Home Sweet Home

by Sarah Title

  They must have packed the wallpaper in bricks, though, because the long, narrow box was heavy.

  She dragged the package inelegantly up the stairs and into her office. She’d pushed all the furniture in front of the bookcases, then piled all the boxes of books on top of the furniture. When she tore the package open and unraveled the first roll, she held it up to the wall and imagined her desk there. And then she dropped the wallpaper and clapped and giggled. It was going to look amazing once the whole wall was done.

  There was still the problem of the high walls, though. Even upstairs, the small rooms had high ceilings, giving the illusion of space without actually being spacious. She thought about using her trusty retractable roller, but Harry told her that, to wallpaper properly, you need a brush. And her brush was short. So she needed a ladder.

  Fortunately, she had friends in town now, and those friends had ladders. Mary Beth, who had forgiven her for her moving-day snootiness after Grace apologized profusely, was going to drop her ladder off after work and would stay to help her put up the wallpaper. Grace thought of the bottle of Pinot Grigio chilling in the fridge, and imagined sitting on the porch with Mary Beth, tired and satisfied after a job well done, watching the sunset. So she practically ran down the stairs when the doorbell rang, ready to start.

  “The paper just came in! Just wait until you—” She stopped, mid-door swing, when she saw Jake standing on her porch with a ladder leaning against his shoulder.

  “Oh,” she said.

  “Mary Beth couldn’t make it,” he said, picking up the ladder and barging past her into the house. “She had a showing. Where do you want this?”

  “Upstairs. Hi, Jake.”

  “Hi, Professor. Where upstairs?”

  “The office. First door on the right. Please.”

  She followed him and the ladder and pointed him in the right direction. He set up the ladder, then stood there, looking around.

  “So this is where you write your famous books?”

  She was surprised that he’d heard about her book; it didn’t seem like his style. But then, most people in Willow Springs seemed to know that she’d written a mildly popular book about Jane Austen. The librarian had practically jumped on her. “Mostly it will be where I grade my students’ papers.”

  “Ah. So this is where you do the dirty work.”

  “I see you’ve been reading undergraduate English papers.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Grace was shocked by the aggression in his tone.

  “It was a joke.”

  “You think just because I didn’t go to college, I won’t get what some kid says about some old book?”

  “No, Jake. I meant that when you say something snippy to me, I’ll say something snippy back. Gosh, I’m not sure how you managed to carry that ladder up here with that gigantic chip on your shoulder.”

  He narrowed his eyes at her. But, whatever, it had been a joke. What did she care that he hadn’t gone to college? He’d already proven himself more qualified than she was for the job.

  “What’s this wallpaper you’re putting up?” he asked. “Mary Beth was all excited about it.”

  Fine. If he wanted a truce, she could give him a truce. “It’s right here,” she said, picking up the partially unraveled roll. “It’s a design from the Regency era. Jane Austen’s time. That’s what I write about.”

  “I know.”

  “Okay. Well, here it is.”

  She watched him take in the soft rose color, the flocked, damask pattern.

  “It’s kind of a lot, isn’t it?” he asked.

  “You mean you think it’s ugly.”

  He shrugged. “It’s your house.”

  She sighed. “I’m just doing the one wall. I thought an accent would be nice.”

  “And a lot more palatable.” He held the sheet up to the wall. “This will be nice, actually.”

  “Well, I appreciate your good opinion. And the ladder.”

  He stood there a moment longer, looking between her and the wall. “Are you going to do this by yourself?”

  “Well, I had hoped for Mary Beth’s help. But it looks like, yes, I’m going to do it by myself.”

  “She’ll probably be able to help you over the weekend.”

  “I want to do it today. I need to get this room set up so I can start getting ready for my classes. And, anyway, I’m too excited to let it sit in a box until the weekend.”

  “Grace, it’s Thursday.”

  “Patience is not one of my virtues.”

  He shook his head. “Fine. Where do you want to start? On this end? Do you have extra so we can match the pattern?” He started moving the ladder toward the end of the wall.

  “You’re going to help?”

  “Yeah, if you can’t wait. I have nothing better to do today.”

  “Of course not.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Wait—” She stopped him again. “What do you mean match the pattern?”

  “You have to line up the panels so the pattern matches.”

  “I know. But how did you know?”

  “This ain’t my first rodeo, Professor. I’ve hung wallpaper before.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah, oh. Do you want my help or not?”

  “Sure.” Why not? It would be fun spending the afternoon with such a chipper guy. Afterward, she could break the bottle of wine over his head.

  Rich people and their accent walls, thought Jake as he started to cut the wallpaper at the top of the crown molding. This pattern was a special pain in his butt—it was so broad that he would think it was lined up in one spot, only to find one intricate swirl that didn’t match a few inches down.

  “Mother of—”

  He stopped, mid-cut, at Grace’s curse.

  “Stop, stop,” she said, putting a hand on his calf. He froze on the ladder, utility knife in the air, and tried not to shiver at the warmth of the contact.

  “Dammit, it’s not matching down here. Slide it up.” She moved her hand to the wallpaper and started to move the panel up. “Whose idea was this stupid wallpaper anyway?”

