Somewhere around the arrival of the appetizers, Jackson quit trying to find reasons why asking Mollie out to dinner had been a mistake. It was time to accept that he enjoyed this woman. Had always enjoyed her.

The kiss might have been a mistake, but it didn’t change the fact that it was only with Mollie that Jackson felt he could relax.

“So anyway,” she said as she heaped a generous portion of steak tartare onto some fussy little piece of toast, “getting to have my own team would be huge, but . . . I don’t know.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know? Isn’t that a promotion?”

“Of sorts,” she said, taking a bite. “But the thing is, I only have my master’s degree right now.”

“Yeah, I know. I paid for it,” he said with a wink.

“And I paid you back, every last penny,” she retorted. She did something with her face then, and he narrowed his eyes.

“Did you just wink at me and fail?” he asked.

She tried again, her face scrunching up comically, her whole head tilting to the side.

He laughed. “Mollie Carrington, are you telling me you can’t wink?”

She sighed. “Apparently not. I’ve never thought much about it, but I tried it earlier in the mirror and it was a disaster.”

“Why were you winking in the mirror?”

She glanced down. “I was trying to see if I could pull off this dress.”

Jackson nearly groaned. “Trust me, you can pull off the dress.”

She gave a happy smile that did dangerous things to his insides, so he cleared his throat and steered them back to safer topics.

“So you have your master’s . . .”

“Right, I have my master’s, but in order to move to the next level, I need my doctorate. But I don’t want to do that until I have a better idea of my focus.”

“And do you?”

She let out a weary sigh and took a sip of her cocktail. “Not really. I still want to do it all.”

He laughed, and she narrowed her eyes. “What?”

“It’s just that you haven’t changed since you were hell-bent on pulling off a quadruple major in three years.”

She laughed. “Oh, right. That phase. Yeah, well . . . all dreams must die.”

“But you still pulled off a triple major and graduated a semester early. Biology, chemistry, and sociology. No easy task.”

Her lips parted. “You remember that?”

Jackson glanced down at the table, feeling strangely embarrassed. “Apparently.”

She stared at him before shaking her head. “Anyway,” she said after a moment of awkward silence, “I know the Ph.D. is next, and I know I’m close to deciding. I just want to be sure.”

He took a sip of his drink. “Do you think you’d go to school here? In New York?”

She shrugged. “It’d depend where I got in. It’s beyond competitive.”

He nodded.

“But I’d apply,” she said softly. “To schools here, I mean.”

He swallowed. He didn’t know why her answer was important, but it was.

“What about you?” she asked casually, running a finger around the edge of her plate to scoop up some of the sauce before licking it off. “Planning on staying in New York?”

He lifted a shoulder. “I don’t know. It’s not home.”

“Left your heart in Texas, did ya?”

His eyes narrowed as he wondered if she was making some reference to Madison, but she only seemed curious.

“You don’t like New York?” she went on.

“If I had a gun to my head and had to describe it one word? Hideous.”

“Oh, come on,” she said. “You can’t tell me you don’t get off on the energy here. The city is so alive.”

“Sure. Alive with pigeons and rats and roaches and—”

She laughed. “Stop. Why are you here, then?”

Great question. “Nowhere else to go, I guess. Needed to do something after the accident. Oxford’s the only one that offered. Other than porn.”

She snorted. “It’s that bad, then?”

He took a sip of whisky. “Actually, it’s getting better, I think.”

“The job or the city?”

“The job.”

“I read your latest article. It was good, Jackson.”

He snorted. “You sound surprised.”

“I’m just glad you’ve found something. Something besides football.”

Jackson’s head snapped back a little. “This is only a temporary gig, Molls. Until—”

She frowned. “Until what?”

Until I can convince my former boss to give me a coaching job. But he didn’t say it. Wouldn’t say it out loud until he knew he had a chance. But the last email he’d gotten from Jerry had said that while he was damn good at football, there was no chance until Jackson had gotten his public image in order. Which meant . . .

“I’m thinking of doing an interview with Oxford.”

She frowned. “You mean for Oxford?”

“No, I mean telling my story. To the sports editors there.”

She sat back in her chair. “Wow.”

“You don’t think I should?” he asked, oddly desperate to hear her answer.

She took a sip of wine. “I don’t know. I mean, I guess you should. If Madison hadn’t talked, you could play the whole ‘Please respect our privacy during this difficult time’ card, but she did talk. She went on the offensive, and unless you defend yourself, you look guilty as hell.”

He shook his head. “You can admit that, and yet you and Madison still think I’m going to want to get back together with her?”

“People make mistakes,” Mollie said gently. “Madison knows she made some: going public with your problems, divorcing you when she did.”

“Those aren’t little mistakes. Those are the rip-a-man’s-heart-out-and-pour-salt-in-the-gaping-hole-in-his-chest type of mistakes.”

Something flickered across her face. “So her leaving—it ripped your heart out?”

He groaned and reached for a piece of bread.

“Oh, come on,” she pleaded. “Drop the macho act for thirty seconds, then you can go back to dragging your knuckles.”

He shook his head and dunked the bread in oil. Jackson had never really understood the appeal of Italian food, but he had to admit the Italians did know their way around bread.

“You know, most women like the macho thing,” he said, chewing his bread.

“Yeah, in bed,” Mollie said. “But dinner at a nice place? Well, let’s just say we don’t mind a little beta.”

“Beta?”

“Jackson Burke, are you intentionally trying to avoid answering questions about my sister?”

He wiped his mouth with his napkin. “Fine. You want to do this? Sure. Yes, she ripped my heart out. Yes, she left me when I needed her the most, and it fucking hurt. Okay? Even though things were awful between us long before that, when I was in the hospital . . . well, it would have been nice if she could have waited. Now, are we good, or should we stop on the way home and get me a diary and a soft pink blanket to snuggle?”

Mollie studied him. “I’m sorry I didn’t believe you. About the other women, I mean.”

He lifted a shoulder. “It was almost a year ago. And your sister told you I was a man whore, so . . .”

She reached across the table. “You’re my friend. I should have ranked that higher than I did.”

Jackson was a little shocked at just how much her apology meant, and surprised them both by flipping his hand over so that they were palm to palm.

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 fucking worth it.