Home Sweet Home

by Sarah Title

  “Crap,” said Mary Beth. Too late for him to do any work. Okay, he’d just stick around and see what this new professor was all about. She was probably frumpy and wore cat sweaters and big glasses, and had thick ankles. Not that he minded thick ankles. He had an appreciation for many different shapes of women’s legs, so long as they weren’t attached to someone who looked at him like he was dirt on her shoe. But his distaste for Pembroke faculty manifested itself in a sort of sick curiosity, and he found he didn’t want to leave.

  Mary Beth was waving at the truck, her business smile plastered on her face. She was business-smiling within an inch of her life. He saw a woman in the passenger seat—couldn’t see much, except that she was a woman. The woman waved at Mary Beth, then he saw her face drop as she got a good look at the house.

  He didn’t think it was that bad. It wasn’t as nice as it had looked last week, but it wasn’t that bad.

  But he’d seen enough. “See you, sis,” he said, heading over to his truck.

  “No,” she said, grabbing his arm in the death grip he recognized from many childhood torture sessions. “Stay and take the picture.”

  “You sure she’s going to want a picture?”

  The U-Haul pulled into the driveway and lurched to a stop. He saw the Professor say something to the woman who was driving, who said something back with her hands, then one more thing with her finger, and the driver opened the door and spilled out.

  The driver was tall and slender, with a mop of bleached-blonde hair piled on top of her head in a messy knot, and thick glasses perched on her nose. She stretched, leaned forward to touch her toes, then stood up to wait for the professor, who was climbing out of the passenger side.

  “You are the worst driver ever,” he heard from the other side of the truck.

  “Love ya, sis!” the driver said.

  Mary Beth started toward the two women, but Jake hung back, hoping to make his escape. The sister could take the picture. If there was going to be a picture.

  But then the professor walked around the truck, and Jake’s curiosity glued him in place. She was tall, too, taller than her sister. She had the same messy top-knot in her hair, but the professor’s hair was darker, nearly brown. And she didn’t have thick ankles, not that he would have minded. She was wearing cut-off denim shorts, and they were short enough to see that her legs were tanned and muscled—not the legs of a woman who spent all day reading.

  Jake shook his head. He didn’t do professors, not in any sense of the word. The Pembroke People had nothing to do with people like him, people who barely finished high school, who worked with their hands.

  Besides, this professor was wearing a baggy, purple sweatshirt with a cat on it. The cat was wearing glittery sunglasses and striking a weird, sexy pose next to the words “Check Meowt.” Also sparkly.

  Still, she was the hottest crazy cat lady he had ever seen.

  Chapter 2

  “I don’t remember it looking this bad,” said Jane in the loudest whisper known to man.

  Grace didn’t remember either. When she’d come for the job interview at Pembroke in early spring, her sister had driven down from Columbus to meet her and they’d gone house hunting together. Grace fell in love, signed the contract, and went back to California with a phone full of pictures.

  Grace was glad she’d had a witness. Jane had fallen in love with the house almost as much as Grace had, although Jane had reservations about its age. Mary Beth had seemed reluctant to show them the place, said it might not be Grace’s taste. It probably wasn’t a lot of people’s tastes. It was gaudy and weird and old. But there was a turret, complete with funky stained glass, and Grace could see herself creating a reading nook in there. And there were windows everywhere! She could just imagine how wonderful it would feel to sit in the sun, or to light a fire in the fireplace when it was overcast and cold. It was never overcast and cold in California. She would never find a house like this in California. This was a New Life house.

  And the porch! The porch had made her sad to go back to her second floor balcony-free condo. She loved sitting outside, and this house not only had a front porch, but a gorgeous, winding garden in the back. Grace had always suspected she had a green thumb, but apartment living was never very conducive to keeping plants alive. If she bought the house, she would have flowers and tomatoes and cucumbers and more flowers and a gorgeous dreamy yard that required hardly any mowing but would be the perfect spot to have garden parties and to concoct brilliant ideas about literature.

