Page 87 of Big & Bossy

Son of a bitch.

“Hey,” he grinned, stepping to one side to let me through. “My name’s Jackson. And yours?”

I rolled my eyes as I shut the door behind me, slipping my wool jacket off my shoulders in one quick swoop. He took it from me and hung it up. “Are we really going to pretend that we don’t know each other?”

He chuckled as he wrapped an arm around my waist, dragging me in far enough to plant a kiss on my temple. “No, princess. We’re not going to pretend with anything tonight.”

————

I sat at the breakfast bar in Jack’s kitchen, my legs kicking against the tiled back of the cabinets. Soft music played in the background, something instrumental, plenty of calm piano and intimate saxophone. He slid a small salad across the bar, his lips curling up into a little smirk. “Eat up.”

“Don’t even joke,” I laughed, picking up the fork he gave me and sinking it into the salad. “You better not hog all of the carbonara.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he crooned. He turned back to the stovetop, muscles flexing beneath his shirt as he plucked two bowls from the nearby cabinet. “You look lovely, by the way. I should have said that when you first came in.”

I stuffed a bite of salad into my mouth, humming my thanks to him. “You too,” I said around the mouthful. “I like the slippers.”

He chuckled as he picked up a massive wad of pasta between his tongs, twisting it as he plated. “I thought you might.”

“How long have you had them?” I asked as I stabbed into a cherry tomato. “Recent purchase?”

He turned, holding up the two bowls in his hand. “Ten years.”

My breath caught as he set the bowl of pasta down in front of me, snatching the barely-eaten salad before I could get the tomato into my mouth. The carbonara looked incredible, like it had come straight out of a restaurant in Italy instead of an Olive Garden.

“Eat up for real this time, princess.”

“Are you not going to sit?” I asked, looking up at him as he loomed next to me, his fork already stuffed into his mouth. He shook his head as he leaned forward, plopping his bowl down right next to mine, his forearms resting on the countertop. “Well, okay then.”

“I considered eating at the dining table,” he said, covering his mouth as he swallowed his pasta. “But as I said, casual. And I didn’t want it to feel like some big thing and overwhelm you.”

My cheeks warmed as he bumped his shoulder against mine. I twirled my fork, gathering as much pasta as I could fit on the end of it, and stuffed it in my mouth as I grinned at him.

It tasted like heaven.

————

“We should probably talk about the press release,” Jack said as he slid me a glass of red wine. “And when you’d like to do it.”

Shit. The press release. I hadn’t even thought of that in the last few days. After our romp in the office, his team had started drafting the announcement that we were no longer engaged and would be going our separate ways. But after the thing with Harry and the mounting stress we’d both been under, it had fallen to the wayside.

His words sat heavy in my stomach as I sipped my wine. “Do we have to?”

“Have to what?”

“Talk about it,” I clarified. My cheeks warmed as I caught his gaze, zeroing in on the way his lips parted, twitched at the sides.

“No, princess,” he said, his fingers gently laying across mine. “We can talk about it some other time.”

I nodded, squeezing his hand in return. “I just want to think about it some more. Not that it definitely isn’t happening, but…”

“I understand.” His lips pressed against my forehead, so light I almost didn’t feel them. His breath fanned across my skin as he held himself there. “Just let me know when you are, okay?”

“Okay.”

The music changed, a slower, wistful tune filtering through the surround sound in the kitchen. Jack slid his hand underneath mine, tracing the lines of my palm. “Do you want to dance with me?”

Is he serious?

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