Page 44 of Size Doesn't Matter

She especially appreciated that he made a point of getting to know each person along the table, including her fourteen-year-old cousins, Josie and Diana, the latter of whom he had an in-depth discussion with regarding the inevitable zombie apocalypse and the importance of a proper survival readiness plan. When she chuckled at the silliness of their conversation, Jack turned his narrowed eyes to her and said, “Doyouhave a zombie survival plan?”

“Well, obviously,” she scoffed. “Who do think taught Diana?”

“Is that true?” he asked her cousin.

Diana grinned at him in her own devilish way. “Yep,” she said before leaning around him to speak to her. “I like him. I vote you should keep him.” And then she left the table in search of her twin.

“I think you should keep me too,” Jack said quietly, his melodious voice making her insides quiver with awareness and a wish to find somewhere private so they could explore exactly what keeping him would look like. Then he leaned in close and whispered, “I like your family. They’re almost as weird as mine.”

Her eyes widened as she stared at him. “Almost?”

No one’s family was as weird as hers.

Jack grinned. “I come from a big family too.Lotsof cousins. Family events generally involved a lack of adult supervision and a lot of mischief. Usually led by Ethan and our cousin Matt.”

A delighted laugh burst out of her at this new information. Sophie had never dated anyone with a family as big as hers before. Except Ethan, of course, seeing as he was Jack’s brother, but since they’d never been introduced to each other’s families during all of their on-again, off-again bullshit, it didn’t really count.

“Tell me everything,” she said. “I want to knoweverything.”

“All in good time, baby.” Leaning in again, Jack planted a smiling kiss on her lips. It started soft and slow but quickly deepened, only ending when a disgruntled growl sounded from across the table.

Breaking the kiss, Sophie glared at her father. “What?” she demanded. Paul flicked his gaze to Jack and back again, then sighed but said nothing. She smiled, smug in the knowledge that her overprotective father wasn’t getting involved. Until she felt a strong hand grip her thigh under the table and Jack’s heated breath against her ear.

“Don’t make me put you over my knee in front of your family, angel.”

Her brow furrowed as she whispered back, “What did I do?”

“Your father only wants to protect you. He doesn’t know me yet, doesn’t know what type of person I am or how I’ll treat his daughter. He has every right to be cautious. You don’t get to snap at him for being wary.” He pulled back far enough to stare her down. “Now apologise.”

Sophie’s eyes narrowed. “What?”

But Jack’s grip only tightened, his fingers digging into her soft thigh punishing, almost brutal, and, as much as she didn’t want to admit it while surrounded by family, highly arousing. His voice deepened. “To your father. Apologise.”

Pressing her lips together in a tight line, she glared at Jack and his stupidly handsome face. The way he stared back at her, with one brow cocked and his mouth turned up in one corner, as if he found the whole thing so very amusing, both infuriated her and turned her on, and she didn’t know if she wanted to yell at the man or crawl into his lap and snuggle against his chest.

But when he cupped her cheek in his free hand and whispered, “Be a good girl for me, Sophie,” she came undone. That dark voice spoke to her on such an intimate level, and as those intense eyes pinned her in place, commanded her to obey his every wish, all resistance melted out of her, and she pressed her cheek into his warm palm.

Her brow smoothed out and her eyes glazed over with need as she stared into her baby daddy’s deep blue gaze. Turning to her father, she said, “I’m sorry I snapped at you.”

But instead of nodding and silently accepting her apology, as he usually would have, Paul burst out laughing and looked to Jack. “Where the hell were you when she was a teenager?”

She glared at her father, but that only made him laugh more. “I wasn’t that bad,” she grumbled, stabbing her spoon into the chocolate crème brûlée the waitstaff had placed in front of her. “Considering the circumstances.”

Jack’s eyes narrowed as he snapped his gaze to hers, but he didn’t poke at her wound or comment on the uncomfortable silence that fell between her and her dad. He just squeezed her thigh again, this time in a way that simply told her he was there. There if she needed him.

There forher.

She appreciated the gesture more than he knew.

By the time they’d devoured their desserts—and she’d stolen more than half, or evenallof Jack’s—he’d endeared himself to pretty much everyone at the table. Her young cousins were enamoured of him and his extensive knowledge of zombies. Her aunt and uncles spoke to him with genuine warmth in their voices and no longer threatened him with becoming garden mulch. Her grandfather had winked at her from the other end of the table and smiled his signature grin, signalling that he thought she’d done well with this one. Even her father, a man notorious for being succinct at best and downright rude at worst, had carried on a lengthy and congenial conversation with the man about the state of the modelling industry.

As Jane’s solution to the wedding cake kerfuffle was served—delicate little cupcakes decorated with bouquets of flowers made from buttercream frosting—Sophie stared at Jack with something akin to awe. Her family were known for many things, their over-protectiveness of each other being one of them. But once that hurdle had been overcome, they were a very accepting bunch of people, something she knew stemmed from other people’s unacceptance of their own unconventional upbringings.

So despite the fact that he’d lied to her, and that he was freshly divorced, and that he’d knocked her up, it had apparently taken the Bennett clan less time than it took to hold a wedding to decide he was an acceptable addition to the family.

But that may have also had something to do with the fact that Abby was right, he hadn’t exactly lied to her. That had more to do with Sophie’s own insecurities flavouring her thought processes. And he wasn’t freshly divorced. He’d been trying to finalise those proceedings for years. And he hadn’t simply knocked her up. It took two to tango, and she was just as much at fault as he was for her current situation.

Not that she was as upset about that as she’d thought she would be. Sophie had always figured she’d have children one day, and she was thirty years old, not an unacceptable age to pop out a kid. She was financially stable, even without Jack, and she had an amazing support system around her. And her newly minted contract with Martin Cosmetics even included a progressive pregnancy clause, not only assuring her job was safe should she happen to fall pregnant but also providing childcare perks, like an on-set nanny should one be required.

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