Chapter Nine
Sky was ready the nextmorning when Jared knocked on her door.
She took a deep breath to try to steady her racing heart.
“Come in,” she yelled from the bathroom.She looked up when his body filled the bathroom doorway.“Are we still going into town for the marriage application?”
Jared’s eyes raked down her body.She’d left her hair down again to curl around her shoulders and stream down her back, just the way he liked it.She was wearing a dress similar to the one yesterday, but in a light blue color.He decided Sky was one of the most beautiful women he’d known.
He froze as something niggled in his brain.He turned abruptly and strode to the closet.Daniel had told him yesterday she’d only had a single suitcase and a light one at that.A thought took root in his head.
His eyes widened.The only things hanging were the dress she wore the day before and another one exactly like it in dark pink.She only seemed to own two pairs of shoes—the sandals she was wearing and the tennis shoes on the floor of the closet.
Sky gripped the bathroom doorjamb as she watched him walk from the closet to the dresser and start opening the drawers.
“What are you doing?”
Jared turned back to her.“Where are all your clothes?”
He looked angry for some reason, and she didn’t understand why.
“This is it,” she murmured.
He stood and placed his hands on his lean hips.
“You have three dresses, one pair of jeans, two t-shirts, and two pairs of shoes?”
Sky tightened her grip on the doorjamb until her knuckles whitened.“Yes.Why are you angry?”
“Do you have more being shipped?”
“No, my father threw all my other clothes away because they either didn’t fit or were old.He bought me the clothes I have now.”
Jared stared at her silently for a moment.“Do you know I sent him ten thousand dollars, so you could get everything you needed?”
Sky’s eyes widened in shock as she shook her head.Her heart dropped.
“He never told me.The only thing he did say was, it was only a drop in the bucket to what I owed him.I didn’t and still don’t understand what he meant.”
Jared’s mind was spinning.That bastard father of hers took his daughter’s money.Jared had already seen the effects abuse had on her and guessed her dad was the cause of that, too.
“Did your father give you a choice to come here?”
Sky bit her lip.Would the truth make him put her back on a bus?“No,” she whispered as tears burned the back of her eyelids.
He took careful steps toward her and pulled her into his arms.“I’m so sorry, Baby.”
She wrapped her arms around him and soaked up the affection and warmth he radiated.“It’s okay,” she whispered and patted his back.
