Act Your Age, Eve Brown

by Talia Hibbert

  “Fine,” she muttered, and made a mental note to research what the bloody hell weighted blankets were for. “You know, you should really have a trolley for all this stuff.”

  “I do have a trolley. I just can’t push it at the minute, because, arm.”

  “I could push it for you.”

  He whisper-shouted a laugh. “You think I’m going to let you run around my B&B with a bloody trolley? You think I’m going to facilitate your reign of terror like that?”

  “Oh my goodness. You run a man over once—”

  “You will have to earn the trolley, Ms. Brown,” he said dryly, shoving his box of biscuits at her. Then he turned and reached up to the highest shelf for what looked like the world’s hugest spray bottle of glass cleaner. Good God, she hadn’t even thought about glass. He would be beyond anal about glass.

  Haha. Anal.

  “What are you smirking at?” he demanded, shooting a suspicious sideways look at her. He was still reaching, his left hand fumbling about on a shelf too high for him to actually see. But Eve, standing feet away, could see it fine, and he was nowhere near the bottle. She decided not to tell him just yet.

  “I was thinking about you being anal,” she whispered instead. “It’s funny, because, you know. You’re anal, er, anal-re . . .”

  “Retentive,” he supplied. “Wait—no I’m not. I’m thorough, thank you very much. I am thorough and committed and—”

  “Jacob.”

  He scowled. “Fine. I’m anal-retentive. Please, continue to thrill me with your bonkers train of thought.”

  “Gladly,” she beamed, leaning back against a shelf. At the same time, a door slammed somewhere, and she jumped.

  Jacob smirked.

  The prick.

  “You’re anal-retentive,” she continued, “and you’re an arsehole. So. It’s like a pun. Or a double ingenue. Or something.”

  “Do me a favor,” he snorted, “and shut up before I am overwhelmed by the urge to sack you.”

  “But it’s so much fun watching you restrain yourself.”

  He opened his mouth, but whatever he might have said was cut off when a voice floated through the grate, faint but clear. “You were a dick at breakfast.”

  A pause. Then a low, baffled response. “Huh?”

  “You. Were a dick. At. Breakfast.”

  Eve widened her eyes at Jacob. “OMG. Drama.”

  “Shush!” he hissed. Then he fumbled about for the window cleaner with renewed vigor, grabbed it, and was clearly readying to leave when the voices grew louder.

  “What the fuck, Soph? What’s your problem lately?”

  “What’s my problem? Do you know why I booked this holiday, Brian? I thought it was the pressure of work making you such a fucking bastard all the time—”

  “Oh, don’t go there, Sophie.”

  “But it’s just you—”

  “You think this is a holiday? Coming to the fucking Lake District and staying at some shitty B&B?”

  Jacob, who had been in the process of quietly shooing Eve toward the door, froze. Then he turned his head slowly, slowly, slowly, and glared daggers at the vent.

  It turned out, every evil look he’d ever shot at Eve had been nothing. Practically heart eyes. She’d had no idea one man could produce this much tangible malevolence with nothing but his eyeballs. If Brian collapsed at this very second, she might have to report Jacob as the cause of death. “Shitty?” he repeated quietly, with the air of a volcano about to erupt and burn everyone in the vicinity horribly alive. “Shitty?”

  “See, that’s your problem!” Sophie was saying. “You think you’re above everything. You can’t enjoy anything. This place is adorable.”

  Jacob closed his Eyes of Violence. “Yes,” he muttered to himself. “Adorable. Fuck you, Brian.”

  Eve knew this was not an appropriate moment to giggle, but she might have to do it anyway.

  As if he’d read her thoughts, Jacob cracked open one eye and ordered, “Keep. Quiet.”

  She stuck out her tongue.

  “Maybe my problem is that you’re boring,” Brian was saying, although he sounded as blustery as a hurricane and nowhere near as impressive.

  Eve rolled her eyes and mouthed, Men.

  Jacob, to her surprise, gave her a look of approval. “Quite.”

  “You don’t like men?” she whispered.

  “It depends. I don’t like imbalanced relationships, and men are frequently the perpetrators.”

