“Is this it?” the voice asked. And then, “Dear Lord, Martin, was that a goose?”

Eve stiffened, then forced herself to relax. Her mother couldn’t possibly be here. That voice clearly belonged to some other lady. A lady accompanied by a man with the same name as Eve’s father.

That’s what she told herself, right up until the moment her mother stepped through Castell Cottage’s front gate, pushed her Dolce & Gabbana sunglasses up onto her forehead, pressed a hand to her chest, and cried, “Eve!”

Then the rest of the family, oh my goodness, crowded behind her—Dad, of course, and Gigi, and Shivani, and even Chloe and Danika, hovering at the back. It was a veritable ambush of relatives, which, in Eve’s experience, did not bode well.

It didn’t bode well at all.

“Oh, fudge,” she said.

Beside her, Mont squinted at Gigi. “Is that Garnet Brown?!”

* * *

Jacob wasn’t sure what he’d expected from Eve’s family, but this . . . Well, actually, he thought, as he looked around his packed dining room, this wasn’t a surprise at all.

Eve’s relatives all had an untouchable air of glamour and certainty, that healthy gloss of attractiveness that surrounded people who had access to the best of everything—food, clothes, whatever. He’d seen people like this many times before, but the part that threw him off was: they all seemed to like each other. It was hard to put his finger on how he knew that. Something about the way they’d walked as a group, making space for one another, steps almost in synch, like a pack rather than a simple group of relatives. Or the way they’d bickered through awkward hellos and made odd little comments to each other as Jacob had herded them inside like sheep.

Whatever the case, he could see the love between them like heat shimmering in the air. It made sense, of course, that Eve had been raised at the heart of a family like this. She’d learned her softness from somewhere, after all.

Jacob studied them now, since he’d run out of conversation shortly after Hello, and since Eve wasn’t here to ease the way for him. There was the mother, sitting stiffly by the window in a pristine suit, her sharp, hazel eyes examining every inch of the room. Probably looking for faults, which shouldn’t worry Jacob; his establishment had no faults, the occasional trespass of waterfowl aside. But he still felt a twinge of nervous worry in his gut, because, well . . . this was Eve’s mother, and she had the same sharpness about her that Aunt Lucy had, which suggested—among other things—very high standards.

And there was Eve’s father, a man who radiated warmth and appeared never to leave his wife’s side. He didn’t look much like Eve, what with the bald head and mustache and all, but he had the . . . the feel of Eve. He’d nodded and smiled, earlier, as Jacob had led them all in here to wait. And right now, he had a hand on the mother’s shoulder, like he could share calm through his touch the way Eve spread happiness through her smiles.