Jacob’s lips quirked. “Part-time?”

“Yep. My other hours are spent as a sparklingly responsible Castell Cottage employee.”

“You’re damn right they are.”

“Sophie—I—you . . .” A tragic pause floated through the vent, dragging Eve’s thoughts back to the drama next door. “Six weeks and five days?”

“Oh, I’m sorry—did you think ten to fifteen minutes of pumping away in silence was doing it for me? Did you imagine I was coming really quietly and in absolute stillness? I’ve been seriously considering having it off with my electric toothbrush, Brian.”

Jacob made a strangled sort of noise and dropped the glass cleaner. He almost caught it—except he reached out to do so with his right hand, so the bottle slipped from his grasp yet again.

On a reflex, Eve fell to her knees and caught it a foot away from hitting the ground. Kind of like a superhero catching a baby or something equally impressive. It was quite satisfying, avoiding disaster instead of causing it. Beaming, she looked up—

And found her face directly in front of Jacob’s dick.

Although she probably shouldn’t think of this area as Jacob’s dick. That was sexy romance novel talk, and this was not a sexy romance novel situation. She should think of it as, like, his groin, or the fly of his jeans, or something equally unsexy and non-dick-related. She stared for a moment at the outline of that heavy shape just below his belt, and narrowly resisted the urge to lick her lips. Not because of his di—groin. Just because her mouth was suddenly, unexplainably dry. Must be all the excitement.

“Get up,” he whispered, an urgency in his voice that she’d never heard before. Not even when she’d tumbled into that duck pond. “Get up,” he repeated, and Eve realized her brain was doing the thing where it stuck, like a scratched CD, on one particular element of the world around her. (Jacob’s di—fly, in this case.) She was about to start moving when he wrapped a hand around her upper arm and hauled her to her feet with a strength that was as impressive as it was unexpected.

She popped up beside him feeling slightly breathless, waving the glass cleaner like a trophy. “Got it.” Probably a redundant comment, by now, but her brain was still feeling sluggish.

That bulge had been very big. Very . . . thick.

And Jacob seemed, in the low light, to be blushing. Why was he blushing?

Probably the electric toothbrush comment.

“Yes,” he was saying, his voice oddly stilted. “Good . . . good catch. Very good catch. Cheers.”

“No problem. I didn’t want to interrupt next door and put an end to the juiciest conversation I’ve ever overheard.”

Jacob blinked as if he might have misheard her. She waited for his confusion to be replaced by a dry look of disapproval. Instead, after one shocked second, he . . . smiled. “You’re so fucking shameless,” he said, but he made it sound like a compliment. And he’d cursed. She had noticed, over the last few days, that Jacob only swore when he was pushed to the absolute limit or when he was pissing around with Mont. So, in short, when he was being himself.