And he was angry with Eve. He was. Even if he also, suddenly, remembered the tremor in her voice when she’d knelt over him on the road, offering an entirely insufficient apology. Bugger that tremor, and bugger her.

By the time she returned to the kitchen, Jacob was determined to despise her the same way he did everything: thoroughly.

“What is going on here?” he demanded as she entered. He kept his voice low so the guests couldn’t hear, stalking over to her as she approached the sink.

“What’s going on where?” she asked lightly, rinsing the clean plates she’d brought back and . . . stacking them in the dishwasher correctly.

For some reason, this only pissed Jacob off further. “Here, damn it. Here! What is with all this—this—” Order, perfection, prowess. Any of those words would apply, but he didn’t want to say them. In the end, he whisper-hissed, “How the hell do you know what you’re doing?”

Eve blinked those long lashes, then smiled, so quick and sharp it flashed behind his eyelids like lightning. “Oh, I see. So the bug that’s crawled up your arse this morning is down to the fact I’m not crashing and burning yet?”

Yet, she said. Something about that word snapped against his skin like a rubber band. But Jacob was quickly distracted by his own embarrassment, because her accusation was technically correct and it made him sound ridiculous. “Well,” he ground out, “obviously I’m pleased that you’re doing—actually, you know what, fuck that.” He stopped, then said sharply, “How well you may or may not be doing is irrelevant, because you shouldn’t be here at all. I didn’t hire you.”

She set down the last plate and turned to face him, eyes narrowed and hands on her hips. “You were going to.”

“You don’t know what I was going to do.”

“Mont told me,” she shot back.

Making a mental note to smack Montrose later—twice—Jacob powered through. “Any decisions I may have come to before you hit me with your car were invalidated the moment you hit me with your car.”

Eve had the grace to look awkward. “Er, yes, sorry about that.” She turned and hurried over to the stove, grabbing a box of eggs. “The thing is, I thought helping out while you were under the weather might go some way toward atoning for that grieving mistake.”

Jacob scowled at the back of her head. There was nothing worse than someone making a valid point during an argument he intended to win. “Look,” he began. But then Eve moved toward the pantry, grabbed a fresh loaf of bread, and shut the pantry door . . . with her hip.

And good God, what a hip.

Jacob’s jaw clenched as several muscles in his body tightened without permission. His eyes glued to Eve’s back of their own accord, focusing on the place where her knotted apron strings grazed the strip of bare skin between her borrowed T-shirt and her jeans. “Don’t do that,” he growled. Really, it was a growl. Like a dog. Jacob immediately wanted to shoot himself.