The Merriest Magnolia (Magnolia Sisters #2) - Michelle Major Page 0,1
who’d also grown up in Magnolia. It was as if people lived in some alternate reality where being a good girl was a bad thing.
Carrie was darn sick of it.
“The apple of your father’s eye. His best girl.” Dylan hurled the words at her like an accusation.
Carrie hated the feeling of bitterness they conjured.
“Did you come back just to antagonize me?” She pulled the tote bag she carried tighter to the side of her body, like she could use it as a shield. “Because these past couple months haven’t exactly been a shot in the arm as far as my self-esteem. I don’t need you to pile any more—”
His eyes widened a fraction before narrowing. “I’m not here for you.”
Of course not.
Even though Dylan had been her first boyfriend, her first love, her first in so many ways, he’d also left her behind the first chance he had. In truth, she had her father to thank for that, as well. Niall had never approved of her high school boyfriend, and when Dylan asked her to leave Magnolia with him, Dad had bribed him to leave on his own.
She shouldn’t have been surprised that he’d taken the money, but the memory of it burned liked acid in her gut.
“That didn’t come out the way I meant,” he amended with a shake of his head. “I came back to Magnolia because—”
“I don’t care why,” Carrie told him, wanting to inflict on him the same kind of hurt she felt then succumbing to guilt when pain flickered across his features. “We’re not leasing the space downtown to you.” She gentled her tone but not the message. “There’s nothing for you here.”
Her father’s will had brought the sisters together even as it divided his estate into three parts. Niall’s paintings, sentimental landscapes depicting idealized scenes of American life, had enjoyed commercial if not critical success for the first half of his career. He’d been Magnolia’s most famous resident for decades and had both supported the town and demanded fierce loyalty from its residents.
As his career and health declined, he’d made a series of bad investments and engaged in the type of frivolous spending that left his savings decimated. At the time of his death, he’d owned a farm near the beach outside Magnolia that he’d left to Carrie. In a twist of irony, he’d bequeathed the family home to his youngest daughter, Meredith Ventner, who’d grown up in Magnolia not knowing that the man who raised her wasn’t her biological father.
Avery Keller, born in California to a single mother who’d had an affair with Niall, had been left the property he owned in downtown Magnolia. The buildings housed his art gallery, a local dance studio, hardware store and bookshop as well as a couple of vacant storefronts.
Past leaders in the town had relied heavily on Niall’s support and generosity without working to modernize the town or attract new businesses and visitors. After a rocky start, Carrie and her sisters were helping to change that.
She couldn’t allow Dylan Scott to be a part of it.
He continued to watch her, the intensity of his stare making heat prickle just underneath her skin. He took a small step back, and in the dim light she couldn’t read his eyes but knew her words had hit their mark.
“You’ve changed,” he said after a moment.
“It’s been ten years.”
“I don’t mean like that, although you’re skinnier than I remember. You always forgot to eat when you were stressed.” He rolled his big shoulders. “In high school, you were a people pleaser. Plenty of people took advantage of that, including me. You let me get away with anything.”
Her stomach pitched and swooped at the memory of all the things she’d let Dylan get away with in his old Chevy pickup. He’d been three years older than she, dangerous and exciting for a shy girl. She’d felt alive with him and hated the detachment in his gaze as it tracked over her.
Carrie stood in front of him after the end of a long day, in a shapeless quilted jacket over an equally loose tunic sweater with her feet shoved into comfortable work boots and her boring brown hair pulled back into a practical but hardly stylish bun.
She’d harbored plenty of fantasies over the years of how it would go if she ever confronted Dylan. Most of them involved her in some sort of fitted, sparkly dress dancing with a Patrick Swayze doppelgänger and having the time of her life.