Act Your Age, Eve Brown

by Talia Hibbert

  Mont led her to one of the closed doors, which turned out to be locked. He produced a key and she found herself ushered into the most anal-retentive office she’d ever seen in her life. It was a box room with a desk set in front of tall, wide windows, a trio of filing cabinets lining the magnolia walls, and absolutely nothing else. No books, no photographs, not even any of the old, jazzy rugs thrown about elsewhere in Castell Cottage. A blank slate.

  “Is this—Jacob’s office?” she managed.

  Mont, who was already standing behind the desk rifling through drawers, shot her a look. “It helps him focus.”

  Well, Eve bloody bet it did. The only possible distraction in this room was the window, and Jacob apparently sat with his back to it.

  Mont straightened up, a stack of notebooks in his hands. “All right, listen up. I don’t know if Jake got a chance to mention it before you ran him over—”

  Wow. Okay, they were being blunt, then. She could respect that.

  “—but we were chasing after you to give you the job.” When Eve stared blankly in response, Mont added, “The chef job. Here. Jacob figured out a couple seconds after you’d gone that you’re pretty much our only hope, so yeah.”

  Was Eve imagining things, or was the guilt being piled rather high in this conversation?

  “Then things went left,” Mont continued, “and now I’m a little worried you don’t intend to take the job you apparently wanted so badly. I’m especially worried because of this Gingerbread Festival thing, which he’s worked incredibly fucking hard for—and because, if you waltz off and leave us in the lurch, you’re also leaving Jacob in an even worse position than he was in before. What with the fractured wrist, and all. So. That’d be fucked up. Right?”

  Eve wasn’t mistaken at all; the guilt pile was indeed high, and it was working.

  Cooking at Castell Cottage was, logically speaking, a horrible idea: Eve had no clue what she was doing, the owner had hated her on sight, and that was before she’d run him over. Plus, she was employed by Florence now—or she would be, come September. But the weight of her need to atone pressed heavier and heavier, squeezing an unauthorized reply from her throat.

  “Of course I’m taking the job,” she croaked.

  And immediately wanted to kick herself.

  Mont brightened. “You are?”

  I’m not. “I am.”

  “Oh, perfect. Thank you. That’s—really, thanks, because we’re in a bit of a bind here. Now, I hate to throw you in at the deep end, but Jacob’s got a concussion and a fractured wrist and a seriously bruised arse—”

  Eve wrestled with an involuntary wince.

  “—so he’s not exactly going to be better in the morning. Do you think you could . . . take over for a little while, just while he’s recovering?”

  Eve blinked. “Take over? But I—I only interviewed for the chef position.”

  “Yeah, but then you hit Jacob with your car.”

  “Well—doesn’t he have any other staff?!”

  “No.”

  “No?!”

  “No,” Mont repeated calmly, striding across the room toward her with his mysterious pile of papers. “Here. These should help.”

  Eve opened the first notebook to find a handwritten title page in impressive calligraphy.

  HOW NOT TO FUCK UP MY HEALTH RATING

  By Jacob Wayne

  She stared. “Are these . . . employee handbooks?”

  “Basically.”

  “That he . . . that he made himself?”

  “Yep,” Mont said. “Now, I need to see to the pub, and you need to be prepared for breakfast tomorrow morning, so—”

  A thought struck Eve on a wave of horror. “What time is breakfast tomorrow morning?”

  Mont ignored her. “So I’m going to rush you through the ropes. Okay?”

  Okay? Okay? A very large part of Eve wanted to scream that no, this was not okay—mostly because holy shit, there were seven notebooks piled in her arms, and this bed-and-breakfast seemed properly run and generally good and therefore intimidating, and she already knew she couldn’t possibly take over in a manner that would please the Prince of Perfection Jacob Wayne.

  Didn’t they realize she wasn’t up to much? Didn’t they know she never quite got things right? Putting her in charge of anything would be a mistake, but putting her in charge of this—

  And yet . . . who else was going to do it?

  Eve bit her lip as realizations racked up in her head. The basic facts were these: Jacob was out of commission. It was her fault. And even before all this happened, he’d been woefully down on staff.

