Act Your Age, Eve Brown

by Talia Hibbert

  “Whatever,” he managed, hoping he sounded exactly as bored and unaffected as he should be. “You want to sleep here, then sleep here. Just don’t wake me up.”

  “Well. Charming. Absolutely charming.”

  “No one,” he said over his shoulder, “has ever accused me of that.”

  Chapter Ten

  The gingerbread meeting, as Eve had begun to think of it, happened two days later. Eve had fallen into a steady routine: she made breakfast, cleaned up, and spent a while calling her sisters or reading Mia Hopkins or painting tiny ladybirds on her fingernails. Then she went back to the kitchen, made and served afternoon tea, gossiped with the guests a bit while Jacob hovered broodily and disapprovingly in the background, before retiring for the evening.

  It wasn’t exactly thrilling, but it certainly wasn’t terrible. Actually, Eve was rather enjoying herself.

  Today, though, her new routine broke down somewhere post–afternoon tea. Instead of disappearing back to his office once cleanup was over, Jacob hung about by the thundering industrial dishwasher and said, “Meeting’s tonight.”

  Eve blinked. “Pardon?”

  “The—”

  “Oh, the gingerbread meeting! I’d quite forgotten.”

  “I know you had,” he said, sounding incredibly long-suffering. “That’s why I’m reminding you. Again. And stop calling it the gingerbread meeting. It is the meeting of the Pemberton Gingerbread Festival Committee.”

  “Right,” Eve said slowly. Sounded dull, dull, dull. Then a thought occurred, and she brightened. “Will there be free gingerbread to keep us going?”

  Jacob sighed. “I’ll meet you out front at six.”

  Since this whole gingerbread situation was clearly Super Important and Very Serious, Eve changed into one of her favorite new T-shirts—READ LIKE YOUR BOOK IS BURNING—and put on a shit-ton of pink eye shadow. Then she remembered that Jacob found excess color offensive, and added pink lip gloss as well. It was good for him to be kept on his toes.

  They met outside on the gravel drive, the evening hot and sticky and golden. He was in Ultimate Jacob mode again, everything about him even more pristine and precise than usual. Eve took in his perfectly sewn-up shirtsleeve, the razor-sharp part in his hair, and his gleaming, polished glasses with a single look.

  “Are you nervous?” she demanded, shocked and yet utterly certain.

  He flushed, but his expression remained severe. “No. Are you wearing glitter?”

  “Absolutely.” She waited for a glower of disapproval. Instead, he studied her for a long moment before sucking in his cheeks and looking away. “What?” she prompted.

  “What?” he shot back.

  “What have you got to say about my glitter, Wayne?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Oh, come on. Be a big boy.”

  “Fuck off.”

  “Just say it—”

  “I think you look nice,” he blurted.

  Eve’s mouth fell open, but her capacity for words had been stolen by the power of her astonishment.

  Setting his jaw, Jacob met her eyes again. “What? You asked. Pink suits you. It’s my opinion. I think you look nice. Okay?”

  She choked. “Um. You’re saying a lot of words right now.”

  “You were right,” he said shortly. “I’m nervous. And concussed, don’t forget. Your fault, of course. Oh, look, here’s the car.”

  A black Volvo with a taxi company logo on the side pulled up just beyond the gate, and Eve blinked, momentarily distracted. “You ordered a taxi?”

  “Of course I ordered a taxi,” he said, striding across the gravel.

  “I thought you were going to drive.”

  He gave her a pointed look, one she supposed she deserved. “Eve. My wrist. Is broken.”

  “Well—well—I can drive!”

  “I’m not going to dignify that with an answer.”

  Before she could defend herself, the taximan stuck his head out of the window and asked, “Jacob Wayne?”

  “Yeah. Cheers.” Jacob opened the door and stood aside.

  Eve stared, uncomprehending. Was he—opening the door—for her? She rather thought he might be, unexpected as such politeness was.

  Before she could overcome her surprise enough to actually move, however, Jacob rolled his eyes, slid into the car, and slammed the door shut.

  Bastard.

