Eve sucked in a breath, pulling back her fingers when they touched something soft and warm and . . . human. Before her, Jacob blushed like a traffic light, his chin snapping up so he was staring straight ahead. Or, more specifically, over her head.
“Did you just bite me?” she asked. Except it hadn’t been a bite, because there were no teeth involved. Just the velvet brush of . . .
Jacob’s mouth?
“No!” he barked. “I was—the toast was very good. I, erm, got a bit carried away, and I wasn’t paying attention, so. Sorry.”
Oh. He’d been so busy eating the toast, he’d almost eaten her. Usually, Eve would laugh about that. Tease him mercilessly, at the very least.
Instead she found herself staring at her still-tingling fingertips.
“Well,” Jacob said into the silence. “I think that’s enough breakfast for today.” It wasn’t until he turned and walked away that Eve realized how close they’d been standing. He put his plate down on the counter with a clatter that seemed distinctly un-Jacoblike, then continued speaking with his back to her. It was a very broad back. It seemed to rise and fall with his breaths quite frequently. Or maybe she was just looking very hard.
“Mont must have set you up for this morning,” he said. “Are you aware of afternoon tea?”
Eve bit her lip. RHYTHM AND ROUTINE: Chapter Three, Section A, THE FULL EXPERIENCE: Afternoon tea and cake is to be served in the yellow parlor daily at four o’clock.
“Yes,” she murmured. “I’m aware of afternoon tea.”
“And you can bake?”
“Of course,” she snorted, momentarily affronted.
“Good. Other than that, I’ll need to meet with you at some point to go over basic paperwork, and there’s a meeting this week amongst the Gingerbread Festival organizers that we should both attend. Oh—and, since I’m currently down an arm, I’ll need your help with housekeeping after breakfast.” He paused, cleared his throat, and added quickly, “But not for the next few days. No. Er . . .”
Eve tried to shake the feeling he was making this part up as he went along.
“My aunt,” he said finally, “has rearranged a few appointments so she can help me. Which means your only remaining duties today are afternoon tea. If you need anything, I’m usually in my office. But I’ll probably be very busy so you might not find me there or, you know, I might not answer when you knock.” With that, he turned away from the counter and stalked toward the door.
“Okay,” Eve said. “Erm . . . Jacob, are you—?”
He left.
* * *
Eve had intended to keep the details of yesterday’s disastrous interview private, which is to say, completely off her family’s radar. But later that day, she made the fatal mistake of calling her sisters for a post-shopping phone call that quickly veered from the price of a decent bra (astronomical) to Eve’s latest goings-on. After a valiant three minutes of prevarication, she unfortunately sang like a canary.
“Oh, Eve,” Danika said. “You can always be relied upon for an interesting story. Really, with you to live through vicariously, Chloe and I barely need to leave the house.”
“And a good thing, too,” Chloe murmured absently, “because I’m far too busy to bother.”
For some reason, the word busy made Eve think of Jacob. Too many things were making her think of Jacob, at present—probably because his sudden disappearance earlier had jabbed at an old and much-disturbed scar.
Eve hefted the shopping bags weighing down her arms—she really needed to start working out, if her current exhaustion was any indication—and continued the uphill trek back to Castell Cottage. “I should stop telling you two my stories, then,” she said, “because you both need to get a bloody life.”
Twin gasps hit her, one through each AirPod. Left for Chloe, right for Dani.
“How dare you, darling.” That was the left. “I have a life. I built it myself.”
Eve rolled her eyes.
“I’m simply incredibly bogged down with work at the moment,” Chloe went on, and in fairness, Eve could hear the telltale rapid taps of Chloe working at her laptop in the background.
“And I also have a life,” Dani said.
Somewhere in the background, her boyfriend, Zaf, called, “Nope.”
“Shut up, you.”
“Nope.”
“Zafir.” There was the sound of a scuffle, followed by a few grunts. Then Dani laughed, “Let go of me, you awful man.”
“Are you going to stop throwing cushions?” he asked reasonably.
“Do you two mind?” Chloe demanded. “Eve is in the midst of a crisis.”
At the sound of her name, Eve blinked. She’d been drifting off a little bit, there. Thinking about . . .
Well, not about Jacob. Not specifically. More about people in general—about how her friends never liked her quite as much as she liked them. How they dropped her as soon as someone better came along, or pushed her to the edge of the circle when space was tight, or generally treated her as optional rather than vital. She had a little scar on her heart from all those tiny, vicious prods, and Jacob walking out abruptly this morning had left that scar sore and aching.
Not that she’d wanted Jacob to stick around. She might be slightly hard up for friends—real friends, the kind you read about in books—but that didn’t mean Jacob made the cut.
Which was just as well, since he clearly didn’t want to.
“Is it a crisis?” Dani was saying. “Because it sounds as if she’s landed on her feet completely by accident, what with this insta-job. Are you enjoying yourself, Evie-Bean?”
Enjoyment was something Eve rarely considered, when it came to the world of work. Work was something you did to try and feel useful—until you fucked it up. Work was something you did to help the people around you until you weren’t needed anymore. Work was not something you enjoyed in and of itself, because that would only make the situation worse when everything collapsed.
Yet Eve knew she had enjoyed herself that morning. The creative chemistry of cooking, the social aspect of starting her day with so many people—even working in relative solitude, being in control of her own environment, had given her a little thrill.
It was incredibly odd. She assumed the sensation would wear off soon.
“I’m not having a terrible time,” she hedged to her sisters, and ignored their laughter.
“What glowing praise,” Dani snorted. “Have you told Mum and Dad?”
“Yes,” Eve said, which wasn’t technically a lie. She had sent Mum a text that said,
Parents,
I’ve found a month’s interim employment and secured an event-planning contract beginning in September. My current job has provided temporary lodgings, and I’ll deal with the rest later, so don’t worry about me coming home.
Then she’d muted their texts and firmly ignored all their calls. Nothing personal. She was just afraid that if she heard her parents’ voices again before she’d gotten over their last conversation, she might do something mortifying, like cry.
“So where’s the crisis part?” Dani nudged.
“That would be the bit where she ran over her employer, darling,” Chloe said helpfully.