The Heiress
The Heiress
Cathy Gillen Thacker
Jack Granger, counselor to the Deveraux shipping empire and totally devoted to the senior Deveraux, has been shadowing the love child of his mentor for nearly a decade. Granger had watched Daisy grow up from a petulant rich girl into a driven young woman with a mission to find her roots–a quest he had long prevented her from ever accomplishing…harboring his desire for her all the while.Both were outcasts searching for redemption and truth in an unforgiving world of wealth and deception. Instead, they found each other…without pretense or promises. But at what cost would they seek the future?
THE DEVERAUX LEGACY LIVES ON!
“Am I getting to you?” Daisy asked.
Jack’s eyes narrowed. Perspiration beaded his temple. “This won’t help your situation.”
Daisy laughed softly. When he didn’t move—didn’t react in any way—she recklessly reached behind her and released the zipper on her sundress.
Jack’s expression grew even grimmer, more forbidding. Although she could tell he wanted her, he was not in the least bit amused by her antics. “Don’t do this,” Jack whispered. His fingers gently encircled her wrist, forcing her hand down. “It wouldn’t help either of us,” he said sternly.
More tired than she could ever say of being told what to do, think, even feel, Daisy replied, “We’ll just see about that.” And before Jack Granger could respond, she stood on tiptoe, wrapped her free hand around the back of his neck, tilted his head down and pressed her lips to his….
Dear Reader,
Have you ever felt that you just didn’t belong somewhere? Or that everyone knew what was really going on behind the scenes but you? Heiress Daisy Templeton has felt that way her entire life. Her intuition tells her there are secrets that have something to do with her adoption into the blue-blooded Templeton clan, and she is determined to discover the truth about her heritage. When she does, it rocks her world. She is a true heir to the Deveraux legacy. Her real mother and real father have been in her life all along!
Jack Granger, on the other hand, knows more than he cares to about his sordid past and wishes fervently he were a member of a family like the Deveraux. That isn’t possible, until he’s given the assignment by his boss Tom Deveraux to keep the beautiful and spirited Daisy safe. A job that soon becomes a lot more personal for Jack.
Daisy doesn’t want Jack around or cleaning up Tom’s mess. But soon their lives are entangled more deeply and irrevocably than they ever could have imagined.
I hope you enjoy this book and the rest of THE DEVERAUX LEGACY as much as I have enjoyed writing all six books. And don’t forget to look for Taking Over the Tycoon, coming in June 2003 from Harlequin American Romance.
Happy reading!
The Heiress
Cathy Gillen Thacker
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Cathy Gillen Thacker has published over sixty books, more than fifty with Harlequin American Romance. And with good reason! The family dramas and romantic comedies are very close to her heart. Her books have made numerous appearances on bestseller lists and are published in seventeen languages and thirty-five countries around the world. She lives in North Carolina with her family.
To my darling daughter Sarah—
who understands the “creative process”/art of
storytelling like only another former English lit
major/Web site designer/law student can. Thanks for
listening, kiddo. (A lot!) This one is for you.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER ONE
WE HAVE TO STOP MEETING like this, Daisy Templeton thought.
Not that she and Jack Granger were really socializing. Just that, for the last month or so, the two of them had been showing up at the same locations in Charleston, South Carolina, at the same time with disturbing regularity. Sometimes, the handsome attorney said hello and engaged her in the kind of brief chitchat one had with an acquaintance. On other occasions—like tonight—the sexy bachelor kept his distance, remaining clear on the other side of the airport baggage claim.
Daisy knew Jack Granger hadn’t been on her return flight from Switzerland in any case. The tall sandy-haired southerner with the nicely chiseled jaw would have been impossible to miss. But, as company counsel, he certainly could have been somewhere for Deveraux-Heyward Shipping. He was dressed in a dark-blue pin-striped business suit, white shirt, tie. As always, his clothes were sharp, if a little worn.
He had been standing there, arms crossed, leaning up against the far wall, when Daisy walked through the security gate that separated arrivals and departures from the rest of the Charleston, South Carolina, airport. Dark aviator sunglasses on, a cell phone pressed to his ear, he appeared to be waiting for someone or something. But unlike everyone else—Daisy included—who was gathered around the motionless baggage claim, waiting impatiently for their luggage, Jack Granger didn’t seem to care whether the ear-splitting warning buzzer ever sounded. He appeared more interested in whatever was being said to him on the other end of the line.
Not that it should matter to her what Jack Granger was doing, Daisy reminded herself as the red light flashed and the conveyer belt finally began to move. Others crowded in. She wedged her way in once she saw her case, grabbed it by the handle, lifted it off the conveyor belt, pulled up the handle, then wheeled it toward the automatic doors.
The August heat was intense, the South Carolina air was warm, moist and scented with saltwater. Grateful to be back home, even if she wasn’t happy about what she had to do next, Daisy headed quickly for the long-term parking lot, and the car she had purchased six weeks ago after she had been disinherited. Her adopted parents hated the beat-up red sedan with the dented fender, yellowing hood and two pine-green doors, but for Daisy, the reconditioned, decade-old vehicle was a crowning symbol of her achievement. She had paid for the car in cash, using money she had earned as a professional photographer. And it had facilitated her during her search for the truth about her heritage. Now that she was back in the States again, she was going to take herself to confront her biological mother and father.
Eight o’clock, the traffic was light as she headed for the downtown Historic District of elegant homes, to the Hayes residence, where Daisy’s older sister, Iris, resided. The stately lemon-colored three-story home, with the black shutters, double wraparound verandas and mansard roof, was one of the larger homes on Concord Street, opposite Waterfront Park.
Her heart pounding with a mixture of anger and anticipation of the blowup to come, Daisy slammed out of her car, the red accordion file filled with proof in one hand, her fringed buckskin carryall slung over her shoulder, and marched up the steps. Iris’s maid, Consuela, answered the door, and ushered Daisy to the antique-filled morning room, where her much older “sister” was seated.
Iris had on a sleeveless pale-blue summer sweater and slim white skirt, high-heeled shoes that made the most of her slender, elegant, forty-seven-year-old form. A cardigan had been tied neatly across her shoulders. A strand of pearls and matching earrings were the only accessories aside from the heavy diamond wedding and engagement rings Iris still wore, a year after she had been widowed by one of the city’s wealthiest—and in Daisy’s opinion, most repulsive—men. Copies of Vogue and Town and Country magazine were spread across her lap. Mozart was playing on the stereo.
Iris took one look at the expression on Daisy’s face and dismissed her maid with a silken-voiced “That will be all, Consuela. And please, shut the doors behind you.”
Consuela nodded and disappeared as silently as she had come in.
Daisy’s heartbeat kicked up another notch as she regarded the woman who had secretly given birth to her, and then, just as heartlessly, abandoned her child. “Hello, Mother.”
For the first time, Iris’s poise faltered. She put aside her magazines. “Daisy. I didn’t know you were back.”
You mean you were praying I would never come back. “Just got in.”
Iris wet her lips nervously, swallowed hard enough for Daisy to see it. “I don’t know what you found out over there—”
Aware her legs were beginning to tremble with a combination of exhaustion and nerves, Daisy eased into a tapered-back Hepplewhite chair, circa 1790. Unable to help herself—hadn’t she promised herself on the plane she would give Iris a chance to explain, before she tore into her?—Daisy countered ever so quietly, “How about the truth?” How about the end of all my childish dreams? She was only twenty-three, but she felt so much older, now that she knew about all the lies.
“But it’s not anything like what it must seem,” Iris continued.
“Really,” Daisy replied. She studied the mixture of guilt and regret on the older woman’s face, and knew that her long-held hope of finding out to whom she really belonged was not going to bring her the peace of mind, the love and acceptance she had sought. “Then suppose you explain all the documents I have in this file.” Daisy patted the pleated red folder clenched between her fingers on her right hand. “The birth records that say I was born in Switzerland to American citizen Iris Templeton, and not to two tragically killed parents in Norway—as I was always told. Or the travel visa to Norway and then the United States with my name on it, issued to Charlotte and Richard, by the U.S. embassy. Or the story of the scandalous predicament that got you in trouble and landed you in the convent, recounted to me by the long-retired and still very remorseful Sister Agatha.” Suppose you tell me about all the lies. About your affair with a very married man.
Silence fell as the color drained from Iris’s beautiful face. Tears glimmered in her eyes as Iris pressed a hand to her pearls and spoke with difficulty. “I was very young when it happened.”
Not that young. “You were twenty-three—the same age I am now, college-educated and wealthy to boot. I think you could have handled having me if you had wanted to,” Daisy concluded resentfully.
New color dotted Iris’s flawless cheeks. Iris looked Daisy square in the eye. “It wasn’t that simple, Daisy.”
“Right,” Daisy agreed bitterly, tears sparkling in her own eyes, too. She wondered why she had ever hoped, even for one overly idealistic second, that the always contained Iris would tell Daisy what was in her heart, then or now. “You had a fortune to amass, a gross old man to marry.”
Pique simmered in Iris’s pale-green eyes. “I tried to do right by you.”
Daisy blinked, the self-serving audacity of those closest to her as astounding as ever. “How?” she demanded incredulously. “By lying to me? Having everyone else lie to me?” Iris had known how important it had been to Daisy to discover the true circumstances of her birth, that Daisy had been looking, off and on, for the past five years. And never once lifted a hand to help her, or even act as if she understood Daisy’s quest to discover just what it was about her that made her so secretly loathsome in Daisy’s “parents’” eyes. Now, of course, it all made sense. Richard and Charlotte Templeton had seen Daisy as the living proof of their only real daughter’s scandalous indiscretion, and probably worried Daisy would “go wrong,” too. Whereas Iris had been protecting herself and her reputation. What Daisy had needed or wanted or felt hadn’t mattered, still wouldn’t, she admitted miserably. No, when it came to protecting the family’s good name, Daisy and other individual members were completely dispensable.
Iris turned her glance away. “Your adoption was for the best,” Iris stated stiffly.
“For you, maybe,” Daisy replied, her heart aching all the more as she looked around, observing what Iris’s bargain with the devil had earned her. A hefty bank account, all the clothes and cars and jewelry she could ever want and one of the most luxurious mansions in Charleston’s nationally recognized Historic District. “Not for me. Never for me.” But, Daisy realized, Iris was not going to apologize for that, any more than Iris would apologize for pretending to be nothing more than Daisy’s older sister all these years.
Deciding she’d learned as much as she was liable to learn at that juncture, Daisy stood and headed for the door. Iris followed her as far as the front door, before stopping and drawing her folded cardigan closely to her bare shoulders. “Daisy, for pity’s sake. Think of the family’s standing in the community and don’t do anything to create a scandal.”
Daisy shot the woman who had given birth to and then promptly disclaimed her a hard look over her shoulder. “A little too late for that, don’t you think?” As far as she was concerned, the damage—and to be honest there had been a hell of a lot of it—had already been done.
JACK GRANGER HAD BEEN hoping and praying Daisy Templeton wouldn’t show up at Tom Deveraux’s mansion that evening. He didn’t want the impossible task of trying to control the wayward heiress. But it appeared it had fallen to him, nevertheless. Trying to ignore how attractive she looked in the short, pink-floral sundress, fringed suede knee-high boots and dangly turquoise bead earrings, he blocked her path. She was a good bit shorter than he, slender and fit, with sexy legs. Her eyes were blue like a stormy ocean and her sun-kissed blond hair tumbled down around her fair freckled shoulders in loose waves. Her profile was flawless, her chin hitched in determination. She was also eight years younger than he was, in actual years—probably a lot more than that when it came to life experience. And that, plus a lot of other things, made the capricious beauty clearly off-limits to him, Jack reminded himself sternly as he tore his eyes from her soft naturally pink lips. Bracing himself for the emotional argument likely to come, he inclined his head in the direction of Tom Deveraux’s Historic District home and told her flatly, “You can’t go in there.”
