Honeysuckle Summer (The Sweet Magnolias #7)(84)

Carrie looked even more suspicious. “She dumped you, didn’t she?”

“I wouldn’t put it that way,” Carter said, his pride still a little wounded by the fact that it had been exactly that way.

“Have you been seeing her?” Carrie persisted. “I mean, since I started with Dr. McDaniels?”

“Not as often as I had been before and not at all for the past few days.”

“Because she dumped you,” Carrie concluded.

“We agreed we needed some space,” he said, trying to spin it.

“That doesn’t make sense,” Mandy said. “If you’re giving each other space, then why would you want to drag us over there to dinner?”

“Because, you dope, we’re his intermediaries,” Carrie said, her expression knowing. “He knows she won’t throw us out, no matter how mad she is at him.”

God save him from teens who understood too much. “It’s not just that,” he insisted. “I want her to feel as if she’s a real part of our family.” He met Carrie’s gaze. “And I know she wants to make amends for what happened the last time you were over there. It’s killing her that she can’t come to you to apologize and that you won’t take her calls. You’ve deliberately shut her out because you know there’s nothing she can do about it.”

Carrie turned pink with embarrassment. “I didn’t mean to make her worry.”

“I know, but that’s what adults do when it comes to kids they love. We worry.”

Mandy’s eyes brightened. “Do you want to marry her?”

His stomach flipped over at the mention of marriage. “It’s way too soon to be talking about anything like that,” he said emphatically. “But I don’t want to slam the door on any possibilities.”

“And that’s going to happen if we don’t go over there and make nice,” Carrie concluded.

His gaze narrowed at her choice of words. “Are you still upset with Raylene?”

“Sure I am,” she said with a touch of defiance. “I’m still mad because she was in my face about my eating. It was none of her business.” She sighed and backed down with another of her whirlwind mood changes. “But I wasn’t trying to pay her back or anything. I don’t want her to feel bad.”

“You do understand that she only said something because she cares, right?”

“I guess so,” Carrie said.

Carter was starting to wonder if this was a bad idea after all. The last thing he needed if he was to get things back on track was to take Carrie over there in a belligerent frame of mind. “If we do decide to go, you’re going to give her another chance, right? You’ll be on good behavior?”

“Anything to keep from messing up your love life,” she said sarcastically. “But if the subject of food comes up, I am out of there. I’ll follow all the rules so you won’t have any reason to complain about my eating in front of her, but you have to promise not to sit there and stare at me or my plate.”

“We’re going to take dinner,” he said. “Food’s bound to come up.”

“You know what I mean,” Carrie retorted.

“Okay, I promise we won’t make an issue out of your eating,” he said.

Carrie looked doubtful, but she grudgingly conceded, “Then I’m in.”

“Me, too,” Mandy said with more enthusiasm.

Carter sighed. Despite getting the agreement he’d wanted from both of them, he had a feeling this dinner idea of his had disaster written all over it.





19




Raylene watched without comment as Carrie picked at her meal. She’d been surprised earlier when Carter and the girls had appeared at the door carrying an elaborate take-out meal from Sullivan’s.

“Dana Sue said we have all your favorites,” he’d said, giving her an appealing grin. “Will that get us in?”

Despite all her best intentions to keep some distance between them, she seemed to be incapable of turning him away, especially with Carrie and Mandy looking on. This was, after all, what she’d been hoping for, a chance to make amends with Carrie. She’d let them in.

With Carter overseeing the transfer of the food from take-out containers to plates, she and the girls had set the table.

“Carter misses you,” Mandy confided, then got an elbow in the ribs from her big sister.

“You’re not supposed to say stuff like that,” Carrie told her. “It’s like giving information to the enemy or something.”

Mandy had looked confused. “But Raylene’s not the enemy. She’s Carter’s girlfriend. At least he wants her to be, and we’re supposed to be helping. Isn’t that the whole point of being here?”

Thoroughly embarrassed and unwilling to be the center of an argument between the sisters, Raylene had ended the discussion by telling them to go in the kitchen and help Carter with the food. “I’ll finish up in here.”

Now they were all seated around the dining-room table making stilted conversation. And she couldn’t seem to keep herself from watching the way Carrie pushed her food around on her plate. Despite the teen’s sessions with Dr. McDaniels, it seemed she was still exhibiting textbook anorexic behavior. Very little of that food was making its way into her mouth. Carter, however, seemed to be oblivious to it.