Act Your Age, Eve Brown

by Talia Hibbert

  “I know,” Jacob replied sharply. It had never been a problem at the luxury hotel chains he’d used to gain experience in the city. Precision, perfectionism, clear communication—those had all been points in his favor. But it turned out B&Bs had different requirements. People wanted to feel cozy and at home. Well, Jacob had gotten that down with the decor, the amenities, the marketing—but his manner didn’t exactly fit in with the crackling log fire and hot tea.

  “Not only that,” Mont went on, “she didn’t bend for you one bit—”

  “That’s a bad thing, Montrose.”

  “No, it’s not, you absolute tyrant. And finally,” he said with a flourish, “I know she can cook.”

  “How?” Jacob demanded.

  Mont got a familiar and annoying expression on his face: the Stubborn and Superior one. “I can just tell.”

  “How?”

  “It doesn’t matter how, because we’re going to go after her and apologize, and then she’ll cook for us and prove it.”

  Jacob shot him a disgusted look. “I hate it when you do this.”

  “When I’m right, you mean?”

  “When you’re full of shit.” Jacob took off his glasses and cleaned them on the edge of his shirt, thoughts flying. The fact was, Montrose’s points weren’t entirely inaccurate or illogical. Eve was undeniably warm, excessively so in his opinion, but Jacob was aware he had unusual parameters. She was probably funny, too, if you liked that kind of bollocks. Much as Jacob hated to admit it, he could see her making customers laugh, could see the Trip Advisor reviews with little throwaway comments about that adorable cook—and her attitude, while infuriating, suggested she wouldn’t be prone to breaking down in tears when under pressure. Jacob couldn’t abide tears in the kitchen. He didn’t need rogue DNA in his guest’s eggs.

  He would never have hired Eve back when he was working hotels, but the dynamic in B&Bs was different, and those who didn’t adapt . . . well, they died out. He refused to die out. Although, if he spent too much time with such an infuriating woman, he might die anyway—of frustration. Or frustrated rage. Or—something.

  So what was more important—his survival, or the B&B’s?

  Absolutely no question.

  Jacob sighed, put his glasses back on, and stood. “If she can’t cook, I’m going to skin you alive.”

  They broke out of the cottage’s front door and into a steady drizzle that was rather typical of the Lake District, even in August. Less typical was the angry yellow tinge of the clouds, the roar of thunder in the distance, and the near-instant flash of lightning that followed.

  “Fuck’s sake,” Jacob muttered as tiny raindrops beaded on the lenses of his glasses in record time. “Electrical storm,” he shouted over the thunder. “Better get inside, Mont.”

  “Really? Height jokes? Now?”

  “Always.”

  Mont rolled his eyes. “You go left, I’ll go right.”

  They split up just as the sky above them cracked open. Rain spilled to the earth as if each drop weighed a ton, and in the few seconds it took Jacob to scan the cottage’s small gravel driveway, he was already soaked to the skin. His shirt clung to him, his jeans grew stiff and heavy, and his glasses slid down his rain-wet nose. He cursed, pushed them back up, and squinted at the cars lining the gravel. Every space was taken by a familiar vehicle—guests—so he jogged out onto the street and turned left.

  “This bloody woman,” he shouted to no one in particular over the rain. An irritating voice at the back of his brain reminded him that he wouldn’t be looking for her if he hadn’t chased her off in the first place, but Jacob swept the voice aside with only a whisper of guilt. Who the fuck wore ironic T-shirts to a job interview, showed up without a CV, and rambled on about her posh mate’s juicing experiences? Who? Feckless, irresponsible ne’er-do-wells, that’s who. He knew the kind. He’d been plagued with the consequences of their actions since birth, the same consequences they always seemed to outrun.

  But he was desperate, and he did try to listen to Mont every six months or so, which meant Jacob had no choice but to continue searching. He passed parked but deserted cars on the street—and pulled up short when he found a moon-blue vintage Beetle he’d never seen before, parked at an outrageous angle a good two feet from the curb. There was a pink sticker on the back window that read SEYCHELLES SLUTS OF ’16—dear God—and he could see a familiar silhouette in the driver’s seat.

