Honeysuckle Summer (The Sweet Magnolias #7)(104)

Laughing, she threw her arms around his neck. “What time do we leave?”



Hands on her hips, Carrie stood in front of Carter, eyeing him with disgust. “Please tell me you are not going to spend the rest of your life sitting around here drinking beer and pouting. It’s been ages since you’ve done anything besides work and hang out with us. Mandy and I are sick of it.”

Carter scowled at her. “I am not pouting. Two-year-olds pout.”

“Well, it looks that way to me, and believe me, I know pouting when I see it. I am the queen of pouting.”

He grinned despite his sour mood. “I certainly can’t deny that.”

“So, get a grip and fight for Raylene,” she said, her expression serious. “If you sit back and let her spend who knows how long trying to decide what she wants, she might figure out it isn’t you.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” he replied sourly.

Carrie made a face. “Don’t mock me. You need to be in her face while she’s deciding, so you’re one of the options. If you play this right, I still think you can be at the top of the list.”

“I think you spent too much time last summer watching soap operas or some of those hot new teen shows,” he accused. “This is real life. It gets complicated.”

“And you don’t think soaps are complicated?” she asked incredulously. “I could fill you in on some plots that would make your head spin. The point is, you want Raylene. She loves you. Sure, she has options now, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be the one she chooses. How’s she supposed to figure that out if you’re over here sulking?”

“What do you suggest?” he asked, more out of curiosity than from any intention of following her advice. She’d barely turned sixteen, for goodness’ sakes. How wise could she be?

“I’m glad you asked,” she said, whipping a piece of paper out of her pocket and handing it to him. “Here are a few ideas for starters. Mandy and I agree they all sound pretty romantic, but what do we know? We’re kids. We would have asked Raylene for her ideas, but that might have given away the plan.”

“The plan?” he repeated, staring at the list of twelve surefire ways to get Raylene’s attention. That’s what it actually said in capital letters: “TWELVE SUREFIRE WAYS TO GET RAYLENE’S ATTENTION.” Clearly they’d given the matter a lot of thought and were pretty confident about their scheme.

He scanned the list. Some of it was fairly predictable—sending flowers, taking over her favorite foods as a surprise. Even sending a hundred balloons that said, I Love You, though over the top, was something any man on a mission might try.

It was the twelfth suggestion on the list that caught his attention: “Work in her garden. Don’t wear a shirt.” He laughed as he read it.

“You honestly think me parading around half-naked is going to do the trick?” he asked.

“You have a halfway-decent body,” Carrie said. “All my friends say so.”

“It’s late October. Haven’t you noticed it’s starting to get chilly around here?”

She shrugged that off. “There’s a warm spell predicted for this weekend, but even if it’s freezing, you should do it to prove how serious you are about getting her attention.”

“You don’t care if I wind up with pneumonia?”

“Not so much,” she said cavalierly.

Carter shrugged. He supposed it was worth a shot, though he wasn’t convinced that the sight of him showing off his abs was going to override all of Raylene’s doubts about the future.

Still, Carrie and Mandy’s list got him thinking. If a piece of paper with a few clearly stated objectives could make him view things in a different light, perhaps something similar would work with Raylene.

“I need paper and a pen,” he told his sisters.

Carrie’s eyes brightened. “You’re going to write her a love letter,” she said eagerly. “Great idea. We should have thought of that one.”

“Not exactly,” Carter responded, accepting the pen and stationery that Mandy had hurriedly provided. He winced at the pink paper, but what the heck? Maybe Raylene was partial to pink.

And if he got the words right, the color of the paper would hardly matter.



Raylene sat at the kitchen table, despondently sipping a glass of lemonade. It was the first pitcher she’d made in a while, but the unexpected arrival of springlike weather in late October had put her in the mood for it. She pursed her lips when she realized she’d forgotten to add sugar. She’d been doing that a lot recently, getting lost in thought and forgetting things. She couldn’t seem to focus, not since she’d sent Carter away and then told his sisters that it was over.

She’d been half expecting them to somehow intervene and stir things up, but as the days passed, they hadn’t returned, and there’d been no sign of Carter. Obviously, he’d taken her at her word and was going to stay away. What had she expected, that he’d fight for her?

Oddly, now that she was actually able to leave the house every day, at least for a brief walk into town and long enough to do a little paperwork for Travis at the radio station, she realized there was no place she really wanted to be, except with Carter and the girls. All of those big plans she’d hinted to him that she wanted to make for her future seemed unimportant compared to what she’d already found with him.