Eve had finally crested the hill and reached her car. She unlocked it, trying not to look at the bumper where there may or may not be a Jacob-sized dent (she didn’t know, having refused to check), and shoved most of her shopping bags inside. Her current housing situation was . . . well, more like a squatting situation, and until that was resolved, she probably shouldn’t traipse into Castell Cottage with all the new clothing and toiletries she’d just bought.
Since Jacob had no idea she was living in his spare room, and all.
She was going to tell him, of course! At some point.
“I don’t see how that’s crisis-y,” Dani was saying, “unless he’s dead. Or suing. But it doesn’t sound like he’s doing either of those things, is he?”
“No,” Eve muttered, “just killing me slowly via frostbite in revenge.”
“Pardon?”
“He’s a bit of an arsehole, is all.” In fact, she felt a rant on the subject building in her chest, like a bubble that needed popping.
“Due to the car-hitting thing?”
“Yes, and also due to his personality.”
“How unfortunate,” Chloe murmured absently.
“He’s—completely unreasonable,” Eve said, warming to the topic. “Intimidatingly focused and alarmingly straightforward and apparently determined not to like anyone.”
“Sounds like Chlo,” Dani said. Which brought Eve up short for a moment, because actually . . . well. That did sound like Chloe. Very like her, on a superficial level at least.
“Charming,” said the woman herself. “And accurate. Just feed him, Evie, that’ll soften him up. Everyone likes food.”
And now Eve’s mind was thrust backward to that morning, to the curious zip in her belly when she’d felt Jacob’s mouth on her skin. His mouth. On her skin. Goodness gracious. She sucked in a breath and started walking again, stomping over the B&B’s gravel drive. “Maybe. I don’t know. This morning, he did seem like he might . . .” She trailed off, suddenly hot all over and ever so slightly confused.
“What?” Dani prompted. “Like he might what?”
“Never mind. I’ve got to go now.”
“Do you? How sudden and suspicious,” Dani drawled.
“Are you perchance hiding something, little sister?” That was Chloe.
“No,” Eve lied. “It’s just that, if he catches me on the phone, he’ll probably flush it down the toilet.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“So I’ll text you later, love you, bye.” Eve hung up with a twinge of guilt toward her sisters and absolutely no guilt toward Jacob, who totally deserved to be mischaracterized as a phone-flushing prison warden so Eve could avoid awkward conversations.
Totally.
Chapter Eight
One upside of having his brain slammed against his skull? It made Jacob sleep like the dead. Or rather, he had slept like the dead last night, and had fallen asleep easily this evening. But now he was awake again, so maybe his sleeping superpower had already gone.
He rolled over and eyed the blinking blue light of his alarm clock in the dark. 1:11 A.M. For fuck’s sake. He was in the process of burrowing deeper into the blankets when a particular awareness zipped down his spine.
He’d woken because something was wrong.
With a grimace, Jacob threw off the covers and dragged his aching bones out of bed. Striding to the window, he snatched open the curtains and was hit in the face by a waft of warm, summer-scented night air. He stared out at the grounds for a moment, letting his eyes adjust to the moonlight. When adjustment failed to happen, he realized he’d forgotten to grab his glasses.
Bloody concussion. Since when did a man who’d been short-sighted since childhood forget his glasses?
He was just turning back to get them when he heard it. Loud. Harsh. Unmistakable. The sound that’d roused him from his sleep, a siren of danger and destruction.
Quack. Quack. Quack.
Ducks.
Gripping the windowsill with his good hand, Jacob stuck his head out of the window, then remembered that bellowing at ducks at 1 A.M. with a houseful of sleeping guests was not conducive to five-star reviews. Crap. He turned and stomped out of the bedroom, snagging his glasses on the way. Maneuvering quickly and quietly through the B&B was a familiar act, if a little more difficult now his body had become a giant bruise. Still, the knowledge that ducks were defiling his precious, perfectly arranged garden—shitting in his pond, no doubt, the bastards—pushed him harder and faster.
He broke out of the back door minutes later, only realizing he was shirtless when a breeze bathed his bare torso. For fuck’s sake. He always wore his pajama set—always—but on the one night he couldn’t face wrestling his cast through the armhole . . .
Whatever. Didn’t matter. He had ducks to shoo.
Although, as Jacob strode across the grass, he realized he couldn’t hear the ducks anymore. Instead, he caught snatches of a voice, low and pure and kind of pearlescent, singing like a fairy-tale siren. Notes rose and fell on the wind, and he stopped walking, vaguely hypnotized. What the bloody hell was that? He rather liked it. Unless it belonged to an inhuman creature luring him to his death, in which case, he hated it, but damn, it was bloody effective. He stared into the darkness of the garden for a moment, trying to locate the source, until—QUACK. The voice cut out and the ducks returned. Fuck. He shook himself and started toward the pond again.
Past the cherry tree, around the folly, left at his carefully arranged wildflower planter—because meadows were pretty but order was prettier—and . . . there. The pond. It was a lovely sight, with the moonlight slanting off its narrow surface, and all that crap. There were just two things wrong with the whole scene.
One: the ducks. The fucking ducks. Two of them. The first was gliding over his pond as if it had the right, and the second was waddling about the banks, foraging for food.
Which brought Jacob to problem number two: Eve goddamn Brown, sitting there with a bag of bread, feeding the bastards. Encouraging their presence. Ruining everything, which he suspected was a particular talent of hers.
Although that thought came with a niggling sense of unfairness, because . . . she hadn’t ruined breakfast. Quite the opposite. She’d been thrown in at the deep end and it turned out he admired the way she swam. He’d been dangerously close to not-hating her presence—until the Accidental Finger Lick had brought him back down to earth via the power of embarrassment.
But he’d decided to wipe that unfortunate incident from his mind. So. Focus on the issue at hand, Jacob.
“What are you doing?” he demanded.
She jumped half a foot in the air, slapped a hand to her chest, and released a little scream. Christ. Hadn’t she heard him coming? Did the woman have any situational awareness at all? Now he was worried about her being murdered or kidnapped when left unattended.
Worrying because such an event would leave him chefless. Obviously.
“Oh,” she said, slightly breathless. “Jacob.” She twisted to look at him, the side of her face softly illuminated by the moon. This sort of light turned her dark skin silvery and made her wide eyes into mirrors. Her braids were loose, spilling over her shoulders, practically forcing his gaze downward, at which point he discovered she wasn’t wearing a bra.