Page 118 of Her Rival

"Yes, Mom."

"His name is Jett."

"Jettson, actually. Goes by Jett."

"That's a name."

"Yeah."

"Is he good to you."

I looked at the man beside me on the bed. The man whose hand was around mine. The man who'd been instrumental in arranging the legal mechanism that had been offered, on Wednesday morning, to my mother, on the house, meaning at no cost to her, meaning paid for by someone else, meaning paid for by him without her knowing, because he'd told Marielle Cho to extend the protection to any woman in my immediate orbit who might need it, because he was a man who, when he'd decided to use his money for something, used it without asking permission and without seeking credit and without expecting acknowledgment.

I had not, until this exact moment, known he'd done that.

He had done it.

He'd done it three days ago.

"Yes, Mom," I said. "He is good to me. He is. He is extraordinarily good to me."

"Okay."

"He paid for the lawyer. He paid for the protection. He paid for the lawyer to extend the protection to you. That was him."

"Oh."

"I did not know about that one until you just told me."

"Was he supposed to tell you."

"I'm working that out with him. He is. He's making decisions and not telling me about them sometimes, and it's a habit he's working on, and I just found out he made one I didn't know about, and we're going to have a conversation about it, but not right now."

I looked at him.

He had on his face the small flat expression of a man who knew he'd been caught. The expression had three layers in it. The first was I see that you are angry with me again. The second was I am sorry. The third was I would do it again.

I had three responses to the three layers. I'd handle them all later.

"Mom."

"Yes."

"Did you take the order Marielle offered."

The phone went quiet again. I could hear the clock.

"Dani," she said.

"Mom."

"I left him three months ago."

Everything in me stopped.

"You. What."

"I left him three months ago. I've been at your Aunt Sara's. I came home today because she's on a cruise this week and I wanted to be here when this call came. Your father has not been at this house since August twenty-fourth, baby. He's been living at the property he and Brett have been renovating. He came home one weekend a month for appearances and we both pretended for three weekends in a row. He's been alone in that house most of the year."