Not that she’d wanted Jacob to stick around. She might be slightly hard up for friends—real friends, the kind you read about in books—but that didn’t mean Jacob made the cut.

Which was just as well, since he clearly didn’t want to.

“Is it a crisis?” Dani was saying. “Because it sounds as if she’s landed on her feet completely by accident, what with this insta-job. Are you enjoying yourself, Evie-Bean?”

Enjoyment was something Eve rarely considered, when it came to the world of work. Work was something you did to try and feel useful—until you fucked it up. Work was something you did to help the people around you until you weren’t needed anymore. Work was not something you enjoyed in and of itself, because that would only make the situation worse when everything collapsed.

Yet Eve knew she had enjoyed herself that morning. The creative chemistry of cooking, the social aspect of starting her day with so many people—even working in relative solitude, being in control of her own environment, had given her a little thrill.

It was incredibly odd. She assumed the sensation would wear off soon.

“I’m not having a terrible time,” she hedged to her sisters, and ignored their laughter.

“What glowing praise,” Dani snorted. “Have you told Mum and Dad?”

“Yes,” Eve said, which wasn’t technically a lie. She had sent Mum a text that said,

Parents,

I’ve found a month’s interim employment and secured an event-planning contract beginning in September. My current job has provided temporary lodgings, and I’ll deal with the rest later, so don’t worry about me coming home.

Then she’d muted their texts and firmly ignored all their calls. Nothing personal. She was just afraid that if she heard her parents’ voices again before she’d gotten over their last conversation, she might do something mortifying, like cry.

“So where’s the crisis part?” Dani nudged.

“That would be the bit where she ran over her employer, darling,” Chloe said helpfully.

Eve had finally crested the hill and reached her car. She unlocked it, trying not to look at the bumper where there may or may not be a Jacob-sized dent (she didn’t know, having refused to check), and shoved most of her shopping bags inside. Her current housing situation was . . . well, more like a squatting situation, and until that was resolved, she probably shouldn’t traipse into Castell Cottage with all the new clothing and toiletries she’d just bought.

Since Jacob had no idea she was living in his spare room, and all.

She was going to tell him, of course! At some point.

“I don’t see how that’s crisis-y,” Dani was saying, “unless he’s dead. Or suing. But it doesn’t sound like he’s doing either of those things, is he?”

“No,” Eve muttered, “just killing me slowly via frostbite in revenge.”

“Pardon?”

“He’s a bit of an arsehole, is all.” In fact, she felt a rant on the subject building in her chest, like a bubble that needed popping.