“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.”

“Why? You like the girl. I think she likes you back. Ask her out.”

“No,” Jacob snapped, because he was sensible and logical and would not be led astray by Mont’s shockingly casual attitude toward human connection. Mont didn’t understand these things. Mont was charming and classically handsome and inherently flexible, and Mont didn’t get tied up in knots over the slightest thing, and Mont had almost certainly never had a woman tell him that he was great in bed but a little too intense out of it.

Jacob had heard that several thousand times and did not want to hear it from Eve. In fact, if he ever did hear it from Eve—accompanied by one of those pitying wince-smiles as she disappeared into the mist—he was oddly certain he might burn Castell Cottage to the ground.

“Christ, mate, stop being so bloody awkward and just tell her how you—hang on.” Mont broke off midsentence, his voice fading as he spoke to someone else in the background. “Give me a sec, Tess.”

“Are you talking to Jacob?” Tessa Montrose’s voice floated down the line.

“Yes.”

“Is he having a meltdown?”

“Yes.”

“Has that woman hit him with her car again?”

Mont laughed. “Oh, something like that. Now piss off.”

“But do you know where my—?”

“No, I don’t know where your glue gun is, piss off. Sorry, Jake. What was I saying?”

“I don’t remember,” he lied. “Put Tess on the phone, would you? I want to talk to her.” Something about hearing her voice had given him an idea. An idea about how to make Eve smile, which was a goal he found himself more and more eager to achieve, these days. She made everyone smile so often, so easily—he could do the same for her, couldn’t he?

He certainly fucking hoped so. She deserved it.

“You want to talk to Tess? Charming,” Mont said. “Why? You need something fixed?”

“Just put your sister on the phone and stop asking questions.”

“Why would I do that when I could keep asking questions and get on your nerves?”

Jacob muttered an insult and drifted toward the window behind his desk. Eve was in the garden, clearing up the empty wrought-iron tables, looking like one of the meadow flowers with her lavender braids and rose-pink T-shirt. She’d started serving afternoon tea outside when the weather was nice. Her idea. And, God, why did it make him oddly hot and . . . fluffy, inside, when she behaved as if this job, as if this B&B, was her passion, too?