Read Online Jane Austen Goes to Hollywood by Abby McDonald - Free Book Online Page A

bubbled into Grace’s mind, and in a split second, she could see it. The possibility. She could kiss him: just move in those last few inches between them, press her lips to his, reach out to touch his face . . .
    She reeled back. “I should go!” she exclaimed, face burning. What if he could tell what she’d been thinking? What if he
knew
? “But, thanks. For tonight. It was fun!”
    “Sure.” Theo seemed thrown. “I . . . Will I see you again, before you leave?”
    “Maybe?” Grace gulped. “I don’t know. I mean, we’ll be busy. But . . . take care!”
    Theo blinked. “Uh, you too.”
    There was another pause.
    “OK, then!” Grace backed away. “Bye!”
    She turned and fled up the front path. What was she doing? Why did she have to go and ruin everything? This was good-bye; it was supposed to matter.
    “Theo?” Grace turned, but he was already walking away, a silhouette against the city lights.
    Her heart fell. It was over.
    She let herself into the house.



Hallie didn’t understand her sister. There they were: delivered from poverty to the land of fame, fortune, and twenty-four seven valet service, and Grace was moping around like someone had just died.
    Which, OK, someone had, but as far as Hallie was now concerned, dropping dead of a heart attack was the best thing their lying, cheating disgrace of a father had done in a long while.
    “Will you just relax?” Hallie emerged from her new bedroom to find Grace heaving boxes up the guesthouse stairs; her face set in that mousy little frown she’d been wearing ever since their U-Haul had left San Francisco city limits. Hallie had been tired enough of it after the first hour, but now, three weeks into summer, it was seriously threatening her good mood. “We’re not in a prison camp somewhere,” she reminded Grace. “Let someone else do the heavy lifting.”
    “Like who?” Grace stubbornly shoved the box down the hall.
    “I don’t know.” Hallie shrugged. “The housekeeper, maybe, or the gardener. . . .”
    “They’re Uncle Auggie’s staff, not ours,” Grace reminded her. Hallie just rolled her eyes. Details!
    “Hasn’t he told us, like, a hundred times? What’s his is ours — and that includes Julio. You’re looking at this all wrong.” She grabbed Grace’s arm and steered her to the window. “See?”
    Grace tried to tug away. “Hallie . . .”
    “No, look!” Hallie insisted, opening the window out onto the courtyard below. “How can you not be happy right now? This is heaven!”
    It was. Pure paradise. Uncle Auggie’s mansion was in the style of an English country estate, all crumbling red bricks and billowing clouds of white roses. It struck Hallie as kind of ridiculous — given that they were five thousand miles and at least a hundred years away from Victorian England — but she guessed that when you were that rich, the usual rules of taste and decency didn’t apply. And what her newly beloved uncle lacked in substance, he certainly made up for in style. The back of the house was all folding glass partition: opening out onto a patio area large enough to entertain two dozen of his closest friends on the white calico-covered couches. Beyond that, immaculate green lawn stretched down to the pool area, a perfect rectangle of gleaming tile and sandstone, with canopied sun loungers and a dining area.
    Their guesthouse was at the back of the property: a sweet cottage adorned with a thatched roof and white shutters, overlooking a tiny paved courtyard filled with ceramic cherub statues. Hallie breathed in the faint scent of roses and felt utterly content. “Everything’s going to be OK now.” She beamed at Grace. “I told you everything would work out, and it has!”
    “Sure, except for how we’re going to support ourselves,” Grace replied, in her familiar depressing refrain. “And if Mom’s going to be able to get a job, or if we can —”
    “La, la, la!” Hallie covered her ears. “I’m not listening!”
    She