Aunt Someone gave Eve a very searching look. Really, it felt rather like an x-ray. “Well,” she barked, “where is he, then?”
“Lucy,” Eve blurted.
The aunt raised an eyebrow. “Yes?”
“Er, sorry, I meant, erm . . .” Eve didn’t think she’d ermed so much in her life. “I believe he’s in bed. He was last I saw, anyway.”
A beat passed. Lucy’s other eyebrow arched to join the first.
“Not,” Eve said quickly, “that I was—that I saw him because—what I meant was that—”
“Go steady, girl, before you swallow your tongue.” The ghost of a smile passed the woman’s fine mouth. “What’s your name?”
“Eve,” Eve mumbled. Then a thought hit, and she spun around. “Shit, my sausages.”
“I’m Lucy Castell, which you seem to know already. New chef, are you?”
Castell. Hm. So Jacob had named his bed-and-breakfast after his aunt? That had to be dull and uncreative or weird and sinister, somehow. Because if it wasn’t either of those things, it might be cute.
“Yes, I’m the new chef,” Eve tossed over her shoulder, snagging a tin of tomatoes from the pantry. Christ, now her timings were all off.
“And Jacob’s in bed because . . . ?”
Eve wondered if she could politely elect not to answer.
“Is he ill?” Lucy nudged. Lord, the woman was like a diamond drill.
“Not exactly,” Eve murmured, pouring tomatoes into a saucepan and opening up the spice rack. “He just—well, he got a little bit run over—”
Lucy’s air of calm evaporated. “He what?”
Eve spun around to face the other woman, hoping her own guilt wasn’t patently obvious. “Oh, it’s nothing to worry about. Just a broken wrist and a very mild concussion, so—”
“Run over by who?” Lucy demanded. Diamond. Drill.
“Erm,” Eve squeaked. “Me?”
Lucy stared in a very violent manner.
Eve began mentally cataloging all the knives in the kitchen and their whereabouts in relation to Lucy’s hands.
After a tense moment, the older woman said, “Are you . . . are you trying to tell me that my nephew, your employer, is currently in bed because you hit him with your car?”
A new guest popped up at the window like a video-game toadstool. “What’s that? Someone hit Jacob with a car?”
“No,” Eve said.
“Apparently,” Lucy said.
“Blimey. Any hash browns going?” asked the guest.
Eve bit her lip. “I’m—I’m certain I can whip some up if you give me just a—”
Lucy held up a hand. “Please, don’t let me keep you. I will be upstairs, checking my nephew’s still alive.” She swept out of the room.
Oh dear.
Eve supposed, all things considered, she’d better do a damned good job with this breakfast.
* * *
“Why in God’s name didn’t you call me?!”
Leaning against his dresser, Jacob squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his thumbs to his temples. Didn’t help: his headache still flared in time with every outraged lilt in Aunt Lucy’s voice. He sighed and opened a drawer, rifling through it for his spare glasses. “Because you were busy.”
“Busy?! A couple of clients and a weekly book club is not busy, Jacob!”
“I didn’t want you to worry.” He found his old case and pulled out a pair of glasses identical to his current frames, except for the fact that these were undamaged, and also weaker by 0.75 in the right eye. Sliding them on, he blinked until the slight blurriness became almost unnoticeable. These would do, for now.
“It’s my job to worry about you, you plonker,” Aunt Lucy said. He turned to face her, and this time, he could see her furrowed brow and pale cheeks clearly. His gut squeezed with guilt. And with a little pain from the ache in his skull and his back and his stomach. The stomach was hunger. But he hadn’t even managed to shower yet, so hunger would have to wait.
“Sorry,” he said, because he knew from experience that she wouldn’t leave him in peace until he apologized. “But in my defense, I was concussed when I told Mont not to tell you.”
“Ha! I’ll be having a word with young Eric soon enough,” Lucy said, looking menacing.
Sorry, Mont.
“But first—what on earth is the woman who hit you doing in the kitchen? I mean, I’m all for forgive and forget, babe, really, I am, but I know very well that you aren’t.”
Jacob opened his mouth, then closed it. The woman who—? “I’m sorry, what?”