  * * *

  Pemberton was a bustling town with a booming food industry, multiple nature walks, and a history of producing mildly famous writers and engineers. It was also responsible for 100 percent of Skybriar’s fledgling tourism trade: they were the overflow town, offering Pemberton’s sightseers a quaint home base that possessed regular transport links to the county’s main attraction.

  Jacob had always planned to take advantage of that fact, but he’d never expected an opportunity like this: the chance to take part in the widely known Gingerbread Festival, to have Castell Cottage’s brand stamped into the minds of Pemberton regulars. It was an incredible marketing opportunity that would take what he’d done with the business so far and boost it into the next stratosphere. Or rather, it could boost the business—if the food they served at the festival was actually mind-blowingly good.

  This time last week, he’d been quietly disintegrating with worry that he wouldn’t have any food, never mind the good stuff. And now—well. Now, he had a chef who’d recently run him over, who was squatting in his sitting room, and who sang made-up nursery rhymes about his grumpiness every morning at breakfast. He really shouldn’t feel as confident as he did.

  But he entered Pemberton’s town hall feeling rather good about the entire situation.

  Pessimism was Jacob’s natural state, but today, his dark thoughts were vague and abstract, rather than real and specific. And he knew that fact was down to Eve. Over the past few days she’d proved herself shockingly competent, culinarily talented, and, most importantly, bloody hardworking. He was starting to actually admire her. It was sickening, and slightly worrying—because Jacob knew himself, and admiration would only worsen his inappropriate physical attraction to this woman. Which was something he really couldn’t afford.

  He snuck a sideways look at her as they approached the table. Her expression was alight with something that might be interest, her glossy lips curved into a gentle smile and her dark eyes gleaming. He tried to be irritated by the obnoxious pink scrawl on her white T-shirt, but when he read the words READ LIKE YOUR BOOK IS BURNING, all he wanted to do was smile. Eve, he’d noticed, read using an app on her phone. Dirty books, if her laughably easy-to-read expressions were anything to go by. She always got shifty and furtive whenever anyone passed too close, as if they might catch a glimpse of the words she devoured so eagerly.

  He shouldn’t have noticed that. Just like he shouldn’t notice the shape of her beneath that T-shirt, or the little glances she flicked up at him now, as if she was noticing things about him, too.

  Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.

  “Jacob!” The leader of the festival’s committee was Marissa Meyers, Pemberton Gingerbread’s marketing director. For a small, still family-owned business, the popular bakery had a very well-developed staff. That was what Jacob wanted, one day: an establishment run firmly in the black, known for what it did, and staffed by the best. Marissa, for example, was incredibly good at her job.

  “Please, sit. And help yourselves,” she smiled, indicating the jugs of water and plates of gingerbread at the center of the big, circular table.

  Eve made a stifled little squeaking sound as she sat, and Jacob knew without looking that she was shooting heart eyes at the gingerbread.

  “Thanks, Marissa,” he murmured. Then he snagged a plate of gingerbread and held it out to Eve, because, well—her arms were shorter than his, so she’d have to lean over to reach.

  She stared at him wide-eyed, like his basic courtesy was some kind of miracle, and Jacob felt himself grow irritable and overheated. For fuck’s sake. Just because he wasn’t a s
unny cartoon character didn’t mean he couldn’t be nice, too.

  “Stop looking at me like that,” he muttered, “and take the gingerbread.”

  After a moment, her surprise dissolved into a smile. “Yes, boss,” she whispered impishly, and took two.

  He ruthlessly squashed his grin.

  Then a voice to his right popped the little bubble that had formed around he and Eve. “All right, Wayne. What’s up with the arm?”

  Ah. Yes. There were . . . other people here. It looked as if almost everyone had arrived, in fact: the ice cream people, the artisanal cheese people, the teacher in charge of the floats by local children, the Thai street-food people, and so on. The man speaking was Craig Jackson, a florist from another nearby village. He was a loud and nosy type with beady, judgmental blue eyes and a love of speaking over people. Including Marissa. Jacob privately suspected that the man would not be contracted again for next year’s festival.