Daisy’s eyes gleamed with audacity as she stomped even nearer. “Oh, really.” She propped her hands on her hips. “Says who?”
Jack was close enough to inhale her orange-blossom fragrance. “Says me,” he told her firmly.
“Funny.” Daisy’s soft, kissable lips curved into a taunting smile as she swept around him and headed for the front door. “The last I heard, Jack Granger, you were legal counsel to Deveraux-Heyward Shipping not the bouncer.”
Jack caught up with her before she had a chance to ring the doorbell and again blocked her way. “I still am.”
“Uh-huh.” Daisy looked him up and down in a way that stirred his blood. “Then why are you here tonight, screening guests? Do you provide the same service to the airport?”
She was looking at him with a mixture of suspicion and disdain. So she remembered seeing him at the baggage claim. What she didn’t know was that he had been at the airport only to see if she had made it safely back to the States, and what—if anything—she planned to do upon her return from Switzerland. When she had gone straight to see her sister, Iris, he had hoped—unrealistically, he now saw—that she would leave any confrontations with Tom Deveraux until tomorrow.
“Why aren’t you inside with the others?” Daisy continued. “Why were you sitting out here in your SUV watching that mansion and that party—” Daisy pointed to the Deveraux clan, visible through the windows, milling about in the formal front rooms “—like some little match boy looking in?”
Because that’s exactly what I am, Jack thought. A kid from the docks, who just works for these people. Aware he’d get nowhere if he let his emotions get the best of him, Jack did his best to contain a weary sigh. He faced Daisy stoically. “Because Tom asked me to try and talk to you if you showed up here tonight.” Looking for trouble.
Bitterness clouded Daisy’s Deveraux-blue eyes. “And why did he think I might do that?” she asked in a dangerously soft, sexy voice. She regarded Jack carefully, as if trying to gauge how much he knew. And whether or not it might be possible to get him on her side, instead of his boss’s.
As the seconds—and silence—drew out, Jack ignored the vulnerability suddenly emanating from Daisy. He had a job to do here—it was Tom he was protecting, not her. Jack shrugged and continued to keep his own emotions out of it. “Tom knew you were headed back from Switzerland. That you’d be tired—” and perhaps overwrought “—when you got here.” Not to mention confused, angry, hurt.
Jack had been instructed to provide the strong shoulder to cry on and the voice of reason until Tom could get to Daisy and deal with her tomorrow once she settled down.
“Then he also knows what I found out while I was over there.” Daisy’s vulnerability disappeared as suddenly as it had bloomed. “Perfect.”
Jack ignored the reproach in her tone. “It’s not what it seems, Daisy.”
“Of course not.” Daisy shook her head in mute disapproval. “Which is why Tom Deveraux is suddenly so desperate to keep me away from him and his family.” Daisy reached around Jack and punched the doorbell. Seconds later, Theresa Owens, Tom’s housekeeper answered the door. She was wearing a navy-blue uniform-dress with a white collar. Her auburn hair was drawn into a knot on the top of her head. “I need to see Tom,” Daisy said without preamble.
Theresa hesitated. “This really isn’t a good time, Ms. Templeton. The family is having a private dinner this evening.”
Daisy smiled in a way Jack didn’t begin to trust. “You mean they’re all here,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Even the former Mrs. Deveraux?”
“Yes.”
“Splendid.” Head held high, Daisy pushed past Theresa and advanced through the foyer.
Jack swore silently to himself. Short of dashing after Daisy, tossing her over his shoulder and carrying her out to the curb, there was no way to stop her from making a scene. All he could do now was try to limit the damage. “I’ll handle this,” Jack promised Theresa as he strode after Daisy, who was already following the laughter and marching into the double drawing room, where, from the looks and sound of it, a wonderful, warm and intimate family party was going on.
Tom’s oldest son, Chase, was the first Deveraux to spot Daisy. Champagne in hand, the magazine editor made his way toward her. “Hey, Daisy,” Chase greeted her cheerfully with a kiss on the cheek. “You’re just in time to toast the newest members of the Deveraux clan. Amy and Gabe’s wife, Maggy, are both pregnant. And the entire family is, as you can imagine, thrilled to be expanding.”
Jack noted that news only made Daisy’s expression turn more turbulent. “Too bad that hasn’t always been the case.”
Chase’s forehead creased. As did Amy’s, Gabe’s and Mitch’s, all of whom were standing within earshot. Watching, it was all Jack could do not to groan out loud. There was no telling how Tom’s children with Grace were going to react to the news of their father’s digression years ago. Chase was probably the best bet for understanding. The oldest son, and publisher of the popular Modern Man magazine, had sowed a few wild oats of his own before he married his childhood sweetheart and settled down. Mitch was a possibility, too. The most like his dad, he was a pragmatic businessman, who could always be counted on to see through the murkiness of any situation, get to the bottom line and do whatever was necessary to correct the situation. Third-oldest son Gabe was known for his compassion, and as a critical-care physician, he was no stranger to people’s most private problems. Amy, the baby of the family and the owner of her own redecorating business, was always pulling for a reunification of her divorced parents, despite past hurts. Might not want to start with her, Jack thought.
Unfortunately, even if Tom and Grace’s children eventually understood and accepted what had happened years ago, Tom’s ex-wife, recently unemployed network television mornings-news show host, Grace Deveraux, probably would not. All of which, of course, Jack’s boss, Tom Deveraux, realized. Which was why Tom was glaring at Jack, as if he couldn’t believe the way Jack had let him down, now, of all times.
Desperate to control the damage, Jack grabbed Daisy’s arm and pulled her against him, so her slender back was pressed against his chest. Bad enough, Jack figured, that Daisy had barged in here, uninvited, despite Theresa Owens warning this was not an appropriate time to be a drop-in guest. Tom didn’t need all four of his children, their spouses and his ex-wife, witnessing this confrontation, too. “You don’t want to do this,” Jack murmured persuasively in Daisy’s ear. “Not now. Not this way.”
“The hell I don’t!” Daisy jerked free of Jack’s staying grip and whirled to face him. Temper shimmered in her eyes. “I’ve been hidden in the shadows long enough!”
“Daisy—what are you talking about?” Amy asked, aghast. “What’s wrong?”
Tom threaded his way through the group, while Grace hung back looking, if possible, even more distressed.
Jack wrapped his arm around Daisy’s shoulders companionably and leaned down to whisper in her ear. “I think you’ve made your point, now let’s go,” Jack said firmly. “I’ll make sure you get to talk to Tom alone first thing tomorrow morning.”
“Thanks, but I’d rather make a scene.” Daisy broke loose and strode forward, heading straight for Tom. “No more pretending, Daddy. The secret’s out.”
DAISY’S TEMPER skyrocketed as Amy regarded her father in confusion. “What secret?” Amy demanded, upset. “And why is Daisy so mad at you?”
Even more color drained from Grace’s face. A mixture of guilt and culpability shimmered in her eyes. Which meant, Daisy thought, even more hurt, that Grace had known, too. And had helped—maybe even encouraged—Daisy’s birth father to walk away…and pretend that Daisy had never existed. Or was she the reason Tom and Grace had eventually divorced? Daisy wondered. Or had there been other, even more devastating problems, too?
“Daisy and I need to talk privately,” Tom told everyone in the room sternly.
Deep in her heart, Daisy had hoped that there was a highly romantic and even laudable reason Tom Deveraux had never lifted a finger to rescue her from her unhappy childhood. In the wake of the cold disapproval emanating from him, however, the guilt and the grim resignation, her misguided hopes fled. Like it or not, she had to face it. She had been willfully and wrongly abandoned—by both her birth mother and birth father. Even worse, to this day, neither of her real parents wanted her in their lives. She was to Tom and Grace and Iris, and God only knew who else, exactly what she was to Richard and Charlotte Templeton—a sordid, unwanted reminder of a time best forgotten. Well, no more. She was tired of feeling ashamed, of being blamed for something that was definitely not her doing! “Don’t look to me to perpetuate any more dirty little secrets,” Daisy warned the man who, more than anyone, was responsible for her lifelong unhappiness. Because she wasn’t going to do it!
Mitch frowned as he struggled to make sense of what was going on. “Have you been drinking?” he demanded of Daisy, striding closer.
“Not yet. But as they say, the evening is young,” Daisy continued sarcastically, picking up the bottle of champagne and waving it in front of her like a red flag in front of a bull. “And we have much to celebrate.”
Gabe moved forward and just as promptly removed the heavy dark-green bottle from her hand. “Look, Daisy,” Gabe said, setting the magnum aside, “I don’t know what’s going on here, but you’re obviously upset, and—”
Daisy gritted her teeth, her anger and disillusionment building to an untenable degree. There were times when she welcomed Gabe’s inherently good nature—this wasn’t one of them. “That a medical opinion, brother Gabe, or just a personal observation?” she asked with a saccharine smile.
Trembling visibly, Grace murmured, “God help us,” and sank into a chair, covering her face with her hands.
Tom gave Jack another look, even sterner and more commanding than before. No words were necessary between the two men. Daisy knew what the orders were—Jack was to get her out of the house, pronto. Ever the faithful, loyal Deveraux-Heyward Shipping Company employee, Jack slid an arm around Daisy’s waist and held her tight. “Obviously, Daisy is in no condition to be talking to anyone here tonight. So Daisy and I are going to be leaving now,” Jack announced firmly but pleasantly.
“Not before I tell everyone what I came to tell them,” Daisy said, looking around at the tense, wary expressions on her half siblings’ faces. “That I’m Tom Deveraux’s love child.”
AMY GASPED, Jack grimaced, Grace moaned. All three of Tom’s sons were shocked, silent. “It wasn’t love,” Tom corrected Daisy impatiently.
Yet another illusion down the drain. “A mistake,” Daisy guessed.
“And there’s no proof you’re even my child,” Tom continued, even more defensively.
Daisy reeled at his unwillingness to claim her as his, even now. She knew what a loving father Tom was to his other children, that being a father was one of the primary joys of his life, aside from his work at Deveraux-Heyward Shipping. It was evident in everything he did and said. Hell, he’d even been a surrogate father to his housekeeper, Theresa Owen’s illegitimate child, Bridgett, over the years, out of nothing more than the goodness of his heart. Which made his refusal to claim her, Daisy thought, all the more stinging. Shoulders stiffening, Daisy regarded Tom resentfully. “You’re denying you slept with my birth mother?”
Tom’s jaw clenched. “It was a one-night fling.”
Like that excused and explained everything, Daisy thought even more furiously.
“Daddy! You cheated on Mom?” Amy said.
Tom shook his head and released a short, aggravated breath. “It was one night,” he defended himself impatiently.
“But once, as they say, is enough,” Grace added in a low voice thick with tears.
“Man, Dad.” Chase shook his head.
“I don’t believe this!” Gabe murmured in horror.
Mitch was silent, tense as he struggled to make sense of it, too.
“But you knew you made Iris pregnant,” Daisy continued probing.
Amy blinked and whirled to face Daisy. “Iris…?” she echoed.
“Templeton-Hayes,” Daisy supplied the rest. “My sister. At least the woman I always thought was my adopted sister. Turns out she was really my birth mother and my adopted parents—Charlotte and Richard Templeton—are really my biological grandparents. And Connor is my uncle not my adopted brother. Funny, huh?” Not waiting for a response from the shocked half siblings around her, Daisy turned back to Tom, still struggling to find a way to obtain her own peace of mind. “Which brings us back to you. Why did you turn your back on me?” And please, Daisy prayed silently, let it be good.
