Act Your Age, Eve Brown (The Brown Sisters #3) - Talia Hibbert Page 0,17

absolutely bonkers and—well, I need your help, Eve. You wouldn’t let me down, would you? Not when I need your help? It would be so terribly cruel.”

Eve bit her lip, a worried frown creasing her brow. Florence sounded quite upset, which made the stress and annoyance sloshing around Eve’s stomach swirl predictably into concern. The fact was, Flo had a problem, and Eve—her currently messy life aside—could fix it.

So after a moment’s internal wobbling, she inevitably gave in. “Oh, all right. If you need me, Flo, you know I’ll do my best. So . . . six months of party planning it is.” What were friends for, after all?

“Really?” Florence squealed. “Oh, that’s wonderful, Eve, absolutely wonderful. Knew you’d see reason.” Her tone zipped from squeaky pleasure to smooth business in the blink of an eye. “Since I’ve got you on the phone, we might as well talk details. Venues are the priority at this point, of course—when are you available for viewings? Never mind, I’ll email you an invite to the Google Calendar.”

Eve blinked. Gosh. Florence was very focused when it came to this birthday party.

And the more Eve thought about it, the more she realized this might be a blessing in disguise. Party planning was different from planning a wedding—significantly less time, less pressure—but still a job. The beauty of it dawned on her slowly, like an early-morning sun. Six months spent planning Freddy’s twenty-first, then another six months planning some other party, and she’d have done it. She’d have held down a job for a year, proved her parents wrong . . .

And maybe done them proud?

Let’s not get out of hand, here. Scraping together a couple of parties was hardly running a business like Chloe or being a professional genius like Danika. But Eve had officially secured gainful employment—even if it wasn’t precisely what Mum and Dad had had in mind—and she really, really intended to keep it this time.

Absolutely nothing would go wrong.

Chapter Five

By the time Jacob returned, Eve was beginning to worry she’d actually killed the man.

Hours had passed. The sun hung low in the sky, and several guests had already returned from their days out. She knew that the National Health Service, being currently underfunded, came with heftier waiting times, but good Lord—how long did it take to check a man’s skull and whack a bandage on him?

In the time since he and Mont had left, she’d found the (rather impressive, if terrifyingly clean) kitchen, helped herself to a sandwich (plus a teeny, tiny baked potato with beans and cheese, for dinner), and relocated to the dining room to avoid any further guests. She found undefined interactions with strangers to be incredibly awkward and had decided not to expose her delicate nerves any further. And anyway, this was a bed-and-breakfast—not a bed and make uncomfortable eye contact with the strange woman hovering in the foyer. She was here to prevent grand disasters and answer urgent requests, not to ask various hikers if they needed fresh towels.

Even if a little voice in her head suggested she was absolutely supposed to ask about the towel thing.

Oh, well.

Eve was considering calling the local hospital and demanding to know if she was an accidental murderer when she heard the distinctive heave of the front door opening. As had become her habit, she leapt to the window and craned her neck to see who was there.

It wasn’t a guest. Nor was it a rogue burglar she’d have to fight off to protect Jacob’s livelihood. No; it was Jacob himself. She only caught the barest glimpse: a head of ice-blond hair resting on Mont’s broad shoulder, and then they were gone.

Suddenly, all those hours of wishing they’d hurry back turned into a desperate wish for them to not be here. Because it finally occurred to Eve that Jacob coming back probably meant Jacob ripping her a new arsehole for, you know, running him over. Which she would richly deserve.

Wincing, Eve tiptoed over to the dining room door—which she’d left open a crack, in case any of the guests rang the bell at the front desk or screeched “Argh! A murder most foul!” or something like that. Nudging it slightly wider, she peered out into the foyer just as Mont used his free hand to shut the door. His other hand, you understand, was engaged in Jacob-hoisting.

And Jacob clearly needed a lot of hoisting. The viciously upright posture she’d noticed earlier that day had vanished; his long, lean body now