  Jacob, by contrast, had been on his absolute best behavior during all meetings. After all, Marissa was the one giving him this opportunity based on nothing but the essay he’d emailed her months ago outlining point by point why he would be an excellent bet for one of the stalls on offer. He certainly owed her the bare respect of paying attention to whatever she said.

  Turning to look at Craig, Jacob said stiffly, “I have fractured my wrist.” He’d have thought that much was obvious, what with the cast and all.

  Craig released a snicker that signaled incoming bullshit. “How’d you manage that, Spock? Sudoku-ing too hard?”

  Jacob set his jaw. He didn’t appreciate Spock comments. He’d received a lot of them over his lifetime, and he knew exactly what they were supposed to imply, and they made him want to throttle people before sitting them down for a long and detailed chat on why the world would be a much better place if they stopped congratulating themselves on being normal and started to accept that there were countless different normals, and Jacob’s kind was just as fine as everyone else’s.

  In his head, that detailed chat usually involved a lot of curse words and multiple threats of violence.

  Unfortunately, he wasn’t in much of a position to carry out threats of violence, since a woman whose professional respect and continued grace he very much relied on was watching this entire interaction with an unreadable expression. He resigned himself to squashing down his anger for the greater good—well, for his own greater good—when Eve leaned forward to glare flintily at Craig.

  Jacob blinked, momentarily taken aback. He hadn’t realized she could glare like that. But it turned out that big, expressive eyes, while very good at sparkling adorably, were just as good at delivering death stares.

  “Spock,” Eve repeated after swallowing her mouthful of gingerbread. “What does that mean?”

  Craig faltered for a moment. “He’s, er, a character from one of them—”

  “No, I know who Spock is,” she said dismissively, as if Craig were being excessively stupid. “I meant, what did you mean by it?”

  Craig paused. “Well,” he said after a moment. “Would’ve thought that was obvious.”

  Eve produced a lovely, vacant smile. “No,” she said. “Explain it to me.”

  Once, as a child, Jacob had seen a mongoose eat a snake. He was now experiencing a similar fascinated, secondhand alarm.

  “Welll,” Craig repeated, drawing out the word uncomfortably this time. “Obviously, Spock is . . .”

  Eve waited, blinking slowly.

  “Spock is . . .”

  “What?” she nudged.

  “Well, you know that Jacob is . . .”

  Eve waited. Then she repeated, “What? Jacob is what?”

  “Yes, Mr. Jackson,” Marissa interjected. “Jacob is what?” Much like Eve, she waited for his answer with a deceptively patient smile.

  “Erm,” Craig mumbled. “Er. Ah. Never mind.”

  “Are you sure?” Eve asked.

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  “But—”

  “I said it doesn’t bloody matter!” Craig barked, his face flushing red.

  Jacob’s amusement drained away at that, replaced by a cold fury. “Do not,” he said quietly, “raise your voice at my employees.”

  Craig shifted uncomfortably, looking away. “Christ,” he muttered. “Let’s bloody get on with it.”

  “I couldn’t agree more,” Marissa said severely. “If you’re done disrupting proceedings, Mr. Jackson, we are all busy people and have no time to waste.”

  Craig’s redness ratcheted up to fire engine, but, with a wary glare in Eve and Jacob’s direction, he kept his mouth shut.

  Marissa opened the notebook in front of her and flicked through a few pages before starting a speech about schedules and orders of events. But, honestly, Jacob barely heard a word. He was too busy staring at Eve, who had produced a notebook of her own from somewhere and was already scribbling bullet points as Marissa spoke.

  He looked at the downward sweep of her dark lashes, the sugar-sweet pink gloss on that lovely, clever mouth, the quick glide of her hand over the page. And then he saw the title she’d written on the clean, white paper.

  Notes for Jacob.

  All the breath swept out of him in a long, quiet wave. Eve, he had noticed, helped everyone. So it shouldn’t hit him like a fist to the chest when she helped him, too—yet his heart stuttered a bit beneath the blow of his surprise.

  This woman—he kept waiting for her to hate him more, but she appeared to be hating him less. They were moving backward, firmly away from safe, spiky interactions and closer to something dangerously like friendship.

