He wanted her arms around him. He was so cold. She was so warm. She’d fix it.

Except right now, she was the problem. She was the one who’d made him a fucking fool.

“Jacob,” she said cautiously, “after I interviewed here, I agreed to plan a party for an old friend.”

“Plan a party?” Joy repeated. “Don’t downplay your achievement, darling. Your father and I were beyond impressed when Mrs. Lennox let us know you’d be planning Freddy’s twenty-first. She had me on the phone for half an hour yesterday morning alone. You’ve done very well.”

“I wasn’t due to start,” Eve said, still looking at him, “until after the festival.”

And there it was. The final confirmation. Jacob’s throat felt tight, his stomach roiled, his skin stretched thin and painful over his bones. Of course she’d been planning to leave. What had he thought—that this perfect hurricane of a woman would blow into his life and actually stick around? Fall in love with him? Instead of blowing right the fuck out again?

He shouldn’t be surprised she was disappearing so soon. Jacob was easy to leave behind; he’d learned that very early on. What hurt—no, what made him furious, so furious his eyes prickled with it and his blood burned him from the inside—was the fact that she’d almost convinced him she might stay. Why had she done that? Why had she done that? And why had he wanted her so bad after all of five fucking seconds? He should know by now that other people didn’t work like him, weren’t intense like him, but she was so right and so familiar, he’d just—

“Fuck,” he muttered, and suddenly he couldn’t bear to stand in that room in front of all those people, all those strangers. He stormed past Eve and slammed out into the hall, drawing alarmed looks from two guests heading up the stairs.

Heart pounding, breaths coming a bit too fast, Jacob pulled himself together and offered them a smile that felt more like baring fangs. Their alarm didn’t fade. Actually, they seemed to head up the stairs a bit faster.

“Fuck,” he repeated, and then the door behind him opened and Eve was there.

Her fingers fluttered up to his shoulder. “Jacob—”

“Don’t touch me.” Her hand felt like a boulder. He jerked away and whirled around to face her, forcing himself to ignore the expression on her face.

The expression that said she was crumbling.

Clearly, his interpretations couldn’t be trusted when it came to this woman. Clearly, he always got her entirely, overwhelmingly wrong.

“Why?” he demanded. “Why would you—” He didn’t even know what to say.

“You didn’t give me the job.” Her words were rushed, fumbled, as she fiddled frantically with the ends of her braids. “At first. I—you didn’t—before I hit you, you didn’t give me the job. So then Florence called me, and she did give me a job. But I had to stay because I hit you, and you needed help. So I thought I’d just stay here until the festival was over. The job—”