I Wish You Were Mine (Oxford #2)(52)

She sniffed. “For the record, the first time I flew in to see my baby sister. This time I flew in to get some shopping done.”

“Shopping? Are you f*cking kidding me, Mad?”

“What can I say?” she said, giving him a pretty smile. “I’ve got some extra cash lying around.”

“Yeah. My cash,” he muttered.

He and Madison had signed a prenup. He wasn’t that dumb. The only way she’d get a dime in the divorce was if there’d been infidelity on his end.

So she’d made sure that there had been. Several times over.

The real shitter was that he hadn’t even cared about the money. He’d have handed it over just to be done with her. But he didn’t think it would have made a difference—she still would have paid off all those women to lie about him having an affair.

Madison had known full well that being a cheating wife wouldn’t go well with her image. So she’d changed the story in her favor.

“You’ve been avoiding me ever since our dinner,” she said quietly.

“How is that a surprise? We have nothing to say to each other.”

She gave him a sad smile. “We had plenty to say that night.”

He looked away, realizing that he didn’t have an argument for that. Conversation had flowed easily that night once he’d gotten over his initial anger. For a couple of hours it had been surprisingly easy to forget the antagonism. The betrayal. The pain.

She met his eyes steadily, their gazes colliding for several tense moments. He was unsettled to realize that there was zero agenda on her face. He knew all of Madison’s various looks, and at the moment she was determined, yes, but also confused. She really couldn’t seem to understand why he wouldn’t want to talk to her.

“Madison,” he said quietly, “you divorced me. Remember? You left me for another man, filed the papers, initiated the end of our marriage. And you’re confused about why I don’t want to be best friends?”

She opened her mouth, but before she could respond, Cole Sharpe appeared in Jackson’s doorway.

“?’Sup, Burke.”

“Cole.”

Cole’s eyebrow lifted slightly at the tension in Jackson’s voice, and his eyes shifted to Madison before he grinned knowingly.

“Mollie?” he mouthed.

Unfortunately, Madison chose exactly that moment to turn around.

“Mollie?” Madison asked.

Shit.

Cole’s smile slipped, giving Jackson a briefly panicked expression before he glanced down at the cell in his right hand. “Sorry, gotta take this,” he said, pointing down to the completely blank screen.

Jackson gave Cole a withering look, and the other man apologized with his eyes as he lifted his cell to take the imaginary phone call.

Jackson closed the door with a slam before turning back to a cold-eyed Madison.

“Why would that man think I’m Mollie?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Jackson said, rubbing a hand over his face and going to sit across from her. “Maybe because she’s my roommate?”

Her eyes narrowed. “Only because you were using her to get to me.”

He had to laugh at that. “You are a f*cking piece of work. How can I make it clear that we’re over? That my actions stopped being about you a long time ago?”

She ignored this. “I approved Mollie moving in because I thought it would be good for her to have family in New York.”

“She’s been in New York for years, and you haven’t given a shit. Plus, she’s twenty-eight. She doesn’t need your approval.”

Madison huffed. “You’ve always been so ready to defend her. Perfect, genius Mollie could never do anything wrong in your eyes.”

A lightbulb clicked on. This was why Madison was trying to sink her fangs into him. Not because she wanted him, but because she didn’t want anyone else to have him, least of all her sister.

He gave her a slow smile. “That’s always bothered you, hasn’t it? My friendship with Mollie?”

“Well, I certainly didn’t expect that she’d be all buddy-buddy with your colleagues.”

“Do you even hear yourself?” Jackson asked. “You don’t get to f*cking divorce me and then pop up whenever you want, digging into my life. And for what it’s worth, Mollie’s never even met these guys.”

Madison folded her arms over her chest. “And yet they know her name. Which means that you must talk about her.”

“Yeah, I talk about her. In fact, I tried to set her up with one of them.”

Madison’s eyes went from annoyed to curious. “Mollie’s dating?”

“It didn’t work out,” he said gruffly.

“Oh. Well, no matter,” Madison said with a little wave of her hand. “I didn’t come to talk about Molls.”

Of course not. Your sister’s only as relevant as whatever she can do for you. “Maddie—” he began wearily, already regretting his decision to give her an opening.

“No, hear me out,” she said quietly, eyes pleading. “You don’t have to say a word. I just need to get this off my chest, okay?”

He grunted, not really sure if he was giving consent or not, but she took it as such and kept talking.

“I want you to give me another chance.”