So when he dragged Eve off to get cleaning supplies, she found herself skipping merrily after him, singing, “We’re off to see the storeroom, the wonderful storeroom of Oz.”

“Good God, woman,” Jacob muttered. “Your energy is indecent. Weren’t you moaning this morning about how early we have to wake up?”

“I think I’m getting so little sleep it’s making me hyperactive,” Eve said.

“Like a toddler,” he replied. “Delightful.”

“Anyway, you said I could sing. You said, something something, blah blah blah, no AirPod, Eve can sing.”

She expected him to express regret over that fact. Instead, all he did was murmur gravely, “Ah. So I did.” Then he shut up about the singing thing completely.

For an outrageous grump, he could be incredibly reasonable sometimes.

They entered a green-and-white wallpapered hallway where Jacob caught her wrist and tugged her to a stop. You’d think, after all the touching and rescuing there’d been the other night, Eve would be accustomed to physical contact with this man by now. But when his long fingers pressed firmly into her skin, she felt as if he’d shocked her—tiny, delicious bursts of electricity sparkling over her flesh.

He touched her casually, as if he had a right to do it, as if they were like that now. She supposed they might be like that now, because she knew him, at least a little bit. And somehow, despite his many infuriating qualities, she liked what she knew.

“You have to be quiet in the storeroom,” he murmured. “We both do. There’s a very thin connecting door to the bedroom beside it, and a shared air vent.”

“Oh,” she murmured back. “So . . . we whisper?”

“We whisper,” he agreed. Then he grabbed the big old ring of keys from his pocket and unlocked the storeroom door. The room inside was small and cramped, filled with well-stocked shelves, lit only by a high, round window on the far side. “You’ll have to grab the sheets,” he said, nodding at a fresh stack on those shelves, “since a dangerous driver recently incapacitated my right hand.”

A dangerous—?! Well, perhaps that wasn’t entirely inaccurate.

Pushing down a now-familiar wave of guilt, Eve shot him a glare—purely on principle, obviously—and took the sheets. She managed a basket of cleaning supplies, too, just to show off. Then a distracting hum of voices drifted in from the next room, and Eve willed herself not to drop a bottle of bleach or knock over a shelf or anything like that, because Jacob would probably murder her. He would bludgeon her to death with the box of little biscuits and tiny milks he was currently balancing in his left arm.

“Grab a blanket, too,” he said, nodding toward a separate pile of bedding.

Eve followed instructions—which was a rather novel experience for her—and asked, “What’s this for?”

“It’s weighted.” When she raised her eyebrows in question, he sighed. “Some people prefer weighted blankets, Eve. Such as the gentleman currently occupying the Peony Room. Let’s move on.”