by Carol Rose
“In the middle of one of our fights, your mother told me Amy wasn’t my child.” He said it baldly, as if the words had festered inside him too long.
“She told you that?” Kelsey gasped. “It isn’t true! I don’t believe it. She’s my sister! Amy is your child.”
John Layton was silent for a long moment. “Probably.”
“You’re not sure,” Kelsey concluded, looking at him as shock reverberated through her.
“Almost completely sure now,” he said finally. “Twenty years is a long time to think over an argument. I’ve pretty much concluded that Chloe wanted to hurt me. That’s why she said Amy was another man’s child.”
“So all these years,” Kelsey paused, “you weren’t sure…?”
“No,” John Layton confirmed. “When she filed for divorce, your mother tried to claim that both you girls were fathered by different men, but I knew you were mine. There’s a strong family resemblance and, when you were conceived, things were still good between your mother and I.”
Kelsey sat in the chair, not knowing what to say.
“In the face of any proof otherwise,” John Layton said, “the judge ordered me to pay child support for you both, as well as spousal support for your mother. So that’s how it ended. We were divorced and I was supposed to send the money. Your mother and I never talked after that.”
Swallowing hard, Kelsey said, “It may not matter to you, but Amy and I are very similar now. Her hair is lighter and she has different color eyes, but….”
“I’m sure she’s mine,” John Layton said with an understanding smile. “It’s just a shock for a man to hear that sort of thing.”
“Yes,” Kelsey agreed slowly. “I guess men are at a disadvantage in the parenting situation. In some ways.”
Jared had been furious when he’d thought she planned to keep her possible pregnancy a secret. A man deposited his seed with a woman and the same situation that made it possible for him to abandon his child, also left verification of the child’s paternity to the woman. At least, until DNA testing had become an option.
Still, John Layton’s side of the story altered her own perspective some.
Here was this man, her father, not the devil she’d thought him, certainly not the god she’d hoped for as a teenager, but a man caught in a bad relationship with a fearful, distraught woman. Chloe had probably struck back at him in the most hurtful way she knew because she’d been hurting herself.
In addition, both Amy and she had been very young when their parents split. How many men got involved with their infant children thirty years ago? Not many, she was sure. The conclusion didn’t exonerate him, but it did add to her understanding of the situation. John Layton didn’t appear to be a cuddly man, certainly not the type to know what to do with young children.
She felt the tightness in her chest loosen some. She’d only come here to see him, to confront the elephant in the closet. She didn’t have to do anything to him, didn’t have to get anything from him.
In a way, his attempt at an explanation was a bonus. His evident distress and regret was surprisingly sweet revenge, but that didn’t mean she could restore him to a place in her heart. Not so quickly, anyway.
Over the years, she’d seen the reunion of long-lost parents and children on talk shows, the tears, the protestations of enduring love. It all seemed false. She didn’t know this man and he didn’t know her.
It had never occurred to her that they would magically unite and pick up where they should have started from. No matter what he may have thought about Amy’s paternity, he admitted he’d known she was his child and he’d still made no effort to be a part of her life.
Hearing his side of the battle didn’t exonerate him, but she found herself feeling depressed rather than angry. He’d been trapped in a bad relationship, making bad choices. She’d seen it so many times. In some ways, coming here only confirmed what she’d already known. People loved, love dissipated and then they moved on.
“After a while,” John Layton went on, “I lost track of you all. Your mother remarried and moved.”
He shrugged, acknowledgment on his face. “I didn’t try to find you.”
“So we’ve been on your conscience all these years,” Kelsey concluded, her words cool. Guilt and love weren’t the same thing.
“Yes,” he said, coming to sit across from her. “I’ve felt bad about not seeing you both. Curious about how you turned out.”
Kelsey met his gaze.
“I’ve often wondered about you. You look like my mother,” he said at last. “She passed away fifteen years ago.”
Kelsey suddenly felt like crying. Her mother’s parents were long dead. What would it have been like to have known a grandmother whom she looked like?
“You’re married,” John Layton said after a long moment. “I’ve met your husband. He’s very shrewd.”
“Yes.” For the life of her, Kelsey couldn’t think of anything else to say. I love my husband and he thinks I’m as much trouble as you thought Chloe was. I love him and he’s no different than you.
“Do I have any grandchildren?” her father asked, his voice rough again.
“No,” she said, swallowing the lump in her throat.
“What do you do for work?” he asked, studying her.
She found herself absurdly pleased that he assumed she worked. After all, he didn’t know her marriage was a shell. She might well have been supported by her husband.
“I’m an art director at Peckham and Morrow. It’s an ad agency. Amy works there, too.”
“Ah,” he nodded and smiled. “Creative as well as beautiful. You remind me of Sarah.”
“Sarah?”
He gestured toward his desk, a cluster of photos arranged at the corner. “Your half-sister. She finished college last year, got a degree in architecture.”
Kelsey stared at the pictures on his desk, a sudden surge of rage making it difficult to speak. They were the photos of a family, two boys and a sister. An attractive older woman wearing a classic strand of pearls.
