The Last Carolina Sister by Michelle Major

Author:Michelle Major
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HQN Books
Published: 2021-01-14T16:17:42+00:00

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AN HOUR LATER, Meredith walked out of the barn with two of her newer canine-rescue residents on leashes. She’d heard a car pulling down the drive and assumed it was Carrie, even though her sister texted shortly after Ryan left to say she was running late.

The dogs, Labrador mixes, cowered as gravel sprayed from the unfamiliar truck. The pups were nearly nine months old, brought to her by a shelter in Raleigh because they needed more socializing than the facility could handle. The dogs had been, at best, ignored for most of their young lives, and based on their behavior, she suspected abuse. She’d videotaped her training sessions to submit as an addendum to her grant application for the Howard Family Foundation. She hoped that if the dogs had a breakthrough before the site visit, it would help prove that while she might not have the degrees or formal training of an experienced shelter manager, her success with animals was enough to earn the foundation’s support.

There were no appointments scheduled for the morning, so she wasn’t sure who she expected to climb out of the truck. Her heart skipped a beat at the familiar tousle of caramel-colored hair, shorter than he normally wore it but still thick and standing up in all directions.

“Theo,” she breathed, her fingers trembling.

Her oldest brother slammed shut the door, took in the house and the barn before turning to her. He wore a denim shirt, faded jeans and aviator sunglasses over eyes she knew were brilliant blue. The color of a perfect summer sky.

“Pupsqueak,” he said with the easy smile she remembered from childhood. A smile she hadn’t seen in far too long.

She wanted to run to him and throw herself into his arms. Meredith had spent most of her childhood tagging along behind Theo, Erik and their friends, wanting desperately to fit in with her oh-so-cool older brothers. They’d been patient with her—mostly—until puberty hit and they got wilder and started to drive and wanted nothing to do with their pesky younger sister. She’d been an annoyance at best and in the way more times than she could count.

Then there had been the awful night her sophomore year, at a party she had no business attending with a boy who’d played football with her brothers for years. Someone she’d known for most of her life. After that, things had changed. She’d changed, of course, and she’d vowed that neither of her brothers would ever know the details. Her reputation had turned south, and she hadn’t bothered to worry about that, either. She’d worn her rebellion like a badge of honor. If she made the lies into truths, then the awful things boys said about her couldn’t hurt.

But she’d almost buckled under the weight of her brothers’ disappointment. She’d stopped answering their calls and texts, stayed in her room when they came home to visit, then gone off to college and tried to forget everything about her past. That had been a colossal failure.

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