Maybe. Gosh, what a thought.

Jacob, meanwhile, was rolling his eyes. “I know you can be clever,” he said in long-suffering tones. “I hired you, didn’t I?”

“Barely,” she snorted.

“You persuaded me into it, then. Which is more evidence of your cleverness.”

“Because you’re sooo difficult to outsmart,” she snickered, at which point Jacob picked up a pillow and whacked her with it. So she picked up a pillow and whacked him right back, and in the midst of all that delicious immaturity, she barely had time to glow over their conversation.

It still stuck with her, though.

Clever, clever me.

* * *

Hours after that sweet, surprise text, the sun had fully set and the moon had finally risen. The night sky was star-studded, the breeze through the open window smelled like cool grass, and Jacob felt a little drunk. But he’d felt this kind of drunk before—the spontaneous, can’t-stop-grinning kind where, for once, he didn’t care too much—and he knew what had caused it.

The woman sitting beside him, solemnly waving an empty Pringles tube in the air like it was a lighter at a concert.

“What are you doing?” he demanded, mostly because he couldn’t fucking wait to hear it. He wanted inside her confetti-strewn head every chance he got. It was the only foreign country he could remember wanting to visit.

Now, when had that happened?

Maybe on Wednesday, when he’d asked what she was muttering to herself as they walked down the hall, and she’d said she was ranking his signature scowls from 1 (Disdainful Glare) to 10 (Torturous Stare of Imminent Death).

Or maybe it had started before then. He wasn’t sure, suddenly. So it was a relief when she scattered his thoughts with her response. “I’m getting into the solemn spirit of ‘Hometown Glory.’ Great pick, by the way. Hey, do you think anyone’s ever gotten their dick stuck in a Pringles tube?”

Christ, the shit she came out with. And what a fuckup he must be, because when she said this barely sexual nonsense so matter-of-factly—when she made silly dick jokes or winked after outrageous double entendres—he always found himself shifting in his suddenly tight jeans.

Like now.

He leaned over to grab a glass of water from the side table, which had the added benefit of hiding his groin from her view. Not that he was hard. That would be ridiculous. If he could maintain his control while lying in bed with her—while the moon turned her skin silver-dark again, and her T-shirt (TOO SOUR TO BE YOUR SWEETIE) had ridden up to reveal the swell of her bare belly—then he could maintain his control over a question about Pringles.

He sipped his water, relished the cool slide down his throat, and settled beside Eve again. “I think anyone who’s big enough to get stuck in a Pringles tube has better places to put it,” he said finally.

“Jacob.” She turned sparkling eyes in his direction. “You absolute size queen.”