Honeysuckle Summer (The Sweet Magnolias #7)(51)

“I know. She overreacts every time I say anything at all to her about eating,” he said. “What the hell am I supposed to do to be sure if there’s a problem?”

“We’ll try my plan again. You all can come to dinner one night this week. I’ll just have Annie over. Believe me, if there’s a problem, she’ll recognize the signs.”

He stopped pacing and sat back down beside her. “Let’s not think about Carrie right now,” he suggested. “If we turn on the TV, we can watch the Boston Pops or the celebration on the National Mall in Washington and have our own Fourth of July celebration right here.”

And if the evening progressed the way he wanted it to, they might even have their own fireworks!





12




Though Raylene was relieved to have Carter acknowledge an awareness of Carrie’s disturbing attitude toward food, she was now anxious for an entirely different reason. She’d seen the glint of desire in his eyes right before he’d settled next to her on the sofa. She knew what that look meant. And though she was as attracted as he was, all the reasons not to move forward and complicate their relationship even more kept spinning around in her head, leaving her a little dizzy.

When he put his arm behind her on the sofa, she froze. But when he didn’t actually drape it across her shoulders, she allowed herself to relax. Every once in a while, his fingers brushed idly across her bare shoulder, sending shivers dancing across her flesh. Good shivers…at least so far.

She turned toward him, and found his gaze on her.

“I really want to kiss you,” he said quietly. “But I don’t want to freak you out.”

She closed her eyes against the tide of longing that washed over her. “I want that, too,” she admitted eventually, daring to meet his gaze. “But I don’t know if it’s a good idea.”

“Because of what happened the last time I touched you?”

“No, actually because I think this is leading toward a complication that neither of us really need.”

“It’s just a kiss,” he said.

Her lips twitched at the sweet innocence behind those words. Surely he had to know better.

“Not if you do it right,” she said. “Carter, there have been sparks between us since we met, some good, some not so good. If you kiss me, we’re both going to want more. I’m not sure I’m ready for that, and I don’t think you are either.”

“Oh, I’m ready.”

He said it so fervently, she laughed. “Well, when you put it that way, so am I, but come on. Are either of us in any position to take this to the next level?” She ticked off all the strikes against them. “You have two young girls who’re counting on you. One of them might have an eating disorder. I’m agoraphobic, most likely because I can’t cope with the way my ex-husband abused me. I’m just now starting to make a little progress toward getting better and now that same man is about to get out of prison. That scares me to death. For all I know, it could make me regress, and then I’ll be worse off than before. None of that is exactly conducive to starting a normal, carefree relationship, which is the way a good relationship should start.”

“Carefree’s great, but it’s not terribly realistic, is it?” he asked. “Everyone has problems, Raylene.”

“But ours are huge,” she insisted.

He sat back with a sigh. “You’re being very rational about this.”

“Somebody needs to be.”

“Usually I’m the one who starts thinking with my head,” he admitted. “Especially since Carrie and Mandy became my responsibility. I haven’t let myself get carried away by what I wanted in a long time. Heck, I haven’t even let myself want anything—or anyone—in a long time.”

Despite her words of caution, Raylene was pleased by the admission. “I really get to you?”

He smiled. “Yes, you really get to me.” His gaze narrowed. “You’re not ruling this out forever, right?”

“This being a relationship?”

He nodded.

She hesitated. She wanted to think a time would come when both of their lives would be less complicated, but she couldn’t guarantee it. “I don’t know,” she said honestly. “None of these problems—especially mine—have quick fixes. That much is clear.”

“I’ll take that as a maybe.” He looked into her eyes. “I know the timing sucks for a lot of reasons, but I think we could have something pretty amazing going on here. I like spending time with you.”

Raylene wanted to believe that, too, but those reasons she’d enumerated were all stacked against them. With her ex-husband possibly poised to come back into her life with a vengeance, with Carter’s sister facing a possible eating disorder, to say nothing of a boatload of unhappiness, how could either of them even begin to think about the future?



“You don’t look very happy,” Sarah said when she arrived home from the fireworks later that night and found Raylene sitting in the dark all alone. While Travis took the kids in to put them to bed, Sarah switched on a couple of lamps and took a closer look. “You’ve been crying! What did Carter do?”

“He wanted to kiss me, and I blew him off.”