Home Sweet Home (A Southern Comfort Novel) (13 page)

G
race jerked awake at the sound of a crash. She looked around, disoriented, for what could possibly be broken this time. The first thing she noticed was Jake’s warm body, face down on the bed next to her. She forgot all about her house falling down as he shifted in his sleep and the sheet slipped past his waist. Good Lord, that was a perfect back. Wide, strong shoulders, smooth muscle tapering down to a narrow waist. And that butt. His butt made her wish for poetry.

Even that stupid tattoo between his shoulder blades was sexy. She first saw it at the swimming hole, but hadn’t gotten a close look at it until last night. An angry-eyed falcon was wrestling an overly muscled tiger. She hadn’t known what to make of it when she first saw it. Then he told her he’d gotten it on a dare, and she knew even less what to make of it.

But it would take a lot more than an ill-advised tattoo to mar the perfection of that back.

He stirred and rolled over, which gave her the opportunity to admire the perfection of his front. But then he squinted up at her and she thought it might be impolite to stare.

“Are you staring at me?”

“No!” she lied.

He gave her that crooked grin, even sexier when it was tinged with sleepiness. “Are you ogling my naked body?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I’ll show you ridiculous,” he said, and he ripped off the sheet. She shrieked as he threw himself at her, but, well, if she had to get mauled, might as well be by a hot, naked man.

“Do you have class this morning?” he asked once she was pinned underneath him.

She shook her head.

“What are you doing awake, then?”

“Oh!” Stupid reality, she thought. “Something fell.”

“What?”

“I have no idea. The noise woke me up, and then . . .”

“Then you got distracted by my physical perfection?”

She hit him on the shoulder, but only because he was right. He sat up, taking the sheet with him.

“Hmm,” he said. “Now I’m feeling distracted.”

“Jake!” She pushed him off her, then reached over the side of the bed for her nightgown.

“I can’t believe you wore that to the Fourth of July party.”

Somewhere between the couch and the bedroom last night, the truth had come out. “I told you, it was an accident!”

Jake just shook his head. “Absent-minded professor.” He turned in the bed to look for his boxers. “Uh, I think I see what broke.”

He turned Grace’s chin toward the closet, where the bar and the clothes it had previously been holding were all in a mess on the floor.

“Oh my God! How did that even—” She didn’t finish her sentence. Just stared at the pile of clothes.

“You probably hung too much on there.”

“I didn’t! It wasn’t shaky at all!” Jake heard a muffled meow from the back of the closet, and, after a while, Mr. Bingley jumped gracefully out.

“Mr. Bingley! Are you hurt?” Grace said, lurching toward her cat.

After determining that Mr. Bingley wasn’t hurt, just a little angry, and that he’d probably climbed on the bar and caused it to fall, Jake got to looking at the problem. It looked like one of the pieces holding the bar in place had come off. Easy fix.

“Do you have a hammer?” he asked Grace.

Grace nudged him aside with her hip and dug through the clothes at the bottom of her closet. Her butt squirmed adorably as she pulled open a box from underneath a pile of everything. “It’s in here somewhere,” came her disembodied voice from the back of the closet.

“You might want to keep your tools more handy. You know, in case you need them.”

“I know you can’t see my face, so you’ll just have to trust that I’m giving you a withering look. Ah, here it is.” She came out of the closet, triumphantly holding the smallest tool kit he’d ever seen.

It was pink.

“I need a hammer, not a nail file,” he said.

“Ha ha. There’s a hammer in here. And one of those screwdrivers with the head you can switch out. Although I think I broke the screwdriver.”

“Why is it pink?”

She opened the tool kit and handed him a hammer that looked like it wouldn’t even crack a teacup. “My sister gave it to me.”

“She must know as much about tools as you do.”

“It was a gag gift. My condo fees in California included a twenty-four hour maintenance man.”

Of course. Why do it yourself when you can pay someone else to do it for you? But he bit his tongue, because she looked so cute and proud of that ridiculous hammer.

“Grace, this hammer isn’t going to do anything.”

“Why not? It’s a hammer.”

He took the hammer from her hand and swung down hard, just once, on the wall of the closet. The head of the hammer neatly detached from the handle.

“You broke my hammer!”

“This is not a hammer, Grace. This would barely be good for opening a piñata. And now it’s not good for anything.”

“Hold on. I think I have some superglue in here.”

He put his hand on her hip to stop her from going back into the mess of the closet. “Glue is not going to help. I have some tools in my truck. You need a man hammer for this job.”

