Warm Front

by Patricia McLinn

  What on earth had he been thinking?

  Bringing all these strangers to Hooper Farm.

  Wanting Everett and Anne to be comfortable with taking money from people for an experience.

  Expecting Anne, who warmed to people only slowly and cautiously, to suddenly become a gregarious tour guide.

  He’d had a vision of how this would all be, but any idiot could see Anne Hooper didn’t fit that vision. How had he — who prided himself on his people skills — overlooked that glaring fact?

  And then it hit him.

  Hit him hard enough to make him grunt and stop where he was.

  It wasn’t what he’d been thinking about — it was who he’d been thinking about.

  Fiona.

  Fiona, who would have waded into a situation like this with pure joy.

  Who would have every one of the visitors hanging on her words. Who would have them viewing mud as delightful and charming. Who would barely seem to ask, yet would have turned every last one of them into walking, talking word-of-mouth promoters of Hooper Farm that would make any ad man drool.

  Who would end the day with eyes shining, cheeks flushed, high on an extrovert’s buzz.

  Instead of the hunted, wary, shoulder-tightened figure that was Anne Hooper.

  God, Anne. I’m sorry.

  He’d never meant to make her miserable, but he had. His good intentions had sent her right down the road to what her expression clearly said was her personal hell.

  He should have known.

  Her reaction to the oatmeal business wasn’t solely that crop farming was who she was. It was also about who she wasn’t.

  The face of a business. The front woman who would tell the world about what she had to offer.

  She’d made it clear she had no interest in that.

  Why hadn’t she refused to do this? Why hadn’t she told him she’d rather be stuck with pins and rolled across the floor?

  We’ve got to do something.

  Because she would do anything, try anything to save this farm.

  So that explained her. But what about him?

  How had he been so off about this?

  Memories of Fiona had never before mingled with his relationships — brief as they usually were.

  It sure wasn’t that the two women were alike. There’d been no question whom he was holding and kissing in the kitchen earlier.

  Yet that had been another mistake.

  He’d meant to give her a boost.

  At least with the first kiss.

  The second one, the one when she’d cooperated and the two of them nearly turned it into far more than a kiss—

  But they didn’t.

  Wouldn’t.

  For all the reasons he’d thought through before. She wasn’t a woman to take what he could offer.

  Though he had been wrong about her not being interested—

  Nope. Not going there.

  Okay, so this was a disaster. The only thing to do about a disaster was to get through it with as little damage as possible. To avoid anything like—

  Oh, damn.

  —the red-jacketed boy was on the loose again. With neither of his parents showing the least recognition that the kid existed, the boy must have skirted the group and, using a high wooden trough to mask his progress, was now making a beeline for Grandy’s enclosure.

  The boy reached up to the latch.

  “Hey!” Quince yelled as he sprinted toward the kid.

  Not a good move. The shout and motion drew the attention of all the visitors. Worse, Grandy went on alert. And worst, the kid — never looking around — worked the latch even faster.

  He had it open and was inside with Quince still half a dozen yards away.

  “Get out of there! Hey, you, get out of there!” shouted Everett.

  Grandy lowered his head, his malevolent eyes shining.

  If the kid would hold still — but no, he kept running toward Grandy, and now he was screeching “Here goat, here goat!”

  Grandy charged.

  Quince changed his angle, no longer hoping to peaceably remove the kid. At the last second, he went airborne — it was the only hope of getting there in time.

  The goat, the kid, and Quince all reached the same square yard of space at the same moment. Quince’s leap put him between Grandy and the red jacket, taking the full force of the charge on the right side of his rib cage.

  “Hey! That’s a valuable animal. Get out of there. Quince, get that kid out of there,” Everett ordered.

  “I’m trying,” Quince said.

  At least he thought he said it. His mouth might have been too full of red jacket for him to say much of anything. And for sure no one could hear him over the kid’s howls of blighted ambition.

  Quince raised himself to his knees — not an easy task in the half-frozen muck while holding onto a squirming kid with one arm and keeping an eye on an irritated goat.

  “Quit fooling around!” Everett barked from the gate. “Get that kid out of there before he really riles Grandy.”

  If the throbbing ache in his ribs — which made standing a real treat — was Grandy un-riled, Quince would hate to see the creature riled.

  “Destin? Are you all right dear?” Great. Now the parents noticed the kid.

  Quince looked around to see the mother trying to follow Everett into the enclosure. Everett slapped her hands, and growled. “Get out of here, lady.”

  “Mommy!” screamed the kid, and Grandy moved restively.

  “Shut up, Destin,” Quince growled low enough that only the kid could hear. “Or you’ll be that goat’s dinner.”

  Destin looked up at Quince’s face, then around him toward Grandy, and miracle of miracles, he not only shut up, he quit squirming.

  Everett slowly passed them without a glance. In a rumbling tone of reassurance, he vividly opined on the stupidity of city folk and their demon spawn.

  Seeing that Grandy’s attention had shifted to Everett — still not friendly, but no longer quite so threatened — Quince used his hold on the red jacket’s collar and grabbed the seat of the pants to frog-march the boy to the exit.

