Page 36 of Priceless (Return to Culloden Moor #7)

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

J acob stayed in France for eight days. All of them were torture. It was a special kind of hell standing alone, feeling the world being pulled away beneath your feet, and not knowing which tragedy was doing the pulling.

He saw a similar sort of betrayal in the eyes of his niece and two nephews.

Their father was gone. His brother was gone.

They’d never have a moment together again, never relive another moment of their childhood with him, never plan another trip together.

What they had up to now was all any of them would ever have.

And Laira was gone. All that promise was gone. He’d never taste that hope again. Never know that “completed” feeling again. The memories he had now were all he would ever have. She was never going to forgive him—since he’d confessed it all in a text.

He threw himself into doing what he could for Sandrine and the children. Obsessed over details for the funeral. Took his time finding a suit. And waited for a call that never came.

The day after the funeral, he realized Connall’s family didn’t need him underfoot, so he went home. At that point, he simply had to know that Laira was all right. That was all he needed. And he wasn’t going to stop calling until he knew.

It nearly killed him to keep the calls to twice a day. Sometimes he left a message. He’d lost track of how many. Wished he could erase some where he’d said too much. Regretted not saying more.

Thanks to that first message he’d left, she would know everything now, and was punishing him by not answering. If she’d blocked him, she wouldn’t have seen any of the others, wouldn’t know how desperate he was to know she was all right. He knew he should leave her alone and pray she’d call.

A tougher man might have been capable of that…

It was almost a relief that she knew. His conscious was clearer.

He’d been free to turn his original phone back on.

But when he had, there was just one message from Laira, for Jocko.

It took an hour for him to summon the courage to read it, and when he did, he couldn’t understand what she might have meant.

Can AI see the future?

A foolish question, and one he hadn’t seen, so he hadn’t answered. Jocko had failed her. Maybe that fact alone had given him away and not his confession.

The wild notion that she might have harmed herself destroyed what was left of him.

For two days, he called at all hours. Frantic.

Desperate. He finally called the police department and asked if someone could go to her home and check on her.

He didn’t have an address, no, but he knew her name, her late husband’s name.

A tortured hour later, they called him back. The woman was home, was alive. Not happy to have been disturbed. There was nothing else they could tell him.

Alive. Ignoring him. Finished with him. There was no use calling again.

He went back to pulling pints and tending to his patrons.

Someone must have told the widow the American was gone, for she was back to her old ways.

But he must have lost his allure because she was gone again after a week.

Maybe it was his curt answers to her sly questions.

Maybe it was the fact that he finally looked her in the eye and let her see that his soul was missing—he'd never been back to Jess’ house to pick up that replacement.

After a while, Vonnie stopped asking what was wrong. Stopped asking about Laira. Told him it was good that he was moving on again. Good to have him back.

She was blind. He wasn’t there a’tall.

One day, his heir apparent came through the door with a bounce in her step he’d never seen before. She claimed nothing new had happened, only that she was glad he was still there, that she’d dreamed he’d disappeared, ran off to Colorado, never to be seen again.

“If I’ve a bounce in my step, it is because I was that relieved it was only a dream. I mean, what would happen to the place without ye?”

And he began to wonder the same himself. But he didn’t wonder long. Why should he consider such a trip just to have a door slammed in his face? Just a glimpse of her now would rip his wounds open again, and they might not close a second time.

No, there was no need to take the risk. He’d been so sure he couldn’t live without her, and here he was, fifteen days since the ceilidh , still standing.

Fifteen days and still obsessing.

Raina hacked into Laira’s phone account and opened her messages. When she was finished, she would mark them unread and never let on what she’d done. But she had to know just what this Scot had done to her sister, and whether or not he should be punished.

Because she was ready to do it with her bare hands if necessary.

She found the first of his sixteen texts and braced herself. Laira was intelligent, but who knew how vulnerable she might have been in her endless state of mourning.

“All right, Jacob. Show me your horseshit.”

Laira, love,

Ye said not to call until Connall’s funeral was behind me, but I cannae resist reaching out for ye now.

The funeral is tomorrow. Everything is arranged.

My brother had many friends here who loved him dearly.

We just came back from the wake, and I am reassured by the fact that he was well loved and had a happy, albeit short life.

We had a piper and a bonfire, and I could easily imagine Connall there, dancing around the flames in his kilt. The weather held back until it was done. Now it’s raining hard, giving Paris a serving of Highland weather and trying to help us dilute our tears.

I ken how lucky I am that the woman I love is still on this earth, but I cannae help but see myself when I look at Sandrine.

