Waking Up in Dixie Read Online Free PDF

frank looks of assessment from the girls and heated reactions of the boys.
    It helped that she’d always had an eye for the finer things in life. She’d always watched and imitated how the rich people talked and dressed. Now she had a chance to put what she’d learned to use.
    Here, in this new place, she’d make sure nobody would ever see the tiny, rundown mill house where she lived. Nobody would meet her useless, drunken father or her brawling older brothers. For all anyone at Whittington High knew, she had an ordinary family and a decent house. She knew how to deflect even the most persistent questions.
    A woman of mystery, that’s what she’d be.
    As for her teachers and the school authorities, Elizabeth had long since learned to forge her mother’s signature and make believable excuses for her absence at parent-teacher conferences. She could handle that end of things.
    As if she’d read Elizabeth’s mind, Cathy asked, “Where do you live?”
    Elizabeth cocked her head with interest. “Where do you?”
    Cathy deflated. “On a farm at the edge of town. Bo-ring.”
    “Thank goodness for books,” Elizabeth said. “They’re a great way to escape boredom.”
    Cathy grinned, revealing a full set of railroad tracks, top and bottom. “How’d you know I like to read?”
    “I can see you’re intelligent,” Elizabeth told her. “All intelligent people like to read.”
    “I think I’m going to like you,” Cathy said.
    Elizabeth nodded toward a covey of girls ahead who were fluttering around a tall, lanky, good-looking football player. A
very
good-looking football player, probably a senior. “What’s that all about?”
    Cathy gazed at the high school hero with a wistful sigh. “That’s Howe Whittington and his usual harem.”
    Him!
Bingo, and on her first day. It was an omen. Elizabeth’s steps slowed, but she deliberately didn’t look at the boy, just tossed out a disinterested, “Ummm.”
    “His family owns this town, and has for generations,” Cathy murmured. “He’s the last of his line, the biggest catch in Whittington, but his mother wants him to marry some rich Atlanta deb.”
    That’s what
she
thought! Howe Whittington’s mother didn’t know about Elizabeth, and she wouldn’t, if Elizabeth had anything to do with it, till it was too late.
    Elizabeth waited till the crown prince of Whittington looked at her to turn away from him. “What’s he like?” she asked Cathy in a whisper.
    Cathy’s eyes widened behind her glasses. “A total dreamboat,” she whispered back, leaning in close. “Not spoiled at all. Treats everybody the same. He’s even nice to the fat kids and nerds like me, and it’s not put-on.” She pivoted slightly to shoot him another adoring look, but Elizabeth stopped her. “He doesn’t have a steady,” Cathy confided. “Just plays the field. Every girl in school would kill to go with him.”
    Which was precisely why they wouldn’t get him. Elizabeth had learned a lot in her short life, and she knew all too well that men want what they can’t have. So she concentrated on Cathy. “Do you have any brothers and sisters?”
    “One younger sister, in the eighth grade,” Cathy said with regret. “She makes my life miserable.”
    Still ignoring Howe and his harem as they approached him, Elizabeth laughed at what Cathy had said, then heard the flutter of feminine conversation subside abruptly. Her side tingled with the sense that she was being stared at.
    When she turned, Howe Whittington was peering right at her, his expression lucid with approval and curiosity. And then he smiled at her.
    Ho-lee cow!
    That dazzling grin transformed him from good-looking to drop-dead, sexy,
gorgeous
. Everyone else in the hallway seemed to disappear.
    Ho-lee cow!
    Elizabeth’s insides did a flip. It took all her strength not to melt on the spot, but she somehow managed to keep her expression unaffected.
    She’d definitely been run over by the love-train, which only made things