  “I’m boring?” Sophie sounded like a woman on the edge. “Brian, you haven’t made me come in six weeks and five days. You think Fish and Chips Wednesday at Wetherspoons is a decent date night and you missed my best friend’s thirtieth because fucking Holby City was on. You’re boring as shit and I’m sick of you acting like it’s me!”

  “Not a fan of the romance thing, then?” Eve asked.

  “Not exactly,” Jacob said. Honestly, she was surprised he’d admitted that much. But then he added, the words low and quick, “I’m not principally opposed. I’m not opposed at all. There’s nothing wrong with—with love. I just think truly happy relationships are hard to find. Often, someone’s disappointed, which makes their partner the disappointment. You’re either Brian or Sophie, and I’d rather be neither.”

  Those words were so similar to Eve’s own (occasional, totally depressing) thoughts, she almost fell over in shock. “Good to know I’m not the only one with terrible taste in men,” she muttered. “Or whoever it is you . . .”

  “Women,” he supplied crisply. “And I don’t have terrible taste. That’s simply the way things turn out, sometimes. Happy endings aren’t as common as car crashes.”

  Eve blinked. She shouldn’t want to cling to the romantic opinion of Jacob Wayne, of all people, but—gosh. “That’s an attractive idea,” she said ruefully. “That bad relationships are just probability.”

  He arched an eyebrow. “Yours aren’t?”

  So he assumed she had bad relationships. She couldn’t feign outrage, since she’d once dated a white guy who’d said Wha gwan, rastaman? to her father. “I make bad choices,” she explained with a teasing smile, because teasing smiles softened everything. They were her safety net. Was she joking? Was she deadly serious? Who could tell? “In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m a part-time hot mess.”

  Jacob’s lips quirked. “Part-time?”

  “Yep. My other hours are spent as a sparklingly responsible Castell Cottage employee.”

  “You’re damn right they are.”

  “Sophie—I—you . . .” A tragic pause floated through the vent, dragging Eve’s thoughts back to the drama next door. “Six weeks and five days?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry—did you think ten to fifteen minutes of pumping away in silence was doing it for me? Did you imagine I was coming really quietly and in absolute stillness? I’ve been seriously considering having it off with my electric toothbrush, Brian.”

  Jacob made a strangled sort of noise and dropped the glass cleaner. He almost caught it—except he reached out to do so with his right hand, so the bottle slipped from his grasp yet again.

  On a reflex, Eve fell to her knees and caught it a foot away from hitting the ground. Kind of like a superhero catching a baby or something equally impressive. It was quite satisfying, avoiding disaster instead of causing it. Beaming, she looked up—

  And found her face directly in front of Jacob’s dick.

  Although she probably shouldn’t think of this area as Jacob’s dick. That was sexy romance novel talk, and this was not a sexy romance novel situation. She should think of it as, like, his groin, or the fly of his jeans, or something equally unsexy and non-dick-related. She stared for a moment at the outline of that heavy shape just below his belt, and narrowly resisted the urge to lick her lips. Not because of his di—groin. Just because her mouth was suddenly, unexplainably dry. Must be all the excitement.

  “Get up,” he whispered, an urgency in his voice that she’d never heard before. Not even when she’
d tumbled into that duck pond. “Get up,” he repeated, and Eve realized her brain was doing the thing where it stuck, like a scratched CD, on one particular element of the world around her. (Jacob’s di—fly, in this case.) She was about to start moving when he wrapped a hand around her upper arm and hauled her to her feet with a strength that was as impressive as it was unexpected.

  She popped up beside him feeling slightly breathless, waving the glass cleaner like a trophy. “Got it.” Probably a redundant comment, by now, but her brain was still feeling sluggish.

  That bulge had been very big. Very . . . thick.

  And Jacob seemed, in the low light, to be blushing. Why was he blushing?

  Probably the electric toothbrush comment.

  “Yes,” he was saying, his voice oddly stilted. “Good . . . good catch. Very good catch. Cheers.”

  “No problem. I didn’t want to interrupt next door and put an end to the juiciest conversation I’ve ever overheard.”

