Which made her exactly the type of person Jacob despised.

She pursed her lips as if he’d demanded something wildly unreasonable, like the deliverance of a magical scroll from the Andes by tomorrow afternoon. “But,” she said, “I don’t have a CV. Or a computer, right now. Actually, I was rather hoping I’d come in here and wow you with my incredible cooking skills, good looks, and general charm, you’d employ me, and I’d have a salary, and a house, and all those lovely things.”

Jacob stared.

Montrose laughed.

Jacob realized that must have been a joke. “Ha. Ha. Hilarious.” Then he remembered that sometimes jokes were kind of true and wondered if she didn’t have a computer because she didn’t have a home, and if she was wandering around looking for jobs because she really needed one.

But she sounded like the queen, and her shoes, he’d noticed, were white Doc Martens with red hearts, probably limited edition and very expensive. If he were homeless, he would sell his expensive shoes. Except, no, he wouldn’t, not if they were warm and waterproof and sturdy and possibly the only pair he had, because that wouldn’t make long-term sense.

“Are you homeless?” he asked.

She blinked rapidly.

“Jacob,” Mont scowled, then looked at Eve. “You don’t need to answer that. Listen, Eve, let me level with you.”

“Oh, God,” Jacob sighed, because Mont leveling with people usually involved a vile amount of needless honesty. People complained Jacob was blunt, but at least he’d figured out when it was polite to lie. (Mostly.)

“Jacob here is knee-deep in the shit,” Mont said cheerfully.

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.