Was Eve in? At this point, she wasn’t even certain she was conscious. “Erm. I must admit, I’m slightly confused on several counts. Jacob wanted to show me a good time?” Jacob had already shown her a good time. Very effectively. And most enthusiastically, she remembered, her cheeks flushing. More to the point, he wasn’t here to show her a good time now, so what the bloody hell was going on?
“Well, he’s not a big fan of going out dancing,” Tessa said.
“Shocker,” Alex interjected.
“But he thought you might be, and also that you might want to talk to someone other than him, for once, so he told us all about you and we decided you sounded excellent and that we should definitely hang out.”
Eve’s heart started vibrating, which was alarming, but entirely understandable, all things considered. “He told you all about me? What . . . what did that entail?” She tried to stamp out the tentative pleasure in her voice, but judging by Alex’s smirk, she wasn’t entirely successful.
“He said,” Alex grinned, “that you were funny, and sweet, and then he had an embolism from being too complimentary and refused to say anything else except, Just be nice to her, Alexandra, or I’ll murder you in your sleep.”
Eve bit her lip on a smile. First he gave her the mother of all orgasms. Then he brooded himself into a tizzy about it. Now he was trying to make her happy in a predictably cloak-and-dagger fashion. It was all so fucking Jacob she might just pass out.
For God’s sake, how the hell was she supposed to resist him? She adored him. It was undoubtedly true that mature, sensible women didn’t sleep with their bosses—but it seemed painfully clear, in that moment, that mature, sensible Eves weren’t supposed to let men like Jacob Wayne pass them by.
So she wouldn’t. She simply wouldn’t. Maybe she’d made bad choices in the past, but she was changing now. Eve was going to follow everything she felt for this man, and if it all ended in tears, she’d simply face the consequences like the grown woman she was.
Just making that decision lifted a weight from her shoulders. A slow smile spread across her face. She felt the urge to go and throw herself at Jacob right this instant, but first . . .
Well, first, she was kind of missing her sisters, and the two women in front of her were chaotic enough to fill at least a quarter of that gap.
“All right,” she said finally. “I’ll go out with you.”
“Yay!” Tessa clapped her hands, while Alex produced a surprisingly sweet smile. In that moment, with matching dimples in their right cheeks and warm, whiskey eyes, Eve finally cottoned on.
“Oh! You’re twins!”
Alex arched an amused eyebrow. “Uh . . . we’re identical. Don’t tell me you only just noticed.”
“Don’t be annoying, Alex, who cares if she just noticed? Eve, come on, get dressed. I love your hair. We’re going to the pub.”
“We might go to the pub,” Alex corrected. “We don’t even know if she drinks.”
“If she doesn’t, she can have lemonade and peanuts. There’s nowhere else interesting to go.”
“We can grab some Thai food and eat in the park like respectable reprobates.”
“You think I’m putting vintage Cavalli on grass?” Tessa demanded.
“Hold on,” Eve said, “there’s Thai food here?”
“See?” Alex grinned, triumphant.
“Eve, no, don’t, don’t be seduced by Thai food.” Tessa came over and put her hands on Eve’s shoulders, at which point Eve finally realized the woman seemed so tall because she was wearing killer heels. But, judging by Alex’s height in shiny, flat brogues, they were also simply very tall regardless. “Listen to me,” Tessa said, low and urgent, as if imparting state secrets of international importance. “We can get Thai food whenever we want. Tonight is our first night of meeting and we’re supposed to become best friends—”
Alex snorted loudly in the background.
“Which means either we have to get drunk together, or we have to make terrible decisions together. I am entirely open to either, but the point is we need to go out and make absolute tits of ourselves in order to forge a lasting best friend bond because—”
“What the hell do you need a lasting best friend bond for?” Alex demanded. “You have a twin.”
“Because,” Tessa forged on firmly, “all friendships are better in threes, like the three musketeers or Totally Spies, so Alex and I need you, and also because you’re driving Jacob sideways up the wall and off his trolley—I salute you by the way—and also because I saw you at the supermarket three days ago wearing a T-shirt that said UNFUCK YOU, OR WHATEVER and I desperately need to know where it was from.”
“Well,” Eve said, faintly stunned. “My. Goodness.”
“I never,” Alex said dryly, “should’ve let you open the rosé.”
“I, er . . . I don’t receive many instant offers of best friendship,” Eve admitted.
“Then you really must take this one,” Tessa said reasonably.
Eve found herself smiling. “Yes, I suppose I must.”
Chapter Seventeen
Mont’s pub, the Rose and Crown, was a cozy mixture of dark wood and green velvet that seemed infinitely suited to the Lake District, and to Montrose himself. Eve spotted him as soon as she entered arm in arm with the twins; he was pouring a glass of gin with a practiced air while chatting to a grizzled customer who looked alarmingly like some sort of biker.
“Mont’s cute, don’t you think?” Tessa said over the speakers’ frantic cascade of “From the Ritz to the Rubble.”
Eve blinked, caught unawares. “Erm . . . weren’t we just talking about macramé?”
Alex rolled her eyes. “Tess thinks that if you ask people unexpected questions they’ll get confused and tell the truth.”
“Oh. Well. Yes, your brother is cute.”
“Perfect,” Tess beamed. “Want to date him?”
“No, she doesn’t want to date him, genius,” Alex interjected. “Anyway, we’re supposed to be bonding. No man-talk. It’s boring.”
Tessa gave a mournful sigh. “Fine. Fine! Come on. Eve, lemon or lime?”
Eve wrinkled her nose as they approached the bar. “You need to be more specific. In general? In drinks? Appearance-wise? As the base flavor for a citrus drizzle cake?”
“Oh my God, all of those.”
“Okay, well, lemon is better in drinks—sharper. Limes look more interesting. But lemon goes better in cake, unless it’s cheesecake.”
“Best color for a Suzuki GSX?” Alex asked.
“I have no idea what a Suzuki is, but I’m going to say lime.”
“Amazing,” Alex said. “You don’t even know what you’re saying and you’re saying everything right.”
Eve laughed, feeling strangely . . . light. She’d never been in this situation, the kind where you met new people with the aim of making friends, yet didn’t experience the crushing weight of self-consciousness. With everyone except her sisters, she felt a slight pressure to perform, to hide away the most annoying parts of herself in order to be liked.