “I do not need saving. Not by you. Not by anybody.”

  “Fair enough,” he said slowly, and with apparently unimpaired good humor. “But tell me this, do you really want to burn that bridge?”

  “If he’s standing on it — yes.”

  “Burning bridges — especially with bankers on them — isn’t good business.”

  “Business? You have no idea what that man—” She clamped her mouth shut. This wasn’t the place or the person for confidences, even if she were prone to them. “Never mind. I’m going to go congratulate Jennifer and Trent, now that the crush around them has eased. And then I’m leaving.”

  “Then I’ll wish you a happy New Year now.”

  She stood.

  He did, too.

  It must have been her imagination that he leaned toward her slightly.

  “Happy New Year,” she said. “And good-night.”

  *

  The countdown to the New Year started, and the jumbled crowd turned into couples pairing off like filings finding their magnets.

  “Eight, seven, six.”

  Zeke and Darcie.

  Vanessa and Josh.

  Jennifer and Trent. And many more whose names he didn’t know.

  “Five, four, three.”

  Quince stood beside the computer chair where Mrs. Richards sat, holding her anticipatory glass of champagne for her while she typed messages to people around the world.

  “There! Finished.”

  “Two. One! Happy New Year!”

  Quince lifted his plastic glass in a silent toast in the direction of the woman who’d exited shortly before the stroke of midnight.

  His gaze might have lingered on the closed door.

  “Your girl left, my guy’s not here,” Mrs. Richards said to him.

  “She’s not—” He broke it off.

  No point in arguing when a nice old lady said the world was flat.

  Instead, he handed over the glass he’d been safeguarding, then leaned down to give her a kiss on the cheek.

  “Happy New Year, Mrs. R.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  “Look out! Get back!”

  The urgency in Anne’s shout made Quince retreat two long strides, even before he looked around to see where she was and what the problem was.

  That’s what saved him from having a bale of hay fall on his head.

  As it was, the dust raised by it splitting apart as it landed set him coughing and blinking.

  He’d just driven in, returning from a meeting in town with Zeke, Vanessa, and the architects.

  He’d say it was the first day back to work in the new year, except Anne had apparently spent yesterda
y — New Years Day — working while he’d lolled at Zeke and Darcie’s house, watching football on TV, talking with other guests, and eating. Lots and lots of eating.

  When he’d returned to Hooper Farm last night, he’d seen signs of how she’d spent the day — a pair of newly oil-stained coveralls in the mudroom, Everett grumbling over printouts of machinery parts, and new strain in those gray eyes looking at him over a mug of coffee held in both hands like she needed the warmth.

  Like she needed the warmth…

  Nope, not going down that road.

  It had merely been curiosity that had made him start for the barn as soon as he got out of the car. He’d caught a glimpse of her up in the open doors on the second story of the old red barn, and he’d wondered what she was doing.

  He didn’t know about the cat, but curiosity had about done him in. Without her shout and his reaction, he would have been flattened.

  He heard Anne coming while his streaming eyes refused to focus.

  “You look okay,” she said. It sounded half accusation.

  And that made him want to grin. He would have, except it would let the still drifting grit in his mouth.

  She must have caught the curmudgeonly bug from Everett. Why Quince liked it was anybody’s guess, but considering Zeke and Vanessa had versions of it, too, and how he felt about them, it appeared to be a deeply ingrained flaw.

  “I will be. What were you doing?”

  “Getting hay out of the hayloft.”

  “Why?”

  “Clearing it out. Leaving that old stuff up there’s an invitation to every kind of critter. Not to mention mold.”

  “Why was it there in the first place?”

  “Why are you asking all these questions?”

  “It distracts me from wheezing.”

  His eyesight must have been cloudier than he thought, because he could almost convince himself that her mouth quirked into a brief smile.

  “Fine. We used to have livestock. We used it for them.”

  “Why no longer any livestock?”

  No smile now. “We’re specializing.”

  She was better at lying than Vanessa was. But not good enough.

  “Ah.” He nodded, as if she’d explained everything. The motion dislodged dust and hay residue from his hair, so he kept doing it, assisting the brushing with his hands. “So that’s why you’re cleaning house — or cleaning barn, in this case.”

  She reached toward him, as if she might assist with removing debris from his hair.

  Changed her mind.

  Fast.

  “You couldn’t have dropped it inside?” he asked.

  “Not unless I wanted this all over everything stored in there.”

  “No.” He coughed. “Far better out here where it only got me.”

  “I didn’t see you until the last second.”

  Mildly, he asked, “Is that how it’s usually done, removing hay from a barn?”

  “No, that’s not how it’s usually done,” she said with a bit of snap. “A pulley and cable that let it be lowered slowly so it’s all usable instead of — this.” Her gesture took in the partially dispersed bale of hay, sitting within a settling dust cloud.

  “Did a cable snap?”

  “The pulley’s— It’s gone.”

  Nothing odd about the words, but her choppy delivery said there was a story behind them. Maybe a full novel. One she clearly wasn’t about to share with him. Her voice would have told him that, even if his gradually clearing vision hadn’t spotted muscles at her jaw jumping.

  “What’re you going to do with the hay?”

  “I’ll drag what I can. The rest I’ll put in a wheelbarrow.”

  “I could help. That—”

  “No. Thanks.” She looked from his topcoat covering his business suit to his leather shoes, attire worn to remind the architects of Zeke-Tech’s status. Zeke and Vanessa could wear whatever they wanted. They were geniuses. He wasn’t. “You’ve got cleaning up of your own to do.”

