Act Your Age, Eve Brown (The Brown Sisters #3)(71)
Anyway, Jacob wasn’t asking for a relationship. He was asking how they should go about not-fucking, which was pretty much the opposite, so she’d better rein in all these secret, silly hopes.
If she was smart, she would want what Jacob wanted: distance. Yet the very idea made her come over all gray, like a rainy sky.
“Look,” she said slowly. “I am on a journey to self-ac . . . ac . . .”
“Actualization.”
“Precisely,” she said. “I know sleeping with my emotionally unavailable boss isn’t a mature, sensible choice, so I’m not going to do it again.” Even if she was struggling more and more to accept the idea that Jacob could be a bad choice.
He wasn’t hers to choose, so it didn’t really matter.
“But I still want to be near you,” she continued. “All right? I just want to be near you. So I vote we keep going the way we always have, and we’ll completely forget the inappropriate sex part, and everything will be fine.” She hoped.
After a long, long silence, he said, “I see.” Then, in a sudden flurry of action, he added, “Come on,” and opened the door, and towed her outside like a boat.
Lucy was leaning against the opposite wall with her arms folded and one eyebrow raised. But there was a hint of amusement in her voice when she asked, “Meeting concluded?”
“Yes,” Jacob said. “Really sorry, Luce, but we don’t need the room. Sorry. Just—more convenient at the cottage. Early hours. Free board. I’m not paying Eve enough, you know.”
“No,” Lucy said dryly. “I imagine not.”
“Right, well, we’ll be off now.”
Lucy cleared her throat.
“Oh.” Jacob released Eve’s hand and went over to his aunt. “Thanks, really. Sorry to play silly buggers. I’ll see you for dinner this weekend. Bye.” He bent to kiss her silvery hair.
“Whatever. Love you, kiddo,” Lucy said, and slapped him on the shoulder as he passed.
“Erm, good-bye,” Eve said brightly, and that was all she managed before Jacob took her hand again and dragged her away.
Chapter Sixteen
Jacob leaned back in his oversized, leather desk chair, his phone pressed anxiously to his ear. “Mont? Are you all right? You sound like you’re hyperventilating.”
“I am hyperventilating,” Mont replied, although now he was speaking again, he sounded more dazed and confused than low on oxygen. “Did you just—Jacob—did you just call me up and tell me, all fucking casual, that you slept with Eve last Sunday night?”
“I suppose that depends on your definition of slept with.”
“My definition involves orgasms.”
“Ah.” Restless, Jacob pushed back his chair and stood. “In that case, I suppose so.” He sounded dry and detached, like he really was as casual about this situation as Mont claimed. But he fucking wasn’t, hence why he’d caved and confessed all to his best friend. It had been an entire week since the Dildo Incident, and he was crumbling like some ancient cliff because God and fuck and shit and God, he wanted to touch her again. To hold her, and taste her, and feel like she was his.
He’d been this close to saying as much on Thursday, in the darkness of Aunt Lucy’s cupboard. If Eve had pushed him then—even a little bit—he would’ve abandoned his common sense and fucked her however, whenever, and wherever she bloody well wanted. But she’d made it clear that she didn’t want anything of the sort—thankfully before he’d made a total fool of himself.
I know sleeping with my emotionally unavailable boss isn’t a mature, sensible choice . . .
That completely factual statement should not have stung.
“So,” Mont said, “does she know you only sleep with people if you—”
“Shut up,” Jacob said crisply.
“If you adore them and you want to marry them and hide them away in your lair forever and ever?” Mont finished.
“You exaggerate.” Jacob paced his office for the seventy-fifth time today, wishing that was true. But unfortunately, Mont was right: Jacob didn’t like people easily, but once he did like them, it was always too far and too fast. He had to temper himself, had to be careful.
Not that he’d been remotely careful with Eve. And it showed.
Take this morning at breakfast, for example. If he hadn’t been knackered from another sleepless night of overthinking and berating himself, he might have kissed her glossy, orange mouth over the pain au chocolat, and then where would they be? Up to their eyeballs in horrified Trip Advisor reviews, and more importantly, on a treacherous path from safe, long-term friendship to difficult, dangerous romance. Which she didn’t even want. So there was no use thinking about it.
“I mean, I can’t say I didn’t see this coming.”
Jacob almost tripped over his own feet. “What?”
“Come on, man. Surely you saw this coming.”
“I say again: what?”
Mont laughed down the phone. “Never mind. Never mind. So, you slept with the attractive woman you haven’t stopped talking about in weeks. Shocker.”
“I—haven’t—” Jacob cut off his outraged sputtering, focused on a nice, blank spot on the wall, and took a breath. “Relaying an employee’s increasingly excellent job performance is not the same as talking about her for weeks. And stop being flippant about the situation, Montrose. It’s horrific.”