Act Your Age, Eve Brown (The Brown Sisters #3)(9)
Great. Absolutely brilliant. Jacob’s second-in-command had gone rogue.
Chapter Three
Eve had never had the pleasure of staying at a B&B. In fact, she rarely ever stayed at any sort of hotel—why bother, when Grandpa’s home in Saint Catherine was always open? Her vision of a B&B owner, therefore, had been cobbled together from vague ideas and possibly a few books she’d read as a child. Jacob Wayne should, by rights, be an old married couple with a twinkle in their eye who looked upon the world at large with kindness and goodwill and would be happy to hire Eve so that she could start her journey to self-actualization in a job she’d never get too attached to.
Instead, Jacob Wayne was a single man, not much older than her, and the twinkle in his eye was more of a steely, judgmental glint. Or maybe that was just the light flashing off his silver-rimmed glasses. Those glasses were balanced on a strong, Roman nose that someone should probably break, because all his features were strong and Roman and that likely had something to do with how he’d become so arrogant. The man was disgustingly, inescapably, thoroughly handsome, and as Gigi often said, A handsome man is a fearsome liability to everyone but himself.
Jacob had high cheekbones and a hard, sharp jaw, a terminally unsmiling mouth, pale skin, and rainy-sky eyes that had speared Eve through the chest from the moment she’d entered the room. Everything about him, from his severely side-parted blond hair, to his blue button-down shirt with its crisply rolled-up sleeves, suggested brisk efficiency. Even the way he talked, staccato bursts that zipped from point to point, said he was irritated by the irrelevant chatter the rest of the world wasted its time on.
Most of all, he seemed irritated by Eve.
Which was, frankly, his loss. Eve was an absolute delight, everyone knew that—yet it was abundantly clear that Jacob believed himself to be better than her. And perhaps, in certain respects, he might be right . . . but she wasn’t overly fond of people who made judgments like that without the proper evidence. She wasn’t fond of them at all.
Honestly, she barely wanted to work here anyway. In fact, what she wanted to do with Jacob sneering Wayne, after just ten minutes of acquaintance, was conk him on the head with a saucepan.
But watching a scarlet flush creep up his chiseled cheeks was also enjoyable, and since that’s what happened when Mont said, Jacob here is knee-deep in the shit, Eve decided to listen instead of storming off.
“Jacob’s last chef won the lotto down at the corner shop last week,” Mont went on. “Fifty grand, so she’s jacked work in and moved back to Scotland to marry her fella—long distance, they were—and start her own business.”
Eve arched a dubious eyebrow. “Well, that’s nice for her. But I doubt she’ll get far with fifty thousand.”
“That’s what I said,” Jacob burst out. “What’s a house deposit without a guaranteed income to pay the mortgage?” He frowned and snapped his mouth shut as soon as the words escaped, looking thoroughly displeased at having agreed with Eve on any level.
Of course, Eve hadn’t realized fifty thousand pounds was a house deposit. What she’d meant was that fifty thousand pounds hadn’t been even half of the budget of the wedding she’d planned for Cecelia. But she decided to keep that minor detail to herself.
You waste time and opportunities like—like a spoiled brat.
She pursed her lips and turned away from Jacob’s sharp, clear energy, focusing on Mont, who was considerably less unsettling in every way. Oh, he was as handsome as Jacob, with his smiling mouth, dark skin, and warm eyes—but he didn’t vibrate with iron control and never-ending judgment, which made him far easier to look at. “Please,” she said politely, “do continue.”
Mont smiled a little wider. Jacob, meanwhile, narrowed those frosty eyes of his. Not that Eve was looking.
“Point is,” Montrose went on, “the chef’s gone, and Jacob doesn’t know how to boil an egg.”
“Yes,” Jacob growled, “I do.”
“Correction: Jacob was cursed by a witch at birth, so no matter how carefully he follows a recipe, it always comes out like shit.”
Jacob opened his mouth as if he wanted to argue, then closed it again as if, on second thought, he really couldn’t. Eve was suddenly glad she’d stayed; though she had no intention of taking this job, hearing all about Jacob’s problems was rather entertaining.
“Plus,” Mont said, “it’s the Gingerbread Festival over in Pemberton at the end of the month.” He must have seen Eve’s expression, because he explained: “Old-school gingerbread bakery with a bit of a cult following. You should try some, it’s bloody good. Anyway, they have this annual foodie event and Castell Cottage is running a breakfast-for-dinner stall.”
Eve hadn’t realized that breakfast for dinner was a legitimate thing, as opposed to evidence of her own chaotic lifestyle, but she decided to take this new knowledge in stride. “So they chose your B&B—”
“My B&B,” Jacob interrupted. God, what a prat.
“This B&B,” Eve went on smoothly—she was rather proud of herself—“to lead such an important event, despite your not even having a chef?”
Jacob’s jaw tensed and his cold eyes flashed with irritation, which was rather fun to see. It was rare that Eve’s natural skill at annoyance gave her such satisfaction. “We did have a chef when I secured the opportunity,” he corrected her. “An excellent one.”