Craig shifted uncomfortably, looking away. “Christ,” he muttered. “Let’s bloody get on with it.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Marissa said severely. “If you’re done disrupting proceedings, Mr. Jackson, we are all busy people and have no time to waste.”

Craig’s redness ratcheted up to fire engine, but, with a wary glare in Eve and Jacob’s direction, he kept his mouth shut.

Marissa opened the notebook in front of her and flicked through a few pages before starting a speech about schedules and orders of events. But, honestly, Jacob barely heard a word. He was too busy staring at Eve, who had produced a notebook of her own from somewhere and was already scribbling bullet points as Marissa spoke.

He looked at the downward sweep of her dark lashes, the sugar-sweet pink gloss on that lovely, clever mouth, the quick glide of her hand over the page. And then he saw the title she’d written on the clean, white paper.

Notes for Jacob.

All the breath swept out of him in a long, quiet wave. Eve, he had noticed, helped everyone. So it shouldn’t hit him like a fist to the chest when she helped him, too—yet his heart stuttered a bit beneath the blow of his surprise.

This woman—he kept waiting for her to hate him more, but she appeared to be hating him less. They were moving backward, firmly away from safe, spiky interactions and closer to something dangerously like friendship.

Jacob really wasn’t sure what to do with that.

Chapter Eleven

Eve’s family saw her as “the social one”—but only because her eldest sister was a hermit, and her middle sister was a bookworm with a vague disdain for human contact. If Chloe or Dani cared enough to collect friendships, they’d probably be far more successful than Eve—because Eve’s method of socializing had been born out of desperation and careful observation, a shield of giggling charm and always-up-for-it flair designed to hide the ways she didn’t quite fit in.

It was odd, really; the more she thought about it, the more she occasionally reminded herself of . . . Jacob.

Well, only a little bit. Just the awkward parts.

So when the man himself announced on Friday morning that they’d finally be doing the housekeeping together, alone, Eve waited patiently for self-conscious anxiety to consume her. She should be a nervous wreck, frantic about maintaining a persona that worked best in group situations, worried he might see right through her and find her irritating or unnerving or just not right.

Instead, she surprised herself by feeling utterly serene. Because, honestly? Jacob wasn’t like other people. He’d found her irritating from the start, and he hadn’t bothered to hide it, so she’d long since bothered to care. It turned out there was a difference between the heavy weight of wondering what people might think, and the easy acceptance of knowing what Jacob thought because he bloody well said it out loud.

Plus, she was pleased to finally offer some help.