Act Your Age, Eve Brown (The Brown Sisters #3) - Talia Hibbert Page 0,119

gently until he met her eyes, Eve murmured, “Yes, Jacob. I love you. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about all my plans, but honestly, they became more and more irrelevant as time went on. As I started to trust myself, and learned what I really value. The truth is, Castell Cottage is my passion, and I love my job, and I want to stay. But also, I love you. And I didn’t want to leave you. I still don’t.”

Jacob felt a bit dizzy. “But—you can leave me. If you want to. If you need to. I just need to know that when you stay, when you’re with me—you mean it. I know you do. I might forget it, sometimes, but I know it, because I know you. Eve—”

“Hey!” A car horn beeped, jolting him out of his giddiness. Well, not entirely. That would be impossible. “Get a room!” someone bellowed.

“Go fuck yourself,” Jacob shouted around the heart wedged in his throat. Funny what a man and his various, malfunctioning organs could accomplish when the most wonderful human being on the planet was involved.

Then the ginger bloke Eve had arrived with got off the bike he’d been perched on a few meters away and wandered over to the queue of cars stuck behind Alex and Tessa. Jacob heard the strange man say in a ludicrously friendly tone, “Listen, mate, I know you’ve got places to be and this traffic’s a nightmare, but . . .” His voice faded out of hearing as he walked away. Jacob waited for more shouting and beeping to ensue, but, to his astonishment, it did not. Instead, the ginger leaned against a stranger’s car, laughing with the occupants through the window.

“Hm,” Jacob said. “He’s quite useful, isn’t he?”

“You’re going soft.”

“Do you mind?”

Eve gave him that gorgeous, sunshine smile. “Certainly not.”

“Good.” Because with her around, he envisioned the softness getting worse. “Now, then—in light of recent declarations—if you could just give me one second to . . .”

She waved a hand. “Oh, yes, whatever you need.”

“Cracking, thanks.” He let go of her and turned away long enough to snag a handful of daisies from the ground. He’d intended all this to be much more put together and professional but—well. He was improvising. Going with the flow. Eve frequently managed to make such behavior look magnificent, so he hoped to achieve something half as great.

A few seconds later, armed with his admittedly sparse roadside bouquet, he went back and thrust the flowers in her direction.

“Oh.” She blinked, as if that was the last thing she’d expected. “Oh. Jacob.” She sniffed and blinked some more.

“Eve, we’ve talked about this. No crying.”

“Shut up and take it, you big baby.”

“I could say the same to you.” He waved the flowers at her, and she finally took them. Flower transference dealt with, he caught her free hand and met her eyes. “Good. So, to recap: I love you. You love me. We’re going home now. Home for both of us. And everything’s going to be fine,” he said steadily, holding her gaze, “because I’m going to trust you, and believe in you, and give you whatever you need.”

“And I’m going to stay,” she replied quietly. “I’m going to stay, and I’m going to love you, and I’m going to try. You taught me how much that matters.”

Those words burned in Jacob like a forest fire, but they left the opposite of destruction in their wake. Because Eve’s love didn’t hurt. If his current feelings were anything to go by, it healed.

“Just to be clear,” he said gruffly, after taking a moment to collect himself, “by accepting these flowers, you have formally agreed to coupledom and commitment, et cetera—”

“Oh, is that what the flowers mean?” she laughed.

“Absolutely.” He hesitated, then pushed through, because she loved him. “Do you have any complaints?”

“Nope.”

Jacob grinned.

Then Eve dropped the daisies, grabbed his arse, and kissed him so hard she almost knocked his glasses off. Tessa turned up the music to obnoxious heights. A few more cars beeped, possibly in outrage, but Jacob liked to interpret the noise as support. Either way, he wasn’t about to stop kissing this woman for anything. He wrapped an arm around the softness of her waist, hauled her closer, and sank into the familiar sweetness of her lips.

He was still grinning when they came up for air.

Epilogue

One Year Later

I can’t believe you got Mother in a hairnet.”

Eve raised a hand to shield her eyes from the late-afternoon sun, squinting in Joy’s