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and
still couldn't guess unless she'd...oh my God...purchased his paternal rights.
    I wanted to hurl.
    Was that even legal?
    But of course it was. It had to be. Lawyers had obviously drawn up that stupid contract
that had to be Mom's idea and should've, in my opinion, spelled out exactly what services were
rendered--as in a list--or at least used words normal people could understand. Shaken, I began
rifling haphazardly through the papers I hadn't looked at yet, hoping for something to let my
mom off the hook.
    The first thing I picked up was a receipt that proved Seth Thomas had actually received
the money. The second was a handwritten note dated after the receipt that said: Kat--Got the
money, but you know it's not what I really want. Call me. We could make it work. It was
signed Seth.
    I gasped. So at one time he'd actually wanted a relationship with his daughter. I could've
kicked myself for not reading that earlier.
    But wait... If he'd really wanted to know Kayly, then why had he acted so surprised last
night when I showed him the contract?
    Thoroughly confused, I got out of bed and began to pace the room. Why had Seth
agreed to give up his daughter? Had Mom's bribe done the trick? Was he that desperate for
cash?
    I wondered how Mom had met him and tried to remember if she'd done any work at the
university. I couldn't recall any, but then, I didn't always know all the details of her projects.
Maybe Seth modeled for her. He could, I thought. He had the looks.
    Yeah, that had to be it. He was a model on one of her shoots. She knew he needed cash
for college tuition. She bribed him into donating sperm.
    Likely? Um...no. First of all, if a donation was all she needed, there were impersonal
sperm banks to take care of that. Second, would she really pass up a chance to have sex with the
likes of Seth Thomas? I thought not. I mean, she was liberated, not dead. And hooking up with a
younger man sounded like something a rebel like Mom might do.
    But the thought of my mother and Seth in bed together was just too disturbing. Not that I
was a prude. I mean, I knew that my mother had sex at least twice, right? With a shake of my
head to clear it, I thought about someone else--my dad.
    How had she gotten rid of him, I now wondered. There weren't any other contracts in the
file, and I didn't think my dad needed money, anyway. The monthly cash transfers into my bank
account told me he had plenty. No. He'd obviously given me up for some other reason.
    Deliberately refusing to go there--I'd survived without him for seventeen years, after
all--I focused on Seth, the more urgently needed dad. I tried to devise scenarios in which Kayly's
father would have no choice but to accept Mom's heartless bribe. I finally settled on the college
tuition theory. I mean, that had to be it, right?
    I thought back to Mom's thirty-seventh birthday, when she first told me she'd decided to
have another child. Though I'd asked a million who, how, and when questions, she'd given me
exactly nothing. Kayly was born six months later, leaving me to wonder if Mom decided she
wanted a baby before or after she got pregnant.
    Suddenly, I burned to know every single detail of Mom's and Seth's relationship. If
anyone knew Kat Mills, it was me. Yet I couldn't begin to imagine what had happened. But all
that didn't really matter. What did was the end result: Kayly Lana Mills. Another daughter who'd
never know her father unless Seth accepted the challenge I'd thrown at him the night before.
    Would he? All I could predict about my current situation was the fact that my mom
would be livid and possibly never forgive me if she found out what I'd done. I truly believed that
her fury was worth the risk if there was any chance Kayly might have a relationship with Seth.
Even if that only meant seeing him one weekend a month, two weeks in summer and on
occasional holidays. Thanks to current divorce rates, that was about as normal as it got
anyway.
    Mom just didn't understand how