“My aunt,” he said finally, “has rearranged a few appointments so she can help me. Which means your only remaining duties today are afternoon tea. If you need anything, I’m usually in my office. But I’ll probably be very busy so you might not find me there or, you know, I might not answer when you knock.” With that, he turned away from the counter and stalked toward the door.

“Okay,” Eve said. “Erm . . . Jacob, are you—?”

He left.

* * *

Eve had intended to keep the details of yesterday’s disastrous interview private, which is to say, completely off her family’s radar. But later that day, she made the fatal mistake of calling her sisters for a post-shopping phone call that quickly veered from the price of a decent bra (astronomical) to Eve’s latest goings-on. After a valiant three minutes of prevarication, she unfortunately sang like a canary.

“Oh, Eve,” Danika said. “You can always be relied upon for an interesting story. Really, with you to live through vicariously, Chloe and I barely need to leave the house.”

“And a good thing, too,” Chloe murmured absently, “because I’m far too busy to bother.”

For some reason, the word busy made Eve think of Jacob. Too many things were making her think of Jacob, at present—probably because his sudden disappearance earlier had jabbed at an old and much-disturbed scar.

Eve hefted the shopping bags weighing down her arms—she really needed to start working out, if her current exhaustion was any indication—and continued the uphill trek back to Castell Cottage. “I should stop telling you two my stories, then,” she said, “because you both need to get a bloody life.”

Twin gasps hit her, one through each AirPod. Left for Chloe, right for Dani.

“How dare you, darling.” That was the left. “I have a life. I built it myself.”

Eve rolled her eyes.

“I’m simply incredibly bogged down with work at the moment,” Chloe went on, and in fairness, Eve could hear the telltale rapid taps of Chloe working at her laptop in the background.

“And I also have a life,” Dani said.

Somewhere in the background, her boyfriend, Zaf, called, “Nope.”

“Shut up, you.”

“Nope.”

“Zafir.” There was the sound of a scuffle, followed by a few grunts. Then Dani laughed, “Let go of me, you awful man.”

“Are you going to stop throwing cushions?” he asked reasonably.

“Do you two mind?” Chloe demanded. “Eve is in the midst of a crisis.”

At the sound of her name, Eve blinked. She’d been drifting off a little bit, there. Thinking about . . .

Well, not about Jacob. Not specifically. More about people in general—about how her friends never liked her quite as much as she liked them. How they dropped her as soon as someone better came along, or pushed her to the edge of the circle when space was tight, or generally treated her as optional rather than vital. She had a little scar on her heart from all those tiny, vicious prods, and Jacob walking out abruptly this morning had left that scar sore and aching.