  He pivoted to follow the path of her look.

  His car.

  It looked as if it had been caught in a sickly green dust storm.

  Him, too, he realized, scanning down.

  With a wry grimace, he turned back to Anne.

  She was gone.

  Only a movement in the dimness beyond the barn doors indicated her presence.

  By the time he entered the back door of the house, he’d gotten the worst off his coat and recognized it was going to take more than his hand for the rest. The car was going to take a good washing in town.

  Everett sat on the bench in the mudroom, grumbling and cursing as he awkwardly yanked at a boot half on and half off one foot — the foot at the end of his hobbled leg.

  “Anything I can do to help?” Quince asked.

  “Yeah. Long as you’re still in your coat and all, you can put this box in the shed. Saves me having to get these gol’durned boots on. You’d think these things were bank vaults they make ’em so hard to get into these days.”

  Quince hefted the cardboard box labeled Christmas — Outdoor. “We’ll give it a try anyway.”

  He hadn’t seen any outdoor decorations when he’d arrived three days after Christmas, not much inside for that matter. Maybe the Hoopers were the kind who dismantled their decorations as soon as Christmas Day passed.

  The box was less heavy than awkward. But he was glad to be carrying it, instead of Everett, with his bad leg.

  Plus, Everett accepting his help made a nice change from his great-niece-in-law always saying no.

  That great-niece-in-law hadn’t wasted any time. A good percentage of the shattered bale of hay was piled up in an out of the way spot. He’d have thought she’d put it closer to other hay already in a fenced enclosure that wrapped around a lean-to shed attached to the side of the barn.

  Another shimmer of movement indicated Anne was inside the barn. Possibly going after that wheelbarrow she’d mentioned.

  Glimpses, that all he seemed destined to have of her, he mused.

  By accident or design?

  And did it nag at him for any reason other than curiosity?

  Maybe.

  If it did, it was because even with his dearth of agricultural background he suspected Hooper Farm — and the Hoopers — were struggling.

  Maybe he could help.

  Not with his non-existent farming skills, as Anne had pointed out. But what about skills and resources he did have — ingenuity, imagination, persuasiveness?

  He considered that.

  He’d used those skills and resources at maximum capacity for years to help Zeke-Tech get off the ground. Years that had drained and exhilarated. Sometimes simultaneously.

  But Zeke-Tech had been flying on its own for a long time now. Heck, even his role as social shepherd for Zeke and Vanessa had just about disappeared lately.

  I think I might have been getting a little bored.

  He’d admitted that to Vanessa a couple months ago when they were talking about his enjoying the challenges of bringing a division of Zeke-Tech here to Drago.

  Now that process, too, was well on its way, running remarkably well. And his enjoyment had faded.

  He balanced the box against a fence post as he opened the gate of the enclosure he’d have to cross to reach the shed.

  Was he getting bored again?

  Maybe he’d have to look beyond Zeke-Tech. Maybe it was time to move on, to find a new challenge to absorb him, to consume his days — and nights — the way their start-up efforts had. Maybe he—

  “Close the gate. Close that gate!”

  This time Anne’s shout didn’t come from above him, but from behind. From the vicinity of the barn doors, he thought.

  Quince put down the box on a patch of new hay, to keep it dry, and returned to the gate, closed it and reached over the top to latch it.

  Yet Anne kept coming toward him, clearly still in full-scale alert. She seemed to be forcing herself to move slowly when she wanted t
o run.

  “Get that box out of there. You can’t leave it there.” Her voice echoed her stride. Like she wanted to shout again and was forcing herself not to.

  Quince dutifully picked up the box.

  Any woman who got that wound up about a gate and box needed to take up yoga or drink buckets of chamomile tea or something.

  “Now, come out of there.” At least this order was spoken in a low, calm voice. Though why she was so wound up about this he couldn’t imagine.

  “First, I’m going to—”

  “Right. Now.” As she interrupted, she looked past him. He followed the look and saw a dark shape emerging from the shadowed shed doorway.

  A big dog?

  But he’d heard nothing about the Hoopers having a dog. And the shape seemed odd for a dog.

  Behind him, he heard metal on metal as Anne worked the latch.

  He didn’t take his eyes off the figure by the shed, because now he could see a glowering face staring at him.

  That was no dog.

  The eyes, pale except for a dark bar instead of an ordinary iris, protruded from the sides of a head that was lighter colored than the rest of the body, except for thunderous eyebrow-like markings under a pair of curved horns.

  Horns.

  The eyebrow markings disappeared from his focus and the horns came into sharper focus — sharp being the uppermost impression — as the animal lowered his head. And opened its mouth emitting a tongue-wagging, guttural scream.

  “Fast, Quince. Now.”

  He followed Anne’s order to the best of his ability, hampered by a flap of the box top catching on the gate post. He lifted it free, spun out of the opening, and Anne slammed the gate closed.

  Just in time.

  Denied his primary target, the animal butted the gate, setting it shuddering and shaking. The animal puffed out annoyed clouds of vapor through the wire of the fence, then, with a disgusted shake of its head, and a final braying scream, plodded back toward the shed.

  “What on earth were you doing?” Anne demanded, dispelling her own annoyed clouds of vapor.

  “Putting this box of Christmas decorations in the shed so Everett didn’t have to wrestle with his boots.”