“This hammer is perfectly fine! At least it was until you went all caveman on it.”

“This is a girl hammer. It’s not even a woman hammer. This is, like, a kid’s hammer. I’m telling you, you need a man hammer.”

“Can you stop saying ‘man hammer’ please?”

“Why?”

“It’s weird. And it’s degrading to women. Tools don’t have to be gendered.”

He shook his head.

“I know it’s dumb that my hammer is pink,” she said, “but when you say it’s a crappy hammer and then associate it with a woman, that implies that women are bad at fixing things.”

“You can’t fix things, you said so yourself.”

“Yes, but that’s not because I’m a woman. My incompetence is completely gender-neutral.”

“Fine. I’m going out to the truck to get my gender-neutral hammer, and then I’m going to fix this bar, not because I’m a man, but because I am just a generally superior human being.”

“Thank you,” she said with a curtsy. So he smacked her on the rear, threw on his clothes and went out to his truck to get his tools. Then he came in, fixed her closet, and taught her all about the gender dichotomy.

The house liked where this was going. Banter was definitely a good thing. And Grace was starting to learn that she liked Jake, and that she needed him. Shouldn’t take too much more.

G
race’s first semester at Pembroke passed much more quickly than she ever would have imagined. She only had to fail one freshman who didn’t show up for class and did not respond to offers of extra credit assignments. The angry phone call from his parents had been brief, and the follow-up with her dean was just a formality. Her evaluations from her students were pretty good, and she got a few peppers on a website that rated how hot your professors were. That last honor was dubious, at best. Jake had laughed his head off when he heard.

She couldn’t believe how easy things were with Jake. They saw each other a few times a week, whenever they were free. There was no set plan, no hurt feelings if one of them wasn’t available, and lots and lots of great sex when they were. He had to go out of town for a job for most of October, but he was back in time to persuade her to dress up as a sexy professor for Missy and Kyle’s Halloween party. She agreed on the condition that he dress up as a sexy construction worker. He ended up looking like one of the Village People—seventies moustache and all—but they had a great time at the party.

That was the only time they really went out as a “couple.” Because they weren’t a couple. Marilyn invited Grace to spend Thanksgiving with them, but she ended up going up to Jane’s instead. Priya was delighted to see her Auntie Grace, which made up for the curry tofurkey Jane’s mother-in-law made for dinner. She was preparing to go back again for Christmas. She had taken the bus up for Thanksgiving, but this time she had too many presents (mostly for Priya), so Jane agreed to drive down and get her. As long as Grace could guarantee her some time with Handsome Jake.

Grace didn’t like the idea—having her sister hang out with Jake felt too much like he was a boyfriend. But Jane insisted, and Jake didn’t mind.

They both wanted her to get a Christmas tree, which she thought was ridiculous since she wouldn’t be home on Christmas Day, but Jake insisted and Jane didn’t mind, so she went along with it. Of course they had to chop their own, so they headed to a tree farm on the outskirts of Willow Springs.

“The way that man swings an ax, it’s just not right,” Jane said as Jake made the first few strokes to the trunk of their chosen tree.

“I hadn’t noticed,” Grace said. “God, I forgot how cold winter is.” She shivered under her down coat, sweater, and long johns.

“California girl,” Jane teased. “Another few winters, you’ll toughen up.”

“I don’t know. Are my lips blue?”

“Why don’t you ask Jake?”

“Grow up,” said Grace, but she was smiling when she said it.

“Grace, come on,” Jake called. “Take the last swing.”

“Go on, Gracie. Knock that sucker down!” Jane chimed in.

Grace shook her head and stomped her feet to get feeling back into them, then she took the ax from Jake. “What do I do? Just hit it?”

“Yeah. With the sharp edge.”

She stuck her tongue out at him, moved a step back and took a swing.

“Try to hit the part that’s already been cut,” Jake suggested mildly.

“I tried! This is stupid, you do it.” She shoved the ax at him and he jumped back.

“Okay, as much as I want to take sharp objects out of your possession, I really think you should do it. Come on.” He pulled her toward him—ax pointing downward—and turned her so their arms lined up. Then he wrapped his hands around hers and, together, they raised the ax.

“Ready?” he whispered in her ear. She nodded, and he swung even higher and then
whap
right into the tree. It didn’t move, so Jake gave the trunk a gentle push. It fell into the frozen ground with a
thump
.

They tied the tree into the bed of his truck (well, Jake tied it while Grace and Jane stomped their frozen feet) and when they got to Grace’s house, she watched Jake maneuver the tree into the stand in the living room.