  Great. He’d found her. Now he’d have to actually say something to her, something that would convince her to come back and try again.

  Clearly Mont hadn’t thought this through, or he never would’ve sent Jacob to do this on his own.

  “Get on with it, Wayne,” he muttered under his breath, and ran both hands through his dripping wet hair, pushing it off his face. Then he stepped out onto the street, ready to walk around the car and knock on her window.

  But in the end, he never made it there. Because the moment Jacob left the safety of the pavement, the car’s lights flicked on, and the car itself jerked backward. Directly into him.

  Hard.

  Trust Eve fucking Brown.

  Chapter Four

  Jacob wasn’t an expert in physics, but he didn’t think the force of one little Beetle should hurt this bad. Then again, the whole event took him completely by surprise, so he didn’t do much to save himself.

  First, the car’s bumper slammed him bodily into the Porsche Cayenne behind him. His head jerked back and hit the windscreen so hard, it was a miracle he didn’t crack the glass—or maybe he did. He wasn’t sure, since a moment later, he was busy sliding to the ground like a stunned sack of potatoes. Landing was awkward as fuck, his right wrist taking almost all his weight and bending hideously. So he gave up on the whole “staying upright” thing and let his body flop back onto the road like a fish.

  After all that, Jacob decided the most sensible thing he could do was lie very still and make sure he wasn’t dead.

  “Oh, shit in a sweet pea.”

  His thoughts exactly, but the voice that floated to him over pounding rain definitely wasn’t his own. It was too posh and too pretty. Could voices be pretty? Jacob wasn’t sure. He’d take a look at the voice and check.

  He opened his eyes, felt a stab of pain shoot through his head like a sharpened ice pick to the skull, and closed them again. His glasses were missing, anyway. No point doing eye stuff. Bugger eyes. Who needed them?

  “Oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no.” There was that voice again, strange and yet familiar. His mind was hot and sticky like fudge. Yum, fudge. Was this a guest, maybe? A yummy, fudgy guest? Fuck. No lying around in the street in front of guests. It was inappropriate and irresponsible and very bad business.

  Jacob tried to sit up, but several points of agony screamed at him simultaneously to stop that shit and lie down again. So he stopped that shit and lay down again.

  Then the voice said, “Are you a dog? Please don’t be a dog,” and memory came to him like a bolt of lightning.

  He croaked accusingly, “Eve.”

  She was supposed to wilt with guilt under the mighty power of his voice, but all she did was sigh, “Oh, thank goodness you’re not a dog.”

  Rage was an excellent method of clearing the head. Jacob forced his eyes open, even though he couldn’t see for shit and felt kind of dizzy. The sky above him was a sickly yellow, staticky with the motion of still-falling rain. He didn’t spot any Eve-shaped blobs in his line of sight, but he hoped she could see him—or more specifically, that she could see the burning hate in his eyes. “You’d rather hit me than hit a dog?” he demanded. “Interview was . . . so bad?” His words were wonky. Goddamn it. He didn’t want his words to be wonky.

  “Don’t flatter yourself,” she said primly. “It has nothing to do with you in particular. I meant that I’d rather hit a person than a dog.”

  His lurching mind grappled with that drivel for a moment before he announced, “You are joking. This is a joke.”

  “Of cou
rse I’m not joking! Dogs are so small and sweet and vulnerable. Humans are much sturdier. See how well you’re handling this?”

  Jacob might be having an out-of-body rage experience right now, because his pain was growing oddly distant, and he barely even noticed that the storm was slowing as suddenly as it had begun, and really, all he could feel was this overwhelming urge to bury Eve Brown in a hole somewhere, or possibly dump her at the bottom of a well. “How well I’m handling this?” he echoed, his shout making his battered lungs ache. “Woman, I am one wrong move from vomiting blood.”

  There was a slight pause before Eve said reasonably, “Ah, but if you were a dog, you might be dead right now.”

  Jacob was searching for the strength to drag himself up and strangle her, even if it killed him, when a new smudge of blurry color appeared before his eyes: an oval of rich brown, surrounded by ribbons of pastel purple. She came closer, closer, and he made out the details he’d rather forget. The rounded cheeks and the big, dark eyes behind rain-wet, spiky eyelashes. The stubbornly pointed chin and glittery, glossy lips. She was biting those lips, if he wasn’t mistaken, and quite violently, too. Not to mention, there was a deep furrow on her formerly smooth forehead. Maybe she was racked with guilt.

