I Wish You Were Mine (Oxford #2)(41)

She jolted a little at the contact but didn’t pull away. He didn’t either.

He told himself it was just a friendly touch—a thank-you for being there. For being Mollie.

But there was nothing friendly about the way touching her made his pulse quicken and his cock harden. When she’d walked out of her bedroom tonight in that damn red dress…hell. He’d just barely stopped having nightly fantasies about taking that dress off her after the last time he saw her in it. Now he was going to have to start all over again, remembering that under no circumstances would he be fulfilling his fantasy of pulling it off her, seeing what was underneath, setting his mouth against her smooth skin, and…

“How are we doing? Ready to place entree orders yet?” their waitress asked, appearing out of nowhere.

Mollie jerked her hand back so quickly she nearly knocked over her water glass, but Jackson could have hugged their server for preventing him from saying or doing something fantastically stupid.

The waitress disappeared again after taking their order, and Mollie’s usual bright, friendly smile was back in place. “Okay, so about this interview. You know you could get anyone, right? The Today show. Oprah. Anyone.”

He gave a grim smile. “Yeah, but with Oxford I might actually have a chance of coming out ahead.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s just…they’re friends. Sort of. Or they could be if—” He stopped.

“If what?”

“I don’t know,” he muttered, taking another sip of his drink.

“Jackson, do you want these people to like you?”

He swallowed, refusing to answer out loud, but looked across the table at her, willing her to understand. He saw it the minute that she did.

She leaned back and tapped her fingers against the table, as though struck with a brilliant idea. “We should have a party.”

He frowned. “Um, what?”

“A big cocktail party. At your place. Our place. Right before the interview. Spend all your trillions of dollars.”

He smiled, seeing right through her plan. “You want to bribe them to write good stuff about me?”

“No,” she said softly. “I just want them to have a chance.”

“A chance for what?”

“To know you. You’re a good man, Jackson Burke. Even if you don’t think so.”

He grunted. “Nobody thinks so these days.”

“I do.”

His chest tightened. “Mollie—”

Jackson’s phone buzzed in his pocket, ruining the potential moment, and he pulled it out to silence it.

He froze when he saw the name.

“Shit.”

“Lincoln again?”

Jackson shook his head.

“Ah,” she said, setting her water glass down. “Madison.”

Jackson nodded.

“You can answer it.”

“Jesus, Mollie. I’m not going to answer a call in the middle of dinner with another woman.”

“But you want to,” she challenged.

“I don’t,” he said emphatically, putting his phone away to prove it. “I don’t want to talk to her now, or ever. But at the same time…” He searched her face. “She’s always going to be there, Mollie. I look at you, and I see you, I do, but I also see—”

“Her,” Mollie finished flatly.

He cleared his throat. “Yeah.”

“I get it,” she said. “Madison’s the most important person in the world to me, and it’s…it’s complicated.”

Jackson gave a wry smile, and because he knew her, he understood what she was saying—and what she wasn’t.

But as he let Mollie steer the conversation back to safer topics—work, and the delicious food, and interview etiquette—he couldn’t stop watching her and wondering if this was one case where complicated would be absolutely f*cking worth it.





Chapter 16


The ride home back to Jackson’s place—no, their place—wasn’t quite awkward, but neither was it the easy silence of two people completely comfortable with each other.

True to the weather app’s prediction, it was stormy, and the raindrops on the cab window gave midtown Manhattan a blurry, dreamlike feel.

Absently she traced the Chanel logo of her bag, as she so often did when she carried this particular clutch. Feeling eyes on her, Mollie glanced over at Jackson, finding him watching the idle motion of her fingers with a tense, unreadable expression.

Mollie turned away, focusing her attention on the raindrops racing across the window. She didn’t try to hide the small sigh that crept out. She was tired. Tired of whatever was happening—or not happening—between her and Jackson.

One thing was becoming painfully clear: they couldn’t keep doing this. They could stay friends, certainly, but they needed distance. Living together had been a mistake on every level. Not only because she’d gone into it knowing full well she was a pawn in some warped contest between her sister and Jackson, but because she’d done it a little bit for herself as well. Her brain might be over her crush on Jackson, but her heart…

Her heart was still hung up big-time on this guy she could never have.

Tomorrow she would search for an apartment. Maybe she’d look closer to the university, find a semi-normal roommate. It wouldn’t be a Park Avenue penthouse, but maybe she and Jackson could get back to normal.