Jared Casey is a fictional character from the NBC/DirecTV soap opera, Passions, portrayed by James Stevenson from July 21, 2006 to July 23, 2007.
Character's background
Little is known about Jared's past. It is believed he spent some portion of his childhood in Mexico, near where Paloma Lopez-Fitzgerald grew up; he has mentioned living in various other locations around the world, including in Chicago, where he says he had an early job as a janitor, as well as doing business in Hawaii and living in France. Most notably, Jared's past includes a tragic love story; on one of their first dates, he told Theresa Crane that, years ago, he'd loved and lost a woman named Arabella, whom he'd met on holiday in Provence and lived with in Paris. When Theresa volunteered the Crane resources to help him find Arabella, he claimed that Arabella had died, and we have since learned that he was part of a love triangle with her, with Jared strongly implying Arabella wasn't, in some sense, free to love him. Jared apparently came to Harmony to interview for the position as Head Legal Counsel at Crane Industries, a position which Theresa had originally earmarked for her long-time flame Ethan Winthrop and which the well-qualified Jared was promptly offered — but not without some early confusion on his part regarding Theresa's identity. When Theresa and Jared first met, he had no idea she was CEO of the organization he'd come to work for; he knew her only as a rude woman who spilled her beverage on him at Harmony's Blue NoteNight Club, where the pair first verbally sparred, and later danced as part of Theresa's effort to irritate her rival, Gwen Winthrop, by making Gwen's husband, Ethan, jealous. In their early relationship, Jared believed Theresa to be a struggling single mother and Theresa believed Jared to be a rude male chauvinist, a belief which culminated in her challenging him to a male vs. female baseball game. It was at that game that Harmony's resident witch, Tabitha Lenox, remarked that she knew Jared's "real story" and would like a "front row seat" when it came out. As Jared and Theresa grew closer in the late 2006, a jealous Ethan repeatedly insisted that Jared was, in fact, keeping some kind of secret from Theresa, and was probably using her for her money and resources. He went so far as to conduct a background investigation on Jared, hack into Jared's laptop to spy on his business dealings, attempt to make a deal with tabloid reporter J.T. Cornell to learn Jared's supposed secret, and also subjected Jared to a lie detector test, which Jared narrowly passed, but not without some lingering implication that he was lying or hiding something from Theresa, to whom he had recently become engaged. On the other hand, Theresa and Ethan were unquestionably hiding something from Jared — their ongoing affair that fall. Jared had never quite trusted that Theresa was truly over Ethan; the evidence was hard to deny when he found them in bed together in late January 2007. Although Theresa claimed that Ethan had crawled into her bed in the dark, and she'd believed he was Jared, her refusal to press sexual assault charges against Ethan led Jared to break off their engagement. Jared was convinced by Crane employee Valerie Davis that Theresa would need him, and came back to her to fight for her and protect her; soon after, Theresa revealed to him that she was being blackmailed, and he contacted his "old friends" to help her recover the evidence of her secret, saying that he was proving his love by "making a deal with the devil." He was shot in the abdomen in February 2007 in his attempt to recover that evidence. Jared was delighted when Theresa told him she wanted to resume their engagement, and, soon after, told him she wanted to marry him right away. Apparently unbeknownst to Jared, however, Theresa was only being blackmailed into resuming their relationship; at their April 2007 wedding in the hospital, where Jared was recovering from his gunshot wound, Jared appeared oblivious to the fact of Theresa's being under duress, even though it was obvious to most of the guests present. Jared is also apparently ignorant of the fact that Theresa's blackmailer demanded she attempt to conceive a child with him; at present, he believes they are attempting to start a family in good faith, and doesn't know that his wife has continued to carry on her relationship with Ethan Winthrop covertly. It remains unclear as to whether or not the secrets Jared may be keeping are bigger than the ones being kept from him. On July 23, 2007, Jared told Theresa that he was leaving Harmony and would not be returning.