Steal My Magnolia (Love at First Sight #3) - Karla Sorensen Page 0,1

under the age of forty in Green Valley, I pretended they didn't exist.

And like the jerk my sister was, she cackled. "You can't avoid it, Grady. Didn't you learn anything from me and Tucker?"

I rubbed the back of my neck. "Grace, I know because you found your perfect match that you think our juju family love curse is real, but ..."

"It is," she cried. "Mom and Dad didn't work out because they didn't meet here. I'm telling you, when you meet her, Grady, you are going to know it in the depths of your soul, and there will be no avoiding the fact she's your soul mate."

A growing sense of unease gnawed at my gut. Her surety was something I'd been trying to avoid ever since she met and fell in love with Tucker Haywood. We'd grown up with stories about the Buchanan love curse, something buried deep in the southern lore of our family tree. Grace and I never believed it, not even for a little bit, because our parents had divorced years earlier and were much, much better people because of it.

It almost felt like a betrayal that my twin sister now believed this with every fiber of her being.

"Can we go back to talking about my lack of help, please?" I begged. "I'd take any subject except this one."

She laughed. "Fine. But bro, you need help, and you need it bad. Please promise me you'll work on finding someone to whip your sorry ass into shape while we're gone."

I held up one hand. "I do solemnly swear."

Once more, she glanced around the space at the stacks of unopened boxes, the shelves I wasn't sure how to fill in the most efficient way, and the empty filing cabinets that would eventually hold ... papers and shit, if I could get a better system than the one I currently favored (piles on the desk). "You sure you've got this, Grady?"

Her tone wasn't light or teasing anymore. It was chock-full of sisterly concern and a slight edge of pity that I seemed to be drowning in my own grand idea.

"I have this," I told her, then shoved her gently toward the door. "Now go. And give Mom a hug when you see her."

She nodded. "Hire someone good," she called over her shoulder.

"I'm sure it'll be a match made in heaven."

The door closed behind her, and I sank back into the chair by the desk.

A match made in heaven.

No, it turned out to be something else entirely, and if I'd known just how complicated it would be, I might never have answered the phone when she called.

Chapter 1

Magnolia

When I younger, I used to think my family was perfectly normal. But isn't that the way of most children? We know what our life is like, and it's hard to imagine, until you grow up and experience a bit more of the world, that other people know life in a different way than you do.

It wasn't until my daddy had the etiquette coach for my cotillion class fired—she had the unmitigated gall to tell me I was breaking a dress code rule—that I had any inkling that the family dynamic wasn't supposed to work that way. Young ladies being bred into the life that I was accustomed—wealthy southern families who valued a certain lifestyle—did not glare mightily across the room at each other, but the day that J.T. MacIntyre stormed through the doors like an avenging angel and informed her that her time of teaching the young ladies of Eastern Tennessee was unequivocally over, I received looks that made my eleven-year-old heart feel pinched and cold.

Of course, as we left classes that day with my daddy's arm wrapped around my shoulders, he promised me something that I'd heard a hundred times since that day: "Don't you worry about a thing, Magnolia. I'll take care of this for you."

My whole life, I knew that truth like it was printed on the pages of the family Bible, the one that used to sit on my grandma’s nightstand.

God is good, and Daddy would remove any obstacle in my way by sheer force of his will. Amen.

Only it didn't seem so funny on that particular day.

The glares of those girls niggled at something in the back of my head that I couldn't shake until we got home and he told my momma what happened.

They didn't know I was listening because I was told to go read in my room, but I tucked myself up at the foot