Momentary Marriage(45)

“You’ve moved a lot?” he asked. Since meeting Kelsey’s mother, Jared could see a picture of his fiancée’s childhood. Chloe was sweet, but she appeared to be driven by pure emotion.

Kelsey laughed, the sound almost derisive. “It seems like every time I got a new stepfather, we changed zip codes, usually states, sometimes countries.”

Jared frowned. “That must have been hard on you and your sister when you were kids. How many times has your mother been married?”

Taking a photograph off the wall, Kelsey paused to glance over her shoulder at him. “She’s been married to Carlos, husband number eight, for two years now.”

“Whew! Husband number eight?” He stopped packing and stared at her. “You’re kidding.”

“Nope,” she said matter-of-factly.

“Let’s see, that makes seven stepfathers.” Jared closed another box and added it to the pile, his mind ticking away a mile a minute. “All that change had to be traumatic for you and Amy.”

He’d known she’d come from a broken family, but seven stepfathers? No wonder she’d lost faith in marriage.

Kelsey shrugged, busily piling paperbacks into another box. “We managed. Kids are adaptable, I guess. I’ve certainly learned how to pack.”

“Yeah,” Jared said, “but moving is the least of it, I’d think.”

She walked across the tiny living room without responding, starting to unload some things from a small desk.

Jared watched her for a moment, trying to judge how much he could say without going over the line. She’d welcomed her mother with affection, despite the fact that the woman had made her childhood an emotional revolving door. By the time she’d have gotten attached to a stepfather, her mother would have been at the lawyer’s office again.

“You don’t hold any of that against your mother?” he ventured, busying himself while he waited for her response.

“No,” Kelsey said quietly after a moment. “She’s a character, but I love her. She’s always been there for me. Chloe just falls in and out of love a lot and she thinks she needs to marry a man when she falls.”

“Where’s your dad been?” Surely her father’s life had been more stable.

“Beats me. Like I told you before, we never saw him as children. He lives here in New York, I think,” Kelsey said, her hair a dark curtain over her face as she bent to put envelopes into the box.

“It amazes me that you don’t know where your father lives.”

“I know he used to work in the city, but I’ve no idea if he still does.” She looked up, her blue eyes jewel-like against the purity of her skin. “He saw us last when Amy was six months old. I was two at the time, so I don’t exactly remember his address.”

“He’s never even written, never tried to visit you?” Jared asked incredulously. He wanted to throttle the man. How could any father not want to see Kelsey? Jared couldn’t understand how a father abandoned any child.

“Nope. I guess his life got too busy,” she said, her smile crooked.

“Why haven’t you and Amy looked him up?”

Kelsey didn’t answer immediately. Stashing another handful into the box, she looked up at Jared. “Why hasn’t he looked us up?”

“Because he’s an idiot,” Jared answered, fighting the urge to take her in his arms and comfort the hurt away. He felt thrilled that she’d let him this much into her emotional life. Somehow he knew not to push it.

“Yes, he probably is. But you can see that compared to him, my mother’s been an admirable parent, when all’s considered. She raised us on her own and sent us both to college herself.”

“I can see you love her very much,” Jared said, his voice grim, “but I personally want to show your father the error of his ways. Three or four times.”

Kelsey recognized the hostile note in his voice and couldn’t help smiling. She was learning that Jared was a champion of the underdog, a man who wanted to bolster the small and the weak—except when it came to contract negotiations and his bottom dollar.

A long time ago when she was fighting her way through adolescence without a father, she would have welcomed Jared’s attitude and eagerly taken him up on his hint of doing her father bodily harm.

But she was an adult now. As much as her father’s abandonment had hurt at one time, she’d long since determined to make her way in life despite his lack of interest. She didn't need him just as he apparently didn’t need her.

Now that her curiosity had been satisfied, she didn’t see any reason to open up old wounds by trying to make actual contact with John Layton.