Momentary Marriage (33 page)

She couldn’t trust him. Couldn’t rely on him to be honest, much less rely on him to care for her the way she loved him.

How dare he manipulate her!

Kelsey had to talk to him. Scream at him. Had to make him explain the things he’d done. Now.

*
**

Kelsey stood in the lobby of the apartment building she’d lived in with Jared for the happiest, stupidest month of her life. Stood waiting for him, a fire of anger, resentment and thwarted love burning in her chest. He had to explain himself, had to be made to explain his behavior.

If she hadn’t given all the damned roses away, she’d have brought a couple of vases full to fling in his face.

The brass-framed main doors opened, the doorman holding it for an elderly couple.

Kelsey stood to the side of the marble-floored lobby, her chest tight with anger and sick with anticipation.

“Mrs. Barrett?” the doorman said, a puzzled look on his face. “Are you sure you won’t go up? I can’t say for sure when Mr. Barrett will be coming home.”

“No, thank you, Anthony,” she said quickly, “I…can’t go up. I-I’ll just stay a few more minutes. I, uh, I have somewhere else I have to be.”

“If you’re sure,” the older man said, a worried expression in his kind eyes.

“I’m sure.” She smiled at him in an attempt at reassurance, but the effort felt tight on her lips.

With a last glance, he withdrew to his post on the sidewalk.

Hugging her arms around herself nervously, Kelsey paced the small lobby, her thoughts scurrying around in her head like demented rodents. How dare he lie to her and manipulate her? Like some kind of con man, he’d insinuated his way into her life under false pretenses. Led her into a fantasy he couldn’t fulfill. Led her into hope and heartache, all for his own dark purposes. His own need for power and pulling the strings.

Deep inside, she almost hated him for making her love him. Jared had managed in six short weeks what she’d been able to keep a score of men from accomplishing in her adult life. He’d robbed her of her heart.

This wasn’t the same as all the times before. This time, she’d let her guard down and come to cherish him, conniving jerk that he was. He’d only wiped her face when she was ill and rescued her from the rain. There was no reason she should love him like this, no reason to feel as if every organ had been unplugged, leaving her hollow inside.

Anyone could buy roses. Wasn’t that what men usually did when they’d screwed up? Bought flowers?

Conscious of the curious stares as people passed through the lobby on their way to the elevators, Kelsey tried to look nonchalant. Tried to shutter the misery from her face. When a woman who lived on Jared’s floor came through, pausing to say hello, she stammered something about waiting for her husband.

Cringing inside, she tried to fortify her wavering smile long enough to see the woman on her way.

Where the hell was he? Out partying with a bevy of women? Or, even worse, was he tucked in an intimate booth with just one, special woman? One woman he was making to feel as special as he made her feel?

The thought made Kelsey dizzy with pain, her stomach wrenching. How stupid she’d been, gullible and naïve.

It was then that she saw Jared, striding grim-faced up to the door. He paused a moment to exchange a word with Anthony. Through the glass, she saw the uniformed doorman smile and reach to open the door for Jared.

Seeing him sent something hot and angry bursting through her. Only weeks ago, her heart would have been thudding in anticipation, joyful to be with him again. Bounding around like
a
brainless puppy.

Because of him, she was reduced to breathless misery. Reduced to being…Chloe. The one person she’d always promised herself she wouldn’t become.

He’d done that to her, him with his melting smile and his strong arms around her—all that and his lying, conniving, faithless heart.

Jared came through the double doors, surprise on his face when he saw her.

“Kelsey? What—“ he broke off as if he didn’t know what to say.

Angry tears threatened her burning eyes and Kelsey burst into speech as the doors closed behind him. “Why did you offer Amy that job in
London
?”

“What?” He came closer to where she stood, his footsteps echoing on the cold marble.

“Why did you tell her she should do something to force Doug to get over me?” Kelsey demanded in a rush, battling the tears back. “And why didn’t you bother to tell me about your Machiavellian plans?”

Angry surprise flashed on his face. “My what?”

“You put Amy up to leaving the country,” Kelsey told him, drawing in a sobbing breath. “You deliberately created a crisis with her for some devious purpose of your own.”

“Kelsey,” he said, reaching out to take her arm. “Please come upstairs.”

“No!” she hissed, jerking back. Letting him touch her would send her over the edge, she knew.

The main doors behind him opened and a family of man, woman and child came through the lobby.

“Please,” Jared repeated, his hand dropping to his side, his eyes dark with an unreadable intensity.

Her teeth chattering together from the emotional storm raging in her, Kelsey shook her head.

“You talked to me about trust and honesty the day I left. When have you ever been honest with me?”

“Kelsey,” he started, his voice less calm.

“And why did you really offer to marry me?” she demanded, the fresh rush of anger making it hard to talk. “Don’t tell me it didn’t include some deceitful plan of yours. Do you do anything without an ulterior motive? How can you even suggest that I deceived you that day? You’ve been nothing but underhanded with me from the beginning. Sending me roses and reminding me of our agreement!”

He’d made her
hope,
damn him, made her want what she knew she couldn’t have. All in some heartless, manipulative attempt to arrange other people’s lives.
Liar!
she wanted to shout.

She gulped back a sob, struggling to control her tears, the sound drawing the stare of an elderly man just exiting the elevator.

“Can we discuss this upstairs?” Jared asked, his voice low.

“No.” She drew in a rough breath. “I-I don’t want to go up. Just answer my questions.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, his dark, intent gaze seeming to take in everything about her.

“The job in
London
. You offered it to Amy,” Kelsey accused, her hands trembling so much she had trouble holding the strap of her purse. Slinging it over her shoulder, she glared at him.