Slowly, Lucy said, “The woman. Who hit you. Is in. Your kitchen.”
Oh. Oh shit. “Eve? Eve is still here?”
“That is what she called herself, yes. Purple hair, about this tall, wearing a T-shirt that I’m sure belongs to one of the twins.”
One of the . . .
Jacob set his jaw and sucked in a breath. No. No way would Montrose actually hire the living terror who literally ran Jacob over yesterday—
Except someone needed to take over, and Mont is even more practical than you sometimes. So this is exactly the kind of thing he would do.
“Fuck,” he hissed. Then, “Sorry, Aunt Lucy.”
“Don’t mind me, sweetheart.” Lucy was already straightening up his perfectly tidy room, throwing back his bedcovers and opening the window. She gave his curtains a considering look. “Would you mind if I just popped these off and gave them a quick iron? They’d look proper smart with a nice crease in the—”
“Whatever you want,” Jacob called over his shoulder. He didn’t have time to argue about the relative merits of curtain ironing. He had an Eve to remove.
* * *
Righteous outrage propelled Jacob out of his private quarters, but when he hit the staircase, reality kicked in. Specifically, the reality of his body, which fucking killed. Gripping the banister with his good hand—his left hand, and what bloody use was that?—Jacob eyed the steps warily before tackling the first one.
Pain sang to life along the length of his spine, from the dull ache near his shoulders to the sharp stab at his tailbone. When his foot made contact with the next stair down, his head throbbed inside his skull like he’d jumped off a building.
“For shit’s sake,” he muttered. “You have got to be kidding me.” His injuries definitely hadn’t hurt this badly yesterday.
Then again, much of what he remembered about yesterday wasn’t exactly coherent. Except for the part where Eve Brown stormed his very serious interviews with her utterly unserious self, thoroughly got on his nerves, made him chase after her like an undignified puppy, then ran him over for his troubles. Yes, that part was crystal bleeding clear.
Gritting his teeth, Jacob took the next step.
By the grace of some merciful god, he made it down all three flights without running into a single guest. Clearly, he’d gotten up during the lull between early birds and those who liked to sleep in—and thank Christ for that, because as he finally reached the polished wood floors of the foyer, he felt a bead of sweat trickle down his temple. When Jacob sweated in front of people, he preferred it to be on purpose: because he’d chosen to run, or he’d chosen to lift, or he’d chosen to go out in some god-awful sun. Not because he’d unexpectedly lost the ability to walk down his own bloody stairs without gasping for breath.
He was swiping the sweat away with an irritable grunt when he heard footsteps approaching from a nearby corridor—the kitchen corridor. And then, wouldn’t you know it, Eve fucking Brown appeared.
She was walking with brisk efficiency, a plate of steaming breakfast balanced in each hand—just one plate per hand, which told him she’d never waitressed before. Inefficient method. Lack of confidence. And yet, her hold was steady and her spine was straight and her focus was undeniable, her trajectory taking her toward the dining room.
Until she noticed him and froze.
Wide-eyed, she gasped, “Jacob?” As if he’d died yesterday and she might be communing
with a ghost right now.
“Eve,” he replied. The word was meant to sound dignified, possibly cold—cold was always safe, after all. But instead, her name fell from his lips like a fistful of sand, his voice a strained rasp.
She looked different this morning. It wasn’t her lack of obnoxious T-shirt, or the Castell Cottage apron she wore, but something . . . else. The steadiness of her stride, maybe. The lift of her chin. Yesterday, her braids had spilled around her shoulders and even the soft, baby curls at her hairline had been . . . styled, somehow, but today her braids were pulled back in accordance with health and safety, and her little curls frizzed around her face. Her skin was glowing and he suspected that if he touched her cheek—not that he ever, ever would, dear God, unless he suspected she had some kind of deadly fever, in which case he would of course have to, as an act of human decency, but never mind that, what had he been saying? Oh, yes. If he touched her cheek, he had a feeling she’d be warm like the air in a busy kitchen.
Even though he knew very well that Eve did not belong here, for a second, standing in his hallway with her hands full, she looked as if she might.