  Or maybe she was just worried about a potential manslaughter charge if he died.

  Probably the latter.

  “Would it take your mind off things if I showed you my tits?” she asked out of the blue.

  God, concussions were strange.

  “Jacob?”

  “What?” he bit out.

  “Did you hear me?”

  “Did I—?” He stopped. Oh. Had the tits comment not been some kind of auditory hallucination? “Dunno,” he slurred. “Maybe it would help. Wait, no it—what the hell is wrong with you?”

  “Several things.” She’d disappeared from his line of sight, which was honestly a blessing, and her voice came as if from a distance. “I only asked because when I came to the interview you seemed very distracted by my chest, so—”

  “I was reading the T-shirt,” he insisted for what felt like the thousandth time.

  “If you say so,” she murmured, clearly amused and absolutely infuriating. Then she cried, “Ah! Found them,” and reappeared again. Slowly, carefully, she slid his glasses back onto his face.

  His glasses. She’d found his glasses. He hadn’t even asked. And now here she was, putting them on for him.

  Of course, that task was not as easy as certain films and TV shows liked to make it look. As a general rule, Jacob made sure no one ever did it to him. Similarly, when women tried to remove his glasses in fits of passion, or whatever the fuck they thought they were doing, it usually pissed him off enough to take him out of the mood, and then he had to think about messy blow jobs for a solid five minutes to get going again. So when he realized that a complete stranger was attempting one of his least favorite things in the world, he tensed.

  Which hurt like a motherfucker and turned out to be a waste of energy when she pulled off the move without a hitch.

  Well, mostly. She avoided all the big no-no’s, like stabbing him in the cheek or the eye or the ear. She didn’t get the glasses quite straight—but he suspected they were no longer straight at all. Plus, one of the lenses had cracked, which was utterly her fault, so he refused to give her 10/10 for cautious glasses-sliding. But still. Pretty impressive.

  And now her face was in focus, he could see something unexpected: those huge eyes of hers were shimmering with something that might actually be tears.

  But she didn’t let the maybe-tears fall. She offered a smile that was a shadow of the cheerful, dimpled thing she’d flashed in his dining room and said, “There. Now you can glare at me properly.”

  Jacob really must be concussed, because instead of telling her to fuck off, he said softly, “Thanks.”

  Thanking her. He was thanking her for putting his shattered glasses back on his face after she’d knocked them off with her car.

  But her smile was wider and realer now, and if she gave him just a little more, that dimple would appear, and . . .

  “Jake?” The shout was Mont’s, clearly nearby. “Where are you, man?”

  Eve looked up. Jacob blinked and wondered why he felt so off-balance, now her gaze wasn’t on him anymore.

  Concussed. He was definitely concussed.

  “Montrose,” she called, and rose to her feet.

  Jacob, for some reason, tried to sit up, as if there was a string attached between them. He made it roughly halfway before pain wrapped a fist around him and squeezed. Shit, shit, shit. He clamped his jaw shut because he refused to throw up in front of Eve—or rather, in public—or rather, at all. Then he sat up the rest of the way, realized he’d done something terrible to his arse, and tried to roll up on his knees instead.

  “Christ, mate,” came Montrose’s voice from above. “You’re a mess. What the bloody hell happened?”

  Eve wailed, “I hit him with my car,” just as Jacob snapped, “She hit me with her car!” Then he registered how teary Eve sounded and felt like a bit of a bastard.

  Hang on—she was the bastard. Her! Good God, what the hell was wrong with him?

  “I’m going to call an ambulance,” Eve said.

  “You bloody well aren’t,” Jacob snorted, then instantly regretted the snort. Could lungs be broken? His lungs were broken. “Ambulance,” he wheezed contemptuously. “What a fuss.”

  “Jacob,” Mont said sternly, “don’t be a prick. You need medical attention.”

