Act Your Age, Eve Brown

by Talia Hibbert

  “What?” Dani prompted. “Like he might what?”

  “Never mind. I’ve got to go now.”

  “Do you? How sudden and suspicious,” Dani drawled.

  “Are you perchance hiding something, little sister?” That was Chloe.

  “No,” Eve lied. “It’s just that, if he catches me on the phone, he’ll probably flush it down the toilet.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “So I’ll text you later, love you, bye.” Eve hung up with a twinge of guilt toward her sisters and absolutely no guilt toward Jacob, who totally deserved to be mischaracterized as a phone-flushing prison warden so Eve could avoid awkward conversations.

  Totally.

  Chapter Eight

  One upside of having his brain slammed against his skull? It made Jacob sleep like the dead. Or rather, he had slept like the dead last night, and had fallen asleep easily this evening. But now he was awake again, so maybe his sleeping superpower had already gone.

  He rolled over and eyed the blinking blue light of his alarm clock in the dark. 1:11 A.M. For fuck’s sake. He was in the process of burrowing deeper into the blankets when a particular awareness zipped down his spine.

  He’d woken because something was wrong.

  With a grimace, Jacob threw off the covers and dragged his aching bones out of bed. Striding to the window, he snatched open the curtains and was hit in the face by a waft of warm, summer-scented night air. He stared out at the grounds for a moment, letting his eyes adjust to the moonlight. When adjustment failed to happen, he realized he’d forgotten to grab his glasses.

  Bloody concussion. Since when did a man who’d been short-sighted since childhood forget his glasses?

  He was just turning back to get them when he heard it. Loud. Harsh. Unmistakable. The sound that’d roused him from his sleep, a siren of danger and destruction.

  Quack. Quack. Quack.

  Ducks.

  Gripping the windowsill with his good hand, Jacob stuck his head out of the window, then remembered that bellowing at ducks at 1 A.M. with a houseful of sleeping guests was not conducive to five-star reviews. Crap. He turned and stomped out of the bedroom, snagging his glasses on the way. Maneuvering quickly and quietly through the B&B was a familiar act, if a little more difficult now his body had become a giant bruise. Still, the knowledge that ducks were defiling his precious, perfectly arranged garden—shitting in his pond, no doubt, the bastards—pushed him harder and faster.

  He broke out of the back door minutes later, only realizing he was shirtless when a breeze bathed his bare torso. For fuck’s sake. He always wore his pajama set—always—but on the one night he couldn’t face wrestling his cast through the armhole . . .

  Whatever. Didn’t matter. He had ducks to shoo.

  Although, as Jacob strode across the grass, he realized he couldn’t hear the ducks anymore. Instead, he caught snatches of a voice, low and pure and kind of pearlescent, singing like a fairy-tale siren. Notes rose and fell on the wind, and he stopped walking, vaguely hypnotized. What the bloody hell was that? He rather liked it. Unless it belonged to an inhuman creature luring him to his death, in which case, he hated it, but damn, it was bloody effective. He stared into the darkness of the garden for a moment, trying to locate the source, until—QUACK. The voice cut out and the ducks returned. Fuck. He shook himself and started toward the pond again.

  Past the cherry tree, around the folly, left at his carefully arranged wildflower planter—because meadows were pretty but order was prettier—and . . . there. The pond. It was a lovely sight, with the moonlight slanting off its narrow surface, and all that crap. There were just two things wrong with the whole scene.

  One: the ducks. The fucking ducks. Two of them. The first was gliding over his pond as if it had the right, and the second was waddling about the banks, foraging for food.

  Which brought Jacob to problem number two: Eve goddamn Brown, sitting there with a bag of bread, feeding the bastards. Encouraging their presence. Ruining everything, which he suspected was a particular talent of hers.

  Although that thought came with a niggling sense of unfairness, because . . . she hadn’t ruined breakfast. Quite the opposite. She’d been thrown in at the deep end and it turned out he admired the way she swam. He’d been dangerously close to not-hating her presence—until the Accidental Finger Lick had brought him back down to earth via the power of embarrassment.