Tom uttered another long, tortured sigh. “Because I never knew for certain that you were mine.”
“You never asked?” Daisy regarded him incredulously. How was that possible? A wealthy, self-assured, successful CEO, he wasn’t afraid of anything. And he certainly wasn’t shy about going after what he wanted! Tom ran his hands through his short, gray-brown hair and began to pace. “Iris went to Europe to learn the antique business, after our interlude. It seemed like a good move, a way to get both our lives back on track, and I wished her well.” Tom paused and frowned. “It wasn’t until Richard and Charlotte unexpectedly and suddenly adopted a baby some nine months later that I realized it was possible she’d become pregnant during the encounter and you were mine. So I confronted Iris.”
“And…?” Daisy questioned impatiently.
Tom shrugged his broad shoulders restively. “She denied ever having a child. I asked for a blood test anyway.” Tom scowled, recalling, “She said I would have to sue her publicly to get it, and if I did, she would not only refuse to take the test but countersue me for slander.” He looked at the assembled group, pleading for understanding. “I was trying to put my marriage to Grace back together, Iris was engaged to be married to Randolph Hayes IV in what was shaping up to be the wedding of the year. You were well taken care of, Daisy, with people who loved you and wanted the best for you. It just seemed right to let the matter drop.” Tom paused again, looking even more conflicted. “Even now, I don’t know that you’re actually my child, Daisy. Just that you could be.”
“Well, I am your child,” Daisy countered hotly, incensed that Tom Deveraux could be trying to duck his responsibility, even now, when she had a red accordion file full of proof sitting on the front seat of her car. “At least according to the nuns at the convent in Switzerland, where my mother stayed when she was pregnant.” At Tom’s blank look, Daisy continued explaining, “Iris confided in one of them. Sister Agatha knew all about you. How you led her on, flirted with her for weeks and weeks, and then—one night—took her to bed, and then afterward, after you got caught by your wife, told her to pretend it had never happened.”
The skin across Tom’s cheekbones stretched taut as he glared at Daisy. “You’re making it simple. It wasn’t.”
“Oh, I think it was,” Grace interjected bitterly, standing and addressing everyone in the room for the first time. “Your father screwed around. He got caught. It happens all the time, especially to men of his ilk.”
Chase looked at his mother, surmising humorlessly, “Dad’s infidelity is why you two divorced, isn’t it?”
Tears gleaming in her eyes, Grace nodded and continued matter-of-factly, “Lord knows I tried to put it behind me. I really did. But after that, after I walked in on him and Iris, I could never trust him again.”
Silence fell as everyone contemplated what an ugly scene that must have been, both during and after the philandering.
Mitch looked at Daisy curiously. “What does your birth mother, er, uh, Iris, and the rest of your family—the Templetons—have to say about this?”
“I haven’t talked to Charlotte, Richard or Connor yet,” Daisy said quietly.
“Why not?” Gabe asked gently.
Daisy threw her hands up in mute frustration. “Because they lied to me for years. All of them.” She looked at Tom again, aware there was a part of her, regardless of how angry, that already thought of him as her father. Just as Richard and Charlotte, who had adopted and reluctantly reared her and guided her through childhood, would always remain Mother and Father to her, too. Daisy sighed, and aware Tom was still waiting, still struggling to understand her motivation as desperately as she was trying to comprehend his, continued with a weariness that came straight from her soul, “And I wanted to hear your side of the story first. Now that I have—” Unable to go on, Daisy shook her head at Tom. Her throat aching unbearably, she turned and headed blindly for the door. “I’ve got to get out of here,” she mumbled. And she fled.
TOM FOLLOWED THEM BOTH and stopped Jack in the front hall. Knowing he could trust the Deveraux-Heyward Shipping attorney to do whatever needed to be done, he looked Jack in the eye and told him brusquely, “Go after her. Do whatever you have to do, but stay with her and make sure she doesn’t do anything even more foolish or self-destructive than what she did here tonight.” Tom inclined his head toward the elegant front room where the rest of the family was still gathered. “I’ll take care of things here, and then catch up with both of you later.”
Jack nodded his understanding and headed out after Daisy.
Relieved that was going to be taken care of, Tom strode back into the double drawing room. One mistake. Who the hell would have known one slip could have blown his entire life to smithereens? But it had, and now, judging from the looks on the faces of his kids and their spouses, and his ex-wife, it was about to get much worse. Grace was seated on the antique sofa, her features tight with resentment. Their children were gathered around her, while their spouses mingled uncertainly in the background, not sure whether to stay or leave, only knowing—like Tom and Grace—that this was one hell of a mess the Deveraux were in.
“I’m sorry about that,” Tom said.
“You should be!” Amy cried, as always, the most emotional of the group. She dabbed furiously at the tears on her cheeks. “I can’t believe you would do something like that!” she fumed resentfully. Beside her, Grace seemed to concur.
“Was there just the one indiscretion?” Gabe asked warily, struggling to understand.
Chase regarded Tom with his customary cheekiness. “Or should we brace ourselves for other illegitimate heirs, to liven up our family gatherings?”
Tom glared at his sons. Gabe’s lack of faith and Chase’s sarcasm weren’t helping. Before Tom could censure them, however, his second-oldest son Mitch put in his two cents’. “Chase and Gabe have legitimate questions,” Mitch pointed out, taking his usual businesslike approach. “News like this could affect our reputation in the community. There are some who might not want to do business with Deveraux-Heyward Shipping if we’re embroiled in one scandal after another.”
“There won’t be any more scandals,” Tom said, disappointed in his family’s seemingly united stand against him. “Nor will there be any more illegitimate children showing up on our doorstep. Now, if you kids will excuse us, your mother and I have a lot to talk about.”
As soon as everyone left, Tom closed the doors to the double drawing room, and turned to Grace. “I’m sorry,” he said softly. It was lame, but he didn’t know what else to say.
Grace glared at him with years of pent-up resentment, the look in her eyes making him feel about two inches tall. “You should be, you son of a bitch,” she retorted just as quietly.
Tom wished she would just haul off and slug him and get it over with, instead of continuing to punish him, day after day, year after year. “Don’t hold anything back,” he advised just as sarcastically, wondering how much longer Grace was going to continue to make him pay for this.
Since the divorce, they’d been civil to one another at family functions, for the sake of the kids. Every time they had tried to do more than that, either be friends or something more, the issue of his infidelity would come up and they’d end up fighting again. Tom was tired of the discord. He sensed Grace was, too. But as for how to move on, move past this…
Grace stood and went over to the table where she had left her handbag. Her cheeks pink with distress, she picked it up and head bent, began to rummage through it. Tom studied her, thinking how pretty his former wife looked in the silky turquoise pantsuit. Her blond hair was much shorter these days—worn in attractive layers that framed her face and the nape of her neck—but her figure was still trim, her beautifully girl-next-door face unlined. As always, when he was near her, he found himself wanting to nurture and care for and protect her. Not that she would allow it. Not after what he had done.
“I always knew this was going to happen someday,” Grace said.
Grace glared at him. “I hoped it never would.” She fished out her keys and held them in the palm of her hand. “What are you going to do about Daisy?”
Tom shrugged. Now that he knew what Daisy thought was the truth, he hadn’t a clue. Daisy was one troubled young woman. Tempestuous, wild and unpredictable, and already the talk of Charleston, even without this revelation. The Templetons had spent years trying to control her. To no avail. Tom wondered if what Daisy had been told by Sister Agatha was true. Was Daisy his child? Or had Iris been with someone else in that time frame? And even if he was Daisy’s father, Tom admitted to himself, would he have any better luck, trying to parent Daisy, than Richard and Charlotte Templeton had had, during their tenure, as Daisy’s adopted mom and dad? Aware Grace was still waiting for his answer, Tom said bluntly, “I don’t know. I’ll give her until morning to simmer down, and then see if I can reason with her. And go from there.”
Grace arched her elegant eyebrows in skeptical fashion. “Good luck with that.”
He would need it, Tom admitted. And even then it might not be enough. Just as his apologies over the years hadn’t been enough. “Grace…”
She paused en route to the foyer. Wheeling halfway to face him, she said, “What?”
“You can’t leave.” Tom held out a beseeching hand. “Not like this.”
Grace shook her head, refusing his plea to stay, and at least try to work things out. She regarded him with a mixture of contempt and displeasure. “Daisy isn’t the only one who needs time to cool off.”
GRACE KNEW she shouldn’t have walked out on Tom like that. She should have stayed and tried to work out a way to deal with this very explosive situation. Publicly, it could be disastrous, if word got out right now. She had a new TV show in the works. She didn’t need this kind of bad publicity in the wake of her firing from Rise and Shine, America!
It had been bad enough going from one of the most watched women on morning television, from the coveted cohost position she had held for fifteen years, to being unemployed. But now this…
Grace didn’t know if she could handle living in the same city with Tom again, if she had to confront his illegitimate child—and therefore his infidelity—day after day after day.
It wasn’t that she didn’t want to forget and forgive.
But that she couldn’t.
Lord knew she had tried. But every time he had touched her or tried to kiss her or hold her, she’d ended up flashing back to the day she had found him making love with Iris. Every time she had run into Daisy, or Iris, or any member of the Templeton family, she had experienced the same sick feeling inside her. Along with the feeling that she would never be smart or sophisticated or sexy enough to hold Tom. Not in any real or lasting way. Because if Tom could cheat on her once, the practical side of Grace knew, he could cheat on her again. And eventually, after nearly nine years of trying to work things out, and failing, she had known their marriage had to end. So she’d told him she wanted a divorce. And, in the end, he’d had no choice but to give her what she wanted, because she wasn’t coming back, not to him, and not to his bed.
Lately, of course, that had begun to change. In the wake of her job loss and public humiliation, she had flirted with the idea of trying again. Seeing if maybe she and Tom couldn’t find a way to work things out, to resurrect the love they had once shared. But now, with the resurgence of Daisy in their lives—as his illegitimate daughter no less—she knew she had just been fooling herself. She had to move on. Put him out of her heart and mind forever. And there was only one way, Grace knew, that she would ever be able to do that.
CHAPTER TWO
DAISY COULDN’T BELIEVE Jack Granger was still following her. It had been nearly two hours, and he was still on her tail. She’d been all over Charleston, out to Sullivan’s Island, Kiawah and back to Folly Beach and he was still right behind her in his black SUV, trailing her around the countryside. Not that she cared much one way or another, Daisy told herself as she drove past several rural churches, which were dark and silent that time of night, and into the marshland that comprised much of the island. Ignoring the turnoff for a summer camp, she drove past several large farms and a tomato-packing shed, thought briefly about stopping in at a down and dirty-looking honky-tonk just to see what Tom Deveraux’s “henchman,” Jack Granger, might do about that, and then continued cruising toward the center of the island.
Sooner or later, Daisy told herself as the warm ocean air blew in through her open driver-side window, caressing her body and ruffling her hair, Jack Granger had to get bored or give up and go home. Go back to her uncaring and irresponsible birth father. Something. Anything. So she could go unencumbered where she was really headed for that night. Because right now all she wanted was to be alone. To try and deal. Not that that was going to be easy, either, she acknowledged with a beleaguered sigh. And that was when it happened. The bad day to end all days became even worse as her car began to sputter and shake.
“I don’t believe it.” Daisy swore as her car came to a trembling halt on the side of the two-lane road. She looked at her dashboard, and saw the red light flashing the words Service Engine. Swearing even more passionately, Daisy tried to restart the car. There had to be a gas station around here somewhere. Otherwise she’d have to get a tow truck and another ride.
