Софи Райан: The Fast Аnd Тhe Furriest

“Maybe—a long time ago—I had feelings for Leila, but I was happy when she and Mac got married.”

He said the words so smoothly I almost believed him. Almost.

I pulled my hand out of my pocket and held it out. The tiny carved duck lay in the palm of my hand. “You had an affair.”

I hated saying the words out loud just as much as I had when I’d told Mac about the affair a few hours earlier.

“This belonged to Leila. You gave it to her. You knew she loved Japanese art. It’s an oshidori —a mandarin duck—a symbol of fidelity, oddly enough. Your fidelity to her, maybe? It was part of a set. You kept the other one. When you saw those two netsuke come up for auction did you think it was a sign from the universe?”

He didn’t answer. Not that I’d really expected him to.

My heart was pounding so hard in my chest the sound seemed to echo in my ears. “Leila kept this as a reminder of what she almost lost because of your affair. But I think you told yourself that somehow she kept it because she loved you, even if she didn’t admit it to herself. Then Erin figured it all out. She was coming to show this to Mac and tell him that what happened to Leila wasn’t an accident. That it was you.”

Something flashed briefly across his face and I knew I was right.

“You slept with my wife,” Mac said. Rage flashed in his dark eyes, and pain as well.

“Don’t make it sound like something cheap,” Jackson said in a voice edged with anger. “She’s not that kind of person. We had one perfect night. One, and Leila was consumed with guilt about it because you had her brainwashed. She felt obligated to you.”

Mac swallowed hard. The muscles in his neck stood out like thick twists of rope. “She loved me and I loved her,” he said.

“I loved her!” Jackson shouted. “We could have had a life together—we would have but you ruined it. You can pretend all you want that she didn’t care about me but it doesn’t make it true.” He all but spit the words at Mac. “Who did she come to when she found out that her company was being investigated by the FTC? Who? Me, not you.”

Mac said nothing.

“I told her I would fix it all. I knew people and I could make the whole thing go away. And I gave her that carving to show her that she could always count on me.”

Something in his body language, in his words, twigged for me. “You knew what Natalie had been doing,” I said.

Jackson’s gaze slid sideways. “Natalie and I had gotten . . . close. I figured it out.” He turned his attention back to Mac again. “And I was helping her fix things. I could have fixed everything but Leila had been living with you, Mr. Moral High Ground.”

It seemed as though I could feel the animosity toward Mac coming off Jackson. One hand clenched and flexed at his side and my stomach rolled as I thought of that large hand clamped over Erin Fellowes’s mouth and nose.

I took a breath. I needed to keep Jackson talking. “But Leila was angry that you hadn’t told her how Natalie was cutting corners. She wasn’t grateful. All she had to do was just let you take care of everything. But she said she was going to talk to Natalie and then she was going to go to the authorities.” I was very aware of the fact that it was only the three of us standing there by the water and Jackson Montgomery was a big man.

He pressed his lips together and didn’t say anything.

“You went to the house,” I continued. “You wanted to talk to her away from the office. You borrowed the spare key from Natalie. All you were going to do was wait inside and talk to Leila when she got home.” I was guessing at the last part but a tiny twitch under his left eye told me I’d guessed correctly.

I nodded like I understood and in a way, I did. I understood that Jackson had a very warped idea of what love was. My mom would have said, Someone worked on him.

Jackson gave a snort of disgust then. “It was an old, run-down house. Leila deserved better. Natalie told me she was sleeping in a downstairs room because of the work that was being done upstairs.”

“You wanted her to see how much she needed you,” I said. It was a struggle to keep my voice steady and even. “I get that.”

“I didn’t want to hurt her,” he said.

I nodded. “I know.” That much I did believe. “You realized that you could make a small adjustment to a vent pipe and carbon monoxide would seep into Leila’s room. Just a bit.”

I didn’t take my eyes off his face but out of the corner of my eye I could see Mac, his entire body rigid with anger. “Then you could rescue her and she’d see that you were the one she could count on, she’d see just how much she needed you.”

“I would never hurt Leila,” Jackson said. It wasn’t really a denial.

I moved a step closer and laid my hand on his arm, hoping he wouldn’t somehow feel how much my legs were shaking. “You didn’t get there in time.”

He closed his eyes for a moment and swallowed. “I had an accident, just a minor one. Once again, Mac was the hero.”

He seemed to have forgotten that Mac was standing right in front of him. I needed to keep the focus on me so he’d keep talking. “How did you know that Erin was onto you?”

“Erin was at my office. She saw my duck. They were a set. She started nosing around. She’d seen the mate in Leila’s desk drawer. That’s how I know Leila cared about me because she wouldn’t have kept it if she hadn’t.”

It would have been better if Leila hadn’t kept the tiny carving, but I didn’t think she’d done so because she cared about Jackson. She’d done it because she loved Mac. Every time she looked at the tiny bird she would have been reminded of what it represented, what she’d put in jeopardy when she slept with Jackson.

He swiped a hand over his mouth.

“When Erin helped Natalie clear out Leila’s office she found her duck,” I said.

Jackson seemed to need to get things off his chest now. “She wouldn’t leave it alone,” he said. “She told me she remembered Leila telling her that she was looking for a new lawyer because it was better if friendship and business didn’t mix. She said Leila had told her no one, not me and especially not Leila herself, was as perfect as they seemed.” He sighed. “She asked me about the birds. I told her I’d given Leila hers for her birthday because she’d liked the one I had in my office.”

I dropped my hand, resisting the urge to wipe it on my dress. “She didn’t believe you.”

“She told Natalie that she was coming to see Mac. I had a pretty good idea why.”

When I saw the mate to Leila’s bird on Jackson’s desk I knew there had been some kind of connection between them. I remembered how he had told me that every man who knew Leila fell a little bit in love with her. Mr. P. had made a phone call to Stevie Carleton, who told us that she’d seen the tiny carved bird in Leila’s desk drawer and when she’d asked her cousin about it Leila had explained what it represented and said she kept it to remind herself how lucky she was to have Mac.

From there it wasn’t much of a leap to figure out that it was Jackson, not Davis Abbott—or Mac—that Nick had seen arguing with Erin. And when I’d told Mr. P. what Nick had heard Erin say he had quickly pointed out that the reason she’d said Mac’s name was likely because she was talking about Mac not to him.

I remembered the gray car Glenn had seen across the street from McNamara’s, that he thought might have followed Erin after she stopped there looking for directions to Second Chance. “You followed Erin,” I said.

“She was going to ruin everything,” Jackson said. “Do you think I like what she made me do?”