  Someone needed to step up here, and it looked like she was the only otherwise unoccupied person around.

  “Fine,” she said. Her voice was slightly shaky, but it was clear. “Fine. I’ll do it. So show me the ropes.”

  * * *

  God, sleep was good.

  As he snuggled deeper into his nest of pillows and blankets, Jacob wondered fuzzily why he insisted on getting up at 5 A.M. every morning. Something something, work, something something, routine. He had a vague recollection of doing push-ups before breakfast, or some such bullshit. But right now, he couldn’t comprehend why any sensible human would ever do any of that when they could just . . .

  Stay in bed . . .

  Forever.

  Even better: when they could sleep forever. He’d been in the middle of a bloody brilliant dream about devouring an orange, segment by sweet, juicy segment, when something had woken him up. Hmm. Should probably investigate that.

  Scowling, he opened his eyes.

  The barest hint of moonlight trickled through his curtains, but the darkness didn’t matter; without his glasses, Jacob couldn’t see for shit, anyway. It was sound that made him realize someone was in his room: the creak of slow, easy footsteps, the steady huff of gentle breaths. He clenched his right hand into a fist, or tried to. But it turned out his right arm was still broken—had that really happened?—so he ended up shouting in pain. Also known as completely giving himself away to his possible murderer.

  “Jacob?” the murderer said, her whisper all velvet and smoke.

  And now he had the funniest sense of déjà vu.

  “You,” he croaked, squeezing his eyes shut. This—woman—this lilac and orange—female—this—destroyer of fucking worlds—

  “I came to check on you,” she whispered. “I read on the internet that you should check on people with concussions or they might, you know, die.”

  This human bloody wrecking ball—

  “Did you know you’re speaking out loud?” the demoness asked.

  This gorgeous fucking nitwit—

  “Is this negging? Are you negging me right now?”

  Jacob’s thoughts lurched along like a series of disjointed train carriages, but they were all aimed squarely at one thing: getting rid of Eve Brown. “Piss off,” he growled, trying—and failing—to sit up. Turned out his arse was broken, too. That’s what it felt like, anyway.

  “Your arse is what?”

  “Stop reading my thoughts.” With his left hand, he fumbled for his glasses.

  “I’m not reading your thoughts! You’re speaking out loud, genius.”

  “That’s right,” Jacob muttered soothingly to himself. “I am a genius. Everything is fine. Here are my glasses, I will just put them on and be happy.”

  “Oh my God, concussions are so weird.”

  For once, the harbinger of evil made a valid point. Jacob shoved his glasses onto his face, scowled at the crack across his lens, then got on with the very necessary business of glaring at Eve Brown. “Go. Away.”

  She came closer, because she was the bane of his existence. Her steps brought her into the slice of watery moonlight that had snuck through his curtains. She was still prettier than she had any right to be, with those wide eyes and that glowing skin. Her mouth was free of obnoxious gloss and therefore looked even better than before. He wanted to bite it. He wanted to bite her. She had
many, many bitable places. He was busy cataloging them all, from her chest to her waist to her hips, when he realized that Eve wasn’t wearing her obnoxious T-shirt anymore. She was wearing a loose, oversized shirt, and—

  And he never figured out what else, because at that moment, she reached out and touched him. Her cool palm pressed against his forehead, and Jacob’s mind went a little haywire.

  Well. A little more haywire.

  “Hmm . . .” she murmured. “You’re warm. But that’s probably because you’re covered in a thousand blankets.”

  “It’s my nest,” he said. His nests kept him safe. Even when he didn’t know where he was, or where Ma and Dad might drag the family next, his nests had always helped him fall asleep.

  But Jacob had never told anyone about his nests. Especially not as an adult, for God’s sake. He clenched his jaw to stop his uncontrollable mouth spilling any more embarrassing secrets.

  Instead of laughing or asking questions, Eve just nodded absently. “Yes,” she said, “nests are useful things. This one could do with a reduction, however.” And then she . . . she fucked with his nest!

  Well, she removed one of the blankets. And then another, and another, and while Jacob did start to feel a little cooler—funny, since he hadn’t realized he was hot—he also felt completely outraged.

  “There,” she said softly. Soft, soft, soft. “Is that better?”