He’d left her, Amy and her mother and went to live with Donna Reed. Her sudden anger was followed by a wave of sadness. How often had she wanted just such a family?
“Do they know about us?” she asked, trying to keep the hollow note out of her voice.
John hesitated. “My wife does. I haven’t told the kids.”
Kelsey looked at the photos, wondering what these happy young people would say if they learned of their father’s secret past.
“Sarah will be very angry that I’ve never talked about you, never brought you over,” her father said musingly, as if he’d heard her thought. “She’ll probably give me hell for months.”
“You’re going to tell them?” Kelsey asked, frowning.
“Yes,” her father answered. “I think it’s overdue, don’t you?”
She met his gaze, unable to stop the little flutter in her heart.
“I can’t make up for the past,” John Layton said, his expression serious. “I can’t go back and be there for you when you were younger. But I’d like to…have a part in your life now. If you’ll let me.”
“I’ll think about it,” she heard herself say, getting up out of her chair. “Let me think about it.”
He walked her to the elevator and stood there while she waited for the car, his gaze searching her face. “Perhaps we could have dinner next week. Maybe Amy, too. Just us for now?”
“I’ll ask Amy. I’ll call you,” Kelsey said, as the elevator door opened.
“I’m glad you came,” her father said, offering her his hand. “Very glad. You had the courage to do what I should have done years ago.”
“Goodbye,” she said, a rush of tears prickling the back of her eyes as she took his hand. “I’ll think about…calling.”
“I’ll be waiting,” he said, stepping back as she got into the elevator.
The doors closed and she pushed the button for the lobby, her eyes glazing with tears. Giving into t
he urge to cry, she could only be grateful the car didn’t stop on any other floors.
She’d gone to see her father and he hadn’t rejected her. He even seemed inclined to make amends.
The past half hour didn’t wipe out twenty-plus years of neglect, but it still affected her profoundly. Maybe meeting him would make a difference in her, help her feel less discarded. Maybe she could close the door on all the hurts from the past.
Walking down the street minutes later, she thought about Jared and his saying that every man wasn’t like her father. Not every man walked away. Some men could be trusted to love a woman forever.
Even if that were true, she brooded, it didn’t mean she could trust him to be one of those rare exceptions.
***
Jared sat on the terrace over-looking Manhattan at twilight. No light shone from the apartment behind him. He’d simply walked in and dumped his briefcase before stepping outside.
It had been two weeks since he’d last seen Kelsey. Fourteen days since their heated exchange of words had ended with his walking away from her in the lobby, leaving her with a high-minded recommendation to straighten out her life.
He felt like he was losing his mind without her.
This was the first evening he’d made it home before midnight, burying himself in business so he didn’t have to face the emptiness. He couldn’t accept that it was over. Nothing was right.
Resisting the reality of their separation, he hadn’t been able to tell his parents about it.
An early-autumn breeze played chase around him, brushing his tousled hair, insinuating itself around his open shirt collar. The tie he’d ripped off lay on the chair next to him.
It didn’t matter how late he came in or how hard he worked himself, he couldn’t sleep.
He’d picked up the phone a hundred times, thought up a thousand ways to maneuver himself into her arms again. Sending her the roses hadn’t softened her the way he’d hoped, but at least five of his ideas would have worked. Still, he’d stopped himself.
The manila envelope in his hands felt heavy. It was all there. All the information he needed to put into action the best of his schemes. Names, dates, photos.
Everything on John Layton, Kelsey’s father. The private
investigator had out done himself, gathering all this information so quickly.
The plan had seemed simple. Find out about Layton and contact him. Make it plain that he’d been a world-class jerk and that he had to initiate a big-time reconciliation with his daughter. If he convinced her he was deeply sorry for avoiding her and her sister, maybe she’d rethink her view of things. If need be, Jared had been prepared to use his not-inconsiderable fortune to swing Layton around to his way of seeing things.
Anything to help Kelsey.
Only then he’d gotten the data. A complete run-down of Layton’s activities since he’d divorced Kelsey’s mother twenty years before. His work, current address, bank balance. There was even a list of the women he’d dated before remarrying.
And there were family photos, studio shots of him and his wife with their three kids, dressed up and smiling for the camera. So happy, so…complete. While his Kelsey had grown up with she and Amy being shuttled between step-fathers like a disease no one wanted to catch.
It made Jared burn.
Other than being a slime-ball father, however, the guy was squeaky clean. No illegal activities, no affairs. He even paid his traffic tickets promptly. So he wasn’t a bum, but somehow that seemed to make it worse. Layton took care of everything but his daughters.
Jared would have enjoyed squeezing him a little. But here he sat, holding the envelope with the guy’s life in it, doing exactly nothing.
Kelsey’s words made him hesitate. You’ve been nothing but underhanded with me from the beginning. She was right about that. In the hours between midnight and morning, he’d been thinking about his part in all this. He’d pursued her because he’d known somehow that she was the woman for him. But had he acted in a loving manner?
From the beginning, he’d deceived her, hiding his interest, watching and noting her reactions, her concerns, as if she were a business he wanted to merge with rather than a woman he wanted to marry.
