Act Your Age, Eve Brown (The Brown Sisters #3) - Talia Hibbert Page 0,22

the weight of a bed-and-breakfast guest’s morning experience rested. And yet, here she fucking was.

Delightful.

Huffing out a breath, she bent to check the fresh pastries she’d chucked into the oven, tapping her thighs in time with the hypnotic beat of KATIE’s “Remember” blaring in her ear. Mont had arrived half an hour ago to check on her—but Eve, like a witless fucking oblong, had sent him home because he looked tired. Who gave a damn if the man looked tired? She was tired. She’d spent last night on Jacob’s pullout sofa, courtesy of Mont, sleeping on lumpy pillows he’d dragged out of some cupboard, wearing pajamas he’d apparently borrowed from some mysterious—and outrageously long-limbed—sister. She’d been up for hours reading Jacob’s various employee handbooks—

And checking on his adorable sleeping face.

—and googling bad bed-and-breakfast reviews to torture herself with the various ways all this could go wrong. She’d gotten ready that morning under the cover of darkness, trying to put off the moment Jacob discovered her presence for as long as possible because she knew he’d be unreasonable about it. Really, under such stressful circumstances, it was only a matter of time until she crumbled into dust and contaminated the croissants. This entire endeavor was doomed to go tits up with her at the helm.

“Excuse me?”

Eve jumped so violently, she was surprised she didn’t bump her head on the ceiling. Smoothing down her apron and adjusting her hairnet—HOW NOT TO FUCK UP MY HEALTH RATING: Chapter One, Section A, THE BASICS: Wear your fucking hairnet—she turned toward the source of the sound.

There was a windowlike hatch in the kitchen wall, and the employee handbooks had revealed that it was meant to be opened. Eve had done so when she came down that morning and discovered the window let her see into the dining room, sort of like an olden-days shop front. Now that window was occupied by what appeared to be—shudder—a guest.

“Hello in there,” he said brightly. He was a man of middling age, pink cheeked and gray haired, with far too friendly a smile for this time of day and a waterproof parka covering his torso. “Bit early for breakfast, am I?” he asked cheerfully.

Eve stared at him in disbelief. Who in God’s name was early for a 6:30 A.M. breakfast? “Yes,” she said faintly, then rallied. HOW NOT TO PISS OFF MY CUSTOMERS: Chapter Three, Section B: Harmless rule breakers are to be humored, however much it might pain you. “But I’m sure we can accommodate you, sir. The pastries are still in the oven, but I can take an order for a cooked breakfast?” Eve approached the window, produced her little notepad, and steeled her spine. Do not fuck up. Do not fuck up. Do not fuck up.

But already, she was starting to doubt her memory of the employee handbooks. She knew she’d memorized them, but she also knew she had a tendency to mess things up at vital moments, and therefore her memories of memorizing were not to be trusted, and—

Oh Christ, the man was talking. “—sunny-side up, and the stewed tomatoes, ta.”

Eve scribbled dutifully and hoped like hell she’d just caught the tail end of a request for a Full English. Because that’s what the poor bastard was getting. “Right. If you’d like to take a seat, I’ll bring it right out.”

“Cheers, my darling,” he said, but he did not take a seat. Why didn’t he take a seat? “This hatch wasn’t open yesterday,” he went on conversationally.

Eve froze in the act of reaching for some eggs. “It wasn’t?” But it was supposed to be open, wasn’t it? Or had she misread, misunderstood, mis—

“Nor the day before, when I arrived. Nice to see what’s going on behind the scenes, though. Say, where’s Jacob this morning?”

Oh dear. This particular question was the one Eve had been dreading. She’d hoped no one would miss the man’s icy presence and she therefore wouldn’t be asked about him, but apparently, no such luck. “Jacob is, erm, indisposed.”

“Indisposed, is it?” The man chuckled. “If it were anyone else, I’d think that was code for a hangover.”

Eve laughed nervously. “Right. But not Jacob!”

“Lord, no, not him. So what’s up with him?”

“Erm . . .”

“I hope he’s not poorly. He’s a lovely lad, he is.”

Eve blinked. “Erm . . .”

“This here’s the only place that guarantees us a ground-floor room every time. My Sharon’s got dicky joints, bless her. Puts us on a special list, he does.”

Eve’s sister Chloe required similar accommodations, so