  “Get off,” he mumbled. “Off my . . . nest . . .”

  “Pardon?”

  “Gerroff my . . .” He broke off into a yawn.

  “I think you’re tired.” He felt the weight of another blanket lift. “You should probably go back to sleep. There’s fresh water on your bedside table, and I’m right next door if you need anything at all. Okay?”

  “Fuck . . . off . . . awful woman.”

  She laughed. She laughed. For God’s sake, Jacob was going to push her out of a bloody window.

  After he took a little nap.

  Chapter Six

  Eve’s Monday mornings were always wildly unpredictable, but she could never in a thousand years have seen this coming. It was 5:56 A.M. and she was standing in someone else’s sterile, steel kitchen with the memory of a thousand employee handbooks spinning through her mind, preparing to make breakfast.

  Good God.

  It wasn’t as if Eve had never made breakfast before. She really had taken several cooking courses. It was just, she’d taken those courses for fun—to pass time, to learn a new skill. They were a party trick to impress friends with, a way to devise the perfect hangover breakfast for Gigi or comfort food for Chloe.

  She hadn’t taken those courses to be an actual bloody chef, a professional who was held to specific standards and on whose shoulders the weight of a bed-and-breakfast guest’s morning experience rested. And yet, here she fucking was.

  Delightful.

  Huffing out a breath, she bent to check the fresh pastries she’d chucked into the oven, tapping her thighs in time with the hypnotic beat of KATIE’s “Remember” blaring in her ear. Mont had arrived half an hour ago to check on her—but Eve, like a witless fucking oblong, had sent him home because he looked tired. Who gave a damn if the man looked tired? She was tired. She’d spent last night on Jacob’s pullout sofa, courtesy of Mont, sleeping on lumpy pillows he’d dragged out of some cupboard, wearing pajamas he’d apparently borrowed from some mysterious—and outrageously long-limbed—sister. She’d been up for hours reading Jacob’s various employee handbooks—

  And checking on his adorable sleeping face.

  —and googling bad bed-and-breakfast reviews to torture herself with the various ways all this could go wrong. She’d gotten ready that morning under the cover of darkness, trying to put off the moment Jacob discovered her presence for as long as possible because she knew he’d be unreasonable about it. Really, under such stressful circumstances, it was only a matter of time until she crumbled into dust and contaminated the croissants. This entire endeavor was doomed to go tits up with her at the helm.

  “Excuse me?”

  Eve jumped so violently, she was surprised she didn’t bump her head on the ceiling. Smoothing down her apron and adjusting her hairnet—HOW NOT TO FUCK UP MY HEALTH RATING: Chapter One, Section A, THE BASICS: Wear your fucking hairnet—she turned toward the source of the sound.

  There was a windowlike hatch in the kitchen wall, and the employee handbooks had revealed that it was meant to be opened. Eve had done so when she came down that morning and discovered the window let her see into the dining room, sort of like an olden-days shop front. Now that window was occupied by what appeared to be—shudder—a guest.

  “Hello in there,” he said brightly. He was a man of middling age, pink cheeked and gray haired, with far too friendly a smile for this time of day and a waterproof parka covering his torso. “Bit early for breakfast, am I?” he asked cheerfully.

  Eve stared at him in disbelief. Who in God’s name was early for a 6:30 A.M. breakfast? “Yes,” she said faintly, then rallied. HOW NOT TO PISS OFF MY CUSTOMERS: Chapter Three, Section B: Harmless rule breakers are to be humored, however much it might pain you. “But I’m sure we can accommodate you, sir. The pastries are still in the oven, but I can take an order for a cooked breakfast?” Eve approached the window, produced her little notepad, and steeled her spine. Do not fuck up. Do not fuck up. Do not fuck up.

  But already, she was starting to doubt her memory of the employee handbooks. She knew she’d memorized them, but she also knew she had a tendency to mess things up at vital moments, and therefore her memories of memorizing were not to be trusted, and—

  Oh Christ, the man was talking. “—sunny-side up, and the stewed tomatoes, ta.”

  Eve scribbled dutifully and hoped like hell she’d just caught the tail end of a request for a Full English. Because that’s what the poor bastard was getting. “Right. If you’d like to take a seat, I’ll bring it right out.”

