Act Your Age, Eve Brown (The Brown Sisters #3)(35)

He stared down at her. “Because we are different heights, Eve.”

“I know that!” She scowled, then blinked. “Er, Jacob, are you shirtless?”

“Let’s not discuss it.”

“Bloody hell.” She hadn’t noticed before, in the shadows, but it was difficult not to notice now, with his bare skin pressed against hers. She prodded experimentally at his abs. “Bloody hell.”

“Stop that,” he snapped. “Do you think we could get out of here now? There’s . . . algae on me.” Apparently he found that even more abhorrent than she did, because he shuddered. It was a full body movement, one that seemed involuntary—and pressed the aforementioned abs against her tits. Which might have been enjoyable if he hadn’t muttered darkly, “Slime. Can’t stand slime.”

Actually, even with the mutterings, it was still enjoyable. How dare Jacob of all people have this . . . television body?! He must have made a deal with the devil. She’d seen evidence in the kitchen of him eating microwaved spaghetti Bolognese for dinner. Men who ate nice food like spaghetti Bolognese were not supposed to also have abs. There was a balance to the universe that had to be observed and he was shamelessly flouting it.

“Well, not to be ungrateful,” she shot back, unreasonably irritated, “but why on earth did you jump in? You’re injured, you clod.”

He gave her a severe look and said stiffly, “Obviously, I came in to rescue you.”

“Rescue me? It’s a pond, Jacob.” Still, the word rescue fizzed through her mind with all sorts of soft and pleasant meanings.

“And you’re a disaster. I’m surprised you didn’t slip under and crack your head open on a rock and drown on my property and send my insurance through the roof. Or something like that.”

“Oh, insurance.” She laughed. “That’s why you jumped in to rescue me?”

“Obviously,” he bit out.

Funny how she didn’t believe him. Jacob’s attitude was rather like a barbed-wire fence: designed to rip you to shreds if you got too close, but only to protect something special.

No matter what he said, injured men who were obsessed with cleanliness didn’t jump bodily into ponds over insurance. No, people did things like that because they were secretly halfway nice, even if they didn’t want anyone to notice.

But if she pointed that out, he might sputter his way into an embolism. So instead, Eve kept her smile hidden, rolled her eyes, and pulled away from his chest. His hard, naked, shockingly well-muscled . . . ahem. His chest. “Whatever. Come on, then. Let’s get out.”

“Gladly,” he said. Then he waded through the water with sickening ease, plopped his left forearm on the banks, and heaved himself up one-handed. Eve watched the entire maneuver very, very closely, for research. In the conveniently broad shaft of moonlight glowing down on them, she observed—for science!—the following:

Jacob’s biceps and shoulder muscles, tightening and shifting beneath his skin as they worked.

The long, lean line of Jacob’s torso emerging from the water, his abs dripping wet, beads of moisture trailing down the sharp V leading into his pajama pants.

The curve of his arse and bulge of his thighs through the aforementioned, soaking-wet pajama pants as he scrambled fully onto the ground.



For science. Obviously.

He stood, then turned around and blinked, as if surprised to find her still in the pond. “Oh. Er. Didn’t we decide to get out of there?”

“Yes,” she agreed, “but as you’ve previously mentioned, you and I are different heights. And possess different levels of upper-body strength. And so on.”

Snorting, Jacob sat down on the banks with a wince. She tried not to think about his various Eve-inflicted bruises. He propped his elbows up on his knees and leaned forward, arching an eyebrow. “Does this mean you need my help?”

“No,” she said automatically.

He arched another eyebrow. And, if she wasn’t mistaken, the corner of his mouth tilted into what might be a smile. “No?”

“No,” she repeated. “But. Well. I just thought, since you’re so concerned about your insurance, and whatnot, that you might like to oversee my exit from the pond—”

“Oversee,” he echoed, and this time his smile was unmistakable. There were teeth involved. Strong, white teeth, with slightly turned-in incisors. She couldn’t speak for a moment, at the unexpected sight of his grin—wolfish and unrestrained and mildly sarcastic.

Then she swallowed and pulled herself together. For heaven’s sake, she was in a pond. Now was not the time to mentally wax lyrical over the smile of a man she barely even liked.

“Yes,” she said, “oversee. Without your uptight—um, I mean, masterful intervention, I could easily make some sort of mistake and fall and hit my head and die.”

Jacob snorted and shook his head, but he was still smiling as he reached out a hand. “All that to avoid asking for help? No wonder you went to a performing arts school. You’re even more of a drama queen than I am.”

Eve pressed her lips together as she bobbed toward that outstretched hand. “Clearly I’m not that much of a drama queen,” she muttered, her attention focused on not slipping again. “Or I wouldn’t have failed.”