Home Sweet Home (A Southern Comfort Novel) Read Online Free PDF

abstract design, a jumble of colors and shapes that shouldn’t make sense, but did. It kind of reminded Grace of a Jackson Pollock painting—it looked haphazard and easy, but there was an unconscious order to the madness that drew her in. The Library Window, as it was cleverly called, was impressive, and so was the library’s collection of DIY books. Grace had a pretty good selection checked out: How to Maximize Small Spaces , The Modern Chick’s Guide to Home Improvement , You Don’t Need a Man, You Need a Hammer , and, just for fun, The Greek Tycoon’s Virgin Secretary .
    She had used the books to guide her through fixing a wonky kitchen cabinet. She found instructions on how to replace her broken toilet seat, which made her very proud, even if she almost snapped her cheap-o wrench trying to get the rusted old bolts off. The process for replacing a loose top piece for the newel post on her banister seemed too complicated, so she just glued it, which seemed to work.
    But none of the books, not even her new home-repair confidence, was helping. She sat at her kitchen table, her panicked gaze switching between the pages of The Home Plumber’s Guide to Home Plumbing and her misbehaving kitchen sink. She was working up the courage to identify the source of the leak, which would entail turning the water back on. If she turned the water back on, her kitchen would flood again. She wasn’t sure if the checkerboard linoleum could handle another rush of misbehaving kitchen water.
    But the plumbing book made no sense to her. There were diagrams and pictures and words, and those three things had gotten her through other projects. But anxiety made the augers and pivot balls and bibs swim before her eyes. Plus, she needed a pipe wrench. All she had were pliers.
    They didn’t work. She’d tried.
    And when she called Jane to freak out and maybe get her much-more-practical-and-handy sister to come down and fix her sink, Jane told her that the two things she never messed with were plumbing and wiring. Because only idiots messed with plumbing and wiring when they didn’t know what they were doing.
    “But you know who does know what he’s doing?”
    Grace hung up before Jane could tell her to call Handsome Jake.
    So, instead of calling someone who would help her out, Grace sat at her kitchen table with her legs crossed (no water meant no toilet, she soon realized) and risked a glance at her refrigerator, where Jane had tacked Mary Beth’s card with Jake’s number on the back.
    She shouldn’t ask him for help. She should just call a regular plumber. She could just get a recommendation. But the only person in town she knew well enough to call so early in the morning was Mary Beth, and if she did that, Mary Beth would just send her brother over. That would save Grace the trouble of calling Jake herself, which would limit her exposure to his patronizing tone. But then Jake would know she was, too—what was she, annoyed? Intimidated? Chicken?
    Yes.
    But she was going to have to be able to use her kitchen and bathroom eventually.
    Letting out the kind of heavy, self-pitying sigh that she only indulged in when she was alone, Grace got up from the table and plodded miserably to the refrigerator. She pulled the horse magnet, which apparently came with the house, off the clean, white surface. She held the card to the fridge with one finger.
    “Grace Williams, you are being ridiculous,” she told herself. Out loud. Because she’d rather start talking to herself out loud than call a perfectly competent person who was sort-of-willing to help. She bopped her head on the refrigerator door once, then once more, then she peeled off Jake’s number and started to dial.
     
    Jake’s head was buzzing.
    He shook himself awake, but it still took him a second to recognize where he was. Brown plaid couch, neon beer signs on the wall. Kyle’s house.
    Kyle had been on call all weekend, and, in solidarity, Jake had behaved himself. He was gone so much