  “I realize that,” Jacob said, “but there’s no need for an ambulance.” Waste of public resources. He was perfectly fit. There were people dying, for Christ’s sake. “I’ll drive myself.” He started to rise to his feet, but the world swung sideways and a gang of vicious pixies set fire to his skull. He was all charred and crumbling inside and he felt violently dizzy again. “Montrose’s going to drive me,” he corrected, and looked up at the man in question, studiously avoiding Eve. Everything would be a thousand times better if she wasn’t here, so he had decided to pretend she wasn’t. “Give us a hand, Mont.”

  Mont gave a long-suffering sigh and knelt down, sliding an arm around Jacob’s back—which hurt like a motherfucker, but there was nothing to be done about that—and muttering “Hold on to me. Properly. I mean it, you bastard.”

  “Yes, sir.” Jacob attempted to sound grudging or maybe indulgent, as opposed to pathetically grateful. In the end, he missed all of the above and simply sounded drunk.

  As they staggered to their feet together, Eve fluttered around like an especially annoying, orange butterfly. “What shall I do?” she asked. “He’s driving you—what shall I do?”

  “Disappear,” Jacob suggested wearily. “Down a well, maybe. Or up a mountain. Or to the moon.”

  “Watch the cottage,” Mont said.

  “What?” Jacob wasn’t sure who said it first—him or Eve.

  “Well, I’m taking you to the hospital,” Mont scowled, “my sisters are working, and so’s your aunt Lucy. Looks like Eve’s all we’ve got.” He turned to the demoness in question. “We were looking for you, anyway, hoping to give you a trial, so here it is. Trial by fire. Tell all the guests what’s happened and wing it.”

  Jacob wanted to tell Mont he’d lost his mind, but he was growing incredibly exhausted with every second they spent standing up, and the connection between his mouth and his brain seemed to have become dislodged at some point in the last few minutes. So all he could do was croak out, “But—serial killer—very sophisticated con woman—industry spy—she’s going to steal my complimentary organic shampoo provider.”

  There was a startled pause before Mont said sadly, “Look what you’ve done to him.”

  Eve winced and focused on Jacob, speaking as if to an infant. “I’m not a serial killer,” she told him slowly, “or . . . any of the other things you just said, whatever they were. But I am really, really, awfully, terribly sorry about hitting you with my car. And I pr
omise I will look after your B&B as if it’s my very own.” Or at least, that’s what he thought he heard. It was hard to tell over the ringing in his ears.

  Jacob tried to say, Take your promise and stick it up your arse, Madame Spy, but what came out was a raspy “Jesus, fuck, my head.”

  And then the fuzziness got even fuzzier and Mont dragged him away, and Jacob . . . just sort of . . . went.

  * * *

  Warm and dry in the B&B, Eve could almost convince herself that the past twenty minutes had been a dream. Of course she hadn’t run over the most infuriating man alive! Of course he hadn’t been dragged off to the hospital by his best friend, leaving Eve behind to watch a goddamn bed-and-breakfast. Really, why not take things even further? Of course Eve hadn’t driven miles in a teary fit of pique before interviewing for the first job she came across as if that would solve all her problems! Because only a spoiled brat, or, alternatively, an adorable dog with a very tiny brain, would ever do such things, and Eve was surely neither.

  Which didn’t explain why her jeans were still damp from kneeling beside Jacob’s crumpled form, why her hands were shaking something awful, or why she was currently standing nervous and alone in Castell Cottage’s welcoming foyer.

  Well, shit sticks and fudgesicles.

  Eve found a handily placed chaise longue by the stairs and summarily collapsed. She’d been aiming for an elegant lounge of the type Gigi might do, but her jeans were stiff and her frigid, fear-stricken bones were stiffer, so she ended up falling like a pile of bricks. The chaise was upholstered in burgundy silk that matched the Edwardian—or was it Victorian? Oh, who gave a shit—wallpaper and rugs. There were a lot of rugs in this high-ceilinged room, she noticed, as well as mahogany floors polished to a gleaming shine, and glowing wall sconces and various other things that said coziness and comfort and gravitas.

  Was this really Jacob’s B&B, or did he just manage things? Only, she’d have taken him for a fan of cold, impersonal, modernist decor. Traditional vibes that she actually liked were not what Eve expected from the man.