  Jacob really wasn’t sure what to do with that.

  Chapter Eleven

  Eve’s family saw her as “the social one”—but only because her eldest sister was a hermit, and her middle sister was a bookworm with a vague disdain for human contact. If Chloe or Dani cared enough to collect friendships, they’d probably be far more successful than Eve—because Eve’s method of socializing had been born out of desperation and careful observation, a shield of giggling charm and always-up-for-it flair designed to hide the ways she didn’t quite fit in.

  It was odd, really; the more she thought about it, the more she occasionally reminded herself of . . . Jacob.

  Well, only a little bit. Just the awkward parts.

  So when the man himself announced on Friday morning that they’d finally be doing the housekeeping together, alone, Eve waited patiently for self-conscious anxiety to consume her. She should be a nervous wreck, frantic about maintaining a persona that worked best in group situations, worried he might see right through her and find her irritating or unnerving or just not right.

  Instead, she surprised herself by feeling utterly serene. Because, honestly? Jacob wasn’t like other people. He’d found her irritating from the start, and he hadn’t bothered to hide it, so she’d long since bothered to care. It turned out there was a difference between the heavy weight of wondering what people might think, and the easy acceptance of knowing what Jacob thought because he bloody well said it out loud.

  Plus, she was pleased to finally offer some help.

  So when he dragged Eve off to get cleaning supplies, she found herself skipping merrily after him, singing, “We’re off to see the storeroom, the wonderful storeroom of Oz.”

  “Good God, woman,” Jacob muttered. “Your energy is indecent. Weren’t you moaning this morning about how early we have to wake up?”

  “I think I’m getting so little sleep it’s making me hyperactive,” Eve said.

  “Like a toddler,” he replied. “Delightful.”

  “Anyway, you said I could sing. You said, something something, blah blah blah, no AirPod, Eve can sing.”

  She expected him to express regret over that fact. Instead, all he did was murmur gravely, “Ah. So I did.” Then he shut up about the singing thing completely.

  For an outrageous grump, he could be incredibly reasonable sometimes.

  They entered a gree
n-and-white wallpapered hallway where Jacob caught her wrist and tugged her to a stop. You’d think, after all the touching and rescuing there’d been the other night, Eve would be accustomed to physical contact with this man by now. But when his long fingers pressed firmly into her skin, she felt as if he’d shocked her—tiny, delicious bursts of electricity sparkling over her flesh.

  He touched her casually, as if he had a right to do it, as if they were like that now. She supposed they might be like that now, because she knew him, at least a little bit. And somehow, despite his many infuriating qualities, she liked what she knew.

  “You have to be quiet in the storeroom,” he murmured. “We both do. There’s a very thin connecting door to the bedroom beside it, and a shared air vent.”

  “Oh,” she murmured back. “So . . . we whisper?”

  “We whisper,” he agreed. Then he grabbed the big old ring of keys from his pocket and unlocked the storeroom door. The room inside was small and cramped, filled with well-stocked shelves, lit only by a high, round window on the far side. “You’ll have to grab the sheets,” he said, nodding at a fresh stack on those shelves, “since a dangerous driver recently incapacitated my right hand.”

  A dangerous—?! Well, perhaps that wasn’t entirely inaccurate.

  Pushing down a now-familiar wave of guilt, Eve shot him a glare—purely on principle, obviously—and took the sheets. She managed a basket of cleaning supplies, too, just to show off. Then a distracting hum of voices drifted in from the next room, and Eve willed herself not to drop a bottle of bleach or knock over a shelf or anything like that, because Jacob would probably murder her. He would bludgeon her to death with the box of little biscuits and tiny milks he was currently balancing in his left arm.

  “Grab a blanket, too,” he said, nodding toward a separate pile of bedding.

  Eve followed instructions—which was a rather novel experience for her—and asked, “What’s this for?”

  “It’s weighted.” When she raised her eyebrows in question, he sighed. “Some people prefer weighted blankets, Eve. Such as the gentleman currently occupying the Peony Room. Let’s move on.”