Act Your Age, Eve Brown (The Brown Sisters #3)(77)

But. No creepy phone calls. Watching people too closely could stifle them. He’d learned that after his first girlfriend had found his spreadsheet tracking the details of their relationship and dumped him outside the local library.

So these accounts would have to do as a distraction. He turned back to his spreadsheet—this one thoroughly legitimate—and typed in a few more numbers before he heard it: the click of a key in the lock. That was the spare key to his private area, the one he’d given Eve shortly after discovering she’d, y’know, moved in.

She was back.

He wouldn’t go out to see her. That would be weird. That would be like handing someone an unexpected and unasked-for gift, then hovering as they opened it and demanding to know if they liked it. He also couldn’t go out there because he’d made a private vow to himself: no being alone with Eve at night. He could not be trusted. Jacob was certain of that.

So he typed nonsense into his spreadsheet, completely fucking up his equations, as the creak of her footsteps sounded down the hall. Ignore. Ignore. Ig—

A knock came at his office door.

Well, shit.

“Jacob?” she called softly. “The light’s on.”

She’d hated it. She’d hated the entire night and was horrified by his presumption. She’d felt corralled into an evening of socializing, like a child, which was frankly Jacob’s worst nightmare, so—

“Can I come in?”

To hit him with a brick, probably. Ah, well. Better face the consequences of his actions like a man. “Yes,” he said, his voice rough with—tiredness. Probably.

The door opened, and Eve didn’t look like she was going to hit him with a brick. For one thing, she didn’t even have a brick. Just a pair of white Converse with neon, rainbow laces, hanging from one hand—Converse that had presumably been on her feet, once, because now her feet were bare. And she probably didn’t intend to hit him with the shoes, because she was smiling. She was smiling so big that her cheeks plumped and her eyes crinkled at the corners and his heart began to thump a frantic dance beat against his ribs.

“Hi,” she said, leaning against the doorway. God, he wished she hadn’t done that. She was wearing this tiny white dress, a silky, strapless thing with random flecks of color, that clung to every last one of her curves. And there were many. Her hips strained the fabric, pulling it so tight she might as well be fucking naked. She leaned forward slightly, her movements lazy and loose, and her cleavage basically spilled over the neckline. That dress was precarious, to say the least. It was clearly his duty, as the nearest authority figure, to watch her breasts as closely as possible. The minute they bounced free, he would spring into action and . . . put them back in? No, that didn’t seem right.

“I know what you did,” she murmured, and he immediately thought back to this morning—to the way he’d fucked his hand underneath the spray of the shower while she sang “Good Morning Baltimore,” of all things, on the other side of the wall.

But obviously, she wasn’t talking about that.

“Jacob Wayne,” she said as she finally stepped into the room, “you are the sweetest man alive.”

He flinched. “No.”

She sprawled in the chair opposite his desk. “Yes.” She raised her legs and put her feet on said desk. Her toes were painted glittery pink. Her lip gloss was glittery pink, too. Bright and brilliant and obnoxious as fuck. He wanted to see it all over his dick.

“Did you organize tonight because you were sick of me and wanted me out of your hair?”

“No,” he repeated, louder and faster than before.

Eve flashed him a smug smile. “Thought not.”

Shit. It was slowly dawning on Jacob that Eve knew him well enough to possibly guess at his motives for tonight. His motives being that he was pathetically in love with her and he would refracture his own wrist, or in this case, ask Theresa and Alexandra Montrose for a favor, to make her happy. “I just wanted you to make some more friends so you could stop talking my ear off.”

“You love when I talk your ear off.”

“You’re a very social being. I was worried you might die in captivity.”

“Now, that, I believe,” she said, and he experienced a moment of relief before she went on. “You were looking after me, weren’t you? You do that rather a lot.”

Shit, shit, shit. “No,” he said flatly. “You don’t need looking after. You’re a grown woman.”

“You do that a lot, too.” Her glossy lips tipped up into a smile. “The whole ‘respecting me’ bit.”

“It’s not a . . . bit.”

“I know. That’s what makes it a panty-dropper.” And then she spread her legs.

Dear fucking Christ.

He saw it all happen in slow motion. Her feet on his desk, slowly parting. His direct view up the length of her legs, and the way those lush thighs separated until he could see straight up her fucking skirt. She wasn’t wearing any underwear. Her pussy was bare and beautifully exposed, as pouting and glossy as her wicked mouth, and at the sight his cock became a fucking crowbar.

He wrapped his good hand around the arm of his desk chair, felt the leather creak and stretch under his white-knuckled grip. “Eve.”

She batted her eyelashes. “Yes, Jacob?”