He caught her wrist automatically, trapping her hand in front of his face. Her skin was soft—almost unnaturally soft. She must bathe in butter or milk or something because if he didn’t know better, he’d think her whole body was wrapped in satin. He could feel her pulse beneath his fingers and it was fast. Probably because she’d just been grabbed by a strange and silent man in the dark.

He let her go.

“Well,” she said cheerfully, “I wasn’t expecting that to work.” But she moved away with a speed that didn’t quite match her casual tone.

Damn. Every time they did something other than argue, he managed to fuck it up. Surprising, how tense and unhappy that made him. Jacob wasn’t in the habit of giving a shit about people who weren’t on his pre-approved list. It was complicated and it always ended badly.

Badly, as in: with him dumped on someone else’s doorstep like a bag of rubbish.

Now, why was he thinking about that?

With effort, he wrenched himself back to the conversation they’d been having before everything had somehow gone off the rails. “You’ve been reading my handbooks.”

“Oh, yes. Mont gave them to me.”

“And you—actually read one.”

She sounded confused when she corrected him. As if she didn’t understand his disbelief. “I read all of them.”

“You—read—all of them.”

“I can read, you know.”

“You’ve been here for two days!”

“Technically three, since it’s past midnight.”

“Days don’t count until they end,” Jacob snapped. “And—and you should know, I really wrote those manuals for myself more than anyone else. To get my systems clear in my head.”

“Ah—that explains the rampant swearing and generally unprofessional tone.”

He was so beside himself with astonishment, he didn’t even scowl at the unprofessional comment. Even though it was bullshit. Jacob was the soul of professionalism. Although he had a feeling that if he said that out loud, she might laugh in his face.

Didn’t matter. He couldn’t get over the fact that she’d apparently taken his weird manuals—yes, he knew they were weird—and read them as if they were very serious materials and applied them with impressive commitment.

Serious. Application. Commitment. All these things added up to one impossible conclusion.

“Eve,” he said slowly. “Are you . . . do you . . . by any chance . . . respect my B&B?”

“What on earth kind of question is that?” she demanded. “Of course I do, you widgeon.”

Well. Well. He’d expected someone like Eve—someone carefree, someone flexible, someone who could bend without breaking—to look down on his rigidity. To laugh at it, maybe. But this . . .

“In that case,” he said stiffly, his mind still sifting through evidence, “it is entirely possible that I have been operating on some incorrect assumptions about you, based solely on your horrific taste in T-shirts and your annoyingly whimsical manner.”

“Is that your way of saying you’ve been a judgmental prick?” she asked. “Gosh, I hope so. Say sorry next. Go on. You can do it.”