I Wish You Were Mine (Oxford #2)(49)

“I’m going to stop both of you right there before you embarrass yourselves any further,” Lincoln said from the doorway.

Cassidy and Jackson both looked over at him.

“Dude,” Jackson said. “What are you drinking?”

Lincoln held out a plastic cup filled with pale pink froth. “Strawberry Frappuccino, extra whip. Want some? Or is your manhood threatened?”

Jackson shook his head and headed out of Cassidy’s office, unsurprised when Lincoln fell into step beside him.

“How was your weekend?” Lincoln asked. Jackson ignored him, and Lincoln gave a dramatic sigh. “Are we fighting?”

Jackson spun around, getting in Lincoln’s face so quickly the other man nearly dropped his pastel beverage.

“What the hell, man?”

“You stood her up,” Jackson snapped.

Lincoln didn’t even flinch as he brought his drink up to his face and took a long slurp from the green straw. “Yeah? How’d that work out for you?”

Jackson shoved him. Not hard, but hard enough to let Lincoln know he meant business.

Lincoln’s smile dropped and his eyes hardened, showing a side Jackson hadn’t seen before. “Watch it, Burke.”

Jackson ignored this. “I don’t know how the hell things work in New York City, but where I’m from, decent men don’t stand a woman up twenty minutes before they’re supposed to pick her up. And they sure as hell don’t do it by calling her roommate.”

“Hell, man, you think I don’t know that?” Lincoln said, shaking his head. “If I thought for one second this Mollie girl was actually looking forward to me taking her out, I’d have been there with f*cking flowers.”

“How could you possibly have known what she wanted? You wouldn’t, because you never showed.”

Jackson was practically shouting now, and they were getting plenty of stares as people slowed on their way to their respective desks.

Lincoln glanced around at the eavesdroppers before swearing quietly under his breath. “Jesus, Burke. Fine, let’s finish this in my office.”

Jackson followed him into his office, but as soon as the door was shut he picked up the argument again. “You could have—”

“First of all,” Lincoln said, slamming his drink on his desk and pulling his cross-body bag over his shoulder and tossing it on his chair, “I didn’t have your girl’s phone number.” He glared at Jackson, visibly pissed. “Second of all, yes, I’m deliberately calling her your girl, because hell, Jackson, I’m not an idiot. You should see your face when you talk about her.”

Jackson’s head snapped back. Sure, now he thought of Mollie as his girl, but up until Friday he’d been doing everything in his power not to. Hell, he’d been the one to set her and Lincoln up.

And yet…

Had he not spent all of Friday wanting to punch Lincoln Mathis’s pretty face?

Had his stomach not turned over at the thought of Mollie wearing that tiny, sexy red dress for anyone but him?

“I’ve dated a lot of women,” Lincoln said quietly. “But I’ve never dated another man’s woman. You’re my friend, man, even if you are an ass.”

“How’d you know—”

“That you were hung up on her?” Lincoln finished for him. “I didn’t. Penelope did. Although it was Cole’s idea to cancel at the last minute. Said you wouldn’t be able to resist being her hero.”

Jackson grunted.

Lincoln picked up his pink beverage, all good humor restored. “So how’d it go, huh? You owe me. I spent Friday night alone with my dog.”

Jackson’s eyes narrowed. “You did?”

“Okay, fine, you caught me. Got laid by the hot bartender in the apartment below me. But then I went back upstairs and cuddled with Kiwi.”

“Who the hell is Kiwi?”

“My dog,” Lincoln said, as though this were obvious.

Jackson shook his head. “You drink pink beverages, you’re wearing a tie clip, and you have a dog named Kiwi. Please tell me Kiwi is a big-ass German shepherd.”

“Nope. Maltese. Five pounds of white fluff that would fit in your hand.”

“That’s sweet,” Jackson said, taking a sip of his coffee. “Do you put bows in her hair?”

“No,” Lincoln said. “She never lets me.”

Jackson shook his head and turned toward the door. “How you get laid is beyond me.”

“Hey, Burke.” Jackson turned back to see a serious look return to Lincoln’s face. “We good?”

Jackson held the other man’s eyes for a moment, realizing that as messed up as his methods might have been, Lincoln had done him a favor. For that matter, so had Penelope and Cole.

“Yeah,” he said. “We’re good.”

Hell, Jackson was better than good. He was great.

At least for now.





Chapter 20


“I swear to God, Mollie, if you’re trying to trick me into trying sushi again…”

“I’m not going to try to make you try sushi,” she said with an eye roll. “But for the record, you sound like a huge baby.”

Three days after sleeping with Jackson, Mollie was all but dragging the reluctant man down Ninth Avenue for a surprise lunch date. The streets of Manhattan were always crowded, but at lunch hour on a Monday, there was a bit of a stampede thing going on. Five minutes later, she led Jackson into a restaurant and watched his face expectantly.