Jack Granger pulled up behind her. He left his engine and lights on as he stepped out of the car and walked up to her window. He leaned down, like a policeman giving a ticket and rapped on the glass, his jacket off, tie loosened and shirtsleeves rolled up. “Problem?”
She stared straight ahead. “Nothing I can’t handle. Now go away.”
“Sorry.” He remained beside her, hands braced on his hips. “I can’t do that.”
“Suit yourself.” Daisy tried once more to start her car, and then gave up. She took her keys out of the ignition, grabbed her purse, and deciding he could be responsible for getting himself out of her way, bolted out of the car.
“I’ll give you a ride,” Jack said.
“No.” Daisy tucked her purse under her arm and started walking in the direction she’d been headed.
Jack caught her arm and swung her around to face him, his big strong body dwarfing her petite frame. His touch gentling ever so slightly, he regarded her impatiently. “Look, I know you’re a strong, independent woman and all that, but you can’t gallivant around here alone this late at night. It’s not safe.”
Daisy surveyed the rumpled state of his sandy-blond hair, the evening beard lining his face, and knew he had to feel every bit in need of a long hot shower and a good night’s sleep as she did at that moment. Refusing to let him tell her what to do, or when to do it, she merely drawled, “Is that so.”
Half his lips curved upward in a coaxing smile. He held his ground just as resolutely, promising kindly, “I’ll take you where you want to go.”
Daisy sighed. The truth was, she was exhausted from the long flight home, the confrontations with Iris and Tom and the driving around aimlessly. Right now she wanted a safe, quiet place, and a bed to call her own. She didn’t want Jack Granger—or anyone else—knowing where she was, but she supposed at the moment anyway that couldn’t be helped. “Fine,” she said tersely. “Take me to Folly Beach and I’ll direct you from there.”
“THERE” turned out to be a run-down lodge and a dozen or so private cottages in equally miserable shape. Jack knew Folly Beach had been devastated during a particularly bad hurricane some years back, and for a while few had vacationed there because of the huge amount of devastation, but that was once again changing. Expensive vacation homes were cropping up amidst the various businesses and year-round residences.
Jack looked at the weathered buildings, with the unkempt grounds and peeling paint. “If it’s a hotel room you’re needing, we can do a lot better than this,” he said, surveying the faded sign that proclaimed it Paradise Resort. “Let me take you to one of the premium resorts or hotels.”
Predictably, Daisy ignored his attempt to help her. “This’ll do just fine,” she said, her soft lips tightening mutinously as she disregarded his offer and slid out of the car. She slung her purse and camera around her neck, and picked up her red accordion file while Jack reluctantly got her wheeled suitcase out of the rear of his SUV. Taking it from him, she headed for the lodge, leaving Jack no choice but to follow. By the time Jack got inside the lobby, Daisy was already being greeted by a thirtyish woman in cutoffs and a T-shirt. Slender and dark-haired, with lively dark-brown eyes, she had a paint roller in her hand and pale-green paint streaked across one golden-skinned cheek. “Hey, Daisy. I didn’t expect you back so soon!” She paused to rip off a plastic painting glove and extend her hand to Jack. “I’m Kristy Neumeyer—I own this place.”
“Jack Granger.” Jack took her hand and shook it warmly, his regard for the establishment being renovated becoming abruptly more positive. A little elbow grease and some tender loving care would go a long way to making Paradise Resort a top-notch vacation hideaway.
Kristy turned back to Daisy, her pretty smile widening even more. “I thought you were staying in Europe indefinitely.” Kristy easily picked up her conversation with Daisy.
“I’m back.” Daisy said, her weariness abruptly beginning to show. “And I need a place to stay tonight.” Daisy looked at Kristy, as if knowing what a big favor she was asking, under the circumstances. “Can you rent me one of the cottages?”
Kristy regarded Jack curiously, then turned back to Daisy. “Uh… Listen…I…none of the cottages are ready yet. In fact, they’re all in pretty dismal shape. As you can see, I haven’t even gotten the lobby painted.”
“But you and your twins are living here,” Daisy protested.
Kristy held up her hands with a helpless shrug. “Susie and Sally are eight. They just like being close to the beach, and being able to build sand castles and collect seashells every single day.”
“Where are they now?” Jack asked.
“Asleep for the night. Which leaves me free to resume my efforts to spruce up this place enough to get it open for business again. Hopefully, by October fifteenth. Meanwhile, I’m closed to guests.”
“I just need a place to lay my head,” Daisy told Kristy persuasively. “If there’s a pillow and a mattress or even a floor, that’s really all I need.”
Kristy studied Daisy. Understanding passed between them as Kristy realized how badly Daisy needed refuge. “Well, in that case…” Kristy stepped around the paint pan and roller and slipped behind the desk. She lifted a drop cloth, then came up with a key. “You can take cabin six. It’s at the other end.”
“Thanks,” Daisy said gratefully.
“Need help with your luggage?” Kristy asked.
Daisy shook her head. She turned to Jack and offered him a tight you-can-get-lost-now-that-you’re-no-longer-useful smile. “See you around,” she said, grabbing the handle of her wheeled suitcase once again. And then she was gone.
“SO DAISY CONFRONTED her biological father tonight, too,” Richard Templeton said shortly after midnight.
Iris looked at her parents grimly, nodding. Richard and Charlotte had been at a charity function and were still in their evening clothes. As always they made a very striking couple. Both were slim and fit, blessed with elegant, aristocratic looks and an inordinate sense of style, but Iris couldn’t help but note, only her mother looked her age. Mostly because Charlotte refused to take advantage of the latest plastic surgery techniques or dye her chin-length silver hair. Richard, however, had no such compunction. He’d had not one—but two—face-lifts over the years and had been “keeping” his dark-brown hair that hue with regular visits to the salon. All Richard’s efforts to retain his youthful visage had paid off. Although Richard and Charlotte were both sixty-seven, Richard looked a good ten years younger than his wife. Iris knew that bothered her father, but her mother didn’t seem to care.
Aware they were still waiting for her answer, Iris said, “Tom Deveraux called me half an hour ago and told me about the scene Daisy created at his home this evening.” Briefly, Iris explained about the family party Daisy had disrupted.
Charlotte Templeton removed her diamond and sapphire necklace and earrings, and put them back in the case. “And you say Grace Deveraux was there, also?”
“Yes.” Iris watched her father open the safe in the library and put the jewelry case carefully inside, with the others. “Apparently, Grace and the rest of the family were very upset.”
Charlotte frowned, her resentment of the man who had turned her eldest child’s life upside down, evident. “I imagine they would be.”
“Are the children going to tell anyone about this?” Richard demanded.
“Tom made them swear to keep it quiet. Apparently, they all agreed. None of them want to endure the public humiliation of a scandal.”
“That was decent of Grace,” Charlotte said.
Because she was among family, Iris made no effort to hide her dislike of the woman the media had once dubbed America’s Sweetheart. “There was nothing noble about what she did. Grace Deveraux was protecting herself, as much as Daisy and Tom and the rest of their kids,” Iris countered. After all, it was Grace’s fault Iris and Tom had never married. If Grace hadn’t been determined to save her marriage—a marriage that had ultimately failed anyway—Iris could have told Tom about the pregnancy and gotten him to marry her. She would never have had to marry Randolph Hayes IV to get the cash to fill the Templeton-family coffers and save her family from public disgrace. She wouldn’t have had to pretend all these years that she was Daisy’s adopted sister instead of her mother. And best of all, Daisy would’ve been brought up by her real parents.
“In any case, we need to talk to Daisy and make her see reason,” Richard said.
“I agree. And as soon as we find her, I plan to do just that,” Iris said, hoping that by then Daisy would be more willing to listen to their side of things, and continue to keep quiet about what had happened in the past.
“And you’re sure Daisy isn’t at your home?” Charlotte said, looking increasingly worried.
“Consuela has instructions to keep her there, and call me on my cell, if she does show up. So far, nothing.” Iris hadn’t heard from her housekeeper. Which meant Daisy could be anywhere, doing anything.
“What about Connor—has he seen her?” Richard asked, looking equally worried about what the unpredictable Daisy might do. They all knew Daisy was never more prone to act out than when hurting emotionally.
“Not yet. But I called him and told him to be on the alert.” Iris paused. “We’re going to have to tell him what we’ve done, too.”
“We’ll get to that,” Richard promised. “Not that we have anything to worry about when it comes to your brother. He knows how to see both sides of every issue, no matter how complex.”
That was true, Iris knew. Connor was the peacemaker in the family. But even he would probably have trouble dealing with this. Not to mention the fact that he, too, had been lied to many times over the years.
“We can’t let Daisy’s parentage become public knowledge,” Charlotte said. “It would ruin us socially, if people were to know just how we covered up your mistake.”
Which was, Iris thought, part of the problem. Even after all these years, of loving and caring for her, her parents couldn’t quite forget how Daisy had come to be.
Richard looked at Iris in disapproval. “This is your fault, you know. If you had let me instill more discipline in Daisy the way I did in you, Daisy would be following our orders without question instead of causing one episode after another.”
Iris’s insides twisted as she recalled the unrelenting pressure she had received from her father when she was growing up. Richard felt then—as now—he had been helping her to be a better person. And to an extent he was right. His continual upbraiding had made her stronger. Strong enough to save her family by marrying a man years older than herself whom she had never loved or even liked, and still present a happy face to the world. Strong enough to take the family antiques business that Richard had nearly ruined with mismanagement and neglect and turn it into a profitable operation once again. Strong enough to find a way to be happy and content in her life despite all of that.
But Daisy hadn’t needed to go through the same social and emotional regimentation she had. Iris had known that and taken steps to protect her, before giving her baby over to her parents to adopt and rear as their own. “That would have only made things worse,” Iris stated, knowing if she had done one good thing in her life, it had been to protect Daisy from being forced to select a mate and marry for money and social position rather than love. She hadn’t been able to keep her parents from cutting off all Daisy’s funds several weeks ago, but she still hoped—over time—to remedy that, too, and return Daisy to a position filled with choices, rather than one directed by an absence of funds.
“So you’ve said,” Richard returned coolly. He walked to the bar and poured a healthy splash of bourbon into his glass. His expression grim, he regarded her steadily over the rim of his glass. “We’ll see if you still feel that way if that bastard child of yours ruins your reputation—and ours—in the community.”
KRISTY HADN’T BEEN kidding when she said the place still needed an awful lot of work, Daisy thought as she let herself into cottage six and deposited the stack of threadbare linens and hotel-size bar of soap on the water-marked table. The paint was peeling off the walls, rust stains coated the sink and the shower, and the bed—well, lumpy didn’t begin to describe it, Daisy thought, sitting down on the edge of the mattress to test it out. But it was a place to sleep that she could afford. It faced the ocean. Daisy didn’t know why, but sitting and watching the timeless motion of waves rolling onto sand always soothed her. And after the past couple of days, she needed soothing more than she could say. Sighing wearily, Daisy removed her fringed suede boots and socks, grabbed enough change for the soda machine located between the lodge and the cottages, and headed back outside. And that was when she saw Jack Granger checking in to the cottage beside hers.
“What the hell are you doing?” She walked barefoot through the grass to confront him.
“Same as you. Bunking down here for the night.” Jack took the hotel-size bar of soap and stack of threadbare linens Kristy had given him and put them inside cabin five.
“Why?” Suddenly, Daisy was angry. Angrier than she had been the whole night.
