His desk phone rang, the caller ID indicating it was the reception desk.

“Jo, my darling. You’ve decided to marry me?”

He got a snort in response. “Hardly. There’s a woman here to see you.”

Jackson grinned automatically, figuring it must be Mollie. He wondered if he could talk her into sex on his desk.

Continued Jo, “It’s Madison Burke. She says she’s your wife.”

Jackson froze, suddenly all too aware what people experienced when they said their blood ran cold.

“Shit.” Jackson closed his eyes. “Tell her I’m gone for the day. Or in a meeting. Or—”

“Hello, darling.”

Jackson’s eyes flew open to see his ex-wife standing in the door.

“Sorry, Jackson,” Jo said quietly. “She sweet-talked one of the interns into taking her back, and I—”

“Don’t worry about it.” Not your fault the woman’s a manipulative bitch.

“Madison,” he said, hanging up his phone and refusing to stand. “What can I do for you?”

Her eyes scanned him. “Mmm. You always did look good in a suit.” She came into the office and closed the door behind her.

He stood and walked over to the door, deliberately opening it again.

Her lips pressed together in irritation for a half second before she resumed her placid smile. She was dressed in a red sweater set and black slacks. The basic black pumps were feminine without being overtly sexy, her makeup and jewelry demure as ever. The woman really had mastered the art of faking classiness—“faking” being the key word.

“What the hell are you doing here?” he asked, keeping his voice pleasant but dismissive as he went back to his office chair.

“I came to see you.”

He stared at her. “Madison, you live in a different time zone. This makes twice now that you’ve flown to another state to see me, and it’s starting to feel a little Fatal Attraction.”

She sniffed. “For the record, the first time I flew in to see my baby sister. This time I flew in to get some shopping done.”

“Shopping? Are you fucking kidding me, Mad?”

“What can I say?” she said, giving him a pretty smile. “I’ve got some extra cash lying around.”

“Yeah. My cash,” he muttered.

He and Madison had signed a prenup. He wasn’t that dumb. The only way she’d get a dime in the divorce was if there’d been infidelity on his end.

So she’d made sure that there had been. Several times over.

The real shitter was that he hadn’t even cared about the money. He’d have handed it over just to be done with her. But he didn’t think it would have made a difference—she still would have paid off all those women to lie about him having an affair.

Madison had known full well that being a cheating wife wouldn’t go well with her image. So she’d changed the story in her favor.

“You’ve been avoiding me ever since our dinner,” she said quietly.

“How is that a surprise? We have nothing to say to each other.”

She gave him a sad smile. “We had plenty to say that night.”

He looked away, realizing that he didn’t have an argument for that. Conversation had flowed easily that night once he’d gotten over his initial anger. For a couple of hours it had been surprisingly easy to forget the antagonism. The betrayal. The pain.

She met his eyes steadily, their gazes colliding for several tense moments. He was unsettled to realize that there was zero agenda on her face. He knew all of Madison’s various looks, and at the moment she was determined, yes, but also confused. She really couldn’t seem to understand why he wouldn’t want to talk to her.

“Madison,” he said quietly, “you divorced me. Remember? You left me for another man, filed the papers, initiated the end of our marriage. And you’re confused about why I don’t want to be best friends?”

She opened her mouth, but before she could respond, Cole Sharpe appeared in Jackson’s doorway.

“ ’Sup, Burke.”

“Cole.”

Cole’s eyebrow lifted slightly at the tension in Jackson’s voice, and his eyes shifted to Madison before he grinned knowingly.

“Mollie?” he mouthed.

Unfortunately, Madison chose exactly that moment to turn around.

“Mollie?” Madison asked.

Shit.

Cole’s smile slipped, giving Jackson a briefly panicked expression before he glanced down at the cell in his right hand. “Sorry, gotta take this,” he said, pointing down to the completely blank screen.

Jackson gave Cole a withering look, and the other man apologized with his eyes as he lifted his cell to take the imaginary phone call.

Jackson closed the door with a slam before turning back to a cold-eyed Madison.

“Why would that man think I’m Mollie?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Jackson said, rubbing a hand over his face and going to sit across from her. “Maybe because she’s my roommate?”

Her eyes narrowed. “Only because you were using her to get to me.”

He had to laugh at that. “You are a fucking piece of work. How can I make it clear that we’re over? That my actions stopped being about you a long time ago?”

She ignored this. “I approved Mollie moving in because I thought it would be good for her to have family in New York.”

“She’s been in New York for years, and you haven’t given a shit. Plus, she’s twenty-eight. She doesn’t need your approval.”