Jacob shook his head sharply. Must be the concussion.
“Are you okay?” she asked, frowning as she stepped closer. Her expression screamed such obvious—and unexpected—concern that Jacob looked down at himself reflexively, just to check his arm hadn’t dropped off while he wasn’t paying attention.
What he found was even worse. He was still wearing his fucking pajamas.
He realized with a jolt that he’d jumped out of bed and rushed down here to throw her out without even making himself presentable first. He was roaming the halls of Castell Cottage in gray jersey and flannel, which meant he’d come to work inappropriately dressed, which made him undeniably unprofessional. Even worse, Eve Brown was looking at him like he was an adorable but endangered baby animal, which was especially annoying, for some reason.
Shit. Shoving a self-conscious hand through his hair, Jacob set his jaw and steeled his spine. He was already down here, and he wouldn’t be climbing those fucking stairs without a ten-minute breather and a cup of tea, so he might as well act natural.
But this disaster, just like everything else wrong with the world, was completely Eve’s fault.
Coating himself in ice like armor, he said stiffly, “I’m fine.” The no thanks to you part was unspoken, but he hoped she sensed it. “You and I need a word.”
Literally just one word: Go.
“Well, that sounded appropriately omniscient,” Eve muttered. Then she paused, shaking her head. “Or is it—?”
“I know what you meant,” Jacob snapped.
“Really.” She gave him a skeptical look, then rolled her eyes and lifted the plates. “Look, if you don’t need anything—I’ll be right with you, but I need to serve these before they get cold. No one likes cold tomatoes, Jacob. Be reasonable. All right?” Before he could begin to formulate a response to that, she’d swept off into the dining room.
Leaving him and his annoyance with the uncomfortable feeling that they’d just been dismissed.
And with the—admittedly obvious—realization that he was late for breakfast. He’d slept in by his own standards, and now, according to his watch, it was 6:44. Breakfast had already begun without his supervision.
Jacob rushed into the kitchen, expecting chaos, chaos, more chaos, and a flagrant disregard for the health and hygiene posters he’d stuck to the walls. You know: filth, disorganization, rats scurrying toward the open pantry, maybe. At least a small microwave fire. Instead, he stared in shock at a kitchen that appeared to be . . . absolutely fine. Exactly as it should be. Clearly in use, but safe and orderly all the same.
Well. That was a bit fucking anticlimactic.
Eve had even opened the dining hatch, a feature that provided an authentic behind-the-scenes glimpse for guests and one that Mont had steadfastly refused to use. I’m not a fucking fry cook anymore, he’d bitched, and I look like a twat in this apron. Blah, blah, blah. Well, apparently Eve had no such concerns, because the window was rolled up and Jacob had a direct view into the dining room.
A direct view of her, actually. She sailed into his line of sight, approaching one end of the mammoth dining table with that infuriating smile. Although, now Jacob saw the smile directed at guests, he had to admit its obnoxious beauty and objective cuteness had some benefits. Feeling himself bamboozled by the thing was unsettling, but watching it have the same effect on Mrs. and Mrs. Beatson wasn’t all bad.
He stared, semimesmerized, as she fetched salt and pepper for the couple from two feet down the table—as if they couldn’t reach it themselves. He frowned, genuinely perplexed, as she poured tea for another party like the three of them didn’t have six clearly functional hands. He glowered with increasing annoyance as Eve whipped around the room being infuriatingly, impressively, undeniably helpful.
It was like she saw people’s needs before they’d even noticed themselves. Which was, obviously, an excellent skill for a hospitality employee to possess.
But goddamn it, he wasn’t supposed to think this kind of thing. He wasn’t supposed to think anything complimentary about Eve. She’d fractured his bloody wrist, for fuck’s sake. Had anyone else broken Jacob’s arm, and therefore messed with his ability to carry out key aspects of his daily routine—push-ups, sudoku, et cetera—he’d be fuming for at least a week.
And he was angry with Eve. He was. Even if he also, suddenly, remembered the tremor in her voice when she’d knelt over him on the road, offering an entirely insufficient apology. Bugger that tremor, and bugger her.
