Then he added, “It’s far too late to find someone else to do this morning’s breakfast,” and Eve decided she’d been mistaken; he was definitely still the worst.

“Fuck off,” she muttered and shoved him away. Her brand-new pajamas were ruined. Her braids were swirling around in algae. Her mouth still tasted of tuberculosis or fungus or something equally terrible, and when she tried to step back, her shoe sort of . . . squidged in something, and the something gave way, and suddenly she was sinking.

“Oh no you don’t,” Jacob said and grabbed her again. Now she was back against the wall of his chest.

“Why,” she gritted out, “is the water up to my neck, but only up to your . . . boob area?”

He stared down at her. “Because we are different heights, Eve.”

“I know that!” She scowled, then blinked. “Er, Jacob, are you shirtless?”

“Let’s not discuss it.”

“Bloody hell.” She hadn’t noticed before, in the shadows, but it was difficult not to notice now, with his bare skin pressed against hers. She prodded experimentally at his abs. “Bloody hell.”

“Stop that,” he snapped. “Do you think we could get out of here now? There’s . . . algae on me.” Apparently he found that even more abhorrent than she did, because he shuddered. It was a full body movement, one that seemed involuntary—and pressed the aforementioned abs against her tits. Which might have been enjoyable if he hadn’t muttered darkly, “Slime. Can’t stand slime.”

Actually, even with the mutterings, it was still enjoyable. How dare Jacob of all people have this . . . television body?! He must have made a deal with the devil. She’d seen evidence in the kitchen of him eating microwaved spaghetti Bolognese for dinner. Men who ate nice food like spaghetti Bolognese were not supposed to also have abs. There was a balance to the universe that had to be observed and he was shamelessly flouting it.

“Well, not to be ungrateful,” she shot back, unreasonably irritated, “but why on earth did you jump in? You’re injured, you clod.”

He gave her a severe look and said stiffly, “Obviously, I came in to rescue you.”

“Rescue me? It’s a pond, Jacob.” Still, the word rescue fizzed through her mind with all sorts of soft and pleasant meanings.

“And you’re a disaster. I’m surprised you didn’t slip under and crack your head open on a rock and drown on my property and send my insurance through the roof. Or something like that.”

“Oh, insurance.” She laughed. “That’s why you jumped in to rescue me?”

“Obviously,” he bit out.

Funny how she didn’t believe him. Jacob’s attitude was rather like a barbed-wire fence: designed to rip you to shreds if you got too close, but only to protect something special.

No matter what he said, injured men who were obsessed with cleanliness didn’t jump bodily into ponds over insurance. No, people did things like that because they were secretly halfway nice, even if they didn’t want anyone to notice.