by Sarah Title
The party lasted well into the night. Marilyn stood on a chair and announced that they had raised the funds to repair the library window, and the whole crowd, Willow Springs townies and Pembroke people alike, let out a cheer and kept dancing. Well, most of the crowd. The owner of the Spinster House was upstairs, showing Jake how much she loved him.
The house tried to settle around them, to give them some peace and quiet, but there were so many people in the yard. These two were impossible. First they hated each other, then they loved each other, then they refused to admit it. The house was exhausted. Maybe one hundred years was enough of matchmaking. Maybe it was time to take its talents in a new direction.
Epilogue
Grace groaned at the persistent nudge at her shoulder.
“Come on, Professor. Rise and shine.”
Then she really groaned. She’d promised Jake that once spring break started, she’d help him tear down the wall between the kitchen and the living room. He was right, it was a good idea and it would open up the space and let some much-needed light into the kitchen. But did they have to do it so early in the morning?
She learned pretty quickly that Jake was an early riser. No matter how late he kept her up—and it was often indecently late—he was up at dawn, ready to tackle the day. And if the day didn’t have enough in it to tackle, he made more. Now that he’d been officially living with her for six months, he was ready to put his mark on the house. And Grace was more than ready to help him with that. Or she would be. Later.
“Can’t we start at noon?” she asked in a voice that she hoped was both plaintive and seductive.
Jake kissed her behind her ear and she squirmed into him. “Nice try,” he breathed into her ear. She shivered.
“Can’t you do that door thing?” she asked, turning into him without opening her eyes. He had taken the kitchen door down yesterday and they rejoiced by running back and forth through the doorway like kids. Then he took the door out to the garage, where he was planning on turning it into a table. She had no idea how he was going to do that; it seemed like a lot of work. Work he could be doing now instead of making her get out of bed to tear down a wall.
“That’s a weekend project,” he scolded. “This is a whole-week project.”
She shimmied further underneath him. “I’ll give you a whole-week project,” she said, and nipped his nose. He kissed her, like she hoped he would, and she pulled him closer and felt his arms wrap around her and his legs tangle with hers.
A crash from downstairs had them pulling apart.
“What was that?” she asked Jake, who had been with her the entire time and could not possibly know what the crash was.
“Mr. Bingley?” he asked, but when they turned, Mr. Bingley was at the foot of the bed, cleaning his ears.
Jake rolled off Grace and out of bed. She groaned and followed him. It had been a suspiciously loud crash, and since the house had been devoid of suspicious destruction since the night of the Jane Austen party, this was probably worth investigating. Jake stepped into a pair of boxers, she grabbed her robe, and he led her out of the room.
When they got to the bottom of the stairs, Grace walked into Jake’s back where he had stopped on the landing.
“Holy—” he said, and Grace followed his eyes to the living room. And the kitchen. Which they could now see from the living room because the wall had fallen down.
Grace coughed as a plume of plaster dust made its way to the stairs. “How did that happen?” she asked her expert contractor boyfriend.
“I have no idea,” he said. “I’m just glad that wasn’t a load-bearing wall.”
Because, really, the whole wall was down. It was a mess, plaster chunks everywhere, pieces of the frame wobbling dangerously.
“I guess our demo work is done,” Jake said.
“Does that mean we can go back to bed?” Grace asked, then bolted up the stairs as Jake chased her. She dove onto the bed, and Jake landed next to her. Mr. Bingley fled into the hallway and padded down the stairs, far from the giggles and squeals in the bedroom.
The light from the windows at the front of the house stretched back to reflect off the glass on the kitchen cabinets, sending the plaster dust dancing like fairies. The light would get brighter and stronger as the morning sun rose higher, and then the afternoon sun would reach through the kitchen. The house would be warm and bright and beautiful, the kind of place a person would want to stay in, to build a life in. The kind of place a person wants to stay in forever.
Sarah Title has worked as a barista, a secretary, a furniture painter, and once managed a team of giant walking beans. She currently leads a much more normal life as a librarian in West Virginia. Her first book, Kentucky Home, was published in 2012, and a follow-up novella, Kentucky Christmas, came out in 2013. Her novella Full Moon Pie appeared in the anthology Delicious, written with Lori Foster and Lucy Monroe. Visit her online at www.sarahtitle.com, where she talks about books and dogs and reality television. It’s a very classy website.
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eKENSINGTON BOOKS are published by
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Copyright © 2014 by Sarah Title
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First Electronic Edition: April 2014
eISBN-13: 978-1-60183-115-6
eISBN-10: 1-60183-115-3
ISBN: 978-1-6018-3115-6