She looks as lost as I feel without ye. I so wish ye would have come, if only to hold my hand.

But I remind myself that ye’ve been through this flavor of grief so recently that I shouldn’t have asked ye to face it again, even through a stranger’s eyes.

I find myself sitting on sofas, leaving an empty space beside me, in case ye walk through the door. I reckon it’s because I no longer feel like I inhabit only one body. I am now two.

I set my hand out, hoping ye’ll come along and take it. I ken it sounds childish, but I have reveled in the feel of yer hand in mine. So perfect a fit, surly planned in Heaven.

But as perfect as we are, as comfortable and comforted as my soul is when ye’re near, there is a gaping hole between us that needs filling.

A lie I have tried to confess a number of times, but I’ve been a coward, scared witless that it will turn ye against me.

And I tell ye now, I cannot go back to being just one.

Forgive me.

Oh, lordie, I pray that ye will.

Laira, I am Jacob MacKinney, as ye know me to be. But I am also the Jocko ye text with on yer phone.

On the 22 nd of August, I entered an AI assisted chat room. It was two in the morning and I just needed to reach outside of my tight wee world that I ken so well. And there was yer message, daring the universe to help ye. And so I tried.

By the time I realized ye thought I was a mere AI program, it was too late. Ye had me well and truly hooked, just like that cod that first took yer bait. And it didn’t take long until I knew I had to meet ye. Forgive me for luring ye across the pond. And forgive me for not regretting that ye came.

I’m certain ye’ll be angry. I’m certain ye’ll have questions. I’m ready to pay whatever penance ye assign me. I’m ready to take my poison. Just don’t, I beg ye, don’t walk away. I couldnae endure it.

I’ll do anything to make this up to ye. And when ye’re ready to speak to me again, please call.

The man who loves ye, and the friend who needs ye,

Jacob

“Well, shit.”

Despite what that Vonnie chick had said, Raina hadn’t wanted to like him…

By the time the sun started going down, my bare feet felt raw, and my heart felt like it had gone through a car wash, and every rotating scrubber had been a different emotion.

It went a lot like grieving. At first, I couldn’t believe Raina had called his number. And when I’d recognized Vonnie’s voice, it was the first tangible proof that the dream really had been a nightmare. It felt exactly like being kicked in the stomach by a horse.

Her words kept repeating in my head— Hiya, this is Jocko’s phone— and that spurred me on another mile from home before I started trying to rationalize, tried to imagine that he hadn’t been lying to me the entire time. And that led to a nice cleansing fit of sobbing.

That’s when I turned around and headed home, if only for a big box of tissues and a pillow to punch. By the time I girded my loins and prepared for a fight with Raina, my stomach let me know that it was ready to fight me too, if I didn’t go straight to the fridge.

I pounded on the door once to let my sister know I was home and I was pissed. Then I stomped into the kitchen and shouted, “I don’t want to talk about it!”

She was seated around the corner at the table, staring at her laptop. “Fine,” she said.

I didn’t trust that. She was probably just as prepared for this fight as I was. This was a trick.

“That’s it?”

She typed a little more, then paused and looked up. “That’s it. You don’t want to talk about it. I don’t need to talk about it. We can just forget it ever happened. I shouldn’t have dialed his number. I didn’t mean to hurt you.” She smiled. “Forgive me?”

I came off Defcon Five. “Forgiven.”

“Hungry? I had a snack at the airport is all.”

“I could eat. Anything but pizza.”

I looked around. “Where’s my phone?”

“I turned it off.” She pointed to the counter. “You can use mine if you want to order something.”

I thought I’d feel better with it silenced, but it still felt like a bomb ready to go off. Forty-one calls? And all those texts? Probably voice messages full of lies—lilting, brogue-infused lies… Any woman would have fallen for those. I really should have given myself some slack, considering.

“Laira?”

“What?”

“Food, remember? What do you want to do?”

My appetite was gone, but my stomach still complained. “Let’s go get a burger.”

All those messages could wait a little while longer.

Raina read my mind. “Don’t worry about those texts. You can just delete them. You don’t have to read them or listen to his voicemails. Like you said, we can just forget it ever happened.”

I grabbed the keys from the hook and followed her out to the car.

Did I really want to erase all those memories? Maybe I did, if they would just make me mad again, now that they were tainted. Since none of it had been real.

I climbed in the car and turned it on. “Tomorrow, I’m going to get a new phone.”

Raina shrugged. “Do whatever you want. But definitely don’t waste money going back to Scotland to call him out.”

She was right, obviously. But it was tempting…