  Now she wasn’t so sure that she hadn’t bitten off more than she could chew. Mary Beth had sent her pictures a week ago, showing her the work her brother had done on the house. Everything was neatly trimmed and pruned and there was a potted plant on the front step. Now the plant seemed in danger of sliding off the crooked step, and it looked as if the yard was not as familiar with a weed whacker as she’d been led to believe.

  She turned to Mary Beth, who had seemed so sweet and nice and genuine. She’d made Grace feel like it was her life’s mission to get her into the perfect house. Mary Beth had gotten her a good deal and everything. At least Grace thought she had. Was she being hoodwinked? By this nice, snappily dressed realtor and her too-hot-for-his-own-good brother?

  Because the brother introduced as Jake was ridiculous in his handsomeness. Even Jane, who was very happily married and who didn’t put a lot of stock in people’s looks, was gobsmacked. “Is this a joke?” she whispered to Grace when Mary Beth made the introductions. “This has to be a joke.”

  “What?” asked Mary Beth, because Jane was the loudest whisperer ever.

  “Nothing. I was just saying that your brother is so handsome that he can’t be real. Are you real?” Jane poked him on the forehead.

  Mary Beth laughed, and way-too-handsome Jake smiled (which, damn him, made him even handsomer). The tension melted around them but Grace remained firm. She crossed her arms over her weird ironic cat sweater, and watched everybody laugh at her sister’s charming goofiness while the house she’d just spent all of her money on crumbled around her.

  She was a little cranky from the drive. Then she caught Jake looking at her. He rolled his eyes and she got even crankier. Because it was one thing to be completely not attracted to a handsome man, but it was another thing entirely to be dismissed by him. She shouldn’t be cranky about that, she told herself, which made her even crankier. Plus she was tired, she was dirty, and she wished she hadn’t worn the ironic spinster cat lady sweatshirt Jane had given her for her birthday last year. To top it all off, the realtor Grace had thought might be her first friend in this town was sheepishly handing her the keys to a quirky, Victorian dump.

  “I mean, it’s not that bad,” Jane said, as Mary Beth and Jake climbed the wonky steps behind them. “It’s pretty nice, really.”

  Grace rolled her eyes at her sister. Jane’s true feelings about the house were written all over her face. Thankfully, once she rattled the door open, the inside wasn’t as bad as the outside. It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t turn-the-truck-around terrible. The sun shining through the old lace curtains revealed some swirling dust, and as Grace ran her finger over the mantelpiece, it came away with more dust. It seemed to swirl and dance in the sunlight and if it hadn’t been dust, for crying out loud, it would have looked magical. But just dust, she could handle. Just dust assuaged her impending panic attack when she thought about how much work she’d have to do to make the house livable before the semester started. If it was just dust on the inside, the outside could wait.

  “It’s just dust.” Jake was inside the living room, running his finger over the windowsills. He looked up at the curtains as if to confirm, yup, those were dirty too.

  “I know,” said Grace.

  “I’m just saying, because you looked like you were about to storm out of here and turn that truck around.”

  “Jake . . .” Mary Beth warned.

  “I’m sure you can get someone to clean it for you,” he added with a shru
g.

  “I can clean it all by myself, don’t you worry about that.” Grace flounced away from the fireplace and headed toward the swinging door to the kitchen. In the time it took her to cross the floor, her cranky brain had conjured a dramatic exit, a perfect cut expertly delivered to the too-handsome Jake, then a flourishing turn through to the kitchen.

  “I can handle—” she started, before being cut off by the swinging door crashing off of its hinges. The momentum she’d put into dramatically pushing the door open brought her down on top of it. Smooth, she thought. She’d really showed him. Half of a cut direct and now she was on her butt in the kitchen, on top of the door, a cloud of magical pixie dust settling around her.

  Grace sneezed. What had she gotten herself into?

  Jake was not sure which instinct came first—the one to laugh as Grace Buster Keaton-ed through the kitchen door, or the one to run to her and pick her up because the fall kind of looked like it hurt. He decided to pretend he was the better man and rushed forward to check on her. She was fine. Red as a beet and scowling, but no injuries. Grace reached for her sister’s outstretched hand, but Jake didn’t like the way she ignored his. So he stuck his hands under her arms and hauled her up.

