Susan Elizabeth Phillips
Ain’t She Sweet?
© 2004
To Jayne Ann Krentz
A dear friend, a wonderful writer,
and the romance novel’s most eloquent
and insightful advocate
No reference to examples in books. Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree. The pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything.
JANE AUSTEN, Persuasion
“I am afraid,” confessed Pen, “that I am not very well-behaved. Aunt says that I had a lamentable upbringing.”
GEORGETTE HEYER, The Corinthian
CHAPTER ONE
The wild child of Parrish, Mississippi, had come back to the town she’d left behind forever. Sugar Beth Carey gazed from the rain-slicked windshield to the horrible dog who lay beside her on the passenger seat.
“I know what you’re thinking, Gordon, so go ahead and say it. How the mighty have fallen, right?” She gave a bitter laugh. “Well, screw you. Just…” She blinked her eyes against a sting of tears. “Just… screw you.”
Gordon lifted his head and sneered at her. He thought she was trash.
“Not me, pal.” She turned up the heater on her ancient Volvo against the chill of the late February day. “Griffin and Diddie Carey ruled this town, and I was their princess. The girl most likely to set the world on fire.”
She heard an imaginary howl of basset hound laughter.
Like the row of tin-roofed houses she’d just passed, Sugar Beth had grown a little shabby at the edges. The long blond hair that swirled to her shoulders didn’t gleam as brightly as it once had, and the tiny gold hearts at her earlobes no longer skipped in a carefree dance. Her pouty lips had lost the urge to curl in flirtatious smiles, and her baby doll cheeks had given up their innocence three husbands ago.