In his first marriage, he’d never really invested himself, hadn’t paid his wife enough attention, hadn’t cared enough. This time he cared more than he could believe. Every breath he took without Kelsey hurt. From the first, she’d emblazoned herself on his senses like fireworks on virgin film.
He felt she was a part of him, an indispensable other half. He wanted to be there when she needed him, wanted to take care of her when she was sick. Ached to hear her low laughter in the dark next to him.
He couldn’t imagine living without her, but from the beginning, he’d lied. Failed to be honest with her. It didn’t matter that his reasons sprang from the heart, that he’d pursued her for all the right reasons. In his anxiety to earn her love, he’d forgotten to trust her and hesitated to be trustworthy, in return.
Yes, she was a woman who held men at bay with the greatest of ease. A beautiful woman who withdrew from men only brought out their hunting instincts. Kelsey played a more skilled game. She dated, flirted, smiled, even kissed. Most men probably never knew she was evading them.
None of that excused his behavior because—he was being brutally honest with himself at last—he’d been deceitful out of fear. He’d wanted to win the fair princess without ever risking himself.
Look at the fact that he’d never told her he loved her. Not in the heat of passion, not once during their last argument. He’d said a lot of things, but never the one that would have left him standing stripped in front of her. Never the words that would have given her a loaded gun aimed at his heart.
He was a coward. He’d chastised her for holding back when, all the while, he was failing to trust her with his heart.
Jared stood, tossing the envelope on the chair as he paced the terrace.
He didn’t know what to do. Any step he could take would be specifically designed to get her back. He loved her. But manipulation wasn’t acceptable anymore.
He wanted his wife back and, yet he’d tied his own hands. Even if he apologized for his deceit and then told her he loved her, how likely was she to believe him?
She had to freely choose, he thought again. He had to let her decide to come back.
And he thought it might kill him if she didn’t.
***
“Dearly beloved, we come together today to join this man and this woman in holy matrimony,” the minister intoned.
Squeezing Amy’s hand in his, Doug sent up a silent prayer of thanks. They were about to take a major step and he’d never felt as confident about anything as he did about marrying Amy.
She stood next to him, beautiful in an off-white suit, a tiny wisp of a veil on her head. Returning his clasp, she tightened her own fingers momentarily, a brilliant smile on her face.
Doug shuddered to think of his life if she’d actually taken Jared up on his offer to give her a job in London. Thank heavens, he’d had the good fortune to be loved by a patient woman.
“Into this holy union,” the minister said, “Doug and Amy now come to be joined….”
What a fool he’d been, Doug thought, to so nearly miss his Amy in his crazy dreams of Kelsey.
Around them in the tiny wedding chapel, stood his family and…surprisingly, Amy’s father with his wife and children. As the minister spoke briefly about the joys and tribulations of marriage, Doug remembered Amy’s uncertainty about inviting her father to the wedding.
But after hearing about Kelsey’s visit with him and his reasons for abandoning them, she’d decided to give the man a chance. Chloe wasn’t the easiest woman in the world to live with, Amy had said. So she’d called her father and been pleased when he’d eagerly accepted her invitation. Her mother had said she couldn’t return to the states for the sudden ceremony, so an awkward meeting of ex’s had been avoided.
Doug was glad
his father-in-law came. He was so damned happy at this moment that he wanted every soul in the world to join in with him. Of course, he’d have liked to have started with his best man. But Jared stood next to him, his face blank, his eyes empty.
Remembering his threat to break both Jared’s legs if he hurt Kelsey, Doug couldn’t help thinking his best man was so miserable he might not have noticed the pain. It had to be killing him to be here in this setting with Kelsey standing up for her sister. On the other side of Amy, Kels looked like the cliched reheated death. With hollows under her blue eyes, her face looked drawn and tired.
Never had two people participating in a joyous occasion looked more unhappy. It was ridiculous. They belonged together. Now that he was over his ten-year stupidity, he could see clearly how well suited Kelsey was to Jared.
Why couldn’t she see that? All she could say to Amy was that she couldn’t trust Jared, that he’d been dishonest and manipulative.
That didn’t sound like the Jared Doug knew, but he’d never been married to the man and Kelsey had. Still, there was no question of the two of them being in love.
They just seemed like they couldn’t get a clue, couldn’t coordinate themselves to mutually apologize and get on with their lives. Hell, he wasn’t even sure what the problem was.
Someone was going to have to jump start this thing, Doug thought, turning his eyes back to the preacher. Someone would have to make the first move.
He hoped it would be soon. Neither of them looked like they could take much more.
CHAPTER TWENTY
“Come in and have a seat,” Jared invited as he shook Stewart Black’s hand.
“I was surprised to get your call,” the union representative told him, sitting down. “I thought you had decided you were through talking.”
Jared sat down across from the man. He’d spent the last three weeks with his head up his ass, angry half the time, in a pit of despair the rest of the time. Being without Kelsey was eating him alive. Just seeing her at Doug and Amy’s wedding had left him useless for two days.
He’d been a fool to get himself involved with a woman who couldn’t trust, a woman whose warmth and tenderness came locked up with doubt and fear.