Page 45 of Nixon’s Promise

“Nixon Swagger, don’t you dare try and eat my ducks.”

He tried, he really did, but he lost the battle, threw his head back, and roared with laughter. He couldn’t remember how long it’d been since he’d laughed so hard.

“I don’t know what’s funny, but swear to God, I’ll be mad. Those are my pets.”

Damn, she was cute.

“Don’t worry, I don’t like duck. It’s too greasy. Now if you had pigs—”

“Stop. Pigs are sweet. I don’t want to know what you’d do to a poor little piglet.”

“Babe, I wouldn’t touch a piglet. You need to wait until they’re nice and fat—”

“Nixon,” she snapped.

He was teasing her. He’d never raised any animal with the intention of eating it. And even after living on a farm his whole life, he didn’t think he had it in him to do so. He’d even hated when the cows got too old to milk and Wayne would send them off to slaughter.

“I’m joking,” he disclosed.

They sat in silence for a moment and Nixon took a bite of his hamburger. He wasn’t going to tell her that the ground beef he was eating came from the quarter cow he’d purchased from a local butcher. Further, he wasn’t going to mention that the cow he was enjoying in the form of a burger had been raised right around the corner. And she’d likely driven past the farm every time she went to town not knowing that the highland cattle were used as food.

“The first time I came over the Chester River Bridge and saw the Sultana sitting at the dock I fell in love,” she said.

“Yeah?”

“I was over here to do some work for Washington College. As soon as I was done, I stopped by a realtor office and picked up some listings. I got lucky and my house had just been listed. I came back two days later to look at the property and made an offer.”

“I have a lot of good memories in that house,” Nixon told her. She looked confused so he continued. “Growing up, my dad and I would go to Mr. and Mrs. Todd’s house for holidays.”

“So you’d been in my house before.” It wasn’t a question, more a statement of fact.

“Yep. Mrs. Todd was a good cook. Great woman. And Mr. Todd worked himself to the bone. I remember Dad telling me they tried to have children for a long time but it never worked out. It was a shame because Mrs. Todd had so much to give. She was a school teacher and when she retired, she volunteered everywhere. The hospital, her church, the retirement homes, she tutored kids, you name it she did it.”

Now that Nixon was thinking about it, he was happy that it was McKenna who’d purchased the parcel with the Todds’ home on it. It made him feel good knowing that she’d take care of what the Todds had worked so hard for.

“And my job really is boring.” She went on telling Nixon all the things he said he wanted to know. “Especially this latest assignment. It took me under ten days to write a program to breach the company’s cutting-edge security.” She’d used finger quotes when she’d said, cutting-edge.

“Says a lot about your skills.”

“No. It just shows their lack of attention to detail. For some reason they rushed out this project. It shouldn’t even be out of the testing phase yet. When I said under ten days, it was more like three days but I spent seven more trying to understand how they’d missed so much.”

McKenna sounded puzzled, like she was still trying to figure out how she’d broken through their security so easily.

“Can you tell me anything about it? The company? General anti-virus software or network security?”

McKenna smiled broadly. “I could tell you but then I’d have to cuff you to my bed so you couldn’t tell anyone.”

Nixon barked out another rusty laugh. “I’d like to see you try.”

He finished up his dinner and placed the empty plate on the table, leaned back, and stretched his long legs out in front of him. As much as Nix wanted to move inside and start the next part of the evening, he was enjoying just sitting on his deck hearing McKenna’s voice.

“I can’t tell you the company, but it was network security. There were so many holes it was laughable. Wanna know how I first got in?”

There was so much excitement in her voice he couldn’t resist saying yes.

“How’d you do it?”

“I was poking around, and their first layer of security was seriously a joke. So easy to breach, I swear a high schooler could’ve done it. Anyway, someone logged on the network with their phone. I was in their entire system within seconds.”