He held it out.

“Oh. Thanks.” She took the clutch.

They both stared it for an awkward moment before he lifted his eyes to hers. “You kept that?”

Mollie let out a little laugh. “Jackson, it’s Chanel. Of course I kept it.”

“Ah.” He gave her a considering look, as though searching for another reason she might have kept his gift.

“Okay, then,” she said, starting to close the door.

Jackson’s hand came up, his palm stopping the door before she could shut it. “Have dinner with me.”

“Well, yeah, I wasn’t going to eat in my bedroom. I’m just changing, then I’ll be back out.”

“No, I mean have dinner. With me. At a restaurant.”

Her breath caught at the intensity in his gaze. “Jackson—”

“Don’t say no.”

She blinked in surprise at his cocky command. “Why shouldn’t I?”

His grin was slow and sexy as he braced both hands on the door jamb and leaned in slightly. “Because I really like you in that red dress, Molls.” He backed up before she could respond and gave her a little wink. “We head out in five minutes. I’ll go call a car.”

Mollie stared after him as Jackson walked back down the hall, whistling a Tim McGraw song.

Well, whaddaya know, she thought. Maybe Jackson Burke hadn’t forgotten how to smile and tease after all.

Chapter 15

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.”