Act Your Age, Eve Brown (The Brown Sisters #3)(52)

“You like biscuits?” She hadn’t been sure.

“I fucking love biscuits. My first hotel job, I—” He broke off with an embarrassed little wince before pushing through with a grin. As if he was mortified, but he knew she’d like this, so he’d say it anyway. “I was sacked for eating the complimentary biscuits.”

“What?” Eve’s gasp was so mighty it probably drained half the oxygen from the room. “Jacob! I can’t believe you stole. I can’t believe you’ve been sacked, ever in your life.”

“It wasn’t stealing!” he said. “Well, it was, but I didn’t mean it to be stealing. I was fourteen!”

“You were working at fourteen?”

He shot her an arch look. “You’re doing that spoiled brat thing again.”

“Oh, yes, sorry.” She waved the question away. “You were morally bankrupt at fourteen?”

“Hey.”

“What? That’s what I heard.”

“Fuck off, Brown,” he grinned, and then he leaned forward to snag a biscuit. She let the rising beat of Ravyn Lenae’s “Sticky” bounce the happy bubbles in her tummy higher, while Jacob bit into a gingersnap, chewed with a slow frown, then examined the plate. Finally, he asked, “Where did you get these?” Because he was a man who noticed things, such as the lack of logo stamped into the biscuits and the crisper, more buttery taste that came from being freshly baked.

“I made them,” she said.

He looked at her sharply, his head held at the lupine angle that meant he was assessing or investigating. What, she wasn’t sure, until he took another bite out of the biscuit and said, “Well, fuck.”

“What?”

“It never occurred to me until now. I could’ve been forcing you to make biscuits all this time.”

“Oh, yes, add to my to-do list, you absolute slave driver.”

“Maybe we could serve these at the festival.”

“Not very breakfast-for-dinner-y,” she reminded him mildly, “and Pemberton might get a bit pissed off if we muscle in on their gingery turf.” But she was smiling because if Jacob wanted something of hers for the B&B, that meant he liked it. A lot.

“Oh. Yes. Hm. All entirely valid points,” he allowed. “I suppose the sugar is going to my head. But adding sweets to the menu—we should think about that. It may be breakfast for dinner, but it is still dinner . . .”

“And I make a gorgeous sponge cake, which is the sort of talent one should never waste,” Eve finished, nodding slowly. “Thank you for the compliment, darling.”

“Er, I don’t think I compli—”

“Cracking idea, really. I could bake a few cakes—they’re easy enough to finish in advance and they’d make for a pretty display. ￡2.50 per slice, and we draw in the pudding lovers and the foodies who’d rather snack from each station than commit to an entire meal.”

Jacob stared at her, looking mildly astonished. “I . . . well . . . yes. That’s a very sound strategy.”

She arched an eyebrow. “Try not to be so obvious about your surprise. I can be clever sometimes, you know.” The words felt slightly foreign in her mouth, more spur-of-the-moment bravado than actual belief—yet once they were out there, Eve found she didn’t want to laugh them off. In fact, they were sort of . . . true. She could be clever. She’d just proved it, hadn’t she?

Maybe. Gosh, what a thought.

Jacob, meanwhile, was rolling his eyes. “I know you can be clever,” he said in long-suffering tones. “I hired you, didn’t I?”

“Barely,” she snorted.

“You persuaded me into it, then. Which is more evidence of your cleverness.”

“Because you’re sooo difficult to outsmart,” she snickered, at which point Jacob picked up a pillow and whacked her with it. So she picked up a pillow and whacked him right back, and in the midst of all that delicious immaturity, she barely had time to glow over their conversation.

It still stuck with her, though.

Clever, clever me.

*

Hours after that sweet, surprise text, the sun had fully set and the moon had finally risen. The night sky was star-studded, the breeze through the open window smelled like cool grass, and Jacob felt a little drunk. But he’d felt this kind of drunk before—the spontaneous, can’t-stop-grinning kind where, for once, he didn’t care too much—and he knew what had caused it.

The woman sitting beside him, solemnly waving an empty Pringles tube in the air like it was a lighter at a concert.

“What are you doing?” he demanded, mostly because he couldn’t fucking wait to hear it. He wanted inside her confetti-strewn head every chance he got. It was the only foreign country he could remember wanting to visit.

Now, when had that happened?

Maybe on Wednesday, when he’d asked what she was muttering to herself as they walked down the hall, and she’d said she was ranking his signature scowls from 1 (Disdainful Glare) to 10 (Torturous Stare of Imminent Death).

Or maybe it had started before then. He wasn’t sure, suddenly. So it was a relief when she scattered his thoughts with her response. “I’m getting into the solemn spirit of ‘Hometown Glory.’ Great pick, by the way. Hey, do you think anyone’s ever gotten their dick stuck in a Pringles tube?”