I nodded and watched her fly out the door, slamming it behind her, my heart pounding in my chest. She was gone in a flash, her words still hanging in the air, but I couldn’t help the grin spreading across my face.?
She actually wanted me to stay. After all this time, after everything, she finally wanted me here. For the first time since I’d come back, I felt like I had a real reason to stay—and that reason was happy about it.
Chapter fifty-one
MAGNOLIA
Sutton and I had just finished training our newest employee, Doyle’s sister, Tally. We’d agreed to let her work here and there, when she was needed, so she could find her footing here in Savannah.?
“I can’t believe you trust Charlie with your baby,” Sutton mused, wiping off the tops of wine bottles before re-topping them and passing them to Tally to line up in the fridge.?
“He’s a great daddy, are y’all kidding me? He’s a good man. Works hard. Seems it runs in the family,” she said, her eyes smiling as she shot me a look across the room.?
Tally hadn’t been around long enough to realize my mood swings and frantic pacing around the inn’s kitchen weren’t because of her or my brother watching the baby. I had thirty minutes until Lee showed up for our date, and I was only half ready.
I’d just gotten off the phone with Eunice, who let me know that Dane was back on Georgia soil, and between wanting to march straight to the police station to ring his neck and my nerves over this date, I was an absolute, adrenaline-charged train wreck.?
“Where are y’all going tonight anyway? And is that how you’re wearing your hair?” Sutton was leaning over the kitchen island, eyeing me up and down, and Tally turned to stare right alongside her.?
“An old, familiar haunt of ours.” I ran my hands through my hair. “Will y’all quit looking at me like that? Jesus. Ever since I stopped those keratin treatments my hair just does whatever it wants to do I guess.” I sighed, and Sutton poured three glasses of wine from the bottle she’d been closing up, and we all took seats on the barstools lining the island.?
“You know I used to be a hairdresser, right? I could help you, if you wanted me to,” Tally mentioned, her attention on my frizzy, washed-up seaweed head.
“I feel like that’s the fifteenth job you’ve listed off,” Sutton laughed. She hopped up and pulled some leftover charcuterie out of the fridge, setting it in the middle of the table. “Eat, Magnolia. We know your track record on a boozy, empty stomach. Never good.”?
“I could create some beach waves if one of y’all had some hairspray and a flat iron. It would take probably five minutes.” Tally jumped up and ran her hands through my fuzzy, sticky red hair. I sighed, throwing my head in my hands.?
“Do you remember when Little Orphan Annie had her makeover after getting to Daddy Warbucks’s mansion? Slap a little bow on the side of your head, and that’s exactly how you look,” Sutton said, cackling so hard she almost choked on an olive.?
“Shut up,” I hissed, tears in the corners of my eyes from laughing.?
“Are you going to call Lee ‘Daddy’ tonight?” Sutton was on a roll, and if I wasn’t howling and bent over cracking up with her, I would have slapped her.?
“Please, Tally, help my hair. And bring that hot tool down here so I can beat my best friend with it when you’re done.”?
Once Tally finished fussing over my frizzy mess, Sutton ran up to my portion of the house and grabbed a top and a tight pair of jeans. We all crowded in the small, downstairs powder room to see the final result of the night’s efforts.?
“Lee might be callingyou ‘Daddy’ tonight, you look that good,” Sutton snorted, as I pulled down my shirt, surveying myself in the long, antique mirror Eunice had pulled from an estate sale for me.?
“Would you shut up with the daddy stuff, please? My behind does kind of look good, though,” I noted, spinning around and almost knocking the drinks out of Tally and Sutton’s hands.?
“If I wasn’t an absolute basket case myself, I’d think y’all were as nutty as a squirrel turd,” Tally giggled, shrugging as she exited the bathroom.?
“Did she just call us crazy?” Sutton and I both asked in unison, falling over each other laughing.?
“Seriously, she ain’t wrong,” Sutton said, holding my hand in hers. “You’re going to be fine tonight. I know you’re nervous about another new beginning, but this one isn’t quite so new. It’s just a new chapter of an old, familiar story.”?
I shrugged and let out a long, cleansing breath. “I don’t want another chapter in our old story. I want something different this time. That old book was so painful and exhausting. Maybe we won’t have a book. Maybe we’ll have a song. You know, our song? I’d always asked him to write something just for us, back when we were dating, so it fits.”?
Sutton nodded, and Tally yelled from the front foyer that Lee had arrived. As we made our way to the front, I laughed quietly to myself that still, after all these years, the sight of Lee standing in my sitting room, hands in his pockets, looking around aimlessly and in awe of the inn, made my stomach flip-flop like a teenager again.?
When he turned to look at me, his eyes drank in every detail, and he bit his lip, his gaze washing over me like a tidal wave. Across the room, Sutton fanned herself dramatically, while Tally rolled her eyes and pulled her toward the Public House area of the inn.
“You look beautiful, Maggie. You really do. And this place, wow,” he said, gesturing to me and the lobby surrounding us.?
“Wait until you see the rest of it.” I couldn’t help but smile, a big ear-to-ear grin that I meant with every fiber of my being. I could hardly believe he was here and that this was real.?
“I can tell you, without a doubt, I am truly looking forward to that,” he said, his cheeks flushing red and his eyes filling with desire.?