Jack removed a cheaply made Paradise Resort toothbrush and tiny bottle of shampoo from his shirt pocket and tossed them onto the stack. “I want to be nearby in case you need anything.”
“Like what?” Daisy retorted, aware that the emotions she had successfully kept under control all evening were beginning to spiral out of control. Way out of control. “The truth?” Her pulse pounding harder with every second that passed, Daisy lingered in the open doorway of his cottage. She glared at Jack resentfully. She didn’t understand why she felt so betrayed by him. She just knew that she did. “You weren’t exactly instrumental in helping me get that in the weeks before I went to Switzerland.” Instead, he’d kept bumping into her, in a way that she now saw was anything but accidental. Kept striking up idle conversation, surreptitiously trying to get closer to her. Not because he was interested in her as a person, or her plight to uncover the mystery of her birth. But because he had been trying to subtly stay one step ahead of her while simultaneously running interference for his boss.
“You never asked me to do that.”
Daisy slanted a glance at the private home some one hundred yards down the beach. Unlike the resort, it looked expensive and brand new. And there was someone—a man maybe—seated on his deck, looking their way.
Annoyed at being observed without her consent yet again, Daisy turned back to Jack. “And if I had asked?” she wondered out loud.
Jack shrugged his broad shoulders and came back outside to stand in the warm, salt-scented breeze. “I couldn’t have helped you because I didn’t know until tonight exactly what the connection between you and Tom was.”
Daisy listened to the waves crashing into shore, on the other side of the sand dune. “But you knew there was a connection,” she said as the sea oats waved in the wind.
A guilty silence fell between them. Eventually, Jack looked back at her and said very carefully, “I knew for a fact that Tom was worried about you, that he’d heard from his daughter, Amy, that you had hired Harlan Decker to help find your birth parents. Tom knew those things sometimes went badly or turned out in ways people didn’t expect. Because of that, he felt you might need some help, and that if that was the case, he was prepared to give it.”
“Why?” Daisy asked doubtfully.
“Because he’s, by nature, a generous, compassionate man. Because you were friends with his children, moved in the same social circles, worked as a photographer for the entire Deveraux family and their various businesses. Maybe it was just due to the fact that he had watched you get into one scrape after another as you grew up and just didn’t want to see you get in any more! Who cares what precisely the connection might be or why he would want to help you get your life under control again? He just did.”
Daisy studied him skeptically. “And I’m supposed to believe that?”
“Believe what you want,” Jack advised her roughly. “It’s the truth. Tom never told me you were—or might be—his biological daughter.”
But had Jack guessed as much on his own? Daisy wondered. And if Jack had, how did that figure into his feelings about her? Was he, like everyone else who knew the truth, seeing her as Tom’s bastard child—somehow less acceptable than Tom’s other kids? Was she a problem to be solved? A liability to be handled? Lawyer style, of course.
Daisy continued to study Jack, certain he was still withholding every bit as much as he was telling her. “And yet you were all too willing to stand guard in front of his mansion tonight,” she probed, wanting desperately to hear the rest of it, whatever it was. “Why?” Had Tom warned Jack there might be trouble? And left it at that?
Jack sighed, his exasperation with her obvious. He gave her a censuring look. “I work for him, Daisy.”
Once again, Daisy decided, that was only half the truth. The half Jack wanted her to know. “As Deveraux-Heyward Shipping’s legal counsel, but my parentage doesn’t have anything to do with that.” Daisy paused warily. “Or does it?” Her mouth dropped into a round “oh” of surprise as the next thought occurred. “Don’t tell me Tom thinks I’m going to come after a piece of his family company!”
Jack shrugged and stepped closer, his nearness setting off all her internal alarm bells. “As a potential heir, I suppose you could try.”
“But you wouldn’t let me succeed,” Daisy guessed unhappily.
His intent, golden-brown eyes narrowed. “I’ll do whatever Tom tells me to do.”
Despite her determination not to show him any emotion whatsoever, she found herself backing away as she asked sweetly, “Even mix business with personal and spend the entire evening coming after me?”
Jack didn’t say anything, but then he didn’t have to. Daisy had only to look into his eyes to know that he was still following orders from her birth father, and probably withholding information from her, too. “Never mind,” Daisy muttered in disgust. She was not sure why it mattered to her at all, but she had not wanted Jack to be there for any reason other than genuine concern for her, and what she was going through. Realizing that wasn’t the case, or anywhere near it, she strode past him, her temper climbing with every second that passed, and headed for the refreshment cove, located on the outside of the main lodge. The covered, concrete-floored portico had an ice dispenser and vending machines containing snacks and beverages. She put in her change, pushed one button. Nothing happened. She punched her fist against the next and the next. Finally, on the fourth try, a can of root beer—which she detested—tumbled through the machine and out of the slot. Daisy picked it up and popped open the top. Aware of Jack loitering just behind her, she held it to her lips and drank a big gulp of the sweet icy-cold liquid.
She wiped the excess moisture off her lips with the back of her hand, and slowly turned around to face him. Wordlessly, he moved by her, and put some change into the machine, too. He also got a can of root beer. Looking content to be there all night, if need be, he popped the top and took a sip.
Daisy didn’t know why Jack was getting to her—maybe it was the way he kept watching over her in that infuriatingly calm and deliberate manner—but she was determined to get a rise out of him. It was the only way, she calculated with a certain weary reluctance, she would ever get rid of him. And that was what she wanted most of all, because she didn’t like seeing herself and her inability to control her feelings reflected in his eyes. “It’s not going to work, you know,” she told him sassily as she leaned against the weather-beaten wooden post.
“What?” Jack asked, taking up a position opposite her.
Her throat unaccountably dry, Daisy watched him take another lazy drink of root beer. “You’re not going to win Tom Deveraux’s approval this way.” She looked him over from head to toe before returning her taunting gaze, ever so vampishly, to his eyes. “That is what this is about, isn’t it?” she queried softly, refusing to accept defeat, knowing this was one—maybe the only—battle she would win. “Your running interference with me for Tom, is simply a way to get in his good graces, to make him think of you as something more than an employee.”
Jack’s broad shoulders expanded against the starched cotton fabric of his white shirt. “Why would you think I would be interested in that?” he asked gruffly.
Knowing she had hit a nerve, Daisy rolled her eyes and continued goading him relentlessly. “Come on. It was all over your face tonight when we were at the Deveraux mansion.” The look in Jack’s eyes, as they had stood outside, had matched what Daisy had been feeling, not just at that moment, but all her life—like she was the little match girl, looking in. Wishing she could join the party. And feel loved and wanted. Like she belonged in such a warm and wonderful place. Only it couldn’t have been that wonderful after all, she reminded herself firmly, or Tom wouldn’t have stepped out on Grace. He wouldn’t have slept with Iris and, in the process, both made a baby and destroyed the happiness of his family.
“What was on my face?” Jack shifted his weight restlessly, abruptly looking as on edge and ready to do combat as she.
Raw emotion. The kind of vulnerability that was missing now that he had his guard up once again. Determined to pierce his armor the way he so easily seemed able to get through hers, Daisy taunted him softly, “You were mortified that you weren’t able to keep me from crashing that Deveraux family party tonight. You were afraid that Tom was going to be ticked off at you—which he clearly was. So now you’re trying to make it up to him by keeping me in your line of vision.”
To her disappointment, Jack didn’t even try to deny it. “You could have tried harder to lose me,” he said, as if he could have cared less how the evening turned out.
“Maybe I didn’t want to,” Daisy baited Jack lazily. “Maybe I was curious.”
The muscles in his shoulders and chest becoming more pronounced, Jack drained his root beer and tossed the can into the trash barrel next to the soda machine. He turned back to her, his expression grim. “About what?” he demanded curtly.
Daisy rubbed her bare toes against the cool concrete. She knew sparring with Jack this way was dangerous. But she couldn’t help it. She needed an outlet for her anger and frustration. Like it or not, this was it. “How far you’d go—or not go, as the case might be—to please Daddy Dearest. For instance—” Able to see she was getting to Jack at long last, Daisy let her lips curve in a soft, goading smile and tossed her soda can, too. “Would you deny yourself a chance to sleep with me?” Ignoring the racing of her heart and the weak funny feeling in her knees, Daisy held Jack’s eyes and undid the string tie at the back of her neck. When he didn’t move—didn’t react in any way—she reached behind her recklessly and released the zipper on her sundress.
Jack’s expression grew even grimmer, more forbidding. Although obviously aroused, he was not in the least bit amused by her antics. “Don’t do this,” Jack said.
“Why not?” Wanting to annoy him the way he had her, Daisy pushed the fabric past her hips, and stepped out of it. Her heart was pounding so hard she could hear it in her ears. “Am I getting to you?”
His eyes narrowed. “Put your dress back on,” he ordered roughly.
“I don’t think so.” Daisy reached for the clasp on her strapless bra.
He caught her hand before she could undo it. Perspiration beaded on his temple. “This won’t help your situation.”
Daisy laughed, softly and bitterly. “You mean it won’t help you to be caught sleeping with the boss’s other daughter.”
His fingers gently encircling her wrist, he forced her hand down between them. “It wouldn’t help either of us,” he said sternly.
More tired than she could ever say, of being told what to do, think, even feel, Daisy replied back, “We’ll just see about that.” And before Jack Granger could respond, she stood on tiptoe, wrapped her free hand around the back of his neck, tilted his head down and pressed her lips to his.
CHAPTER THREE
JACK KNEW he could get fired for this, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself from responding to the fervor of her soft lips, any more than Daisy seemed able to put an end to what she was doing. Not that Jack hadn’t known going into this assignment that Daisy Templeton was wild and reckless to a fault. But this was something different, Jack realized as Daisy flattened the softness of her breasts against his chest as she kissed him. Even through the starched cotton of his shirt, and the transparent lace of her bra, he could feel her nipples budding, her skin heating.
“No,” he said, tearing his mouth from hers. Afraid of what might happen if he didn’t call a halt to this, and soon, he took her abruptly by the shoulders. Doing his best to keep his eyes from straying lower, to the tempting curves spilling out of her next-to-nothing underclothes, he forced her inside, to the safety of her cabin. “No.”
The misery pouring out of her faded, ending the possibility that she might just burst into tears and get rid of her pent-up emotions that way. As Daisy locked glances with Jack, hurt flashed in her eyes, then defiance. And unbelievably, Jack knew he was in an even worse quandary than before. He was the protector here, the defender. Not the man who took advantage…of any woman in turmoil.
“Okay.” Daisy smiled fiendishly and stepped back, reached behind her once again, and successfully unfastened her bra. She whisked it off and let it drop to the floor.
Jack immediately grew hard as a rock—like never before. He swallowed again, his whole body aching, and pretended he didn’t want to give Daisy what she was asking—no, begging—for. “Cut it out,” he told her grimly.
“Nope.” Daisy continued to hold his gaze as she tucked her thumbs into the edges of her thong panties, and slid them down, to reveal her downy soft curls.
Jack tried to appear unaffected by Daisy’s striptease, but it was impossible. She was without a doubt the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Her skin glowed with vitality, her breasts high and full and round. Her nipples were as rosy and tempting as ripe raspberries. Her stomach flat and sexy, her mound covered with curls a shade darker than her wavy blond hair.
Delighting in his perusal, she lifted her arms above her head and stretched. Slowly, deliberately, she pirouetted, giving him ample time to study her tiny waist and curving buttocks, the long slender thighs, firm calves, trim ankles and dimpled knees. Turning all the way back to face him, she smiled again, and reached for a towel on the rack. “I think I’ll go for a swim.”