  The look on her face as she got her feet underneath her was pretty much what he expected: angry, horrified, embarrassed.

  “Jake,” Mary Beth said behind him. Fine, yes, he shouldn’t manhandle her clients. But he was just trying to help.

  “Are you okay?” Jane asked, putting a protective arm around her waist.

  “Yes, fine,” Grace said, pulling her sparkle-cat sweatshirt back into place. Jake tried not to observe that the sweatshirt was doing her no favors, and that underneath she felt soft and solid.

  “What’s the deal, Mary Beth?” Grace whirled that soft and solid body on his sister. “I thought this house passed inspection?”

  “It did! I don’t know what—”

  “Is this some kind of joke?” said Grace. “Get the new girl to buy a piece-of-crap house and laugh because you got your swindle on?”

  “I swear to you, Grace, I have no idea why this is happening. You’re right, the house passed inspection, and nobody has been in here since the old owners moved out.”

  “You’re sure there wasn’t a bunch of, I don’t know, dismantling elves in here?”

  Jane snorted. Jake tried not to.

  “Because if this is how you do business—”

  Mary Beth took a step back and Jake stepped in. He was willing to make allowances for Grace’s anger because she was in a pretty tough position and she had just made a fool of herself, but stepping up to his sister like that was not going to fly.

  “Watch it,” he warned.

  “Watch it? Watch it? What is that supposed to mean? You gonna manhandle me some more if I get in her face about the fact that I just got ripped off?”

  Mary Beth looked close to tears. “I promise you, I have no idea—”

  “Skip it, lady.”

  “Don’t you talk to my sister—”

  “Hey!” Everybody froze, fingers pointed at each other, as Jane shouted from on top of the kitchen door.

  “Thank you,” she said when everyone was quiet. “Let’s talk about this like adults.”

  “I am—” Grace started.

  “Don’t make me use my teacher voice again,” Jane warned.

  Grace scowled at her sister, but she stopped talking. She crossed her hands angrily over her chest, but she stopped talking.

  “Grace, did you do your due diligence when you bought this house? Inspections, certifications, all that stuff we talked about?” Jane asked, hands on her hips.

  “You know I did.”

  “Mary Beth, did you talk to my sister about the possibility of things needing repair in an older house, even though there were perfectly fine new houses available in the neighborhood?”

  “I did. But she fell in love with this one,” Mary Beth said, choking back a note of desperation. “I can’t blame her, it’s a beautiful house. But, Grace, I did warn you that it would need some work.”

  “ ‘Some work!’ ” Grace shouted. “ ‘Some work’ is different from doors falling off!”

  “It’s not a big deal,” Jake said. “Look.” He nudged Jane aside and hoisted the door up. He lined up the hinges, and the door clicked back into place.

  Which was much easier than he expected it to be.

  He thought he would have to prop it up, then go out to his truck to get some tools, or maybe run downtown to get some new hinges. But he stood it up, then click, and the door was working again. He gave it a tentative swing. It swung.

  “No problem,” he said, turning to the three amazed sets of eyes staring at him.

  “It shouldn’t have fallen in the first place,” mumbled Grace.

  “No, but Handsome Jake here was nice enough to fix it for you, so no problem,” said Jane.

  “No problem now, but what am I going to do when the next thing falls apart? What if this chandelier falls on our heads?”

  Everybody took a little step back from the center of the room, where an antique iron lighting fixture was hanging.

  “Grace, I know this is upsetting, and I really can’t explain why that door just fell off,” Mary Beth said, leading them toward the living room windows.

  “Which was easy to fix,” said Jake.

  His sister shot him a look. “But,” she continued, “everything should be fine. We did the inspection, the last owner replaced the water heater, the things that needed to be updated have been updated. That was part of the contract we signed. But it is an old house. I told you, it is livable, but it will require some TLC.”