  “It’s authentic,” he reminded her.

  “I wanted Jane Austen, not Charlotte Perkins Gilman.”

  He had no idea what she was talking about, but he didn’t want another lecture. Not while he was holding a knife.

  “Is it straight up there?” she asked him. He focused on the wall, not on the fact that when he looked down, he could see something pink and lacy through the neckline of her shirt.

  “Yes. Ready to glue?”

  She didn’t respond, so he picked the brush up off the ladder’s shelf and started the top coat of glue.

  “How are we only on the second panel?” she whined. “How many more do we have to do?”

  Jake did a quick visual measurement of the wall. It seemed to be getting bigger every time he did it. “Two and a half.” Hopefully.

  She leaned heavily onto her hands on the wall. Even though she was spiraling into a sulk, he appreciated that she held the wallpaper in place for him.

  And he appreciated the pink bra.

  “Trust me, this would feel a lot longer with Mary Beth,” he said between brush swipes. “She’s even more impatient with home improvement projects than you are.”

  He heard her sigh.

  “Just keep your eyes on the prize, Professor. Every time you look at this accent wall, you can remember how hard you worked on it.”

  “That’s nice of you, but you’re doing all the work. I’m just holding the paper up.”

  “Don’t forget how nicely you’re bossing me around.”

  She laughed. “Sorry. I thought I knew what I was doing.”

  “Even though you’ve never wallpapered before?”

  “I watched a video on YouTube.”

  He snorted. She was cute when she wasn’t biting his head off.

  “So you do a lot of this stuff?” she asked.


  “Wallpapering?”

  “Yeah, and other home improvement stuff.”

  He shrugged. “Sure. I like working with my hands.”

  “Better you than me,” she mumbled, wiping one of her glue-y hands on her shorts.

  A few hours ago, Jake would have taken that comment to mean that it was better for him to do the dirty work since he, as a dirty, working man, was much more suited to it. But now he knew that she was making a self-deprecating joke. Which he appreciated, because she really was not very handy.

  He was beginning to see maybe she wasn’t a total judgmental diva.

  Not judgmental. He still wasn’t sure about the diva part.

  “Where do you park your car?” he asked. He hadn’t seen it in the driveway, and he wasn’t sure of the state of the garage. She probably had one of those tiny little hybrid things.

  Although Missy had a hybrid and she seemed to be able to make it go pretty fast. Every cop in the county would probably agree with him.

  “I don’t have a car,” she said.

  “What?” Maybe she was one of those crazy earth-mother chicks who thought even a hybrid was too much carbon footprint. “Why not?”

  She and her pink bra shrugged. “I don’t really like driving, and Willow Springs is small. I’m hoping I can get away with not having one.”

  “So you just expect other people to chauffeur you around?”

  She looked up at him, sharply. “That’s a pretty big assumption. Have I ever asked you for a ride anywhere?”

  “No.”

  “Or your sister? Or anyone you know? Have I ever, in the weeks that you’ve known me and decided I’m worthless, asked anyone for a ride anywhere?”

  “Not that I know of.” He didn’t like how that made him feel, that she was aware of his disgust for her. No, it wasn’t disgust, it was just . . . he just didn’t like professors. But he didn’t like that she knew.

  “Well, I haven’t, because I purposely bought a house close to town with a nice, flat bike ride to campus so I won’t have to offend people like you with my grubby neediness.”

  “People like me?”

  “Yes, people like you. People who don’t know anything about me, but decide I’m useless.”

  “Please, you professors are all the same.” He stopped wallpapering to glare down at her. “You think you’re so smart and so great just because you have a fancy degree.”

  “I have several fancy degrees, Jake, but that’s not what makes me smart and great.”

  “Not so smart that you can hang wallpaper on your own.” He watched a drop of wallpaper glue land in the knot of hair piled on her head. She must not have felt it, because she didn’t react.

  “No, Jake, I’m not an octopus. I only have two hands.” She stepped away from the wall. “You know what? You can go. I’ll get someone else to help me.”

  The panel that he had half-glued unstuck itself from the wall and peeled slowly down. Onto Grace’s head. She floundered and flailed and finally came unstuck.

  “Very funny, Jake.”

  “You’re the one who let go!”

  “Just go.”

  A few seconds ago, he wanted to go. He wanted to just say, screw it. He had so many better things to do with his time.

  But then the wallpaper had come down on her and she looked flustered and he felt bad about the blob of glue he’d dropped in her hair. Not, like, let’s be friends forever bad, but bad enough that he remembered he was not a jerk, that he was the kind of guy who finishes what he starts. No excuses.

  He still didn’t like her. “I said I’d help you, so I’ll help.”

  “That’s not necessary, Jake. Especially since I don’t really want to be in the same room as you are.”

  “Fine. Go. I can finish.”

  “It’s not a one-person job.” She threw his words back in his face.

  “I’ll call a friend to help me.” Kyle owed him a favor—probably. And Kyle didn’t hate him.

  “I don’t think this house is big enough for two self-righteous butt faces.”

  He had to hold on to the ladder rail to keep from falling off. She was funny. He thought he might put “self-righteous butt face” on his business card.

