“I don’t think sucking up is your style, Jacob Wayne,” she said softly.

“If anyone could drive me to it,” he replied, “you could.”

In that moment, Eve decided that getting on with things might be the adult way to live—but blurting out her feelings was officially the Eve Brown way to live. She much preferred it.

“So,” Jacob said after a moment. “Since I never did ask—what do you want to do? About . . . everything?”

Now, there was a question. Her gut instinct was to reply, I want to go home and have my way with you again—but Eve had spent the last week thinking about all the reasons why that was not a sound choice. First and foremost: she had a queasy suspicion that if she spent too much time with her hands on this man, she’d eventually refuse to let go. And she couldn’t refuse to let go; not when Skybriar was just a temporary pit stop on her journey to being her better self. She had a party-planning job to complete. She had parents to make proud, once and for all. She had a mature, adult plan, and staying here in this happy little fairy-tale town with a delightful big bad wolf was not conducive to that plan. It couldn’t be, because she wanted it so badly.

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.”