  “Destin!” screeched the mother, clasping the boy yet at the same time carefully keeping her shoes out of the mud.

  “Lady, back up, so we can close the gate.”

  “Oh, my boy, my boy!” she wailed, while the kid obligingly whimpered in harmony. “How could you have treated him so roughly? My poor baby.”

  “If you don’t get out of the way so we can close the gate, I’ll let Grandy treat the both of you as roughly as he’d like.”

  Everett arrived just then, and started freely expressing his opinion of the traffic jam at the gate.

  Quince reached out, intending to take the woman by the shoulders and bodily dislodge her. But Anne was there first.

  “Everyone move back, give them room,” she ordered, as if the press of spectators had prevented the woman from showing a grain of sense.

  The clog at the gate finally backed up, allowing Everett to close it behind him.

  “Be a miracle if this doesn’t put Grandy off breeding for the rest of season,” grumbled the older man.

  “Look at this jacket. Brand new and the filth of this pigsty ground into it,” griped the mother.

  “Pigs? Where are the pigs?” asked one of the three kids in Bears hats.

  “I didn’t get to pet the goat,” Destin whined.

  Anne looked into his eyes. “Are you okay, Quince?”

  “I’ll live.” He’d nearly produced a grin for her until pain fired up and down from the middle of his shin bone. “Hey. That little brat kicked me.”

  “How dare you! Do not call my child names. Carlisle, tell these people we will not tolerate such abuse.”

  “Yes, dear. We will not tolerate such abuse.”

  “You want to talk about abuse? How about the kid kicking me? How about him going into the pen after being told not to. How about the two of you letting him—”

  �
��Okay, everyone. We’re wrapping up the day now.” Anne faced the wider group gathered around the knot of combatants. “Help yourself to any of the brownies left, then head on out.”

  The spectators dispersed, their mumbling divided between concern and ill-disguised amusement. “Best entertainment all day,” one man said, dropping a twenty on the refreshment table.

  “We should sue you,” Destin’s mother huffed.

  Anne froze. The lank-haired husband murmured “Now, dear.” Destin kept whining. Everett snorted.

  But for Quince the words were a tonic, washing away pain and irritation as his professional instincts kicked in.

  His voice was deceptively smooth as he said, “You’ll find that the release you signed not only prevents you from suing, but lists instructions that your son broke — repeatedly. As his parents, you totally failed to supervise him, as you agreed to with your signature. And the form expressly says that failure to adhere to the agreement allows us to sue you.”

  The husband got it first. “C’mon, dear. Destin’s not hurt, that’s the important thing. Let’s go.”

  “I wanna pet the goat,” Destin wailed.

  “In the car — now!”

  The father’s shout had both son and wife gaping at him. He scurried to herd them to the car. But before the last door closed, Quince heard the renewed duet of complaints from boy and woman.

  Most of the others had already left. A few stragglers came from the barn, munching brownies and headed toward them. Anne took one look at them and made for the house, her command presence evaporating.

  He and Everett fielded the final questions and a number of compliments. The taillights of the last car shone bright against dusk when he sent Everett inside and made a quick inspection, sticking a stack of comment cards in one jacket pocket, the final two brownies in the other, and hoisting the urn.

  Anne was putting dinner on the table when he came in. The sudden silence told him they’d been taking about him — or more likely the debacle.

  “Go ahead and say it,” he offered.

  Anne said quietly, “Take your jacket off and sit down. We’ll talk after supper.”

  Everett’s abbreviated snort carried amusement. “Good idea on the jacket. It stinks like Grandy, and it ain’t ever produced a good milker.”

  Only at the end of his second bowl of stew did Quince start flipping through the comment cards.

  “Throw those things out,” Anne said.

  “They’re surprisingly positive. You should read—”

  “I am not going to read them, because we are not going to do this or anything like it ever again. You can’t honestly think otherwise after this afternoon.”

  “No,” he acknowledged. He met her eyes. “I never meant to make you so miserable.”

  The moment drew out, long enough to burn something in his throat.

  Then she stood abruptly, stacking plates. “No need to worry about me. But this isn’t the way to save this farm — not and have it be a real farm, anyway. We’d have to spend so much time tending to people I’d hardly be able to plant anything. We’re not in the business of people. We’re in the business of farming.”

  “Too bad there’s not a way to separate the stinkers at the gate.”

  “Some of ’em weren’t as bad as I expected,” Everett said.

  Quince sighed. “Some were a lot worse.”

  Surprisingly, Anne chuckled. “Not as much a people person as you thought you were, huh?”

  “Even people people have limits.” He tried to grin, but shifting in his chair produced sensations that gave his mouth muscles too much else to do.

  “What’s wrong?” Anne asked.

  “Can’t you see, woman? The boy’s hurting—”

  “I’m fine.”

  “—that’s what’s wrong. Should have—”

  “Quince, come upstairs, let me take a look.”

  “—been tending to him—”

  “Really, I’m fine.”

  But she had a hold on his arm and had started him toward the stairs.

  “—instead of sitting here jawing at him.”

  “Everett. That is out of—”

  Anne tugged on his arm to stop his words, and said low but vehement. “Don’t.”