  “Let’s just finish,” she said, picking up the fallen wallpaper. “Can we still use this?”

  He nodded, then took it from her. “You just want to make sure I line it up right,” he teased. But she didn’t say anything back. They wallpapered in silence, and he had no choice but to think about Grace and what a strange person she was. When he was a teenager, he couldn’t wait to get his license; to him, driving meant freedom. He could go wherever he wanted, see whomever he wanted—until his parents gave him a curfew and took away the car when he broke it.

  But Grace didn’t drive at all. He’d seen one of those Schwinns from the seventies on the porch, basket and all. He thought it was just a decoration. That, apparently, was her car. No wonder she had such great legs.

  Great legs and a pink bra. The glue fumes must be getting to him.

  The wallpaper finally stuck. And the wall wasn’t letting go—the house made sure of that. The house liked this one. She had good taste in wallpaper, and she took care to clean the house’s nooks and crannies. Grace liked the nooks and crannies. She didn’t drag furniture across the floor without putting something underneath the legs first, she didn’t put four thousand little nails in the walls, and every time she came home, she let out this happy sigh and the house would take it into its walls and ceilings and nooks and crannies.

  The house knew that Grace just needed time to see that Jake was as right for her as the house was. But time wouldn’t do anyone any good if they were never together. And Grace needed to be periodically reminded of how handsome Jake was, and how useful. A woman liked a man to make her feel special and taken care of. The house knew Jake could be that man.

  If only they didn’t kill each other first.

  Chapter 7

  “Hi, Jake. I’m sorry to bother you again, but I wasn’t sure who to call.” Grace peeked nervously around the doorway as she left a message for Jake. “I think something is living in my oven. Or behind it. It sounds big. Can you, I don’t know, come take out the oven?”

  She hung up, then took one step into the kitchen. The furious scratching paused. Don’t be such a baby, she told herself. Then another scratch, and she ran out of the kitchen as if her bunny slippers had wings.

  She stopped at the top of the stairs, feeling like an idiot. It was probably a mouse. Or a rat. Ugh, a rat would be so much worse. Or a raccoon. With rabies. Oh, God. She was going to have to just move. She didn’t want to move. She loved this house.

  Her cell phone rang, and since she was still clutching it within an inch of its life, she jumped out of her skin. Thank God, she thought. Jake to the rescue.

  “Happy Fourth of July!”

  That sure didn’t sound like the voice of the man who was going to save her from the hell-beast trapped behind her stove.

  “Mary Beth?”

  “Yes, hi. What are you doing today?”

  Grace knew she should spend the day working on the syllabi for her upcoming classes, or maybe unpack a few more boxes. But another round of furious scratching from the kitchen reminded her: Hell-beast.

  “Nothing. I’d love to get out of the house.”

  “Great! Come to a barbecue. I’ll pick you up at one. Super-casual, just bring something to drink if you don’t like beer.”

  Grace didn’t like beer. She wished she liked beer. It would be much cheaper to drink beer than those fruity umbrella drinks she usually ordered. She had perfected her mean margarita recipe. That could be fun for a barbecue. But that would mean digging out her blender, which was definitely in a box, and that box was probably in her kitchen.

  She’d figure something else out.

  Her groceries were still in the foyer, a bottle of red wine perched on top. She liked wine, and this wine was not in the kitchen. She ran up the stairs to s
hower and change. She couldn’t hear the scritch-scratching from upstairs, and when she listened at the top of the stairs, it seemed to have stopped. Which either meant the mouse had gone back to its family in a different part of Willow Springs, or it was loose in the house. She shivered, threw on the first set of clean clothes she could find, grabbed the bottle of wine, and went outside to wait for Mary Beth.

  Jake needed another beer, but he wasn’t sure how to make that happen. He was sitting in the sun, which was making him hot, but his feet were in the kiddie pool, which was making him cool. It was all balancing out to perfect comfort—well, almost perfect. He was out of beer.

  He threw a pleading look at Missy, but she just rolled her eyes and went back to talking to her girlfriends. Kyle was over at his massive grill with every other male in the county, so that wasn’t going to work. This was it. Jake was just going to have to die of thirst. With his feet in a kiddie pool.

  He jumped when he felt something cold and wet on his neck. “Here you go, lazy.” Mary Beth was standing in his sun, but she’d brought him a beer so he forgave her.

  “Hey, sis. What’d you bring?” He hoped potato salad. She made a mean potato salad.

  “Nothing but Grace,” she said, stepping aside to reveal the professor, wearing a short pink sundress and clutching a bottle of wine. Jake wished she was potato salad.

  “Hi.” Grace waved, and when she lifted her arm, her dress rode up a little. That was a pretty short dress for his professor. She must have caught him looking, though, because she blushed and looked away.

  “Todd is coming later with the potato salad when he gets off work. He said he didn’t trust you to leave any for him,” Mary Beth told him with a scowl.

  “I’m deeply offended. My own brother-in-law.”

  Mary Beth snorted at him, then flipped his baseball hat off his head. “Come on, Grace. I’ll introduce you to people.”