Ladies' Night Andrews, Kay (great novels .txt) 📖

kitchen cabinet doors have been removed, and that ugly vinyl flooring is currently under attack. Watch this space for frequent updates!

One other thing. Meet my new BFF, Sweetie. She is an adorable poodle mix who was cruelly locked in a bedroom at the cottage and abandoned by her former owners. Can you believe she is the first dog I have ever owned? Sweetie is an expert at watch-dogging and cockroach wrangling, and she works cheap—just a little kibble and a lot of love. Life is full of twists and turns, dead ends and detours, isn’t it? Lose a husband, gain a dog, take a run, find a house to transform.

I can’t wait to see what the next chapter of my life will bring.

Grace uploaded all the before photos she’d taken of the little cottage, resizing and writing captions as she went. The last photo she posted was her favorite, Sweetie, posing on the front steps of the cottage, ears pricked up, tongue lolling, as though to say, “Hey, check me out!”

She held her breath and clicked the PUBLISH toggle on her new blog’s dashboard.

“Just try and hack me now, Ben,” she muttered to herself. She’d knocked off work on the cottage at noon, just so she could come home and re-create her blog. One more time. She’d chosen a new, easier platform, WordPress, and gone through every security move she could think of to foil any other attack on her blog, including running a malware program that would pinpoint and hopefully eliminate whatever method Ben had used to sabotage TrueGrace.com.

“Everything new” was her motto this time around. She didn’t have the graphics knowledge Ben had, and she sure didn’t have any of her former advertisers. But her new platform was clean and simple. The writing was brutally honest, and from the heart. The photos of Mandevilla Manor were clear, and Grace felt certain this project would resonate with all the homeowners, thrifters, and DIY-ers in the world, in a way her old blog never had. How many people, after all, could relate to a three-hundred-dollar Belgian linen tablecloth like the one that had adorned the dining room table at Sand Dollar Lane? Were there really all that many hostesses who wanted recipes calling for black truffle oil and imported pink sea salt?

After she published the blog post, she copied the URL and e-mailed it to every lifestyle blogger she’d ever read, explaining to them that Gracenotes had been taken over by Ben and apologizing, again, for any spurious negative comments they might have seen floating around on the Internet.

I’ve reinvented myself, and my blog. I’m TrueGrace now, and I would love it if you’d drop by and check out my new project. And since I’m starting from scratch, I’d be humbled if you saw fit to add me to your blog roll.

Grace lolled back on her bed pillows and closed her eyes. It was nearly six. She’d been hunched over her laptop for hours. She was tired and sore from being down on her hands and knees hacking away at the kitchen floor. She told herself she was in no mood for divorce-recovery group. And she really dreaded seeing Wyatt Keeler again after her clumsy and humiliating encounter with him after their last session.

She was surprised to find that she was looking forward to seeing the others. Camryn’s wisecracks and brutal honesty never failed to entertain her. Suzanne, quiet, vulnerable Suzanne, seemed close to revealing whatever secrets were tormenting her, and even that gold-plated gold digger Ashleigh was at least good for comic relief.

And yes, she was definitely curious about Paula after witnessing her encounter with the mystery Lexus driver. She got dressed and slipped Sweetie into her now-familiar tote bag, giving her a doggie treat to chew on and keep quiet.

*   *   *

A hastily scrawled note on the back of an envelope was taped to Dr. Paula Talbott-Sinclair’s office door.

DUE TO FAMILY EMERGENCY NO GROUP SESSION TONIGHT—PTS

“What’s going on?” Ashleigh Hartounian stuck her head out the window of her red BMW and called to Camryn Nobles, who was standing in front of the office door, fuming.

“No session tonight,” Camryn said.

“Whaaat?” Ashleigh scrambled out of her car and joined Camryn on the sidewalk in front of the office. She peered into the office window, but there was nothing to see.

“What are we looking at?” Grace asked, as she walked up to the two women.

“See for yourself.” Camryn gestured toward the note taped to the door.

“Huhh,” Grace said, frowning. “And there’s no sign of life inside the office?”

“None that we could see,” Ashleigh said. “So what do we do now?”

“We don’t spend three hundred dollars on Paula’s bullshit, at least tonight,” Camryn said.

“Oooh, that’s exactly how much the pair of shoes I’ve been stalking at Saks are,” Ashleigh said, rubbing her hands together in glee. She bowed in the direction of the door. “Thanks, Paula.”

Camryn adjusted the strap of her pocketbook on her shoulder. “Since I had to clear my calendar anyway, should we go somewhere and grab dinner?”

“Absolutely! I know this adorable new bistro at Saint Armand’s Key,” Ashleigh said. “If we hurry, we can still get in on happy hour martinis.”

Grace glanced at her watch. “What about Suzanne? Shouldn’t we wait for her? I’d feel bad if she came all the way over here just to turn around and go home again. She’s always so quiet, but I get the feeling we’re the only ones she can really talk to.”

“Although she hasn’t really told us anything at all,” Ashleigh pointed out. “I’m thinking whatever she did to get Stackpole to order her to therapy must have been really, really radical. And scary.”

“Scarier than writing on her husband’s mistress’s house and car with blood?” Camryn asked.

“I told you, it wasn’t blood. It was only red paint,” Ashleigh said. “Although now I kind of wish it had been blood, which would wash off, because I was in such a hurry when I did it, I grabbed oil-based paint. And since my lawyer is