By the time she returned to the kitchen, Jacob was determined to despise her the same way he did everything: thoroughly.
“What is going on here?” he demanded as she entered. He kept his voice low so the guests couldn’t hear, stalking over to her as she approached the sink.
“What’s going on where?” she asked lightly, rinsing the clean plates she’d brought back and . . . stacking them in the dishwasher correctly.
For some reason, this only pissed Jacob off further. “Here, damn it. Here! What is with all this—this—” Order, perfection, prowess. Any of those words would apply, but he didn’t want to say them. In the end, he whisper-hissed, “How the hell do you know what you’re doing?”
Eve blinked those long lashes, then smiled, so quick and sharp it flashed behind his eyelids like lightning. “Oh, I see. So the bug that’s crawled up your arse this morning is down to the fact I’m not crashing and burning yet?”
Yet, she said. Something about that word snapped against his skin like a rubber band. But Jacob was quickly distracted by his own embarrassment, because her accusation was technically correct and it made him sound ridiculous. “Well,” he ground out, “obviously I’m pleased that you’re doing—actually, you know what, fuck that.” He stopped, then said sharply, “How well you may or may not be doing is irrelevant, because you shouldn’t be here at all. I didn’t hire you.”
She set down the last plate and turned to face him, eyes narrowed and hands on her hips. “You were going to.”
“You don’t know what I was going to do.”
“Mont told me,” she shot back.
Making a mental note to smack Montrose later—twice—Jacob powered through. “Any decisions I may have come to before you hit me with your car were invalidated the moment you hit me with your car.”
Eve had the grace to look awkward. “Er, yes, sorry about that.” She turned and hurried over to the stove, grabbing a box of eggs. “The thing is, I thought helping out while you were under the weather might go some way toward atoning for that grieving mistake.”
Jacob scowled at the back of her head. There was nothing worse than someone making a valid point during an argument he intended to win. “Look,” he began. But then Eve moved toward the pantry, grabbed a fresh loaf of bread, and shut the pantry door . . . with her hip.
And good God, what a hip.
Ja
cob’s jaw clenched as several muscles in his body tightened without permission. His eyes glued to Eve’s back of their own accord, focusing on the place where her knotted apron strings grazed the strip of bare skin between her borrowed T-shirt and her jeans. “Don’t do that,” he growled. Really, it was a growl. Like a dog. Jacob immediately wanted to shoot himself.
She turned around, a line appearing between her eyebrows. “Do what?”
And now his choices were: either to say out loud Don’t move things with your body that belongs to you, or to pretend he’d made an involuntary noise as part of a concussion-related seizure. “Nothing,” he muttered, biting the inside of his cheek. “Look, I’m . . . glad things are going well down here. And that you started breakfast, and so on.”
Eve smiled, a real smile—the bright, sunshine one that lit up entire rooms, possibly entire worlds. He felt a bit dazed. As a concussed man who’d only just woken up, it probably wasn’t safe for him to be exposed to such things. “I’m sorry,” she said teasingly, “was that a compliment?”
His reply was automatic. “No.”
“A positive comment of some sort directed at me, then? Ah, ah.” She held up a finger to cut off his response. “Don’t bother to answer. I’m quite certain it was.” And then she was off, back to the stove again, leaving Jacob feeling . . . odd. Flushed. Perhaps he should go back to the hospital. His reactions were all wrong this morning, and he was becoming concerned.
“This conversation isn’t over,” he said, which made no sense, because it clearly should be. He was sliding backward down a very steep hill, and Eve was pushing him with one finger and laughing all the way. “The fact remains that I didn’t hire you, and—” He paused beside her, squinting at the flash of white hiding beneath the braids she’d pinned over her ears. “Bloody hell, are you still wearing that fucking earbud?”
She flicked him a cool look. “Language, Mr. Wayne. I’m sure the guests don’t want your foul mouth served with their tea.”
“I—you—” Jacob was pretty sure steam had just shot out of his ears.
“Trust me,” she went on, “you want me to wear the earbud. Music helps me concentrate on the order of things.”
Act Your Age, Eve Brown Page 7