I Wish You Were Mine (Oxford #2)(12)
He lifted a shoulder. “Suit yourself. So I shouldn’t bother mentioning that the closet has two built-in shoe racks? And a separate dressing area?”
Mollie groaned, and Jackson resisted the urge to give a fist pump in victory. He had her. He knew he had her.
She blew out a breath. “Okay. Okay. I’ll move in. Temporarily, and on one condition.”
His eyes narrowed. “What’s that?”
“I pay rent.” She jabbed a finger at him.
“Ah, jeez, Mollie—”
She lifted her finger even higher, a vaguely threatening look on her face that reminded him of a puppy looking for a fight with a much bigger dog.
“Fine,” he muttered. “You can pay rent.”
Mollie made a happy squealing noise before launching herself at him, throwing both arms around his neck, and giving him a smacking kiss on the cheek before all but running down the hall toward her new room.
Jackson gave a grim smile as he glanced down at his whisky. On one hand, he’d gotten exactly what he’d wanted. On the other hand…
He tossed back his drink, relishing the burn as it made its way down his esophagus.
Why did he want it?
“Jackson! Get your ass in here!” she called.
He opened his eyes and made his way toward his new roommate, wondering if she was struck by déjà vu as much as he was, remembering a much younger Mollie who’d shown all the same enthusiasm when she’d moved into his and Madison’s guest room for a summer.
But not exactly the same, huh, old man?
He stepped into the bedroom just as Mollie came out of the closet.
No, this time it wasn’t the same. Because this time Jackson wasn’t married. And when Mollie Carrington met his eyes and smiled, Jackson had never been quite so aware of his single status.
Or quite so grateful.
Chapter 5
When Jackson had first seen Madison Carrington, he’d thought her the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen.
He’d been a senior in college, and as starting quarterback, he’d been the big man on the Texas State campus. He’d dated whomever he wanted, whenever he wanted. And he wanted to—often.
Madison had been a senior too, but not part of the football groupie crowd. A quiet English major with a perfect GPA, Madison was about as far from the usual girls he dated as it was possible to get.
In fact, the first time he’d worked up the courage to talk to her, the pretty brunette had confessed she’d never even been to a football game. And then she turned down his invitation to dinner. Multiple times. No matter how nicely he asked, no matter how extravagant the floral arrangement, she’d politely refused to go out with him.
And Jackson had fallen. Hard.
His friends had tried to tell him that it was a classic case of wanting what he couldn’t have—had warned him not to fall for the girl who played hard to get.
But Jackson had been determined, and halfway in love. Or at least lust.
Madison with her dark ponytail, wide blue eyes, and shy smile had reeled him in one rejection at a time. And by the time the rejection had finally—finally—turned into a yes, Jackson had been so relieved, his heart maybe a little bit weary, that he didn’t think to look for any warning signs. Didn’t think to look for anything other than another date and then another, until suddenly college was over.
Jackson had gotten the girl.
And Madison had gotten herself a number one draft pick.
It would be years later before Jackson realized maybe that’s what she’d been all along, and she’d played him brilliantly. Years before he finally acknowledged that the girl he’d fallen in love with had been a mirage—a perfectly crafted shell designed to be everything he wanted on the outside.
And completely rotten on the inside.
Interestingly, it hadn’t been Madison’s treatment of him that had awakened him to the woman beneath the sweet smiles. It had been the way she’d treated her sister.
For whatever reasons—sibling dynamics, perhaps—it had been Mollie who’d brought out Madison’s true colors. Sure, on the outside she’d been all doting sister and tolerant saint to Mollie’s sometimes quirky “outsider” ways, but by the time he and Maddie had gotten engaged, the veneer had started to chip. He’d gotten glimpses of how Madison really felt about the younger sister she’d had to help raise.
Resentment.
Resentment that she’d had to move home her junior year of college to care for Mollie rather than live near campus with her friends. Resentment that Mollie wasn’t a “normal” kid who was content to hang out at the mall on Saturday afternoons, and instead wanted to go to museums and music performances and bookstores.
Their mother had died just a year before Jackson met Maddie—a lethal drug and alcohol overdose that Madison had claimed surprised no one except Mollie, who’d been thirteen when she’d come home from school and found her mother dead at the kitchen table.
Jackson would give his ex-wife credit: she’d stepped up to the plate. Madison had moved home and played the role of mom as best she could at the age of twenty.
But the more time he’d spent with the two sisters, the more Madison’s resentment seeped through, and the more he’d realized that Madison’s love for her sister was obligatory. Hell, sometimes he wondered if the word “love” even applied at all.