Not much, but to keep his calm

"Yeah, we're doing fine." Jack nodded slowly, while trying to figure what the girl was fishing for with those nosy questions. She'd already been spying on his family before, but he figured she should have lost her interest by now, after Shirley ran away with her new lover. For some reason she kept coming back though, and he started to feel like she was genuinely curious about the rest of his family as well.

"Well, I'm glad to hear that." Samantha told him eventually, as he really didn't have much else to say, and they both stayed silent for another couple of seconds. She looked surprisingly serious though, after taking another short sip from her glass of water, and when she continued there was even a hint of sincere regret in her otherwise melodic, soft voice. "Look, Jack... I just wanted to say that I'm really sorry for all of this..."

"Yeah, right." He just gave her a sarcastic scoff in reply, but then couldn't keep from smiling when he saw the pained expression on her cute little face. She couldn't have known that he was merely mocking her, and in the brief moment before she realized he was able to tell that she'd really meant what she said.

"It's not like you can do something about that now, though...." Jack continued, with the same wry smile on his lips, and noticed how the brightened up again when she came to realize that he wasn't holding her to blame for anything. He wasn't sure what else to say, but couldn't keep from mocking her again, now that he felt like they were almost on friendly terms with each other. "Unless you've already found a suitable replacement for my wife, I guess...?"

"That's... not quite what I had in mind...!" Sam laughed, and suddenly seemed a lot more at ease, as she leaned herself back in the chair to look at him over the glass in her hands. It wasn't something Jack had actually thought of before, but in that moment it suddenly occurred to him that this otherwise very confident young woman had all the reasons to keep her guards up around him.

For all she knew she'd pretty much ruined his life after all, which he'd been at least partially holding against her, even if they both were fully aware that Shirley was the one to blame in the end. With all that in mind she must have been really brave to follow him inside his house like this, unless she wasn't as clever as she seemed, or truly sorry for all that happened since she first got involved with his life.

Either way it felt pretty good to have her as a guest, now that they had things sorted between them, and Jack was quite disappointed when she suddenly told him that she needed to get back to work again. Before she left she walked up and gave him a quick hug however, which caught him completely off guard, and without thinking he found himself returning her embrace in a way he wouldn't even touch his own daughters.

Especially not them, in fact, considering how both his hands just happened to slip down and give that fine little bottom a gentle squeeze...