  Jacob blinked as if he might have misheard her. She waited for his confusion to be replaced by a dry look of disapproval. Instead, after one shocked second, he . . . smiled. “You’re so fucking shameless,” he said, but he made it sound like a compliment. And he’d cursed. She had noticed, over the last few days, that Jacob only swore when he was pushed to the absolute limit or when he was pissing around with Mont. So, in short, when he was being himself.

  Fucking had never sounded quite so lovely.

  “I could never admit that I wanted to listen to this shit,” he said.

  “But you do. You do want to listen.”

  “It’s like a car crash. The first car crash in recent memory that I haven’t been a victim of.”

  She scowled through the tug of guilt in her stomach. “Holy ginger biscuit, Jacob Wayne, are you trying to make me crumble into a pile of sad and sandy regret?”

  “Yes,” he said. “It makes you awkward and babble-y, and then you say things like holy ginger biscuit.”

  Well. Eve certainly hadn’t expected that response. She hesitated, trying to unravel all the threads in his voice—the warmth and the familiarity and the amusement. Because surely uptight and impatient Jacob Wayne wasn’t trying to say that he enjoyed her rambling?

  Before she could decide, he spoke again, all business now. “We should sneak off before one of them storms out into the hallway and we’re trapped.” He turned away, as if he didn’t want her to examine his face in the fine light through that one window any longer.

  And she had the oddest feeling that he did enjoy her rambling, after all.

  * * *

  Fifty minutes and two bedrooms later, all such wonderings about Jacob’s inner mind had ceased. Instead, Eve had started to fantasize about hitting him with her car again.

  “Tighter,” he said, sounding bored out of his mind. “Eve. Seriously. Tighter.”

  It turned out, making beds to Jacob’s ludicrously exacting standards was really fucking hard. Changing sheets? Even harder. Changing duvet covers? The single attempt she’d made would haunt her nightmares forever. Really, didn’t most sensible people accept that the duvet would always be a little bit bunched within its cover?

  Apparently, not Jacob Wayne.

  Then again, she had never believed him to be sensible.

  “Tighter,” he repeated for the fifty thousandth time.

  Tighter, she mouthed, scrunching her face into a scowl.

  “I saw that.”

  “No you didn’t!” she gasped, outraged. “You’re behind me!”

  “There’s a mirror in front of you.”

  “Oh.” Eve looked up, and so there was. Over the dresser, right there. She could see herself, bending awkwardly as she attempted the pristine hospital corners Jacob was still somehow capable of without his dominant hand—the corners she couldn’t seem to manage. They’d barely been at this tidying nonsense an hour, but Eve’s brand-new T-shirt—CERTIFIED HEROINE—was already clinging to her slight sheen of sweat, and her braids were spilling out of their ponytail. She looked a mess.

  Jacob, meanwhile, was sitting comfortably in the wingback chair behind her, arching a sardonic eyebrow and looking generally villainous. Even the white cast on his arm could be mistaken for a white cat. Any moment now, he’d start stroking himself nefariously.

  Heh. Stroking himself. Amusement struck her for a moment before the image of Jacob in that same chair, bare-chested and maybe a little wet, with one hand on his hard cock, wiped her smile away.

  Gosh. Where on earth had that come from? She really needed to read less AO3 smut before bed.

  Or possibly more.

  Jacob’s reflection frowned at her. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  Good question. No dirty thoughts about your boss, Eve.

  “I was thinking,” she said, pushing all illicit fantasies firmly away, “that your arse must be better. Because all you’ve done today is sit on it.”

  She’d intended to annoy him with that comment, but instead, he grinned. His sharp, wolfish smile—with its turned-in incisors and the lines of pleasure fanning out from his pale eyes—made her think of sunlight beaming off fresh snow. “If you have enough energy to give me lip,” he said, “you have enough energy to pull that sheet tight.”

  “Give you lip? You’re enjoying this far too much.”

  “Of course I am.” He shifted back in the chair, sprawling like some indolent prince. “I am beginning to think I was born to boss people around.”

  “You’re only beginning to think that?” she muttered.

