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 fucking 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.

Whatever normal was.

Mollie didn’t know what her role was in his life anymore. Once upon a time she’d been his confidante. The one he’d come to when Madison was having a tantrum. The person he’d called after a bad practice when Maddie had been out with the girls again.

But things were shifting. There was an undercurrent between them that felt darker and far more dangerous than whatever she’d felt for him before.

Whatever Madison wanted for Jackson, her sister would just have to figure that shit out on her own.

Once back on the Upper East Side, Jackson paid the cabdriver and they rode the elevator up to the penthouse in silence. Not angry silence. Not even truly awkward silence. Just the quiet of two people who knew there were things to be said, but didn’t know what things.

“Thanks for dinner,” she said as he flicked on the light in the foyer. “I had a good time.”

He nodded and dropped his keys on the console table. “It was my pleasure.”

It was Mollie’s turn to nod, giving a horribly dorky wave as she started to head toward her bedroom.

Then she stopped, pivoted on her high heel, and turned back to face him. He hadn’t moved.

“Okay, this is dumb, Jackson.”

“What’s dumb?”

She walked toward him, stopping several feet away. “What is happening to us? We used to be friends. Heck, there were times when you felt like my best friend, even though we were in different time zones. Now we’re all tense and walking on eggshells, and you’re weird.”

“I’m weird? You’re the one who’s kissing me one night and going out with another guy days later.”

“You said that kiss was a mistake. I’m not going to put my life on hold while you go hot and cold on me.”

“Cut me some slack, here, Mollie! I don’t exactly know the protocol. A year ago you were my wife’s sister, and now you’re…”