  But he’d decided to wipe that unfortunate incident from his mind. So. Focus on the issue at hand, Jacob.

  “What are you doing?” he demanded.

  She jumped half a foot in the air, slapped a hand to her chest, and released a little scream. Christ. Hadn’t she heard him coming? Did the woman have any situational awareness at all? Now he was worried about her being murdered or kidnapped when left unattended.

  Worrying because such an event would leave him chefless. Obviously.

  “Oh,” she said, slightly breathless. “Jacob.” She twisted to look at him, the side of her face softly illuminated by the moon. This sort of light turned her dark skin silvery and made her wide eyes into mirrors. Her braids were loose, spilling over her shoulders, practically forcing his gaze downward, at which point he discovered she wasn’t wearing a bra.

  It was difficult to miss, really. Her top was thin and kind of loose, and the armholes hung low, and the sides of her breasts swelled—

  Jacob put a fast and violent stop to that train of thought. It wasn’t hard. All he had to do was look at the ducks and fury welcomed him back into its cold embrace.

  “Yes,” he agreed, “Jacob. Me. Here.” Hm. Maybe he hadn’t fully woken up yet. “Which means,” he continued, trying to snatch his thoughts back from their duck-Eve-boob precipice, “you are caught.”

  She blinked slowly. “Caught . . .”

  “Feeding ducks!”

  She blinked some more. “Should I . . . not be feeding ducks?”

  “No!” he burst out, then realized he was almost loud enough to wake the dead, never mind Castell Cottage’s guests. “No,” he repeated again, more quietly.

  “But they seemed so hungry,” she said, and the worst part was that Eve appeared genuinely concerned. For ducks. For the vermin of the waterfowl world. Good God.

  “They’re not hungry,” Jacob scowled, “they’re wild animals who know how to feed themselves, so stop it. You’ll encourage the bastards. They’ll make a habit of returning. They’ll treat my pond like a common watering hole and bring their friends. Next thing you know, the whole garden will be duck shit and duck sex—which is an extremely disturbing event, let me tell you—and aggressive duck demands for food. Aside from which, you’re not even supposed to give them bread.”

  A pause. Eve cocked her head. Then, instead of addressing the substance of his speech, she asked in tones of great surprise, “You aren’t? Oh dear. Why on earth not?”

  “It’s bad for the digestion! Christ, woman, read a waterfowl blog.”

  “Which you do because . . .”

  “Because,” Jacob sniffed, suddenly aware that this conversation had spiraled out of his control. “Know thine enemy.”

  “Ah,” she murmured. “Yes. Of course.” The moon had shifted, so Jacob could no longer see her face. But he had the strangest suspicion that she was smiling.

  He wasn’t entirely sure how he felt about that.

  “What are you doing here, anyway?” he demanded. “Aside from sabotaging my garden.”

  “Nothing.” Which was a nonsense answer if he’d ever heard one, but she rose to her feet and went on. “If you’re so antiduck, I’ll get rid of them. Not that I brought them here in the first place.”

  Bloody ducks. They should know by now that Jacob’s property was off-limits to their foul ways.

  “Well,” he muttered. “Good.” Except it wasn’t good, because Eve was still here, and he really didn’t want her to be. He was starting to find her . . . charming. Jacob usually saw charm as useless and insubstantial, but somehow, she ma
de the damn thing stick. Made it solid and welcoming, like a well-built brick house rather than smoke and mirrors.

  That was technically a good thing, but he hadn’t expected it, and so he decided to resent it. He’d always hated surprises. “What possessed you to come over here at this time of night and waste perfectly good bread? My perfectly good bread?”

  “I’ll buy some more tomorrow,” she said, throwing what remained of the bag—yes, throwing it!—casually on the ground.

  “You’ll fuck up my supp—”

  “Supply is my responsibility now, anyway,” she cut in, and Jacob was left to wonder how the bloody hell she’d known that. He hadn’t mentioned it, because frankly, he hadn’t wanted her to do it just yet. Supply monitoring was a delicate business, and Eve seemed a bit bloody ditsy, to say the least. Plus, he’d only known her for a few days. Putting her in charge of securing sausages and whatnot seemed premature. They hadn’t even had their first post-employment meeting yet.

