Act Your Age, Eve Brown (The Brown Sisters #3)(51)

And which he certainly would not want.

Oh, good great shit.

“It’s a bonding experience with clear perambulators,” she blurted out, because an explanation suddenly seemed quite urgent. “I mean—per—um—”

“I know what you meant,” he said.

She swallowed and waited for him to say more. He did not. Righto, then. “Because, you know, you weren’t sure how to officially become friends. So I thought . . .” Well, there hadn’t been very much thought involved. It was more instinct that had driven her to this. Or some weird, unexplainable desire to sit beside Jacob with no other distractions, and just . . . talk.

Oh dear.

“I thought,” she said finally, “that I could make a specific evening for you to say, Yep, only friends do that, that’s the moment we became friends, and then—”

“Well,” he cut in, “it’s working. Because I’m pretty sure only friends do something this nice to make their friends feel comfortable with calling them friends. Or—oh, for fuck’s sake, I don’t know. Only you, Eve. Only you.” He shut the door and rubbed a hand over his face, as if trying to hide his smile. Except he couldn’t hide it, because gosh, it was big. Big enough that Eve’s clammy palms started to calm down and her hammering heart became a much more respectable drumbeat.

She was relieved, obviously, that he hadn’t taken this the wrong way. She’d been silly to think he would take it the wrong way. Why would he possibly take it the wrong way?

“So,” Jacob said, walking toward her. His eyes slid over everything, everything, again and again, as if he was greedy to see it. And it occurred to her for the first time that Jacob, for all he seemed not to give a shit, might be just as pleased by the thought of being liked as she was.

He looked pleased. She’d made him pleased. The idea started a bloom of happiness in her chest that threatened to grow into a garden.

“So,” he said again. “We’re . . . sitting on your bed?”

“And listening to music and eating crap,” she said firmly. “Basically a teenage girl sleepover.”

“Ah.” He nodded gravely. “Because no one knows how to have fun better than a group of teenage girls.”

“Exactly.”

He started to sit down on the bed, which made Eve realize she wasn’t sitting down at all—just hovering awkwardly around the room like a nervous hostess at her first dinner party.

Arching an eyebrow, Jacob nudged the bed’s duvet slightly aside to look at the sheets beneath. “Nice corners.”

She flushed. Okay, yes, she’d been practicing her bed making on her own bed. She had to get good somehow. “Thanks.”

He grinned that wolfish grin and finally sat. Eve swallowed. The sofa bed had seemed a perfectly reasonable place for them both to sit, until Jacob had actually done so. Now it looked like a den of lascivious temptation. Possibly because he looked like a lascivious temptation.

He lounged comfortably among the blankets and pillows like a prince, his long, lean body taking up space unapologetically, spread out as if on display. The breadth of his chest was emphasized by that neatly buttoned shirt, the one she’d ironed for him because she’d caught him trying to do it himself and he’d almost set his bloody cast on fire. The length of his thighs was emphasized by those jeans she should find unattractive, because he ironed those, too, but actually found drool-worthy, because they clung to the slight curve of his muscles in a way that told her entirely too much about how he might look naked . . .

And now she was getting all hot between her thighs on their very first friendship date. Perfect. Just perfect. Thoroughly annoyed with herself, Eve sat down.

“What are we listening to?” Jacob asked, all calm and pleasant like a . . . calm . . . pleasant thing. Meanwhile, Eve’s eyes were glued to the shift of his jaw as he spoke, because Eve’s eyes were very badly behaved and had no consideration for her feelings or for the feelings of her vagina.

“I set up a queue,” she said, passing him her phone. “I thought, you know, we could both add to it as we went.”

“I get to add to the queue?” he asked, raising his eyebrows in mock astonishment. “Me? Even though you called me a heathen for not liking Kate Bush?”

“You are a heathen for not liking Kate Bush. But I caught you humming along when I was singing ‘Honor to Us All’ the other day, so you do have some taste.”

In the dying light of the setting sun, his blush was deep and glowing. “Liam had a mild obsession with Disney princesses, growing up.”

“Oh, sure. Your cousin, definitely.”

“He really did. As for myself, that’s classified information.”

She laughed while he tapped through her music app and added who knew what to their queue. When he passed the phone back, the tip of his middle finger grazed the curve where her palm flowed into her wrist, and Eve had to clamp down on this outrageous full-body shiver. Friends, she told her nervous system firmly. We are friends.

Her blood continued to pulse hot and stormy through her veins, regardless. Good Lord. Jacob, poor, unaware soul, was leaning back against the cushions and cracking open a packet of crisps. Meanwhile, here she was feeling her knickers get damp. It was depraved. And also kind of hot. Wait, no—bad Eve.

“Hang on,” he said, going momentarily still. “Are those biscuits? Are there biscuits in the snack pile?”