by Lauren Layne
She ventured another glance. Saw how his eyes locked on the rippling water in that way people had when their bodies were in one place but their minds were far, far away.
Finally he tipped his champagne glass to his lips and finished its contents in one long swallow before standing. He held out an elbow in a gentlemanly manner. “Let me walk you back?”
She looked away. “I’ll be there in a few.”
His arm dropped and he sighed. “You promise?”
Mollie’s smile was fleeting. “I promise.”
“Good. Because I’ll have you know I saw several guys who seemed all too happy about the fact that you didn’t bring a date tonight. I definitely see dancing in your future.”
Mollie rolled her eyes. “You don’t have to do that, you know.”
“Do what?”
“Be so nice to me. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I appreciate it. But promise me that when I go back there you’re not going to bribe some young buck to dance with me.”
Jackson tilted his head back and laughed. “Young buck? What is it with you and your animal comparisons?”
This time her smile was genuine. “Let’s just say animals can be more . . . interesting than humans.”
What she’d really wanted to say was that animals could be nicer than humans. From the way his smile dimmed, she suspected that he knew it—maybe even felt sorry for her. And that was terrible.
Mollie tilted back the rest of her champagne. The second she was done, Jackson stepped forward, plucking the flute from her hand. Before she realized what he was about, he’d lifted his huge hand—his huge, game-winning, touchdown-throwing hand—and wrapped it firmly around her elbow, lifting her so that they were chest to chest. Or actually nearly eye to eye, thanks to Mollie’s long legs and high heels.
Slowly he brought his face close to hers, his lips brushing softly at her cheek in what Mollie would long remember as the most perfect moment of her life.
“Someday, Mollie Carrington, men aren’t going to need to be bribed to dance with you. They’re going to fight for the honor.”
Mollie’s lips parted slightly as he took a step back, gave her one last wink, and then turned, walking back toward the party, two empty champagne flutes dangling from one hand as he whistled along with the George Strait song the band had just started playing.
Mollie lifted her fingers to her cheek, still feeling the warmth of his lips, the slight rasp of his five o’clock shadow. She watched him go, his broad shoulders getting smaller and smaller, until he rounded a corner and disappeared from her view.
Mollie dropped down onto the bench with an inelegant thud.
It wasn’t fair. Mollie had spent her entire life trying to do the right thing—going out of her way to do what she was supposed to, even when she wanted to do the exact opposite. But tonight her heart had betrayed her. Tonight her heart had done the wrong thing. No, the absolute worst thing.
Tonight, at her sister’s wedding, Mollie Carrington had gone and fallen head over heels in love.
With the groom.
Chapter 1
EIGHT YEARS LATER
There was a perky knock at the door, and Jackson stifled a groan as he realized that it was that time.
Lunchtime.
“Yeah?”
His office door opened a crack, and the familiar face of his petite brunette coworker appeared with big brown eyes and a wide smile. Penelope Pope was always smiling.
“Hey, Jackson!”
He jerked his chin. “Hey.”
“A bunch of us are headed to Roundy’s to grab a quick lunch before the one o’clock brainstorming meeting. Come with?”
His smile was automatic and forced. “Sorry. Just ate.”
Penelope pushed the door wider, leaning a shoulder against the door jamb as she crossed her skinny arms. The woman couldn’t have been more than five feet tall, but what she lacked in stature she made up for in personality. Bubbly, friendly, and unabashed, Penelope was as likable as she was exhausting.
His coworker’s eyes narrowed as she scanned the office as though looking for proof that he’d just wolfed down a turkey sandwich.
She wouldn’t find it. Because he hadn’t eaten yet.
Penelope didn’t accuse him of lying, but it was impossible to miss the disappointment in her eyes. At her small sigh, Jackson was about thirty seconds away from squirming under the scrutiny of his pint-sized colleague.
“I’m not going to stop asking,” Penelope said, lifting her eyebrows in challenge.
