Page 54 of Size Doesn't Matter

“My people will have all of your belongings moved into my apartment by the time we get home tonight. And three—”

“Hang on a sec,” she blurted, sitting up and shoving her hair out of her eyes. “What do you mean, I’m moving in with you? And your people are touching my stuff? What people? How do they even know where to find my stuff? It’smystuff.”

“You are currently between places, correct?”

He waited for her to nod. Her eyes narrowed. “Yes.”

“And you’ve been crashing on Anna’s couch for how long now?”

Her mouth twisted to one side. “About a week. And how did you even know about that?” He raised one brow and grinned. Sophie closed her eyes and growled. “Anna told you, didn’t she? Presumably when she gave you a list of all my favourite things and told you where to find me this weekend.”

“She did.”

Sophie crossed her arms over her chest and harrumphed. “She’s dead to me.”

“She’s a good friend who cares very deeply for you,” Jack said. “And if it matters, she also told me she would remove my testicles and turn them into a coin purse if I did anything to hurt you.”

Her lips pinched together, but that didn’t stop her tiny snort of laughter. “It does matter,” she said, her tone begrudging, before growing serious again. “But it’s also completely beside the point.”

“And what is the point?”

“That you can’t just decide I’m moving in with you without discussing it with me first. That’s not how this works.”

He was enjoying her ire more than he should, the redness creeping up her neck like she was a living thermometer about to explode. “Oh? And how doesthiswork, then?”

“Youaskme to move in with you like acivilisedhuman being.”

He cocked one brow and grinned at her. “You didn’t mind my lack of civility last night.”

She stared at him like he’d just said the dumbest thing in the world. “You were eating me out like the blue ribbon winner at a pie-eating contest. No woman on the planet is going to complain about that. But again, that’s not how this works. You can’t tongue-fuck me into submission. That’s not how grown-ups communicate.”

“It is if they’re any fun.”

“And that sounds like something your brother would say to avoid talking to me.”

Jack sobered immediately.

No one had ever compared him to Ethan in that way before, and he found it unsettling. Ethan did use sex to avoid conversations—to avoid connections—especially intimate ones. It was one of the myriad of reasons why his brother had never had a serious relationship. Jack, on the other hand, liked tackling things head-on. It was one of the reasons he was so successful in business.

It was also one of the reasons his love life was so woefully crap.

Besides his ex-wife accusing him of being too controlling, previous girlfriends had told him he was bossy, arrogant, and a humourless, cold-hearted prick. Personality flaws that apparently stemmed from asking blatantly pointed questions.

Questions he generally knew the answers to before asking them.

His mouth thinned into a tight smile as he contemplated admitting to something he normally wouldn’t. He’d found himself doing that a lot recently, but he needed this relationship to work, and if that meant changing the way he did things, admitting his flaws publicly, then so be it.

His brother was right. He’d fallen for Sophie Bennett—hard—and failure was not an option.

Not this time.

“I don’t usually ask questions I don’t already know the answer to,” he said. “And sometimes it’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission.”

Sophie’s eyes narrowed. “First of all,” she said, pointing a finger in his face, “where my body, mind, and soul are concerned, you willalwaysask permission. I learned the hard way what asking for forgiveness looks like, and I won’t go through that again.”

She waited for him to agree, which he did without hesitation, before continuing.

“Second, asking questions you already know the answer to is cheating. But….” She shifted, her whole body fidgeting as though she was fighting against it, trying to contain whatever was dying to spill out of her, like a laugh at a funeral. “If you really need to know, my answer is yes.” She shrugged one shoulder, as if she hadn’t just handed him the world on a silver platter. “There. Now you know the answer, you have no excuse not to be civil.”

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