Act Your Age, Eve Brown (The Brown Sisters #3)(5)

CASTELL COTTAGE

BED-AND-BREAKFAST

Eve checked her watch and discovered that it was now far from breakfast time.

“Gabriel’s burning bollocks, you have got to be kidding me.” She glared at her warped reflection in the front door’s stained-glass window. “Has the trauma of the morning’s events killed off your last remaining brain cells, Eve? Is that it?”

Her reflection did not reply.

She let out a hangry little growl and started to turn—when a laminated notice pinned up beside the door caught her eye.

CHEF INTERVIEWS: FIRST DOOR ON THE RIGHT

Well, now. That was rather interesting. So interesting, in fact, that Eve’s witchy sister, Dani, would likely call this literal sign . . . a sign.

Of course, Eve wasn’t Dani, so she simply called it a coincidence.

“Or an opportunity,” she murmured slowly.

Eve, after all, could cook. She was forced to do so every day in order to live, and she was also quite good at it, having entertained brief fantasies of opening a Michelin-starred restaurant before watching an episode of Hell’s Kitchen and developing a Gordon Ramsay phobia. Of course, despite her private efforts, she had never actually cooked professionally before—unless one considered her ill-advised foray into 3D genital cakes cooking. It was certainly baking, which amounted to much the same thing. Kind of.

The more she thought about it, the more perfect this seemed. Wedding planning had been too exhilarating—the kind of career she could easily fall in love with. The kind where true failure could break her. But cooking at some small-town bed-and-breakfast? She certainly couldn’t fall in love with that.

Your father and I would like you to hold down a job for at least a year before we restart your trust fund payments.

Her parents didn’t think she could get a job on her own and clearly doubted her ability to keep one. They thought she needed supervision for every little thing, and if she was honest with herself, Eve understood why. But that didn’t stop their doubt from biting like too-small leather boots. So, securing her own job the day she left home? And also, quite conveniently, not having to return with her tail between her legs after this morning’s tantrum-like disappearance? That all sounded ideal, actually.

One year to prove herself. Surely, she could manage that?

She opened the door.

*

Contrary to popular belief, Jacob Wayne did not create awkward situations on purpose. Take right now, for example: he didn’t mean to subject his latest interviewee to a long, glacial pause that left the other man pale and jittery. But Simon Fairweather was a certified prick and his answers to Jacob’s carefully considered interview questions were nothing less than a shit show. With each meaningless response, Jacob felt himself growing even colder and more distant than usual. Perfect conditions for the birth of an accidental awkward pause.

Simon stared at Jacob. Jacob, more pissed off by the second, stared at Simon. Simon began to fidget. Jacob reflected on how bloody irritating he found this man and did nothing to control the derisive curl of his lip. Simon started, disturbingly, to sweat. Jacob was horrified, both by the rogue DNA rolling down Simon’s temples and by his obvious lack of guts.

Then Jacob’s best friend (all right, only friend) Montrose heaved out a sigh and leapt into the breach. “Cheers, Simon,” he said. “That’ll be all, mate. We’ll get back to you.”

“That’s true,” Jacob allowed calmly, because it was. He watched in silence as Simon scrambled up from his chair and exited the room, nodding and stuttering all the while.

“Pitiful,” Jacob muttered. As the dining room door swung shut, he wrote two careful words on his notepad: FUCK. EVERYTHING.

Not his most adult choice, granted, but it seemed more mature than flipping the goddamn table.

Beside him, Montrose cleared his throat. “All right. Don’t know why I’m bothering to ask, but . . . Thoughts on Simon?”

Jacob sighed. “Are you sure you want to know?”

“Probably not.” Montrose rolled his eyes and tapped his pen against his own notepad. He, Jacob noticed, had written a load of intelligent, sensible shit about today’s applicants, complete with bullet points. Once upon a time, Jacob had been capable of intelligence and bullet points, too. Just last week, in fact. But then he’d been forced to sit through the seven-day-straight parade of incompetence these interviews had become, and his brain had melted out of his fucking ears.

“Well,” Mont went on, “here’s what I put: Simon’s got a lot of experience, but he doesn’t seem the sharpest tool. Bit cocky, but that means he’ll eventually be confident enough to handle that thing you do.”

Jacob narrowed his eyes and turned, very slowly, to glare at his friend. “And what thing is that, Montrose?”

“That thing, Bitchy McBitcherson,” Mont said cheerfully. “You’re a nightmare when you’re panicking.”

“I’m a nightmare all the time. This is my ordinary nightmare behavior. Panic,” Jacob scowled, “is for the underprepared, the out-of-control, and the fatally inconsistent.”

“Yeah, so I’ve heard. From you. Every time you’re panicking.”

Jacob wondered if today would be the day he murdered his best friend and decided, after a moment, that it was entirely possible. The hospitality industry had been known to drive men to far worse. Like plastic shower curtains and brown carpets.