“Not going to stop asking what?” said a tall blond man who appeared at Penelope’s side, tossing a baseball from palm to palm.
Great. Now both of the sports editors were going to bust his balls.
Penelope Pope and Cole Sharpe were Oxford magazine’s latest power couple. Not that Jackson had made it his business to figure out their story, but best he could tell, the two of them had competed for the sports editor position a few months back and ended up having to share it as co-editors. And based on how often Penelope’s hair was mussed coming out of Cole’s office, they’d expanded their partnership beyond the workplace, and were damn happy about it.
Just wait, kids. That shit doesn’t last.
Penelope nodded toward Jackson. “I asked him to lunch.”
“Yeah? He fall all over himself saying yes like he always does?”
Jackson resisted the urge to give the other man the finger. Cole Sharpe was every bit the pain in the ass that Penelope was, except not as cute.
But flipping Cole the bird would convey the exact breed of familiarity with these people that Jackson had been striving for the better part of a month to avoid.
That was unfair. It wasn’t that Jackson didn’t like them. They were good people. It was just . . .
Jackson’s hand lifted to his shirt collar, a finger slipping into the neck of the white dress shirt as he tugged at it.
He didn’t belong.
For three weeks—three long-ass, bullshit weeks—he’d been trying to pretend that he, Jackson Burke, former quarterback of the Texas Redhawks, could change. That he could now be Jackson Burke, fitness editor for Oxford magazine.
It wasn’t working. He hated New York. Hated the suits. Hated the change.
“I already ate,” he grumbled for the second time, avoiding the knowing look his coworkers were giving him.
“Huh,” Cole said. “Heads up.”
Before Jackson fully registered Cole’s intentions, the other man’s wrist flicked, tossing the baseball toward Jackson.
The ball came to Jackson’s right side, but it was his left hand that crossed his body to catch it.
He felt a flash of rage, wondering if Cole had done that on purpose to test him—wanting to see for himself if the rumors about Jackson’s injury were exaggerated.
Believe it, Sharpe. The right shoulder’s every bit as useless as everyone thinks.
But Cole wasn’t paying attention to whether or not Jackson had caught the damn baseball. He was too busy shooting the shit with Lincoln Mathis—another Oxford staffer, and one who didn’t feel the need to lie about already having had lunch. Lincoln had that sort of easy confidence that he belonged here. They all did.
But then they hadn’t had their entire life turned upside down the moment a multitasking businessman had thought he was the exception to all the don’t-text-and-drive statistics. They hadn’t gone from NFL superstar to international douchebag. Although the douchebag part he couldn’t blame on Mr. Text-and-Drive. Jackson’s reputation was a gift from his toxic ex-wife.
As he lifted his finger to his too-tight shirt collar once again, it occurred to Jackson that maybe it wasn’t the shirt that threatened to choke him. Maybe it was the anger.
Anger that not so long ago his biggest worry had been Tirone Alberts’s occasional butterfingers in the end zone. Now the closest he’d be getting to any end zone was through the seventy-five-inch flat-screen in his living room.
“Hey, Burke!” Lincoln Mathis said
, seeming to realize for the first time that they were standing in the doorway of Jackson’s office. “You coming to lunch?”
Even Jackson Burke could admit that Lincoln was one good-looking dude. Black hair, blue eyes, shoulders that knew their way around a gym.
And just like Penelope and Cole, Lincoln had no respect for the fact that Jackson had zero interest in joining their little clique.
“No. Not coming to lunch.” Jackson cleared his throat when he realized how terse his response sounded. “I have a couple things to work on here, otherwise I would.”
Penelope tilted her head, her long brown ponytail swinging to the side. “I thought you said it was because you already ate.”
Jackson lifted a hand to his forehead, relieved not to feel any dampness. Good Christ, were these people out to kill him?
Jackson had jumped at the job offer from Oxford magazine’s editor in chief with an odd mixture of reluctance and desperation. Reluctance to relocate to New York, to cease being an athlete and start being a journalist. Desperation to escape Houston. Desperation to get to—
“So that’s a no, then?” Cole asked, interrupting Jackson’s dark thoughts.