  Jane looked at her sister even as she addressed the realtor. “Are you suggesting, Mary Beth, that my sister heard your well-informed advice, but ignored it and did what she wanted to anyway? How unlike my sister to do something like that. How very, very unlike her.”

  Jake guessed by the sarcasm dripping from Jane’s tone that this was par for the course for Grace. Of course. People like Grace, they got what they wanted no matter what.

  And based on the scowl covering Grace’s face, she didn’t like hearing it.

  “I tell you what,” said Mary Beth, ushering Grace into the sunny foyer. “What if we work something out? What if I got someone to come over here and help you fix things when they break? That way, you can enjoy the charm of this gorgeous old house, and you won’t have to feel like I did you wrong in any way.”

  The back of Jake’s neck prickled.

  “Let me guess,” said Grace. “You have the perfect guy lined up and his rates are completely reasonable.”

  “No charge,” said Mary Beth calmly as she opened the front door. “The guy I’m thinking of doesn’t need the money, and he owes me a favor.”

  Now Jake’s neck was on fire. There was no way . . .

  “He owes me a lifetime of favors,” Mary Beth said, and looked right at Jake.

  “Mary Beth—” he started to protest.

  “She’ll take it!” Jane said, and slammed the front door in their faces.

  The house shuddered at the slam of the door. Things were not working out yet, but they rarely did at first. The heavy footfall on the front steps definitely belonged to the one, but now he was going away angry, muttering to the woman who had taken such good care of the house. The man had mowed the lawn and painted the porch rails. But if the house hadn’t been careful, the man would have finished everything before the new owner moved in, and that would never do. The house had a job to do, and no matter how much it hurt, the job would get done.

  Chapter 3

  “What did you just do?” Grace stared at her sister, who was smirking in a way that looked as if she was pretty pleased with herself.

  “What?” Jane blinked, and Grace didn’t buy her innocent act for a second. “You don’t want that hot guy helping you with stuff around your house?”

  “No! He’s a jerk.”

  “You don’t have to t
alk to him. You just have to call him when something breaks and then ogle him from the corner while he works.”

  “Jane, that is beyond creepy.”

  “I wonder if he’ll take his shirt off if it gets too hot? Your air conditioner isn’t broken, is it?”

  There was a quick knock at the door, and then Mary Beth’s head appeared through the opening. “I just wanted to give you this,” she said, thrusting a business card through the open door. “Jake’s cell is on the back.”

  “Thank you!” said Jane, far too cheerily. “We’ll be sure to give him a call!”

  Grace rolled her eyes at her sister. On one hand, Jane was right. Grace was not handy, and owning a condo with a twenty-four hour handyman had not filled any holes in her education. She had stubbornly pushed ahead with buying the house because she’d wanted it so badly. She’d figured she could get a few library books, learn along the way.

  But things take on a different urgency when a girl is sitting on her own kitchen door.

  On the other hand, Jane was totally, one hundred percent wrong. Jake was not the right man to help her out. He hated her, or at least he looked down on her. Even if he hadn’t acted like a jerk, she’d felt his disdain the second she got out of the truck. And she didn’t need a man who thought she was an idiot hanging around her house, proving himself right about her own idiocy by doing manual tasks that she was incapable of doing.

  Plus, he was hot. He was tall and broad, and his jeans were just snug enough to make her want to see if it was possible to bounce quarters off a guy’s butt. His hands were big and rough, and he’d picked her up off her kitchen door like she weighed nothing. Grace knew she didn’t weigh nothing.

  The worst part, though, was when he’d stood her up and she faced him. She was mad, and then she’d got a good look at his eyes. They were a rich, dark brown, and in them she saw some mockery, yes, but also concern and intelligence. Those were deep eyes. She didn’t do deep.

  She couldn’t afford to like him. She couldn’t afford to like any man. She was done with that. She had taken the job at Pembroke to begin the spinster life she wanted to be destined for. No more men, no more distractions, no more lies. The last guy she’d let in, and she had only let him in a little, turned out to be a lying jerk with a superiority complex and a wife.