Page 57 of Size Doesn't Matter
“I don’t want to,” she replied, steadfastly avoiding his gaze.
The next thing she heard was a car horn wailing at them, and then she was bracing her hands on the dash as Jack suddenly pulled the car off the road and onto the shoulder. “Dickhead,” he muttered under his voice, then cut the engine and turned to face her.
“What are you doing?” she demanded. “We’ll be late for lunch.”
“Fuck lunch. Look at me.”
She looked at him all right. She looked at him like the crazy person he was, only the expression that met her gaze was not the scowl she’d anticipated but his usual patient stare. He stroked her cheek. “Talk to me, angel. What’s bothering you?” When she opened her mouth, ready to dismiss his concerns, he added, “And don’t even think about lying to me.”
Pressing her lips into a thin line, she took a moment to think about her answer. “I know you said you had fun last night, but….”
“You’re wondering how long it will last,” he said, as if he could see her thoughts. But when he continued, she realised he’d been thinking the same thing. The thoughts of someone who had been hurt more than once. “You’re wondering how long it will be before you’re forced to change, forced to become what they want you to be. What they expect you to be.”
“Exactly,” she said quietly, then shook her head. “I don’t usually introduce guys to my family because I know they’re not planning on sticking around. And the ones who I thought might be different, the few I did take along to family get-togethers—” She huffed a dissatisfied breath and stared at her hands in her lap, twisted her fingers together. “Well, they either ran for the hills the moment they figured out that what you see is what you get—a big, loud brat from a family of big, loud bastards—or they went out of their way to make me feel small, to cram me into some preconceived pigeonhole. The model. The fat chick. The party girl.” She chanced a glance at Jack and frowned at what she found. He was smirking at her, as if it was all a big joke to him. She folded her arms and looked away. “Forget it. Let’s just go to lunch.”
But Jack gripped her jaw in his warm hand and gently turned her face towards his. “We’re not going anywhere until we discuss this,” he said. “Because you seem to be forgetting what I told you last night, that I also come from a big, loud family.” Grinning, he slid his hand to her nape and fisted it in her hair. “I’m not afraid of you, Sophie Bennett, and I don’t need to make you feel small just to prove how big my dick is. Hearing you scream my name as I plough your sweet pussy is all the affirmation I need.”
The unexpected comment made Sophie laugh out loud, made her body relax and release the tension she hadn’t realised she’d been carrying. “You’re weird. I like that.”
Jack shifted his grip from her hair to her neck and dragged her closer, met her over the gear stick, and brought his mouth within a hair’s breadth of hers. “I’m glad to hear it,” he murmured, then kissed her soundly, tightening his grip on her nape so she had no way of escaping him, even if she’d wanted to. When he pulled back, he gentled his hold on her and stroked her cheek. “I don’t expect you to be anything other than what or who you are, as long as you extend me the same courtesy. So be as loud as you want, take up as much space as you want, because I’m not going anywhere.”
Sophie bit her lip as she absorbed Jack’s words, leaned into the warm feeling they caused to bloom in her chest. They were so different from the ones she’d heard from other men in her life. So different even from the ones she’d heard growing up with her mother. Was he really saying he accepted her? As is? Even though he himself was quiet and private and shy? Maybe that was why she felt the need to reassure him, to tell him, “You know I’m not loud all the time, though, right? I like peace and quiet too.” She tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “I’m actually pretty tame compared to my late teen years.”
Losing her mother to drugs had been a wake-up call no one should ever need, had stopped her party-train ways in their tracks and set her on a new path, one with some direction. Who knew that direction would point her towards Martin Cosmetics, and ultimately Jack?
“I know,” he said, aiming that indulgent smile at her again. “And I look forward to spending many quiet evenings with you curled up in my lap, all naked and warm. But I don’t ever want you to feel like you need to be something you’re not, and if I do ever make you feel that way, you call me on it, okay?”
“Yes,” she said. “Okay.”
“Good,” he said, turning his attention to getting the car back on the road.
As Jack accelerated, Sophie reached over and laid her hand on his thigh, smiling when she felt the muscles twitch and flex. “Thank you for saying what you did. You don’t know how much I appreciate it. And thank you for agreeing to lunch. I know you wanted to get back to Sydney as soon as possible, but I don’t get to hang out with my family as much as I’d like to. I appreciate you changing your plans for me.”
Jack lifted her hand and pressed a kiss to the backs of her fingers. “Sydney will still be there tonight,” he said. “We’ll have lunch and visit for a while.”
And that’s exactly what they did. They ate, they talked, they laughed, they oohed and ahhed over the endless stream of baby photos Ulysses spammed their family chat group with. Elijah Ulysses Rafael Bennett and Evan Alec Rafael Bennett had to be two of the cutest babies Sophie had ever laid eyes on, and all reports from the hospital—where her proud grandfather had apparently set up camp indefinitely—confirmed that Jane and the babies were all doing well. The last photo they’d received showed Rafe sound asleep in a chair beside Jane’s bed, with one of the babies cradled against his chest, one tiny fist shoved in his mouth.
It was adorable.
As the afternoon passed, Sophie watched Jack interact with her family as if he’d known them for years, not hours. He blended in perfectly, proving again that he really was a weirdo, and again she felt that little flutter around her heart. That sense that something special was happening right in front of her. Happening to her. Something new. Something she’d never felt before.
Something she felt totally unprepared for.
“What are you thinking about, angel?”
Jack’s question startled her. She hadn’t even realised the room had gone quiet until he’d turned his attention to her. Pasting on a picture-perfect smile, as if he hadn’t just caught her in the throes of an emotional revelation—or crisis—she said, “Not much. Why? What are you thinking about?”
Jack smiled but there was an edge to it, an almost feral deviousness that made her lady parts perk up and pay attention, which was damned inconvenient considering where they were.
Until he dumped a bucket of cold water on her head. “I was thinking we should get married.”
Sophie blinked at him for a moment, unsure she’d heard him correctly. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”
His grin broadened. “I said, we should get married.”
For the second time that day, she stared at him like the crazy person he obviously was. “But you just got divorced.”
He shrugged. “So?”