He gave a curt shake of his head. “Maybe next time.”
Someone snorted at that. He wasn’t sure who.
“Yeah,” Penelope said quietly. “Maybe next time.”
One of them closed his office door with a quiet click, and Jackson shut his eyes in gratitude for the silence even as he felt a stab of regret.
How many times would he have to say no until they quit asking?
How many times until he wanted to say yes? Until he wanted to be one of them, going to the casual lunches, the after-work happy hours, and the weekend whatevers.
But something held him back. No, everything held him back. Accepting a job offer with Oxford magazine had been foolish. Worse than the time he’d thrown an interception at his first Super Bowl. Worse than the time he’d had an affair with his professor in college. Worse than the time he’d blown his entire first year’s salary on a Houston mansion he hadn’t yet been able to afford.
Worse, even, than marrying the woman who’d nearly destroyed him.
But none of that—not the interceptions or the affairs or the money mistakes or Madison—quite measured up to the acute stab of foolishness that had Jackson staring rather desperately around his barren office wondering what the fuck he was doing.
For the first time in . . . well, ever, Jackson Burke was the outsider. The one who didn’t know how to fit in among the high-rises and the pinstripes and the stupid lunch meetings.
Jackson ran both hands over his face slowly until his fingertips dug into his jaw, hard, as though trying to wake himself up from this new life. With a muttered oath he turned back to his computer.
But not to the article he was writing, “Shortcut to an Eight-Pack,” which was due tomorrow. Instead, Jackson’s big hand closed over his computer mouse and navigated to his Gmail account.
There was the usual shit. Spam. Propositions from dedicated groupies. A handful of curt but well-meaning messages from his former teammates. One from his mother, whom he’d catch hell from if he didn’t respond soon.
But not the email he was looking for. No email from the head coach of the Texas Redhawks.
Jackson’s other hand reached for his phone. He could text Jerry. It would be so easy to text his former coach, ask if Jerry had considered his proposal. But it was bad enough that Jackson was going around his agent. Texting crossed a line that would send his agent over the edge.
Plus it smacked of desperation, and Jackson wasn’t there.
Not yet.
He was just about ready to close the Internet browser and get back to his godforsaken day job when a new email came through.
Not from Jerry. But this email was as good. No, it was better.
See, the whole damn world thought Jackson had hightailed it out of Houston because of a Carrington sister. They were right.
Where they were wrong was that it wasn’t Madison Carrington who’d inspired Jackson’s move to New York, although getting away from his ex had been a pleasant bonus. But Jackson’s new Manhattan address didn’t have anything to do with Madison. Or even Oxford.
No, Jackson’s presence in New York had everything to do with the other Carrington sister.
He’d been keeping his distance. He’d had to. But today he didn’t want to. He wanted to see her. Needed to see her.
He needed Mollie.
Chapter 2
“Joining us for dinner, sir?” The hostess at the upscale Italian restaurant gave him a polite if generic smile.
“I am, but I’m early,” Jackson replied, forcing a smile in return.
“Not a problem. Feel free to grab a seat in the bar while you wait.”
That was the plan, sweetheart. Jackson mustered up another fake-feeling smile and made his way into the dimly lit bar to wait for Mollie.
A tuxedoed bartender appeared even before Jackson had fully settled on the plush red barstool.
“Drink, sir?”
“Manhattan,” Jackson replied. “Knob Creek bourbon if you have it, with Carpano Antica if you have that.”
“Of course¸ sir.” The middle-aged bartender didn’t even bat an eye at the precise order.
Now this was one thing New York did better than Texas—cocktails. Perfectly cold, perfectly mixed, perfectly classic cocktails. The bartender fluttered a white monogrammed cocktail napkin in front of Jackson as he stirred the drink before straining it into a chilled glass.
