Since that was pretty much the truth, Travis gave a curt nod.
“And you thought you might as well see Kim, since you were in the same town.”
“I saw Kim first,” Travis said, feeling defensive as he cut open another carton.
“Only because the wedding was going on and you got sidetracked.”
“I told you too much,” Travis muttered.
“What was that?” Joe asked.
Travis turned to him. “I told you too much. You know too much. You see too much.”
Joe chuckled. “That’s because I raised two kids on my own. The things I went through with my daughter! Joey was no problem. When he started staying in the bathroom too long I handed him some condoms. I didn’t have to tell him anything. But Jecca! She fought me every inch of the way. So who’s your dad?”
Travis caught himself before he blurted out the answer. Could he trust this man he barely knew? But there was something about Joe that engendered trust. The expression “salt of the earth” had been created just for him.
“Randall Maxwell,” Travis said.
For a second, Joe looked shocked, scared, impressed, horrified. But then he recovered himself. “That explains everything,” he said. “So you came here to see if the New Jersey guy was after your mom’s money.”
“More or less. She’s still married to him.” Travis looked hard into Joe’s eyes. “The divorce is going to be brutal. You think you can handle that?”
“If I get Lucy all to myself in the end, yeah, I can handle that.”
Travis didn’t try to contain his smile. “I’m a lawyer and—”
“And here I was beginning to actually like you.”
Trav
is groaned. “Don’t start on me and no lawyer jokes. I’ve heard them all. How did we go from my problems to yours?”
“It started with you lying to me. You came to see your mother, not Kim. You left that girl alone for all those years, then you came back here for something else, accidently saw the girl you left behind, and now you’re whining because she has a boyfriend she might marry. What did you expect? That she would stay a virgin and wait for you? You got any brothers or sisters?”
“No to every question. What is this thing? The egg of some extinct species?”
“Orbital sander. You didn’t expect Kim to wait for you?”
“No I didn’t, but then I did know—” He bent back into the carton to pull out sandpaper disks.
“Did know what?”
“A bit about her life.”
“You’ve been stalking her?” Joe asked, his voice full of horror.
Travis refused to answer that. It would take too much explaining and he didn’t want to have to defend himself. “When are you going to get shelves?”
“They’re in those big boxes over there and you’re going to put them up.”
“No, I’m not,” Travis said. “If you need help and can’t afford it, I’ll hire—”
“With Maxwell’s money?”
“I have my own,” Travis said, glaring at him. “Where’d you get the money to buy all this?”
“Thirty years of hard work—and a mortgage on my house in New Jersey. Not that it’s any of your business. If you’re so in love with Kim, why are you here with me now? Why aren’t you courting her?”