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.
Because he was one of them. Or at least he was trying damn hard to be.
Jackson slid a finger under the collar of his shirt and tugged. He didn’t care what his tailor said. The damn thing was too tight.
He went for another sip only to freeze when he saw a pair of very nice legs out of the corner of his eye. He turned his head subtly to get a better look, and all traces of boredom vanished.
A woman in a short red dress could do that to a man. Especially when the woman had the most perfect pair of legs he’d ever seen. Long—sinfully long—toned, smooth, golden skin…
His eyes traveled up over the trim ankles in their sexy sandals, over the defined calves and toned thighs and narrow hips. The woman was tall and thin, bordering on lanky, which he didn’t usually go for, but it was working for her. In a big way.
His gaze kept right on going, over the narrow waist, over the small but perky breasts, until he reached her face.
Pretty. Very pretty. Her shoulder-length blond hair was sexy and tousled, her eyes big and blue. And that mouth…
That mouth was smiling at him. No, smirking. At him.
The woman had definitely caught him in the act of leering.
Shit, he thought. Might as well roll with it.
Jackson calmly lifted his drink to his lips as he met her eyes, only to experience a jolt as their gazes collided.
No. Hell no.
Jackson felt a punch of lust in his gut, followed by something else…something low and dangerous, not unlike an eerie siren trying to tell him that his complicated life was about to get a whole lot worse.
Slowly the woman lowered herself to the barstool next to his. He watched in horrified arousal as she reached out, plucked his drink from his hand, and raised it to red, red lips, taking a deliberate sip.
Only after she’d set the drink—his drink—back on the bar did she speak.
“Hello, Jackson.”
Damn, he thought. If he’d been in trouble before, he was completely fucked now.
Jackson swallowed. “Mollie.”
Chapter 3
Jackson Burke was here.