Jackson took a sip. Perfection. Although what did it mean that Jackson’s life had turned into one where the highlight of his day was a well-made cocktail?
It wasn’t that Jackson needed the booze. He enjoyed it, certainly. Had relied on it more than he probably should have in those first few days when he’d gotten out of the hospital and come home to a whole lot of nothingness.
But these days he could take it or leave it.
Tonight, however, he was taking it. Sobriety had no place when you had to sit across from the most off-limits woman on the planet.
Knowing that didn’t stop the anticipation, however. He hadn’t seen her since she’d shown up in his hospital room to deliver a bag of Gatlin’s BBQ and . . .
His divorce papers.
That had been eight months ago.
He’d avoided her ever since, and he couldn’t even say why except that he’d avoided pretty much everyone. Jackson still spoke with his parents every Sunday, but everyone else—all the old teammates, the old neighbors—had eventually stopped calling.
Mollie hadn’t, though. Mollie had never given up on him. Until today, he hadn’t responded to a single text, a single email, and yet she hadn’t stopped sending them. That was Mollie for you. Fiercely loyal to both him and Madison, even when things had started to go to hell.
Mollie had been accepted to Columbia just about the time that he and Madison started coming apart at the seams. In hindsight, he was grateful that Mollie had been in New York when things started to go to hell in his marriage. That she hadn’t seen him at his worst.
At the time, however, he’d been hit with an unfair sense of abandonment. He hadn’t realized how much he’d come to rely on the much younger Mollie to mediate things between him and the volatile Madison until she was in a different time zone.
Even now, more than a decade since first meeting Mollie, he struggled to reconcile the fact that she and Madison had come from the same parents. Madison was perfectly coiffed, charming only when she was in the mood, and manipulative as all hell. Mollie, on the other hand, was adorably awkward—a brainy research assistant who cared a hell of a lot more about her scientific journals than her manicure.
But somewhere along the line, Mollie Carrington had ceased to be that awkward kid who talked about bugs at inopportune times. Somewhere along the line, she’d become his rock. The one person in the world, save for perhaps his parents, who always knew the exact right thing
to say to make him feel like a human whenever he’d started to feel like a caricature of himself.
For years he’d tried to tell himself that it was just sibling affection—that he cared about her the way he would a sister. But then things had gotten worse with Madison—way worse. And Jackson had been hit upside the head with the truth: that maybe he’d married the wrong sister. That he didn’t want to spend the rest of his days married to the beautiful, brittle Madison.
He wanted someone who made him laugh. Who listened. Someone who cared more about people than she did about hair appointments.
Someone like Mollie.
“Fuck,” Jackson muttered under his breath as he took another sip of his drink.
The bartender shot him a glance as he dried a pint glass with a towel, but didn’t comment on Jackson’s obvious turmoil.
Get it together, man. It’s never fucking going to happen.
Jackson took a sip as he scanned the room, making sure Mollie hadn’t arrived before him. It took him about eight seconds to note that she wasn’t here yet. Mollie would have stood out in this crowd.
It was early on a Wednesday evening, which meant that most of the clientele was the after-work business crowd. Men in perfectly tailored suits, women in their classy pencil skirts and perfectly styled hair. Mollie was all crazy curls and had no respect for modern fashion, no interest in makeup. That had driven Madison nuts over the years.
Come to think of it, this was an odd restaurant choice for Mollie. He’d have expected her to pick some hole in the wall whose cuisine was from a country he’d barely heard of.
Feeling eyes on him, Jackson glanced at a group of twentysomethings near the window. He made eye contact with one of them, and though the entire group made a big show of not looking his way, it was obvious they’d recognized him. Had been talking about him.
Jackson took another sip of his drink and told himself that it didn’t bother him.
Not so long ago he’d been able to walk into a room—any room—and be swarmed with fans wanting autographs or selfies or just to touch him. But it was less common in New York. More often than not, he tended to blend into the suit-wearing, Monday-through-Friday crowd as though he were one of them.