“So what if I offered Amy a job?” he said after a moment.

“Why? Why did you do it? You started this whole, insane mess. Amy and Doug. Our ending up married.”

He glanced down briefly, his lashes shadowing his eyes for a moment. “Maybe I did start it, but is that so bad? Amy and Doug have worked everything out. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

The hard note in his voice, the burning intensity in his gaze, slashed at her.

Maybe her sister was happy, Kelsey thought, but she was being destroyed in the process. She, Kelsey, had fallen over the precipice she’d feared her whole life.

“I realize now,” she said, her voice shaking, “that you don’t do anything without a reason. So why did you tell my mother we were going to give her grandchildren? You say you don’t have to trap a woman into having your children, but you said that to my mother. You admitted to me that you wanted to change our deal to include children.”

She felt locked in his gaze, caught and lost. Hurt, disillusionment and rage threatened to swamp her. She loved him, dammit, and he was a snake in the grass. He was dishonest and power-hungry and he didn’t love her back. “Was I some sort of a challenge to you? Rich men get bored sometimes. Did you just want to see if you could get me to cave in? You’ve been using me—“

“That’s not true," Jared said flatly, breaking into her diatribe, giving no sign he was aware of the doorman walking through the lobby behind them. Anthony cast them a surreptitious glance but said nothing, punching the elevator button and returning to the door.

Kelsey’s words tangled in a mass at the back of her throat, her gaze searching his face as if to find the truth.

He hesitated. “I did…maneuver Amy, a little—“

Kelsey’s laugh was short and hard.

“Doug needed a shake-up,” he insisted. “He was infatuated with you. You were clueless and Amy was hurting.”

“So, out of the goodness of your heart, you offered her a job, and when I needed a husband, you offered to marry me,” Kelsey concluded, her wrath not appeased. “Why? Why did you marry me?
Answer me and don’t lie!”

“You needed a husband,” he said slowly before pausing. “I thought we’d be good together.”

Jared saw the disbelief on her face, the skepticism radiating from her. Even now, she looked incredibly beautiful, her face flushed with fury, her eyes red with anger and tears. The normally smooth sweep of her dark hair was fluffed around her face, as if the wind had kicked it up and she hadn’t thought to straighten it.

So much for his floral gesture.

Seeing her so miserable at the agency meeting had left him aching to make everything better. He’d ordered the flowers hoping to tread the fine line, luring her closer without declaring his own feelings.

He couldn’t admit his love now, couldn’t get the words to form in his brain, much less get them out of his mouth. Said now, the words would seem like one more manipulation.

He kept thinking, too, that at the slightest difficulty, she’d bailed out on him. Taken her marbles and gone home. The past month of loving and sharing their days and nights hadn’t meant anything when she’d come face to face with the possibility of a pregnancy. He knew that having a child wasn’t the issue—it was having his child that sent her over the edge. Any thought of genuine commitment to him and their marriage, that scared her. Taking a chance on a future with him.

She couldn’t take a risk on him, couldn’t believe in him. The thought speared through Jared and he went blank, unable to do anything else but stare at her wordlessly.

She’d told him she wasn’t pregnant and he’d believed her, but the thought of her conceiving and hiding the fact haunted him. She’d openly acknowledged she wanted children at some point in time. She’d gone ballistic over his comment to her mother and she’d never given any sign that they had a real future together.

But when she’d thought she was pregnant with his child, she couldn’t get far enough away from him.

The image of her pregnant shook him. Kelsey nursing their child at her breast. Bearing the child, alone. Raising it, alone. The thought of a child of his growing up in
New York
unbeknownst to him made his stomach clench.

He looked into her beautiful face and made himself confront the likelihood that he’d never be able to win her over. Maybe she was scarred too deeply, hurt too badly by the abandonment of her father and the merry-go-round of stepfathers. Maybe she couldn’t love any man.

“So,” Kelsey said in scathing disbelief, after waiting for a response he couldn’t find, “you married me because we ‘might be good together’? Don’t give me that crap! Have you ever made any major decision on such a flimsy basis? Do you marry every woman who might
possibly
suit you?”

“No,” he admitted slowly, seeing the fear behind her anger and hating it. Hating that he couldn’t erase a lifetime of disappointment and desertion. He’d tried and failed.

He loved her, but telling her now wouldn’t do either one of them any good. He’d be opening his already-bruised heart for another blow…and she wouldn’t believe him anyway.

She had his number on the maneuvering. He’d worked the situation trying to get what he wanted and now he was caught in a web of his own weaving.

“I was wrong to marry you the way I did,” he heard himself say. “You’re too afraid to fall in love. You dated like a woman who’s determined never to get caught. Never seeing any man more than a few months. Never letting anyone too close. I don’t know what made me think this could ever work.”

He saw stark emotion flash in her eyes but couldn’t read it. She stood there in a defiant, defensive stance, a wounded woman against the men of the world.

“Maybe it’s because your own father abandoned you, I don’t know, but you’ve obviously never learned to love or trust a man,” Jared said in a rough voice.

He raised a hand to still the retort he could see was coming. “I know you’ve got your reasons. Your father never loved you enough to show up, none of your step-fathers ever hung around. Every man you or your mother has ever loved has left. But that doesn’t mean that all men can’t be trusted!”

“Leave my mother out of this,” she said fiercely, dashing an angry hand across her eyes.

“I’ll admit I didn’t tell you everything in the beginning,” he said, suddenly feeling incredibly weary. “I did encourage Amy to shake things up with you and Doug.”

“You son-of-a-bitch,” she spat. “Didn’t it matter that when you were telling her to leave Doug, you were sending her thousands of miles away from me? Sending my only sister away?”