Jacob, by contrast, had been on his absolute best behavior during all meetings. After all, Marissa was the one giving him this opportunity based on nothing but the essay he’d emailed her months ago outlining point by point why he would be an excellent bet for one of the stalls on offer. He certainly owed her the bare respect of paying attention to whatever she said.
Turning to look at Craig, Jacob said stiffly, “I have fractured my wrist.” He’d have thought that much was obvious, what with the cast and all.
Craig released a snicker that signaled incoming bullshit. “How’d you manage that, Spock? Sudoku-ing too hard?”
Jacob set his jaw. He didn’t appreciate Spock comments. He’d received a lot of them over his lifetime, and he knew exactly what they were supposed to imply, and they made him want to throttle people before sitting them down for a long and detailed chat on why the world would be a much better place if they stopped congratulating themselves on being normal and started to accept that there were countless different normals, and Jacob’s kind was just as fine as everyone else’s.
In his head, that detailed chat usually involved a lot of curse words and multiple threats of violence.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t in much of a position to carry out threats of violence, since a woman whose professional respect and continued grace he very much relied on was watching this entire interaction with an unreadable expression. He resigned himself to squashing down his anger for the greater good—well, for his own greater good—when Eve leaned forward to glare flintily at Craig.
Jacob blinked, momentarily taken aback. He hadn’t realized she could glare like that. But it turned out that big, expressive eyes, while very good at sparkling adorably, were just as good at delivering death stares.
“Spock,” Eve repeated after swallowing her mouthful of gingerbread. “What does that mean?”
Craig faltered for a moment. “He’s, er, a character from one of them—”
“No, I know who Spock is,” she said dismissively, as if Craig were being excessively stupid. “I meant, what did you mean by it?”
Craig paused. “Well,” he said after a moment. “Would’ve thought that was obvious.”
Eve produced a lovely, vacant smile. “No,” she said. “Explain it to me.”
Once, as a child, Jacob had seen a mongoose eat a snake. He was now experiencing a similar fascinated, secondhand alarm.
“Welll,” Craig repeated, drawing out the word uncomfortably this time. “Obviously, Spock is . . .”
Eve waited, blinking slowly.
“Spock is . . .”
“What?” she nudged.
“Well, you know that Jacob is . . .”
Eve waited. Then she repeated, “What? Jacob is what?”
“Yes, Mr. Jackson,” Marissa interjected. “Jacob is what?” Much like Eve, she waited for his answer with a deceptively patient smile.
“Erm,” Craig mumbled. “Er. Ah. Never mind.”
“Are you sure?” Eve asked.
“Doesn’t matter.”
“But—”
“I said it doesn’t bloody matter!” Craig barked, his face flushing red.
Jacob’s amusement drained away at that, replaced by a cold fury. “Do not,” he said quietly, “raise your voice at my employees.”
Craig shifted uncomfortably, looking away. “Christ,” he muttered. “Let’s bloody get on with it.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” Marissa said severely. “If you’re done disrupting proceedings, Mr. Jackson, we are all busy people and have no time to waste.”
Craig’s redness ratcheted up to fire engine, but, with a wary glare in Eve and Jacob’s direction, he kept his mouth shut.
Marissa opened the notebook in front of her and flicked through a few pages before starting a speech about schedules and orders of events. But, honestly, Jacob barely heard a word. He was too busy staring at Eve, who had produced a notebook of her own from somewhere and was already scribbling bullet points as Marissa spoke.
He looked at the downward sweep of her dark lashes, the sugar-sweet pink gloss on that lovely, clever mouth, the quick glide of her hand over the page. And then he saw the title she’d written on the clean, white paper.
Notes for Jacob.
All the breath swept out of him in a long, quiet wave. Eve, he had noticed, helped everyone. So it shouldn’t hit him like a fist to the chest when she helped him, too—yet his heart stuttered a bit beneath the blow of his surprise.
This woman—he kept waiting for her to hate him more, but she appeared to be hating him less. They were moving backward, firmly away from safe, spiky interactions and closer to something dangerously like friendship.
Jacob really wasn’t sure what to do with that.
Chapter Eleven
Eve’s family saw her as “the social one”—but only because her eldest sister was a hermit, and her middle sister was a bookworm with a vague disdain for human contact. If Chloe or Dani cared enough to collect friendships, they’d probably be far more successful than Eve—because Eve’s method of socializing had been born out of desperation and careful observation, a shield of giggling charm and always-up-for-it flair designed to hide the ways she didn’t quite fit in.
It was odd, really; the more she thought about it, the more she occasionally reminded herself of . . . Jacob.
Well, only a little bit. Just the awkward parts.
So when the man himself announced on Friday morning that they’d finally be doing the housekeeping together, alone, Eve waited patiently for self-conscious anxiety to consume her. She should be a nervous wreck, frantic about maintaining a persona that worked best in group situations, worried he might see right through her and find her irritating or unnerving or just not right.
Instead, she surprised herself by feeling utterly serene. Because, honestly? Jacob wasn’t like other people. He’d found her irritating from the start, and he hadn’t bothered to hide it, so she’d long since bothered to care. It turned out there was a difference between the heavy weight of wondering what people might think, and the easy acceptance of knowing what Jacob thought because he bloody well said it out loud.
Plus, she was pleased to finally offer some help.
So when he dragged Eve off to get cleaning supplies, she found herself skipping merrily after him, singing, “We’re off to see the storeroom, the wonderful storeroom of Oz.”
“Good God, woman,” Jacob muttered. “Your energy is indecent. Weren’t you moaning this morning about how early we have to wake up?”
“I think I’m getting so little sleep it’s making me hyperactive,” Eve said.
“Like a toddler,” he replied. “Delightful.”
“Anyway, you said I could sing. You said, something something, blah blah blah, no AirPod, Eve can sing.”
She expected him to express regret over that fact. Instead, all he did was murmur gravely, “Ah. So I did.” Then he shut up about the singing thing completely.
For an outrageous grump, he could be incredibly reasonable sometimes.
They entered a green-and-white wallpapered hallway where Jacob caught her wrist and tugged her to a stop. You’d think, after all the touching and rescuing there’d been the other night, Eve would be accustomed to physical contact with this man by now. But when his long fingers pressed firmly into her skin, she felt as if he’d shocked her—tiny, delicious bursts of electricity sparkling over her flesh.