“Oh, tell her I said hi!” Madison said.

Mollie pulled the phone away from her face and turned toward the closet. “Madison says hi.”

“Oh my gosh, tell her I say hi back!” Kim said in a gushing, fake voice as she came out of the closet and put a couple of blouses into a box. Kim fluttered her eyelashes behind her thick black-rimmed glasses and pretended to flip her chin-length black hair over her shoulder.

Mollie mouthed “ha ha” before turning her attention back to her sister. “Kim says hi back.”

Kim and Madison had only met a couple of times, but they weren’t exactly friends. Madison, at least, pretended to like Kim with all her brainy, no-bullshit candor. Kim, on the other hand, had trouble being more than passably polite in the face of Madison’s sugar-sweet Texas charm.

But Mollie had bigger problems to worry about than the fact that her best friend and sister weren’t pals. Like the fact she was about to be living in Jackson Burke’s guest room, and big sister was none too happy about it.

“You know that Jackson’s just doing it to mess with me,” Madison complained.

Mollie’s eyes narrowed at the smug confidence in her sister’s tone. As though the only reason anyone would do anything would be if it somehow related to Madison.

“Or it could be because Jackson and I are friends,” Mollie said, the sharpness in her own voice surprising her. She rarely swiped back at Madison’s bitchy jabs. She’d learned early on that her sister was rarely worth engaging.

“Has he mentioned me?” Madison asked, as though the idea of Jackson and Mollie’s friendship wasn’t even worth acknowledging.

Mollie picked at a cuticle. “Nope.”

“Huh.” Madison’s tone was irritated.

“Look, Maddie—”

“I hate that name.”

Mollie ignored this. “I’m sorry I didn’t ask you first. Truly. But I really didn’t think you’d have a problem with it. You’ve told me a million times that you didn’t care if I stayed friends with Jackson after the divorce.”

“Sure, I meant you two exchanging your little inside jokes by text, or whatever. I didn’t mean becoming his roommate.”

Mollie frowned at the edge in her sister’s voice. Even before Maddie had filed for divorce, she’d seemed long uninterested in anything having to do with Jackson, as though the very mention of his name irritated her.

“Is everything okay?” she asked her sister. “I mean with Alec?”

“Alec’s amazing.” The words were out almost before Mollie had finished asking the question. “We’re probably going to get married.”

Alec McDaniels was a thirtysomething model with a history of attaching himself to the rich and famous. Mollie was 100 percent sure that if Madison had never become a household name, courtesy of Housewives, Alec never would have conveniently bumped into Maddie at a bar.

Still, her sister liked the guy, and Mollie supposed that was what mattered.

“I’m glad things are going well,” Mollie said. “I want you to be happy.”

Madison said nothing to this, but then Mollie hadn’t really expected her to. Her sister seemed to think that the entire world existed to ensure her happiness.

It hadn’t always been this way. True, Madison had always been self-absorbed, but she’d also stepped up to the plate when someone needed her. When Mollie needed her.

Something had changed once Maddie had become Mrs. Jackson Burke. It was as though the money and fame had somehow brought all of her sister’s worst qualities to the top and leached out all of the good. Mollie still loved her sister. But liking Madison…that was harder.

“I bet he’s thinking he can get to me through you,” Madison said in a musing voice.

Mollie picked at her chipping nail polish to keep from losing her temper. “Mad, I wasn’t kidding when I said he didn’t mention you. I really think he’s moved on, just like you have.”

“He’s seeing someone?” Madison asked, her tone turning even sharper.

“I don’t know. I didn’t ask.”

If the thought of Jackson dating someone caused a funny little pang in her stomach, Mollie ignored it. It was just that for a moment there, when the two of them had stood face-to-face in his apartment, she could have sworn there was a little sizzle of something between them. Nothing inappropriate. Not even interest. Just…awareness.

She’d always been aware of Jackson Burke. She’d accepted that as one of the facts of her life. But this was the first time she’d sensed that maybe he’d been aware of her.

Thank you, little red dress.

Mollie mentally slapped herself. No. That was not what this was about. This was about getting out of her crap hole of an apartment, saying yes to an offer from a friend.

Mollie glanced around at the grungy apartment. It was disgusting. Even before Cabbage Boy had moved in with his spider, it had been a bit of a crap hole. She’d picked the place mainly based on its bigger-than-average closet space, only to realize too late that the closet was almost as big as the bedroom and kitchen combined. She wanted out.

“Mad, I’ve got to get going. I can’t let Kim do all of my packing.”

“Oh, I’m not packing so much as purging,” Kim interjected, chucking one of Mollie’s favorite shirts into the giveaway pile.

“So you’re really doing this?” Madison asked.