  “He shouldn’t—”

  She added in a voice only he could hear, “He’s worried about you.”

  He let himself be led upstairs.

  Everett’s voice, filled with proud gloom trailed them up the stairs. “Grandy’s got a powerful butt. Probably broke a rib or two.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Only after she directed him to the hall bathroom she and Everett used and where she had a set of first aid supplies, did she realize that treating his injuries could — would? — involve his removing at least some clothes.

  “Where did he get you?” she asked as casually as she could.

  He sat on the closed toilet seat while she pulled out supplies. “Everett was right about the ribs. I suppose because I was bent over to protect darling Destin, but—”

  She said a little thank-you prayer that Grandy hadn’t gotten Quince anywhere normally covered by pants.

  “—he was wrong about any ribs breaking.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Don’t know a hundred percent. But once they make sure you haven’t punctured a lung or your aorta, they treat broken or bruised pretty much the same way. Let ’em heal. This doesn’t feel as bad as broken ribs anyway, so I’d say bruised.”

  “You’ve had broken ribs?” She sat on the edge of the tub.

  “Yeah. Played some lacrosse. Another time a drunk driver T-boned my car. Want me to take off my shirt?”

  Yes.

  No.

  “Guess you better.”

  He crossed his arms in front of him, for an instant she remembered doing that while they waited for the tow truck, but this was entirely different. Because he grabbed the hem of his t-shirt in each hand, and pulled up and up and up, revealing the flat expanse above his pants, his belly button, then the ripple of muscles over bone of a man who was fit without obsessing.

  The good news was the shirt covered his face as she swallowed several times. Hard.

  The rising shirt bared more, as his chest widened to his shoulders.

  Okay, the tailors of those beautiful coats and suits didn’t deserve as much credit as she’d thought. They had plenty to work with.

  As his shirt cleared his chin, his nose, then neared his eyes, she dropped her gaze to the kit in her hand. “You, uh, turn around so I can see— Quince.”

  “What?” He’d pivoted away on her command, but now tried to look back over his shoulder. “Ouch.”

  “Don’t twist. That’s got to hurt more. You’re already developing a bruise back here.” She barely touched her fingers the right side of his back. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  “You didn’t.”

  Yet a shiver had run through him.

  She swallowed again, forcing herself to speak normally to his back. “I’ll clean this up a bit, but there’s not much to do for it, except give you ibuprofen and a cold pack to bring down the swelling. It’s going to be a beaut.”

  “At least this one won’t be on my face.”

  She busied herself opening the antiseptic wipes, glad to follow the lead of his distraction. “Your face? Are you accident prone?”

  “Nah. The face bruise was as a kid. There was this very proper party for the very proper kids of very proper people. I decided to liven it up. I found an empty plastic bin and there was this great staircase. I got in and started sliding down. The staircase curved and I didn’t. Planted my face in an antique wrought iron baluster.”

  “Wrought iron? You could have been seriously hurt.”

  “Good thing they were wrought iron. If I’d ruined antique balusters, I really would have heard about it,” he said dryly. “As it was, I had striped bruises up and down my face. The school wanted to take my kindergarten picture in profile to
minimize their visibility. My father declared that it would be frontal, so I would have the reminder evermore of my poor judgment.”

  “You were in kindergarten.” Indignation made her sit tall.

  He didn’t answer directly. “It’s the only picture of me he’d ever had in his office.”

  She bypassed what she wanted to say and invited, “Tell me about him.”

  He shrugged, then winced. “You’ve met his type. Hard-driving executive. Been CEO of a few firms you’ve heard of. Been in magazines and on TV, especially business and financial news shows. He’s kept his assistant — his work wife — and housekeeper for decades, but he’s gone through three wives.”

  Beneath the coolness she heard pain.

  Yet Darcie had talked about the difference between Zeke’s and Quince’s families and upbringings before she’d said there was something more. Something deeper. Something more hurtful.

  And there’d been the way he’d reacted when Anne had asked “Who was she?”

  Was she coming up in this story?

  “His first wife and their kids were the originals. He left them in the dust, along with his parents and siblings. A shame. I met them — not through him. Wasn’t until I was out of college and sought them out myself. First encounters I’d had with my half-siblings, cousins, grandparents. All nice people. Really good people. His first wife, too. A really nice woman. Same can’t be said for my mother,” he said.

  Anne gently stroked antiseptic cream over the abused area of his back, just in case.

  “But she was an asset to him,” he said. “She was part of his campaign to reach the next level. She brought Roselle and me in to his life and when she left — loved the money, not the man — he kept us both. Roselle to make sure his life at home always ran smoothly, me as the requisite heir, since he didn’t consider his other children worthy.”

  She was chilled by Quince — warm, smiling Quince — talking with such dispassionate distance about his father, his mother, his family.

  She slid along the edge of the bathtub, getting a partial view of his face.

  “That opened the door for Wife Number Three. Outsiders might see her as a trite trophy wife — younger and beautiful — but it’s sadder than that. Georgina is a decent human being who made the mistake of her life by falling in love with Peter Quincy II. She is perpetually disappointed and heartbroken by the fact that he does not return that affection.”