“He just moved that whole tree by himself,” Jane whispered to Grace from the kitchen doorway.

Grace looked at her sister. “You’re drooling. And you’re married.”

“I know, I know. But our tree is only as tall as Priya, so it’s not as much fun to watch Dev with it.”

“Hot chocolate?” Jake asked, brushing tree dirt all over her living room floor.

He had done a lot of work, so she kept her mouth shut about the mess. She nodded and turned the kettle on.

“Be right back,” he said, then ran out the front door.

“Gah,” said Jane. “I don’t know how you do it.”

“Do what?” Grace asked.

“Keep your hands off that guy for more than three seconds.”

“You realize you sound like an old perv?”

“I don’t care, look at him!”

Grace laughed and pulled mugs down from the cabinet. She rubbed her hands up and down her arms. She was still freezing.

“Seriously, Grace. How are you not falling in love with him? He’s strong, he’s hot, he just chopped down a Christmas tree for you and he built a fire. I can’t believe that even you are immune to those charms.”

Grace chook her head. “I’m not immune. I just don’t do that.”

“That’s not how it works, Grace. You can’t just
not
fall in love with someone you so clearly love.”

“I don’t love him, Jane. I like him. A lot. He’s one of my best friends here. And, yes, I have a different relationship with him than I do with my other friends.”

“A sex relationship,” snorted Jane.

“Great, very mature. Yes, a sex relationship. But that’s it. We’re friends, and we have great sex. Amazing sex. But I don’t love him, Jane.”

Jane smacked her on the arm and Grace was just about to give her an older sister what-was-that-for look, but when she turned around, she saw Jake standing there. He was holding an old shoebox with a red bow stuck to it. She couldn’t read the look on his face. He was smiling, but it wasn’t that sexy, sideways smile that made her nuts. He just looked sort of blank. Blank and smiling.

“Jake—” She started to apologize, but what for? They both knew what their arrangement was.

“Here,” he said, handing her the shoebox.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Open it and find out, dummy,” said Jane, trying to cut some of the tension by throwing Grace under the bus.

Grace opened the box and pulled back the tissue. Inside was a set of vintage glass ornaments. She picked one up. It was a scene of a church surrounded by trees. The roof and the trees were painted bright red and green, and the stars were dotted with gold glitter. There were about half a dozen hand-painted bucolic scenes in the box.

“Wow,” she whispered.

Jake looked like he was blushing. “I just thought, since you didn’t have a tree before, that you probably didn’t have any ornaments. And I thought you would like these. They’re kind of old and falling apart.”

Grace laughed. “That’s my style. Thank you, Jake. These are amazing. I feel terrible, I don’t have anything for you.”

Jake waved his hand. “This isn’t really a Christmas present. It’s just—I just saw them and I thought you would like them, that’s all.”

“I do. They’re gorgeous.” She stepped over and kissed him on the cheek. She really wanted to kiss him on the mouth, but she was still holding the box of ornaments and she didn’t want to drop them. His kisses had a tendency to make her lose essential motor skills.

He smiled at her. “I’m glad. Now make me a hot chocolate, woman.” He smacked her on the rear and stalked out to the living room.

Jane didn’t say anything to Grace, just raised her eyebrows and poured boiling water into the hot chocolate. Grace told her to shut up anyway.

Jake could have done without walking in on Grace telling her sister that she didn’t love him. He knew she didn’t. He didn’t want her to. He didn’t love her. That was why their relationship worked so well. Strictly casual.

But he still didn’t like to hear it.

At least she liked the ornaments. He’d worried they might be stupid. They were nice, but they were cheap, just a few bucks at the mission charity store. But Grace liked vintage stuff, and the box said “Made in England,” so he figured, why not? And all night he caught her sneaking glances at the ornaments where they hung on the tree. Either that or she hated them and couldn’t stop looking at them because they grossed her out. But every time she looked away, she had kind of a wistful look in her eye.

She liked them all right.

So after Jane went to bed, making a point of telling them that she would be asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow at the other end of the house, Jake took Grace’s freezing hands in his and led her upstairs. He unwrapped her and, quietly, warmed her up.

Things felt different. The house had thought this was a done deal, but tonight things had changed. It felt . . . sad. Like things weren’t going to work out as planned. Maybe it was just a misunderstanding. Grace and Jake argued all the time. But this wasn’t a normal fight. This was Grace willfully ignoring what was in front of her face. This was Grace picking and choosing among the parts of Jake that he offered, instead of enthusiastically embracing all of him.

This was not the road to happily ever after.