Slowly he brought his face close to hers, his lips brushing softly at her cheek in what Mollie would long remember as the most perfect moment of her life.

“Someday, Mollie Carrington, men aren’t going to need to be bribed to dance with you. They’re going to fight for the honor.”

Mollie’s lips parted slightly as he took a step back, gave her one last wink, and then turned, walking back toward the party, two empty champagne flutes dangling from one hand as he whistled along with the George Strait song the band had just started playing.

Mollie lifted her fingers to her cheek, still feeling the warmth of his lips, the slight rasp of his five o’clock shadow. She watched him go, his broad shoulders getting smaller and smaller, until he rounded a corner and disappeared from her view.

Mollie dropped down onto the bench with an inelegant thud.

It wasn’t fair. Mollie had spent her entire life trying to do the right thing—going out of her way to do what she was supposed to, even when she wanted to do the exact opposite. But tonight her heart had betrayed her. Tonight her heart had done the wrong thing. No, the absolute worst thing.

Tonight, at her sister’s wedding, Mollie Carrington had gone and fallen head over heels in love.

With the groom.

Chapter 1

EIGHT YEARS LATER

There was a perky knock at the door, and Jackson stifled a groan as he realized that it was that time.

Lunchtime.

“Yeah?”

His office door opened a crack, and the familiar face of his petite brunette coworker appeared with big brown eyes and a wide smile. Penelope Pope was always smiling.

“Hey, Jackson!”

He jerked his chin. “Hey.”

“A bunch of us are headed to Roundy’s to grab a quick lunch before the one o’clock brainstorming meeting. Come with?”

His smile was automatic and forced. “Sorry. Just ate.”

Penelope pushed the door wider, leaning a shoulder against the door jamb as she crossed her skinny arms. The woman couldn’t have been more than five feet tall, but what she lacked in stature she made up for in personality. Bubbly, friendly, and unabashed, Penelope was as likable as she was exhausting.

His coworker’s eyes narrowed as she scanned the office as though looking for proof that he’d just wolfed down a turkey sandwich.

She wouldn’t find it. Because he hadn’t eaten yet.

Penelope didn’t accuse him of lying, but it was impossible to miss the disappointment in her eyes. At her small sigh, Jackson was about thirty seconds away from squirming under the scrutiny of his pint-sized colleague.

“I’m not going to stop asking,” Penelope said, lifting her eyebrows in challenge.

“Not going to stop asking what?” said a tall blond man who appeared at Penelope’s side, tossing a baseball from palm to palm.

Great. Now both of the sports editors were going to bust his balls.

Penelope Pope and Cole Sharpe were Oxford magazine’s latest power couple. Not that Jackson had made it his business to figure out their story, but best he could tell, the two of them had competed for the sports editor position a few months back and ended up having to share it as co-editors. And based on how often Penelope’s hair was mussed coming out of Cole’s office, they’d expanded their partnership beyond the workplace, and were damn happy about it.

Just wait, kids. That shit doesn’t last.

Penelope nodded toward Jackson. “I asked him to lunch.”

“Yeah? He fall all over himself saying yes like he always does?”

Jackson resisted the urge to give the other man the finger. Cole Sharpe was every bit the pain in the ass that Penelope was, except not as cute.

But flipping Cole the bird would convey the exact breed of familiarity with these people that Jackson had been striving for the better part of a month to avoid.

That was unfair. It wasn’t that Jackson didn’t like them. They were good people. It was just…

Jackson’s hand lifted to his shirt collar, a finger slipping into the neck of the white dress shirt as he tugged at it.

He didn’t belong.

For three weeks—three long-ass, bullshit weeks—he’d been trying to pretend that he, Jackson Burke, former quarterback of the Texas Redhawks, could change. That he could now be Jackson Burke, fitness editor for Oxford magazine.

It wasn’t working. He hated New York. Hated the suits. Hated the change.

“I already ate,” he grumbled for the second time, avoiding the knowing look his coworkers were giving him.

“Huh,” Cole said. “Heads up.”

Before Jackson fully registered Cole’s intentions, the other man’s wrist flicked, tossing the baseball toward Jackson.

The ball came to Jackson’s right side, but it was his left hand that crossed his body to catch it.

He felt a flash of rage, wondering if Cole had done that on purpose to test him—wanting to see for himself if the rumors about Jackson’s injury were exaggerated.

Believe it, Sharpe. The right shoulder’s every bit as useless as everyone thinks.

But Cole wasn’t paying attention to whether or not Jackson had caught the damn baseball. He was too busy shooting the shit with Lincoln Mathis—another Oxford staffer, and one who didn’t feel the need to lie about already having had lunch. Lincoln had that sort of easy confidence that he belonged here. They all did.

But then they hadn’t had their entire life turned upside down the moment a multitasking businessman had thought he was the exception to all the don’t-text-and-drive statistics. They hadn’t gone from NFL superstar to international douchebag. Although the douchebag part he couldn’t blame on Mr. Text-and-Drive. Jackson’s reputation was a gift from his toxic ex-wife.