Read Online Home Sweet Home (A Southern Comfort Novel) by Sarah Title - Free Book Online

hadn’t said anything, but she did look at her funny when Grace climbed into her car.
    Jane always said that when Grace found herself in situations like this—which she often did—she needed to raise her chin and brazen through it. Nobody ever need know that Grace was doing absolutely everything wrong. Of course, Jane’s idea of brazening through it was admitting her mistakes and charming everyone into laughing with her.
    But Grace had never found it easy to talk to strangers. She got so nervous that all of her polite small-talk skills, practiced with Jane over the phone, went flying out of her head like a woman with a mouse in her kitchen.
    “Hey, Missy,” said Mary Beth, hugging a woman in a red halter top and blue denim shorts. “Great party.”
    “Thanks,” said Missy. “Just do me a favor, and let Kyle pretend he did all the work? He gets cold feet when he thinks we’re throwing parties together.”
    That sounded like a terrible boyfriend to Grace. But what did she know? She didn’t have one.
    “Missy, this is Grace. She moved into the old house on Grant.”
    Grace took Missy’s outstretched hand and tried to return her warm smile. “I brought wine,” Grace said. “And I’m accidentally wearing pajamas.”
    Missy’s eyes widened for a second, but she quickly recovered her polite smile. “Thanks,” she said, taking the inappropriate wine. “I’m not sure if we have a corkscrew.”
    “There was a mouse,” said Grace.
    Missy just smiled and took the wine into the house.
    Grace turned to explain to Mary Beth that she was not having a stroke, but, really, it was all the mouse’s fault, but Mary Beth had turned to talk to some friends on the other end of the long picnic table. Grace looked around, hoping for some kind of lifeline to pull her from the whirlpool of her own stupidity. The only other person she knew, though, was Jake, and he was scowling at her from under his baseball cap.
    Fine, thought Grace. Brazen through it. She channeled her inner Jane.
    “Beer?”
    Grace hated beer. She knew red wine was a terrible thing to drink on a hot summer afternoon, but beer gave her a headache and she thought it tasted like smelly feet. But the guy standing in front of her was cute, and if he brought her a beer, he’d probably want to flirt with her. She didn’t much like flirting, but at least she wouldn’t be standing alone like an idiot.
    “Thanks,” she said, taking it from him.
    “I’m Kyle,” he said, holding out his hand.
    Uh oh. Missy’s Kyle. “Grace,” she responded in her most platonic tone.
    “So, Mary Beth tells me you’re new in town?”
    “Yes.”
    “Bought that old house on Grant?” Kyle asked after a long pause.
    “Yes.”
    “Jake helping you fix it up?”
    What a strange thing to ask. Was Jake telling people that he was fixing up her house? “Sort of.” But that didn’t feel right, to throw him under the bus like that. He had helped her out of a few bad spots. And she was probably going to ask him to catch a mouse later. “Actually, yeah. He’s doing great.”
    “I’ll bet,” snorted Kyle.
    Grace wasn’t sure what that meant, but it was probably some sort of sexist innuendo. In the interest of small talk, she ignored it. “So, Kyle, what do you do?” she asked, doing exactly the thing Jane had told her not to do.
    Kyle didn’t seem to mind. “I do landscaping.” His hand swept over the expanse of newly cut grass. “And I’m a firefighter,” he added.
    “Wow. That’s a lot of responsibility.”
    “Yeah, well, the firefighting is volunteer. I just, you know, do what I can.”
    “Great,” said Grace, meaning it, but not sure it came out that way.
    “So, you’re a professor?”
    “Yes. I focus on British literature from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. I’m starting at Pembroke in a few weeks.”
    “Cool. You must read a lot.”
    “I guess,” Grace said with a laugh. People always said that. She didn’t know that she read more than the