  “Cheers, my darling,” he said, but he did not take a seat. Why didn’t he take a seat? “This hatch wasn’t open yesterday,” he went on conversationally.

  Eve froze in the act of reaching for some eggs. “It wasn’t?” But it was supposed to be open, wasn’t it? Or had she misread, misunderstood, mis—

  “Nor the day before, when I arrived. Nice to see what’s going on behind the scenes, though. Say, where’s Jacob this morning?”

  Oh dear. This particular question was the one Eve had been dreading. She’d hoped no one would miss the man’s icy presence and she therefore wouldn’t be asked about him, but apparently, no such luck. “Jacob is, erm, indisposed.”

  “Indisposed, is it?” The man chuckled. “If it were anyone else, I’d think that was code for a hangover.”

  Eve laughed nervously. “Right. But not Jacob!”

  “Lord, no, not him. So what’s up with him?”

  “Erm . . .”

  “I hope he’s not poorly. He’s a lovely lad, he is.”

  Eve blinked. “Erm . . .”

  “This here’s the only place that guarantees us a ground-floor room every time. My Sharon’s got dicky joints, bless her. Puts us on a special list, he does.”

  Eve’s sister Chloe required similar accommodations, so Eve knew some people were horribly unreasonable about that sort of thing. But apparently, not Jacob. Typical. She’d feel much better about her rather shocking sins toward him if he could be a little bit evil. The bastard.

  “Barry?” A voice trilled from the dining room doorway, out of sight. The man in the window turned toward it, his smile growing impossibly wider.

  “There y’are, Shaz! Sleepyhead. I’ve ordered my breakfast, babe, didn’t know what you wanted.”

  A woman appeared in the hatch, as smiley and pink faced as the man. “Hiya, darling,” she beamed at Eve. “I’ll have what he’s having.”

  Of course she would. “Right,” Eve stammered. “Which, er, which is . . . I mean, rather, would you like your eggs—”

  “Sunny-side up, thank yo
u!”

  “Fabulous.” Eve stared at the couple with a rictus grin she hoped they might find encouraging. Any further instructions? No? Fine. “Can I get you anything to drink? Tea? Juice? We have a selection of both this morning.”

  IT’S NOT JUST BED AND BREAKFAST: Chapter Two, Section F: There’s no such thing as too much.

  “I’ll have a coffee,” the woman said. “He’ll take a green tea.”

  “Shaz!”

  “Don’t start.” She patted Barry’s chest, then linked her arm with his and tugged him off toward the tables. “Now, leave this poor woman to her work.”

  Yes, thank you, Shaz. Eve waved them off with what she hoped was a sunny smile, then returned to anxiety-cooking as soon as their backs were turned.

  Okay, Full English. She presumed.

  Eve grabbed Jacob’s premium-grade, locally sourced pork sausages from the fridge—LOCALS LIKE MONEY: Chapter Eight, Section N: Skybriar’s butcher is named Peter, he is very old, do not question his maths or he will provide inferior sausage meat—and got started. She was, under ordinary circumstances, quite an excellent cook. Despite this fact, Eve stared at the sausages for a moment, gripped by the fear that she’d put the wrong oil in the pan. She was humming frantically along to the beat of Teyana Taylor’s “How You Want It?,” trying to recall the basics of cooking oil usage, when the kitchen door opened behind her.

  She froze, dread catching her by the throat. Dear God. Jacob was awake. Jacob was here. And she was—

  Frazzled. To say the least.

  But she was also trying, and that should count for something. So Eve cleared her throat, lifted her chin, and turned around—to find that Jacob wasn’t standing in the doorway after all. No; Eve had been joined by a tall, slender woman with sharp blue eyes, her graying blond hair pulled into a no-nonsense ponytail and her jacket open over a uniform apron of some sort.

  The woman stared at Eve. Eve stared at the woman.

  Then the woman said, “You’re not my nephew.”

  Eve blinked rapidly. “Erm,” she replied, “no. No, I’m not.” Hadn’t Jacob mentioned an aunt, yesterday? Yes, he had. What was her name? Laura, Lisa, Lilian—