Magnolia Dawn Read Online Free PDF Page A

out—”
    â€œThat’s where we’re different,” she shot back. “I don’t have to go out partying every night to feel like I’m alive. I don’t need expensive meals and clothes and cars to feel like I’m somebody. For me,
Ashland is—”
    â€œEverything?” He advanced on her, his eyes glittering with anger. With determination. “When’s the last time you went out with a man, Annabelle?”
    â€œI don’t need—”
    â€œDon’t you long to be loved? To be held?” He stopped directly before her, and although she told herself to look away, she found she could not. “Don’t you long to be a woman?”
    Her eyes filled, and she whirled away from him. He knew what buttons to push, how to hurt her. Of course he did—he was her brother.
    Again he followed her, but this time he didn’t force her to look at him. Instead, he lightly stroked her hair. “Aren’t you tired of being alone, Anna?”
    Tears welled in her eyes. She blinked against them, but still they rolled down her cheeks. “If you would move back to Ashland, I wouldn’t be.”
    â€œThat’s not what I meant, and you know it. I’m talking about a lover, a husband. A life partner, Annabelle. Not a brother.” He rested his cheek against her hair. “If we sold Ashland, we could both start anew. We would be free.”
    She stiffened and jerked away from him. “Family shouldn’t hurt each other, Lowell,” she said softly. “They shouldn’t prey on each other’s emotions to get their way.”
    He laughed, the sound filled with bitterness. “It’s an Ames tradition, my dear. Like so many others, handed down with pride.”
    â€œHow can you say that?” Anna demanded, anger replacing hurt. “Mama—”
    â€œWas a saint,” Lowell muttered.
    â€œShe loved you. Doted on you, even.”
    â€œTo make up for dear old Daddy. Isn’t that right, Anna?” He arched his eyebrows, mocking her. “Mama, the long-suffering and saintly wife of Joshua Ames, the monster.”
    Anna opened her mouth to deny his words, to defend their father. But in many ways, he was just what Lowell had called him. “Mama did love you, Lowell. And her love had nothing to do with him. And
Daddy…loved you, too. He just had difficulty—”
    â€œBeing anything but cruel?” Lowell raked a hand through his light hair, so like hers. “You’re hopeless. You always have been. You seclude yourself out here, living in the past and in those ridiculous stories Daddy told you. No wonder no man ever comes around. What would a real, flesh-and-blood male want with an unfeeling martyr like you? You’re going to be alone forever, Anna. Or until you let go of this place and learn to live
in the real world.”
    His words cut her, so deeply it burned. She drew in a shuddering breath, tears closing around her throat. “What’s happened to you?” she whispered. “You didn’t always play so dirty.”
    â€œI wasn’t so desperate before.”
    Desperate. That word again. How she despised it. How helpless and trapped it made her feel. Unwittingly, she thought of the new strands of gray hair she’d spotted just that morning. Soon her hair would be more gray than blond. Time was making its mark on her, as well as Ashland.
    Forty. She fought the sense of panic that suddenly squeezed against her chest. Past her childbearing years. Past the age when men pursued. Not that they ever had in the first place.
    Alone. She would end up alone.
    Anna stiffened her spine. She liked the gray. And she liked her life. She was fine. Happy. She didn’t need a man in her life, and although she would have loved to be a mother, she had her first-graders. She would live without knowing that experience.
    She would not allow her brother the power to make her start doubting herself.