Not naked, she wasn’t. The last thing he needed was to have her either arrested—or assaulted—on the beach. And given that even the private beaches such as this were patrolled periodically during the evenings by local law enforcement, Jack moved to block her way. “You can’t do that,” he told her firmly. “Not without a swimsuit.”
“Sure I can. You can, too.” She sashayed forward, tucked her fingertips in the front of his trousers. “Haven’t you ever skinny-dipped?”
“Put your clothes on, Daisy. Now,” he ordered gruffly and succinctly.
“Why?” She batted her eyelashes at him flirtatiously and continued to play the vamp. “Am I bothering you?”
More than you could ever know.
“Just go to bed,” Jack continued to suggest with deceptive casualness. And sleep off your hurt and your fury.
“Sure thing.” Daisy sashayed closer in a drift of orange-blossom perfume. “But only if you join me.”
His heart thudding at the seductiveness of her smile, Jack asked in a taut, strangled voice, “Why are you doing this?” And why was he even considering giving in to temptation and making her his? Especially when he could see she was nearly as apprehensive as she was eager.
“I think the real question is, why are you resisting?” Daisy went up on tiptoe, linked both hands around his neck, and like a daring kid playing a game of Truth or Dare, pressed her nude body against the clothed length of his.
The heat of his desire burned through Jack’s skin. And it was all he could do not to tumble her back on the bed and see how silky wet and sweetly accommodating he could make her. “You know the answer to that.” As much as he wanted to make love to her—here, now—using her that way would hurt her, and Jack did not want her to suffer any more pain. She’d borne enough at the hands of her family.
Daisy’s Deveraux-blue eyes glimmered with a mixture of relief and wounded pride. “What I know,” she stated in a low tone, “is that you’re afraid and I’m bored. And I hate to be bored.”
Her chin set stubbornly, she moved past him toward the door. Jack caught her by the arm before she could step outside the cabin. He could see that she had been torn apart inside by the lies and the betrayal. But making love out of spite was no way to fix the mess she was in. All that would do, Jack knew, besides potentially cause him to lose the job he had worked long and hard for, was increase her emotional devastation. Maybe not now, while blindly reaching out for any comfort or distraction she could find, but when her frustration with the situation, with those close to her, subsided, Daisy would regret her rash behavior here tonight. Of that, he was very sure. Just as he was certain he would not be able to just talk her down. “You’re hell-bent on stirring up even more trouble tonight, aren’t you?”
Daisy shrugged her slender shoulders, attempting unsuccessfully to break free of him once again. “I have to give them something to talk about. The way I see it—” the corners of her lips turned down mutinously “—I have just enough time to get arrested and make the morning papers.”
Not on his watch, she wasn’t, Jack thought. Not after what she had already pulled earlier, when she had gotten past him and crashed the Deveraux-family gathering. Using his firm but gentle grip on her wrist, he reeled her in, not stopping until she was positioned close against him once again. With his free hand, he smoothed the silky blond hair from her cheek and tilted her face up to his. They weren’t even kissing yet, and he was already throbbing. “This is really what you want?” he said, making sure they were clear. “To go to bed with me?”
“Yes,” Daisy said even more stubbornly. “It is. But if you’re not going to play—”
“Oh, I’ll play all right,” Jack said. If it was the only way to keep her out of jail and out of the papers. “I’ll play,” he repeated softly. And then he did what he had been wanting to do for what seemed like forever. He traced the sexy bow-shaped outline of her lips with the pad of his thumb and slowly, deliberately, lowered his mouth to hers.
IN THE PAST, the only thing Daisy had changed more than her colleges or her clothes was the men in her life. With the exception of one disastrous roll in the hay, which was over almost before it began, she had no sexual experience with guys, save the occasional boring kiss—and with good reason. She got rid of her dates before they could make demands or try to get close to her, place demands on her.
Now, as Jack Granger wrapped her in his arms and folded her against the warm, strong length of him, kissing her hotly and thrillingly all the while, she wondered what she had been saving herself for. It wasn’t as if she believed in marriage. Or even, at this point, love. On the other hand, sex was supposed to be great. And Jack Granger was the kind of man who knew what he was doing in the sack, she reasoned securely, the kind of man who could and would give a woman pleasure. And right now Daisy was desperate for even a smidgen of happiness in her life, no matter how fleeting. She wanted that and she wanted revenge on all those who had hurt her. Jack Granger was perfect for both. And they both knew it.
Moaning softly, she let him guide her over to the bed. He let her go long enough to throw a sheet over the bare mattress, and while she watched, dry-mouthed and trembling, shuck his clothes. The next thing she knew, that Adonis-beautiful body was next to her again, and the two of them were tumbling down onto the bed. It had felt lumpy earlier. Now, with Jack draped overtop her, kissing her, touching her, their berth felt like sweetest heaven. She had never experienced desire like this, and an overwhelming flood of emotion swept through her, as timeless, as unstoppable as the tides, as he stroked her, gently and ephemerally, until something wonderful was happening to her, something beyond her control. And yet, even as he spread her thighs and prepared to enter her, she wasn’t afraid. She could feel his iron control as he entered her with aching slowness, kissing her all the while, letting her body adjust to the size and pulsing heat of him.
He took his time possessing her, lifting her hips in his hands, adjusting the angle of penetration until it was just so, until she was kissing him back madly and rocking urgently in rhythm with him. Until he was reaching that sought-after inner place, the one guaranteed to send a woman over the edge. And he did, Daisy thought as she moaned softly and shattered and fell apart in his ever-so-capable hands.
Seconds later, Jack followed in a blissful, overpowering rush of sensation and the two of them collapsed together, breath still coming rapidly. Unhappily, though, the physical release did little to ease the deeply lonely and conflicted way Daisy was feeling inside. Too late, she realized, even having a fling with an accomplished lover would do nothing to make her forget or feel better. Oh, Jack knew the moves, all right. He could even make her come, without half trying, which was something no one else had ever even come close to doing, but he couldn’t touch her heart or her soul. And without that, Daisy realized sadly, there really was no connection. Not one that meant a damn anyway. Once again, Daisy mused as she extricated her body from Jack’s and curled onto her side, facing away from him, she was adrift and alone. She knew who she was now, where she’d come from. She’d even made love with a man successfully. But sadly, nothing of importance in her life had changed.
TOM SLEPT very little during the night. At 6:00 a.m., he finally got up and shaved, showered and dressed. Going down to the kitchen, he found Theresa getting a tray of lemon-blueberry muffins out of the oven. He nodded at the sugary confection. “Pack a half dozen or so of those in a paper bag for me, please.”
Theresa did as he asked and handed it to him wordlessly. Relieved his longtime housekeeper was sensitive enough to appear not to recall what had happened the night before, Tom murmured his thanks and walked out to his Jaguar.
Banking on the fact that Grace had been no more able to rest than he, given the tumultuous turn their lives had taken, Tom drove the short distance through the downtown Historic District of residential homes to the single house Grace had leased from their daughter-in-law, Lauren. As usual, parking in the area was limited. It took him a while to find a space. When he did, he doubled back to her place, saw a light on upstairs and what looked to be movement behind the lacy white curtains. Feeling more confident now—that his ex-wife was not only awake but up, he took his cell phone out of his pocket and dialed. Grace picked up on the second ring. Working to conceal his uneasiness, he said, “It’s me. I’m on the front stoop.”
He stepped back so she could see him. Saw the curtains part. He lifted the bag of muffins and continued speaking quietly into the phone. “I brought breakfast. We need to talk, Grace.”
“Tom…” Just one word. Her reluctance was evident.
Refusing to take no for an answer, Tom said, “Come to the door, Grace,” and severed the connection before she could argue further.
Seconds later, he saw a slender silhouette coming down the stairs through the frosted glass on either side of the portal. The lock turned and the door opened. Grace was in a satin robe and, it appeared, to Tom’s discomfort, little else. Her cheeks were flushed, her lips unusually red, almost chapped. “This isn’t a good time.”
It was a perfect time, Tom disagreed silently, aware all over again how sexy Grace was when she had just tumbled out of bed, with her hair mussed and her eyes still soft with slumber. Their divorce had done nothing to limit his desire for her. Tom knew he would always want her. Even if she never again wanted him. That was just the way it was.
Grace continued to regard Tom resentfully.
Which wasn’t a surprise to Tom, either.
For years, he and Grace had had this secret hanging over them, curtailing their closeness. Now that Daisy’s parentage was out in the open, at least as far as the family went, anyway, the two of them could finally begin dealing with his infidelity and Daisy’s presence in their lives. Tom knew there was anger and disappointment in him among Grace and their kids, but even that was probably less than the disappointment he felt in himself. Even now, years later, he found it difficult to believe he had been foolish enough to throw it all away for one clandestine tumble in the sack. But he had, and like it or not, they all had to deal with that, and hopefully, at long last, just move on.
“I still want to come in,” Tom repeated flatly. Not waiting for an invitation that was unlikely to come anyway, he brushed past her.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” a low male voice said.
Tom stopped, shocked, and looked up. A buff, long-haired man the same age as their sons stood at the top of the stairs. He was naked except for the towel around his waist as he came down the stairs, acting more like the man of the house than Grace’s yoga instructor.
The color in Grace’s cheeks went from pink to white. She held out an imploring hand. “Paulo, please.”
Jealousy ripping through his gut, a muscle working in his cheek, Tom swung back around to his ex-wife. “A little early for a naked yoga lesson, isn’t it?” he asked sarcastically before he could stop himself.
“She asked you to go,” Paulo said as he joined them at the foot of the stairs.
“Gladly,” Tom said. Feeling as if he’d been kicked in the gut by a mule, Tom thrust the bag of baked goods at Grace and said sourly, “Enjoy your breakfast.”
Pushing Paulo aside with one hand, Grace followed Tom out onto the stoop. “Tom…”
When he kept going, her delicate hand curved around his arm, tightening until he stopped his flight. Tom tensed. Whatever she was going to say, he didn’t want to hear it. He continued looking out at the street. “We’re even, right?”
Grace moved around, so Tom had no choice but to look into her face. “What do you mean?” she asked, clearly upset.
Tom pried her fingers from his bicep. He stepped back a pace. “You paid me back. In spades.”
Hurt flashed in her eyes at his low, brutal tone. Her lower lip trembled with resentment. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Didn’t she? Tom wondered. “You caught me with Iris. Now I’ve caught you screwing Paulo. We’re even, okay?”
“You don’t have to be crude,” she admonished coldly.
Tom lowered his face to hers, his mood more dangerous than it had been in years. “And what should I be, Grace?” he retorted caustically, wanting to wound her the way she had just hurt him. “Understanding? You sure as hell weren’t!”
Grace compressed her lips together tightly. “We were married then,” she reminded Tom angrily.
And we should still be married now, Tom thought bitterly. If she hadn’t been so damn stubborn and unforgiving. The cell phone in his pocket began to ring. Tom looked at the caller ID screen, saw it was Jack Granger. Probably with news about Daisy. “I have to get this,” he said.
“Of course.” Grace abruptly turned on her heel and headed back toward Paulo, who was lounging in the portal.
Good thing, too, Tom noted, because other residents on the street were beginning to stir. Interior lights going on, exterior lights going off. Others stepping out to get their morning paper and head to work or out for a jog. Turning his back to Grace and Paulo, Tom answered the call and demanded, “Yeah, what do you have?”
“Daisy spent the night or most of it at the Paradise Resort on Folly Island,” Jack replied, sounding no less stressed and out of sorts than Tom felt.
Tom frowned. “I thought they closed that eyesore last year, when the owner died.”
“They did. The new owner is fixing it up. She’s a friend of Daisy’s and she let us both stay here, although the accommodations are less than stellar.”
“Are you still there?”
