Jacob stared. “We don’t look alike.” Liam was handsome and charming and probably could’ve played the badboy love interest on a daytime soap opera if he hadn’t been born to play with engines instead. Jacob saw the family resemblance, but he knew he was sharper and harsher and altogether more awkward in a way that drained the handsomeness right out of him.

But Eve frowned as if he wasn’t making sense and said, “What? You’re practically identical. You see that, right?”

Jacob tried to compute the many implications of that statement and developed a small headache that encouraged him to stop. “You thought Lucy wasn’t my aunt?”

“She’s protective over you like a mother. You have different surnames but you love her enough to name Castell Cottage after her. And you never talk about your parents. I thought maybe she’d adopted you or fostered you or something, and you didn’t want to call her Mum.”

“She did adopt me. I’m her son.” He cleared his throat. “Legally, I mean.”

“Not just legally, from where I’m standing.”

Jacob supposed that was a comment on love or emotional connection or what have you. He shifted uncomfortably and searched for a new topic.

But Eve apparently wasn’t done. “I’m sorry about your parents.”

He blinked. So am I. “Sorry for what?”

“That they . . . um . . .” For once, she looked awkward, lacing her fingers together and shrugging her shoulders. “Sorry . . . for your . . . loss?”

Jacob realized what she was getting at and snorted. “Are you? You don’t sound certain.”

“Oh my God, Jacob.” She squeezed her eyes shut and winced.

He decided to put her out of her misery. “My parents aren’t dead.”

Her eyes flew open. “Aren’t they?”

“Well, I suppose they might be. I’d hardly know, at this point. But last I heard, they were alive and well, terrorizing a small village in southern Italy. Mind you, that was a few Christmases back. This time of year, they’re probably in . . .” He thought for a moment. “Thailand? Cambodia? Maybe Laos.”

Eve stared as if he’d started speaking a foreign language.

With a sigh, Jacob did what he’d always done, right from his first day at school, back when he’d arrived in Skybriar. He ripped off the bandage and splayed his guts out there like they didn’t matter one bit. All the better to speed up everyone else’s eventual boredom with his life story.

“My parents are international adventurers, also known as spongers, grifters, or childish twats. They had me by accident and weren’t pleased with the result. After about a decade, they gave up and came back to England long enough to dump me on Lucy’s doorstep.” He made his voice as flat and robotic as possible during this recitation, because if his words were impenetrable iron bars, no one bothered to look beneath. To see the anxiety he’d grown up with, waking up somewhere different every morning in the bed of his parents’ truck.