But she was going to try.
* * *
When Eve finally opened her mouth, Jacob’s hope swelled. But the only sound she produced was another astonished sob, so he went back to slowly dying.
On the plus side, she was letting him touch her—and she’d mentioned coming back to Skybriar for him, which was good. That was fucking excellent. On the negative side, he’d accidentally admitted the whole love thing, which might be a bit soon, so she could be changing her mind about coming back and considering filing a restraining order instead.
Regardless, hiding his feelings hadn’t worked too well for him last time, so this time, he’d keep going with the truth. “My heart seems to be throwing some kind of fit, and seeing you cry isn’t helping the matter, so if you could at least tell me how to make you stop . . .”
She didn’t tell him jack, but she did dry her eyes with her hands and smile. If anything, that made his heart situation worse.
Then she blurted out, “You are so brave and you are absolutely beautiful and I’m so happy you’re here, and anyone who doesn’t want you as much as you want them is a fucking donut, Jacob, because you are just the most wantable man on planet Earth.”
He blinked slowly, his pulse thudding in his ears. His eyes were stinging a little bit. Shit. God. He swallowed hard.
Then the opening notes of Corinne Bailey Rae’s “Breathless” sparkled in the background, and they both turned to look at Jacob’s car. Tessa gave them a thumbs-up from the driver’s seat before pointing at the stereo.
“What an excellent song choice,” Eve said.
Though Jacob privately agreed, he muttered, “That woman is a menace.”
Eve smiled. “You’re very sexy when you’re grumpy.”
Just like that, the last of his nerves dissolved. “Eve,” he laughed shakily, letting his head fall forward until their noses bumped together. “Please. I’m trying to keep things romantic here.”
“That was romantic,” she argued. “Pointing out your hotness counts as romantic if I also love you while I do it.”
She said it so casually, sprinkled it into her stream of smiling words. Almost as if she knew that saying it outright might short all his circuits.
“You . . . do?” he asked haltingly, his mind approaching the concept with care, taking a cautious examination. Even if what he really wanted was to jump on her words without hesitation, old habits died hard. “Love me, I mean. You . . .”
She reached up and slid a hand into his hair, and he didn’t even mind the fact that she was definitely messing it up. Pushing his head up gently until he met her eyes, Eve murmured, “Yes, Jacob. I love you. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about all my plans, but honestly, they became more and more irrelevant as time went on. As I started to trust myself, and learned what I really value. The truth is, Castell Cottage is my passion, and I love my job, and I want to stay. But also, I love you. And I didn’t want to leave you. I still don’t.”
Jacob felt a bit dizzy. “But—you can leave me. If you want to. If you need to. I just need to know that when you stay, when you’re with me—you mean it. I know you do. I might forget it, sometimes, but I know it, because I know you. Eve—”
“Hey!” A car horn beeped, jolting him out of his giddiness. Well, not entirely. That would be impossible. “Get a room!” someone bellowed.
“Go fuck yourself,” Jacob shouted around the heart wedged in his throat. Funny what a man and his various, malfunctioning organs could accomplish when the most wonderful human being on the planet was involved.
Then the ginger bloke Eve had arrived with got off the bike he’d been perched on a few meters away and wandered over to the queue of cars stuck behind Alex and Tessa. Jacob heard the strange man say in a ludicrously friendly tone, “Listen, mate, I know you’ve got places to be and this traffic’s a nightmare, but . . .” His voice faded out of hearing as he walked away. Jacob waited for more shouting and beeping to ensue, but, to his astonishment, it did not. Instead, the ginger leaned against a stranger’s car, laughing with the occupants through the window.
“Hm,” Jacob said. “He’s quite useful, isn’t he?”
“You’re going soft.”
“Do you mind?”
Eve gave him that gorgeous, sunshine smile. “Certainly not.”
“Good.” Because with her around, he envisioned the softness getting worse. “Now, then—in light of recent declarations—if you could just give me one second to . . .”
She waved a hand. “Oh, yes, whatever you need.”
“Cracking, thanks.” He let go of her and turned away long enough to snag a handful of daisies from the ground. He’d intended all this to be much more put together and professional but—well. He was improvising. Going with the flow. Eve frequently managed to make such behavior look magnificent, so he hoped to achieve something half as great.
A few seconds later, armed with his admittedly sparse roadside bouquet, he went back and thrust the flowers in her direction.
“Oh.” She blinked, as if that was the last thing she’d expected. “Oh. Jacob.” She sniffed and blinked some more.
“Eve, we’ve talked about this. No crying.”
“Shut up and take it, you big baby.”
“I could say the same to you.” He waved the flowers at her, and she finally took them. Flower transference dealt with, he caught her free hand and met her eyes. “Good. So, to recap: I love you. You love me. We’re going home now. Home for both of us. And everything’s going to be fine,” he said steadily, holding her gaze, “because I’m going to trust you, and believe in you, and give you whatever you need.”
“And I’m going to stay,” she replied quietly. “I’m going to stay, and I’m going to love you, and I’m going to try. You taught me how much that matters.”
Those words burned in Jacob like a forest fire, but they left the opposite of destruction in their wake. Because Eve’s love didn’t hurt. If his current feelings were anything to go by, it healed.
“Just to be clear,” he said gruffly, after taking a moment to collect himself, “by accepting these flowers, you have formally agreed to coupledom and commitment, et cetera—”
“Oh, is that what the flowers mean?” she laughed.
“Absolutely.” He hesitated, then pushed through, because she loved him. “Do you have any complaints?”
“Nope.”
Jacob grinned.
Then Eve dropped the daisies, grabbed his arse, and kissed him so hard she almost knocked his glasses off. Tessa turned up the music to obnoxious heights. A few more cars beeped, possibly in outrage, but Jacob liked to interpret the noise as support. Either way, he wasn’t about to stop kissing this woman for anything. He wrapped an arm around the softness of her waist, hauled her closer, and sank into the familiar sweetness of her lips.
He was still grinning when they came up for air.
Epilogue
One Year Later
I can’t believe you got Mother in a hairnet.”
Eve raised a hand to shield her eyes from the late-afternoon sun, squinting in Joy’s direction. “Hardly.” The net sat on top of Joy’s immaculate bob at a jaunty angle, more like a beret than a food safety aid.