She huffed. Folded her arms. Flicked Jacob an utterly unreadable look. “So—do you think—” She broke off, pressing her lips together. “Then why did you bring it up?”

Good fucking question. His feelings for her must be causing some kind of brain hemorrhage, because this conversation wasn’t his to have. You couldn’t just tell a woman that she often behaved in a way you read as autistic. Not if you weren’t said woman’s behavioral therapist. There were rules—or—ethical boundaries, or—something. Or maybe there weren’t; Jacob didn’t fucking know. He’d only been twelve when Aunt Lucy had told him they were just going to the doctor’s to sort something out, and really, the something didn’t matter, except school might be easier if people knew what she already suspected, that was all.

So he didn’t really know how this stuff worked for adults. He did know that he could very easily be wrong, and that he’d already crossed enough lines with this woman, so he should stop while he was ahead.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said finally. “Just—don’t worry about it.”

She seemed to deflate, though he didn’t understand why. “Okay. Whatever.” A moment later, he watched as her odd mood drifted away like clouds from the sun—because she was Eve, and Eve was never one thing for long. She turned the golden ray of her attention upward as they wandered down an avenue of old oak trees. The sunlight through the verdant leaves sent dappled patterns across her skin and brought out the ocher in her dark eyes. She released a sigh that thrust him right back to last weekend, to her shaky breath when he’d kissed between her thighs.

He wrenched himself back to the present before his dick could start to react. Wandering down the streets of Skybriar with a hard-on wouldn’t do his reputation much good, professional or otherwise.

“Oh look,” she said, pointing. “A gingerbread sign.”

Jacob eyed the banner advertising the Gingerbread Festival, and instead of his usual anxiety to get said festival absolutely right, all he felt was a quiet confidence in Eve. Which wasn’t a feeling conducive to caring about her less, so he squashed it down and simply grunted.

“This is such a lovely town,” she murmured. “I don’t know how you manage to stay so grumpy when you live here.”

“Through great force of will,” he replied.

“I’ve never seen this street before. It’s pretty.”

“Never seen—?” But no, he supposed she wouldn’t have. He knew that Eve had gone shopping, and that she made trips to the supermarket, but aside from that, well.

“There’s not much time for exploring,” she said. The words were light and even, a simple statement of fact, but they hit him like a hammer made of guilt. Christ. The more he thought about it, the more Castell Cottage looked like some kind of labor camp, lately.

“I’m sorry,” he blurted. And it was the truth. As a child, he’d caught a butterfly in a jar, and though he’d given it air holes and fed it as advised by the quick facts section of his insect encyclopedia, it had still died.