  Because you’ve been avoiding her.

  Blah, blah, blah. The point was, she knew too much. “Who told you that?” he demanded. “It was Mont, wasn’t it? I heard him come and visit you today, you know. While you were baking.”

  Eve, who was windmilling her arms at the first duck with almost no effect, snorted a laugh. “Visit me? I thought he was on his way to visit you.”

  “Well, yes. Wanted to check I hadn’t died while he wasn’t looking. But I don’t see how that mission took him to the kitchen.”

  Earlier, it had occurred to Jacob that he’d left a bit abruptly after the Finger Licking Moment, and he’d started to feel almost . . . bad. After all, Eve was so unrelentingly earnest, she might as well be a puppy, and if you kicked a puppy, even by accident, you had to pick it up and rub its belly and say sorry. Not that he’d intended to do something so awful as apologize. Or rub Eve’s belly. He’d just planned to pop into the kitchen and say something vaguely friendly, to negate his earlier awkwardness.

  So down he’d gone, only to find her laughing. With Mont.

  “You should be aware,” Jacob said now, “that I think he likes you.” It would make sense, after all. Eve was technically attractive, and technically interesting, and really quite capable in a way that made Jacob’s stomach tighten, but also quite silly in a way that made his chest fizz, so, yes. He could see it. Why Mont might like her, that is.

  “Everyone likes me on first acquaintance,” Eve said, then flicked a look at Jacob. “Well. Except you.”

  “I—” He snapped his mouth shut before it could betray him.

  “Aha! Success!” The first duck had finally taken the hint and fucked off, waddle-flying away with an affronted squawk. Eve clapped her hands and did a little jump, and Jacob thanked every god he knew that the moon was currently covered by cloud, because if he’d seen that movement in any kind of light he probably would’ve noticed something awful. Like her tits.

  Or her thighs, in those tiny shorts he absolutely hadn’t been looking at.

  “And by the way,” Eve went on, “Mont didn’t tell me anything. I read about it in the handbook.”

  Jacob froze.

  “SUPPLYING ONESELF: THE ART OF REMAINING READY,” she went on.

  Jacob froze some more.

  She walked toward him in the dark, her shadowy outline drifting closer. “Are you all right?” she asked. “Is this some sort of concussion thing? Do I need to reboot you?” And then she reached out a finger and tapped him on the nose.

  He caught her wrist automatically, trapping her hand in front of his face. Her skin was soft—almost unnaturally soft. She must bathe in butter or milk or something because if he didn’t know better, he’d think her whole body was wrapped in satin. He could feel her pulse beneath his fingers and it was fast. Probably because she’d just been grabbed by a strange and silent man in the dark.

  He let her go.

  “Well,” she said cheerfully, “I wasn’t expecting that to work.” But she moved away with a speed that didn’t quite match her casual tone.

  Damn. Every time they did something other than argue, he managed to fuck it up. Surprising, how tense and unhappy that made him. Jacob wasn’t in the habit of giving a shit about people who weren’t on his pre-approved list. It was complicated and it always ended badly.

  Badly, as in: with him dumped on someone else’s doorstep like a bag of rubbish.

  Now, why was he thinking about that?

  With effort, he wrenched himself back to the conversation they’d been having before everything had somehow gone off the rails. “You’ve been reading my handbooks.”

  “Oh, yes. Mont gave them to me.”

  “And you—actually read one.”

  She sounded confused when she corrected him. As if she didn’t understand his disbelief. “I read all of them.”

  “You—read—all of them.”

  “I can read, you know.”

  “You’ve been here for two days!”

  “Technically three, since it’s past midnight.”

  “Days don’t count until they end,” Jacob snapped. “And—and you should know, I really wrote those manuals for myself more than anyone else. To get my systems clear in my head.”

  “Ah—that explains the rampant swearing and generally unprofessional tone.”