  “You’re right. I’ve always known.” He watched her struggle for a moment longer, then sighed and stood up. “But I think that’s enough torture for one day.”

  “No,” Eve said, looking away. “It’s just a bed. I can do it.”

  “You—”

  “I can do it! Just give me a minute.” Except he’d already explained they were on a strict schedule due to check-in times, and Eve knew she’d made him slower today. “I’m supposed to be helping you, not making more work.”

  “Eve.” He was standing beside her, looking down with an expression she couldn’t quite decipher. One part frown, two parts something that might be tenderness. Or possibly the urge to tenderly strangle her.

  “This is your first day on housekeeping,” he said slowly. “I’m teaching you things. You’re practicing. I do not need or expect you to get everything instantly right, and contrary to your mother hen instincts, help doesn’t mean doing everything for me.”

  She huffed out a breath and straightened, inadequacy tangling around her limbs like vines. “I’m not a mother hen,” she mumbled, but she wasn’t really thinking about Jacob’s words. She was thinking about the vines.

  Usually, when Eve experienced this feeling of not-good-enoughness, she did the sensible thing and got out. Gave in. Gave up. Anything to stop the inadequacy from dragging her down again. But this time, she refused to—because, for God’s sake, it was only a bloody bed. And because giving up on Jacob’s job would mean giving up on Jacob. It would mean letting him down. Which she didn’t want to do, since she, erm, owed him, or something.

  Anyway, she kind of liked this job. She liked Castell Cottage. So. No giving up today.

  “You are a mother hen,” Jacob was saying, “but luckily for both of us, I don’t care. Now, come here. Press down there for me, to keep the tension.” He pointed at a spot farther up the bed, then bent over to fold the sheet she’d just been wrestling with. Within seconds, he was making a perfect hospital corner. Left-handed. Eve hurriedly pressed down as instructed, slightly dazed by the sight of his long, dexterous fingers tugging and folding. And by the thought that he was bent over, and what a view she’d have if she were standing behind him. Tragically, though, she was standing in front.

  Damn you, situational physics.

  “Erm, sorry,” she said awkwardly, “for slowing you down today—”

  “Actually,” he cut in, “I accounted for the possibility that things would take a b
it longer. We’re not behind schedule.”

  “I’ll be better tomorrow,” she offered. “I’m always better at new things once I’ve had a while to wrap my head around it. Or daydream it. Or break it down or—you know.”

  He gave her a strange look and said, “Funnily enough, yes. I do know. But—listen . . . Eve . . . you did . . . acceptably . . . today.”

  She stared. “Pardon?”

  “At breakfast.” He paused, pulling the sheet even tighter—probably tighter than necessary. Possibly so tight he was in danger of ripping the thick, high-quality cotton. At some point during the conversation, his face had become a rigid mask of awkwardness. She had no idea why. “You . . . Good food.”

  Dear God, he’d stopped using verbs.

  “And you multitask,” he continued. “You . . . you talk to guests very well, you know. As you work. I couldn’t do that. You . . . impress me, when you do that.” He almost choked on the word impress.

  But, to be fair, Eve almost choked, too.

  You impress me when you do that. Well, all this explained why he sounded so bloody uncomfortable. She tried to remember Jacob praising anyone, ever, including the local milkman who delivered his product in clearly labeled glass bottles and of whom Jacob seemed very fond, and came up a complete blank.

  “And the meeting we attended,” he continued. Good fluff, he was still going. He’d straightened now, rubbing his palms against his trousers. He was all raspberry ice cream and diamond-hard jaw and uncertain flicks of those frosty eyes, as if worried Eve might throw his tentative compliments back in his face. But he was still going.

  “You were . . . good,” he said. “You—just—you’re not a hot mess, that’s all. Not as far as I can see.”

  She looked up at him, dazed and confused by this sudden barrage of what could only be called reassurance. Compliments would be one thing—one strange and unexpected thing—but what really got to her, what hooked her with compelling claws, was the suspicion that he’d started reeling off positives to make her feel better.

  He was worried she felt bad. He was trying to comfort her. He’d listened to what she said about bad choices, about being a failure, and he was trying to . . . to disagree.