“That’s true,” Jacob allowed calmly, because it was. He watched in silence as Simon scrambled up from his chair and exited the room, nodding and stuttering all the while.

“Pitiful,” Jacob muttered. As the dining room door swung shut, he wrote two careful words on his notepad: FUCK. EVERYTHING.

Not his most adult choice, granted, but it seemed more mature than flipping the goddamn table.

Beside him, Montrose cleared his throat. “All right. Don’t know why I’m bothering to ask, but . . . Thoughts on Simon?”

Jacob sighed. “Are you sure you want to know?”

“Probably not.” Montrose rolled his eyes and tapped his pen against his own notepad. He, Jacob noticed, had written a load of intelligent, sensible shit about today’s applicants, complete with bullet points. Once upon a time, Jacob had been capable of intelligence and bullet points, too. Just last week, in fact. But then he’d been forced to sit through the seven-day-straight parade of incompetence these interviews had become, and his brain had melted out of his fucking ears.

“Well,” Mont went on, “here’s what I put: Simon’s got a lot of experience, but he doesn’t seem the sharpest tool. Bit cocky, but that means he’ll eventually be confident enough to handle that thing you do.”

Jacob narrowed his eyes and turned, very slowly, to glare at his friend. “And what thing is that, Montrose?”

“That thing, Bitchy McBitcherson,” Mont said cheerfully. “You’re a nightmare when you’re panicking.”

“I’m a nightmare all the time. This is my ordinary nightmare behavior. Panic,” Jacob scowled, “is for the underprepared, the out-of-control, and the fatally inconsistent.”

“Yeah, so I’ve heard. From you. Every time you’re panicking.”

Jacob wondered if today would be the day he murdered his best friend and decided, after a moment, that it was entirely possible. The hospitality industry had been known to drive men to far worse. Like plastic shower curtains and brown carpets.

To lessen the risk of imminent homicide, Jacob pushed the fine frames of his glasses up his nose, rose to his feet, and began to pace the B&B’s spacious dining room, circling the antique table that took up its center. “Whatever. And you’re wrong about Simon—he isn’t right for Castell Cottage.”

“You don’t think anyone’s right for Castell Cottage,” Mont said dryly. “That’s kind of why I’m here. Voice of reason, and all that.”

“Actually, you’re here because you’re a respected local business owner, and proper interviews need more than one perspective, and—”

“What’s wrong with Simon?” Montrose interrupted.

“He’s a creep.”

Mont, who had a habit of leaning everywhere—probably something to do with his ridiculous height and the natural effects of gravity—sat up straight for once. “Who told you that? The twins?”

A reasonable assumption, since Mont’s sisters were some of the only women in town who actually spoke to Jacob—aside from Aunt Lucy, of course. “No one told me. Just watch the man sometime. Women bend over backward to avoid being alone with him.”

“Christ,” Mont muttered and ripped a page out of his notepad. “All right. I know you hated the first two, and you’ve written off all the previous candidates.” He paused significantly. If he was waiting for Jacob to feel bad, or something, he’d be waiting a long fucking time. “So that leaves us with Claire Penny.”