“You’re doing this all wrong,” Alex told her. Eve noticed that Alex had made herself comfortable on Jacob’s weight bench, of all things, lying back and propping up one knee, staring at the ceiling with her hands over her stomach. She had a thick, dark scar wrapped all around her wrist like a bracelet.

“I’m doing it wrong? You’re lying on the furniture,” Tessa said, but by now Eve had noticed their bickering held zero heat. As if they were simply annoying each other for the fun of it. “Now, Eve, I know this is all very sudden, but Jacob told us you urgently needed to socialize, and we are his only friends aside from Mont—”

“Friends?” Alex snorted.

Eve found herself suddenly scowling. “Jacob’s only next door, you know. He can probably hear you.”

“Good,” Alex grinned, raising her voice, at which point Eve realized this was a gentle in-joke, as opposed to actual Jacob-hating, and felt rather silly.

“Well,” Tessa said thoughtfully, “we’re probably not his only friends. He gets on very well with that older lady who runs the cheese counter at the supermarket and also the man who washes out the wheelie bins, but you know what I mean. He wanted to show you a good time, and he decided we were the best option. Obviously.” She swished the hair again, leaving a trail of hibiscus and coconut in the air, and flashed a rather beguiling smile. “So. Are you in?”

Was Eve in? At this point, she wasn’t even certain she was conscious. “Erm. I must admit, I’m slightly confused on several counts. Jacob wanted to show me a good time?” Jacob had already shown her a good time. Very effectively. And most enthusiastically, she remembered, her cheeks flushing. More to the point, he wasn’t here to show her a good time now, so what the bloody hell was going on?

“Well, he’s not a big fan of going out dancing,” Tessa said.

“Shocker,” Alex interjected.

“But he thought you might be, and also that you might want to talk to someone other than him, for once, so he told us all about you and we decided you sounded excellent and that we should definitely hang out.”

Eve’s heart started vibrating, which was alarming, but entirely understandable, all things considered. “He told you all about me? What . . . what did that entail?” She tried to stamp out the tentative pleasure in her voice, but judging by Alex’s smirk, she wasn’t entirely successful.

“He said,” Alex grinned, “that you were funny, and sweet, and then he had an embolism from being too complimentary and refused to say anything else except, Just be nice to her, Alexandra, or I’ll murder you in your sleep.”

Eve bit her lip on a smile. First he gave her the mother of all orgasms. Then he brooded himself into a tizzy about it. Now he was trying to make her happy in a predictably cloak-and-dagger fashion. It was all so fucking Jacob she might just pass out.