  He was so beside himself with astonishment, he didn’t even scowl at the unprofessional comment. Even though it was bullshit. Jacob was the soul of professionalism. Although he had a feeling that if he said that out loud, she might laugh in his face.

  Didn’t matter. He couldn’t get over the fact that she’d apparently taken his weird manuals—yes, he knew they were weird—and read them as if they were very serious materials and applied them with impressive commitment.

  Serious. Application. Commitment. All these things added up to one impossible conclusion.

  “Eve,” he said slowly. “Are you . . . do you . . . by any chance . . . respect my B&B?”

  “What on earth kind of question is that?” she demanded. “Of course I do, you widgeon.”

  Well. Well. He’d expected someone like Eve—someone carefree, someone flexible, someone who could bend without breaking—to look down on his rigidity. To laugh at it, maybe. But this . . .

  “In that case,” he said stiffly, his mind still sifting through evidence, “it is entirely possible that I have been operating on some incorrect assumptions about you, based solely on your horrific taste in T-shirts and your annoyingly whimsical manner.”

  “Is that your way of saying you’ve been a judgmental prick?” she asked. “Gosh, I hope so. Say sorry next. Go on. You can do it.”

  “Piss off.”

  “There he is.”

  Jacob was disturbed to find himself grinning ear to ear. God, why did she have to be funny? He felt himself being dragged against his will toward the certain doom of not-hating her. Dangled over the explosive volcano of enjoying her as a person.

  “And what exactly is horrific about my T-shirts?” she asked, as if she’d just remembered the comment.

  “Everything.” Except for how tight they were. He was a fan of the tightness.

  Wait, what?

  Jacob was busy checking his own pulse (because his thoughts indicated a lack of oxygen to the brain, possibly caused by some kind of cardiac event) when the clouds covering the moon danced away again. Eve came properly into view, but this time, she wasn’t standing—or duck-chasing—safely on the banks. This time, she was at the very edge of the pond, waving her arms like a wind turbine and muttering, “Shoo! Shoo!” at a certain beady-eyed minion of poop and destruction. Which was wonderful, except for the part where she was leaning perilously far.

  “Eve,” Jacob said.

  “Go on, Mr. Duck. Bugger off.”

  Make me, said the duck’s tranquil glide and vicious gaze.

  “Eve. Be careful. The banks are uneven and you’re too—”

  “Shit sticks,” said Eve, and fell right in.

  * * *

&n
bsp; The night was warm, but the pond, as it turned out, was not.

  Eve sucked in a breath as she plunged into cold water, then choked and coughed when she got a mouthful of pond for her troubles. Oh, fudge knickers. Now she probably had tuberculosis, or something. Lung mold, or something. She was diseased, and all because Jacob was ridiculously anal about ducks. She would kill him. She would murder him. She would—

  Another splash sounded beside her, and then a steely arm wrapped around her waist, and Eve found herself turned around and smushed chest-first against some sort of wall.

  She blinked water droplets from her eyes and squinted up. The wall had a marble-carved jawline and a wintry gaze and slightly lopsided glasses. The wall was Jacob.

  Her mind momentarily glitched.

  He shook her about like a terrier shaking a rat. The fact that he did this with only one arm made the whole ordeal even more undignified. His other arm, or rather, his cast, was held in the air, clear of the pond, because even when leaping into bodies of water to physically assault his staff, he remained coordinated and sensible. The bastard.

  “Eve,” he said, shaking her some more. “Say words. Proper words. Together.”

  She slapped his arm—his strong, strong arm, which was lean and corded with muscle, and currently getting up close and personal with her not remotely lean or muscular waist. It was an . . . interesting contrast, one she absolutely did not enjoy because that would be weird. “Get off me, you prat!”

  “Oh good,” he said, “you’re all right.”

  She paused, then glowed for a moment. He’d been checking she was all right? He cared that she was all right? Maybe he wasn’t the worst human being on earth after all.

  Then he added, “It’s far too late to find someone else to do this morning’s breakfast,” and Eve decided she’d been mistaken; he was definitely still the worst.