A brief hesitation on the other end. “Yes.”
“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.” Tom ended the call, then turned back to his ex-wife, who was scowling at him as resentfully as ever.
“Just go,” Grace said, indicating with a lift of her hand she didn’t want to hear it. Figuring he’d had enough turmoil for one morning, Tom did as she asked and headed back for the Jaguar. What the hell had he been thinking? Tom berated himself grumpily as he drove away. Hoping Grace might finally be willing to work through this problem if not actually forgive him for a misjudgment? Nearly twenty-four years had passed since he’d been with Iris and his ex was still out to punish him, as readily as if it had happened the day before. His involvement with Iris Templeton would never be forgiven. Not ever.
JACK GRANGER WAS WAITING for Tom outside cabin five. He was unshaven, bleary-eyed and wearing the same clothes he’d had on the night before. Not, Tom thought, necessarily a good sign. “Where is she?” Tom demanded, anxious to talk to Daisy. Alone this time. Father to daughter.
“I don’t know,” Jack admitted reluctantly, his low voice as grim as Tom’s mood. “She took off with my SUV, one of my credit cards and all my cash sometime during the night.”
In all the years Jack had worked for Tom, Tom had never known Jack to be foolish or careless. “How the hell did she manage that?” he demanded.
“I don’t know,” Jack said, sounding even more uncomfortable as he tugged at the knot of his tie. “I was asleep when it happened.”
Tom blinked. “With the door unlocked?”
Jack flushed with embarrassment and looked all the more chastened as he admitted reluctantly, “We were…uh, in the same cabin.”
The bad mood Tom had put on hold reared up again. Hands knotted in fists at his sides, he glared at Jack. “You spent the night in the same cabin with my daughter?”
Jack shrugged, the guilty look in his eyes increasing. “That wreck of a car she’s been driving lately broke down. She wanted to come here. I gave her a lift. She checked into cabin six. I checked into cabin five. She was upset and about to do something really reckless and crazy.”
“And you stopped her,” Tom guessed.
Jack looked away before admitting, “Yeah.”
“How?” Tom asked, not liking the sound of this, not one bit.
Silence.
“Don’t tell me you slept with her.”
What the hell was Jack supposed to say to that? He wanted to protect Daisy and keep what had happened between them strictly between the two of them. But he couldn’t lie to the man who he had looked up to as a trusted mentor. Especially when he knew, given her impetuous nature, that Daisy would probably announce the tryst to her biological father anyway.
Figuring it would be best coming from him, Jack reluctantly owned up to his mistake. “I—we—didn’t mean for it to happen,” Jack said, knowing all the while that even if the impulsive one-night stand had meant something to him, it had been nothing more than yet another form of payback for Daisy.
“The hell you didn’t,” Tom exploded as his fist came flying toward Jack.
Too stunned and disbelieving to duck, Jack took a right cross on the jaw. The impact knocked him off his feet and sent him flying into the exterior cabin wall. The next thing Jack knew, he was lying on the ground. Tom was standing over him, fists clenched, more angry and disapproving than Jack had ever seen him. Chest heaving, Tom instructed fiercely, “I don’t care what you have to do, but you find her, goddamn it. And when you do—” Tom paused, to let his words sink in “—you bring her to see me.”
BUCKY JEROME’S FATHER was waiting for him when he arrived at the Charleston Herald newspaper offices at five minutes after eight that morning.
With a pointed look at the clock to let his son know he was late and a jerk of his severely balding head, Adlai Jerome motioned Bucky into his office. Adlai gave Bucky another long assessing look, focusing on Bucky’s spiked black hair, rumpled khaki’s and trendy shirt, letting Bucky know he didn’t approve of his son’s “look” any more than he liked Bucky’s writing. Which was no surprise, Bucky thought, sighing inwardly. He and his “button-up-shirt-and-tie” father had been at odds as long as he could remember. “I’m putting you on the society beat,” Adlai said.
The society beat! His entire 5'8" frame stiffening with tension, Bucky plopped down on the leather sofa in the publisher’s office and stared at his father, knowing Adlai too well to think this was a joke. His dad was one of the original hard-asses, loaded with money in his own right but determined to own and manage the paper that had been in their family for generations, instead of selling out—for millions—to one of the big chains. Bucky respected his father’s determination to make it on his own regardless of their family’s personal wealth. He didn’t like Adlai’s theory that everyone—whatever their pedigree—must begin their work career at the very bottom.
Adlai shrugged and gave Bucky a look, like, What did you expect? “You said you wanted off the obits,” Adlai explained, “so I’m moving you to the society page. Specifically, the ‘Around the City’ column.”
He’d gone to Duke and worked his ass off for four years for this? “Shirley Rossey already writes that,” Bucky argued, not about to take what he considered a demotion lying down.
“Not anymore.” Adlai took a sip of inky-black coffee, poured from the pot in the newsroom that was, Bucky knew, almost never washed. Just filled and refilled and refilled again. Which, of course, made any coffee brewed in it taste like something from the bottom of a trash barrel.
“She’s being bumped up to lifestyles editor,” Adlai continued explaining in the don’t-give-me-any-crap tone he always used with Bucky. “I’m promoting from within instead of hiring from the outside. So you’re it, Bucky.” Adlai looked at Bucky over the rim of his Charleston Herald mug, which was washed almost as much as the pot. “I want you covering every event. And be sure you take lots of photos. The folks in Charleston like to see their pictures in the paper, especially when they are all gussied up.”
Bucky scowled at his father and gripped the double latte he’d gotten at Starbucks on his way over. “This isn’t fair,” he told Adlai grimly. “I want to do something important.”
Adlai dropped into his swivel chair and turned his attention back to the stack of papers on his desk. “You want to run this paper someday, you’ve got to learn it from the ground up, just like I did. And that means working every single department, Bucky.”
When Adlai had first laid out the deal to his son, Bucky hadn’t taken his father literally on that particular point. He’d figured after his initial mind-numbing stint in the classifieds sales office last summer that he’d work as a reporter for like a year, and then move into the editorial offices alongside his father. Too late, he was beginning to see that might never happen. That he should have tried harder to find a job on one of the big city papers when he had graduated from Duke instead of returning to Charleston.
Desperately, Bucky tried to change his father’s mind. “You promised me the police beat.”
“And you’ll get it,” Adlai agreed smoothly, taking another sip of coffee, “just as soon as you learn how to make even the most mundane interesting.”
Bucky scowled, knowing it would be futile to argue further. Once his father had made up his mind, that was that.
“And concentrate on getting as many under forty mentions as those forty and above,” Adlai cautioned as Bucky pushed to his feet. “We’ve had complaints recently that section of the paper is getting too stodgy.”
No kidding, Bucky thought, trying hard to think how to turn this situation around. The assignment might not be what he wanted, but he was certain if he was smart, he could make it work to their mutual advantage just the same. After all, where there was smoke there was fire and where there was a lot of money there was usually scandal. It was just up to him to uncover it. “Assuming I take this position,” rather than quit, “you’ll give me free rein? I can write it like the gossip columnists in the New York City newspapers?”
Already losing interest in the conversation, Adlai began booting up his computer. “You have to concentrate on the people who actually live here or are visiting the Charleston area. But yes, as long as it’s not actionable, or too editorialish, you can do what you want. Your goal should be to get people so excited about reading ‘Around the City’ that they’ll turn to that section of the newspaper the moment they pick up their papers.”
Bucky knew that was the same stock advice his father gave to all the journalists on his paper, with the exception of the obits. There, Adlai just cautioned that the items should be the best obits—the most concise, loving and compassionate—anyone had ever read. But Bucky was going to take Adlai’s advice to heart anyway, and use the column to make a name for himself.
“Who knows,” Adlai continued in an obvious effort to motivate Bucky to do his best, “if it’s good enough, snippets of your column could even get picked up and run in other papers, too.”
He was right about that, Bucky mused. They did have at least one national celebrity in their midst. Grace Deveraux. Who, rumor had it, was currently seeing some model-type half her age. If he could get something on that, something factual and not actionable, proving the relationship wasn’t just a platonic one, maybe it would get picked up by other newspapers. Or get him noticed by one of the big outfits in New York City.
Adlai handed Bucky a typewritten sheet of paper. “Here’s a list of society parties and other gala events this week. Make sure you put in an appearance at all of them.”
“No problem,” Bucky said, his spirits already lifting as he savored the excitement and notoriety ahead. Adlai might think he’d just given Bucky a low-level assignment, but nothing could have been further from the truth.
CHAPTER FOUR
“SO, SHE GOT YOUR SUV, your AMEX card and three hundred in cash from your wallet,” Harlan Decker stated as he sat back in his swivel chair and lit a cigar.
Jack nodded and looked over at the casually dressed private investigator, feeling damn embarrassed. As always, the burly ex-cop was dressed like a tourist, in a loud shirt, knee-length plaid shorts, wide-brimmed straw hat, knee-high crew socks and well-worn running shoes. He had a camera slung around his neck and a street map sticking out of his shirt pocket. His face and neck were sunburned, his gray hair damp with perspiration from the heat and humidity outside. Jack knew Harlan’s disguise worked like a charm—Harlan could wander in practically anywhere, look a little lost and distracted, and not be paid any mind. He was also an ace at both uncovering and keeping secrets.
Too tense to stay seated for any length of time, Jack got up to pace the P.I.’s office. Knowing he could trust Harlan to guard the Deveraux family and shipping company’s reputation the way he always had, Jack warned, “Tom doesn’t want any publicity. This is a private family matter. He wants it to stay that way.”
Harlan’s glance cut to the bruise on Jack’s face. Too discreet to inquire how that might have occurred, Harlan picked up his pen and asked, “How much money did Miss Templeton have on her own, do you know?”
“Probably not much,” Jack predicted, worrying a little about that. The lack of ready cash, combined with her need to stay hidden, could lead Daisy to some dives that were not necessarily safe. Jack didn’t want to think about anything happening to her, especially when he was the one who had prompted her to take off the way she had. If only he had been able to walk away from temptation and contain his lust for her…. The situation might be very different now. Jack let out a long, self-effacing breath, aware Harlan was waiting for him to continue. “As you probably already know, since you just got finished doing a job for Daisy yourself, the Templetons cut Daisy off weeks ago and she just returned from several weeks in Switzerland that, according to Amy, had Daisy down to her last couple of bucks.”
Harlan made a note on the pad in front of him. “I’ll start checking the airports and train stations, but my guess is she’s still driving your SUV.”
That was Jack’s theory, too.
“Less chance of her movements being traced.”
And more of a chance of being arrested and creating a situation embarrassing to both families. If there was one thing Daisy Templeton was interested in, it was payback. And Jack had the feeling she wouldn’t rest until she’d gotten it. Knowing how upset she still was and, Jack admitted reluctantly, probably had every right to be, he slid his hands in his pockets and looked out the window at the parking lot below. In retrospect, he knew he should have expected Daisy would pull something after they made love. He should have talked to her, tried to work things out verbally. Or at least try to discuss what had just happened between them. But like an infatuated fool, he had figured conversation could wait until morning and wrapped her in his arms and held her until she—they both—fell asleep.
Now, thanks to his lack of foresight, Daisy was out there somewhere, feeling the way he had for as long as he could remember—like no one had ever really loved her, or ever would. Like she was a source of shame, existing only to sully the family honor. And that was a miserable way to live, Jack knew.
“Eventually, though,” Harlan continued pragmatically, “she’ll start working somewhere and have to use her social security number, or she’ll have to start charging on your credit card.”
And that was how they would locate her. “I’ll check my American Express account daily for any transactions,” Jack promised, his customary confidence beginning to return.
“And I’ll start looking for her right away,” Harlan retorted with a narrow glance. “How fast I find her will depend on just how badly she doesn’t want to be found.”
PAULO LIFTED HIS LIPS from Grace’s breast, the frustration he felt evident on his face. “Why are you pretending?”
Grace’s skin warmed self-consciously. She shifted away from Paulo and tugged the sheet upward to cover her nakedness. “I don’t know what you mean,” she said in the cool polite voice she used to keep people at bay.
“Last night. This morning.” Like a scientist in the midst of a perplexing experiment, Paulo stroked his hand across her belly. “You merely pretended to feel pleasure. Why?”
A shiver of revulsion ghosted over her insides. “What makes you think that’s the case?” Grace tried hard to keep the defensiveness out of her voice. And how was it this man knew what Tom had never once guessed in all their years of marriage?
“You moan, you sigh, you go through the motions, but you’re not wet here unless I wet you with my tongue.” Paulo gently caressed her between the thighs, and Grace felt…nothing. Except the wish he would stop touching her. “Your nipples bead when I touch them but you don’t tremble with arousal. Instead, you fake it. And I want to know why,” Paulo insisted. “I want to know if it’s me, if it’s something I’m not doing or should be doing to excite you, or if it’s just that you can’t relax the way you want to right now.”
Her body taut with equal parts frustration and embarrassment, she sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed. “I think you should leave.” She didn’t talk about this. Never had. Never would. Her mother had been right. Sex was dirty. Meant for bringing children into the world and little else, except maybe a man’s gratification.
“Grace—”
“I mean it, Paulo.” Grace reached for her satin robe and shrugged the sensual fabric over her shoulders, loving the way it felt, the way she had never loved a man’s touch. Feeling more humiliated than she had when she’d been fired, she continued in a low, flat tone, “Being with you was a mistake. I was just too caught up with emotion to tell you, and that was wrong on my part.” Despite their failure to bring each other genuine pleasure, she was grateful to the sensual young man for trying, for being so patient with her, even when it didn’t work. She swallowed around the lump of emotion in her throat. “I’m sorry.” She didn’t know why she had even tried this, after years of abstinence, after being with no one but Tom. She looked her yoga instructor in the eye, knowing after what had just happened those lessons were going to have to end, too, because she would never be able to have his hands on her again without thinking about this. And she didn’t want to think about this, any more than she wanted to think about all the times she had put aside her dislike of sex and feigned enjoyment with Tom.
She swallowed hard around the tight knot of emotion in her throat, even as she yearned for a long hot cleansing shower, the kind that had relaxed her so much in the past. “If you think I led you on—”
Paulo shook his head. He stood and, taking her cue, began to dress, as well. “I knew when Tom showed up this morning what the problem was.” Paulo looked sad but not surprised. “You’re still in love with him, aren’t you?”
Grace didn’t respond. But then, she thought sadly as she put on her slippers and exited the bedroom, she didn’t have to. Everyone knew the answer to that, just as they knew their marriage never had, and never would, work. The problems she and Tom had had in the bedroom—with her not wanting him, and him eventually not wanting her, either—had only been the half of it. She had two things she could count on to make her happy—her kids and her work. And that was it.
GRACE SPENT the next week and a half immersing herself in her work. At the soundstage, she was overseeing the construction of the kitchen, bedroom and living-room sets for her new television show, when Amy came to see her. Grace knew immediately there was trouble—she could tell by the pinched look on her only daughter’s face.
“Mom, I’m worried about Dad.”
Grace did not want to talk about Tom, and especially not at the soundstage, with various grips, cameramen and set designers around. Grace put the fabric swatches for the sofas aside and regarded her daughter stoically. “Amy, I’m trying to work here,” Grace murmured with as much patience as she could muster, and it wasn’t a lot.
Amy took her mother by the elbow and led Grace over to a deserted corner of the warehouselike building, where At Home with Grace was going to be taped. Ignoring Grace’s wish they save this for later, Amy continued anxiously, “He hasn’t gone to the office for ten days.”
Grace smiled at Amy as if they were discussing something as mundane and happy as Amy’s imminent need of a shopping expedition for maternity clothes. “I suspect he’s probably long overdue for a vacation.”
Amy clamped her arms over her gently rounded belly and regarded Grace mutinously. “He isn’t taking a vacation.”
Grace put up a hand to ward off the approach of a staff member and continued talking to Amy. “Then what is he doing?”
Amy sighed, her blue eyes abruptly filling with unshed tears. “Not much of anything from what any of us can tell,” she said in a low, quavering voice.
Grace knew Amy was more emotional now—the hormones of pregnancy ensured that—but that didn’t mean Grace would change her feelings when it came to her ex. “Honey,” Grace said as gently as possible, “this isn’t my concern.” And she didn’t want it to be, ever again.
“Then who else is going to get Daddy off the yacht?”
Grace blinked. Amy had lost her. “What are you talking about?”
Amy drew a tremulous breath. “Apparently, after the party, Daddy didn’t leave the house for about three days. He didn’t shave or shower, he just sat in the library brooding and drinking. Theresa was concerned—she wanted to call a doctor. Daddy wouldn’t let her, so she called Mitch and he went over and found Dad. Not drunk but not exactly sober, either. Dad wouldn’t talk to him. So Mitch called Gabe and Gabe went over.”
“And?” Grace prodded anxiously. If anyone would be able to tell if there was something medically wrong, causing Tom—the epitome of tranquillity under stress—to behave that way, Grace knew it would have been Gabe.
Amy shrugged. “Gabe said that medically there was nothing wrong with Daddy—he wasn’t clinically depressed—he was just totally devastated.”
“Well, he’s allowed to take a break,” Grace said, telling herself Tom’s emotional state had nothing to do with finding Paulo at her place, and everything to do with being identified as a philanderer to his grown children.
Amy laid a hand over her heart. “That’s what we all thought initially. But now that it’s been going on for nearly two weeks, we’re beginning to get scared.”
Grace had to agree, that didn’t sound like Tom. Not at all. Even in the midst of the divorce and their darkest days together, he had never taken off work. But instead had sought solace and refuge in his work, just as Grace was doing now.
Grace paused, still trying to make sense of Tom’s actions. “Is he taking the yacht out?” Tom did love to go boating, always had. And it was an affection he had passed on to all their children.
“Occasionally.” Amy stuck her hands in the front of her overalls, which were emblazoned with the name of her redecorating business. “Mostly he just sits on the yacht and broods.”
That didn’t sound good, but it didn’t sound lethal, either. Grace sighed and for the benefit of staff around them kept the carefully composed smile on her face. “Have you talked to your father about this?”
Amy hesitated. She ducked her head, studying the toe of her sneaker. “I haven’t seen him.”
Grace wasn’t surprised. In the past, when she and Tom had been quarreling, their children had pretty much run for the hills and tried to stay as far away from any familial turmoil as they could. None of them had wanted to take sides in Grace and Tom’s marital problems, and Grace couldn’t blame them. Their mutual anger and resentment had been hard enough for her and Tom to deal with. Neither of them had wished it on their children. Besides, their four kids—five if you counted Daisy now for Tom—had their own problems, careers and lives to attend to, and each other to go to for comfort and counsel. But, Grace determined that didn’t mean Amy could identify a problem, dump it on Grace’s doorstep and then run away. “If you’re so concerned—and I can see that you are—why haven’t you seen your dad?” Grace asked quietly.
Amy’s chin took on a petulant tilt and her eyes glowed with blue fire. “Because I’m still mad at him, and I don’t want to make things worse, and anyway—Nick said I should wait until I cool off and can listen objectively to what Daddy has to say about what happened.”
That sounded like Amy’s husband, Grace thought, realizing all over again how glad she was that Nick was now a member of the Deveraux clan. Nick had not only helped Grace find a new career path to take in the wake of her firing from Rise and Shine, America! by signing her to do a television show for his production company, he had given Amy the tenderness, stability and practical guidance Grace’s ever-so-romantic daughter needed to remain grounded and optimistic.
“But honestly, I don’t know when that will be. Chase, Mitch, Gabe and I have had several discussions about this, and we are all still very mad at him—even Mitch—who is Dad’s lieutenant in just about everything. I mean, all these years we thought you were responsible for the divorce, that you going to New York City to take the job when you knew Dad’s work and all our lives were here in Charleston, was what caused the breakup. But now we know the truth.” Amy’s voice dropped to an anguished murmur as the production staff and construction workers continued to give Grace and Amy wide berth. “We know what Daddy did to you. And we still can’t believe that he slept with Iris Templeton! My God!” Amy’s eyes welled with tears once again.
Grace saw the disillusionment in her daughter’s eyes, remembered full well how that felt, and her heart went out to her. “Oh, Amy, honey—” Grace put her arm around Amy’s shoulders.
“And poor Daisy,” Amy interrupted before Grace could comfort her further. “She’s apparently disappeared, too.”
Grace paused as that news sank in. “What do you mean, disappeared?” Grace demanded uneasily.
Amy drew a deep, quavering breath. “She took off with Jack Granger’s SUV and his credit card, and she even stole some cash out of his wallet. They’ve got that P.I. Dad likes—Harlan Decker—looking for her, but there’s no telling how long it will be before they find her.”
As always, the mention of Tom’s illegitimate child, and the problems Daisy perpetually seemed to cause, ignited a core of resentment within Grace. Try as she might, she couldn’t see the young woman as anything but proof of Tom’s betrayal. But figuring Amy didn’t need to know that, Grace turned the conversation back to Tom once again. “I’m the last person your father would want to see right now.”
Amy shrugged. “That may be true, Mom.” Her voice dropped beseechingly. “But you’re probably also the only person who can help.”
TOM HAD FIGURED Grace would show up sooner or later—he figured the kids would send her. So it was no surprise when she walked across the gangplank onto his yacht at 5:00 p.m. Thursday evening. Unlike Tom, who was wearing only a pair of navy-blue swim trunks and a pair of sunglasses, she looked pretty and professional in a white silk pantsuit. She also looked irked, and she didn’t waste any time starting in on him, either. “What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded, propping her hands on her hips.
Tom continued disassembling the reel he’d been working on. “Exactly what it looks like, I’m repairing my fishing rod.” It had taken a heck of a beating the last ten days or so, given the way he’d been using it.
Grace strode closer, her high heels clicking across the deck. She held a hand above her eyes to protect them from the glare of the sun. “People are going to start to talk.”
Tom shrugged. Like he gave a damn about that.
When he made no move to defend or explain himself, Grace released a short, aggravated breath, dragged a deck chair over and sat down beside him. She leaned forward. “Do you really want to disillusion our children any more than you already have with this extended vacation of yours?”
If Tom didn’t know better, he would’ve thought she cared about him, given the way she was acting. “Is that what I’m doing?” he asked dryly. He reached down into the toolbox beside him for a pair of pliers.
Grace huffed and spoke between tightly gritted teeth. “If you stay out here on the boat much longer, people will realize you’re not just taking a much-deserved few days off from work.”
Reassuring his ex would have been easy, but Tom decided not to tell Grace he had already determined he would return to work the following day, the Deveraux mansion that very night. After all, it wasn’t her business what he did, just as it wasn’t his business what she did.
Grimacing as the reel refused to cooperate with him, he decided to remind her she was hardly one to talk. “I’m surprised you were able to tear yourself away from your young lover.”
Pink color that had nothing to do with the summer heat and humidity flooded Grace’s cheeks. “I won’t discuss Paulo with you.”
Tom nodded gravely. “And no wonder,” he returned sarcastically, “since being with him makes you a hypocrite.”
Grace’s eyes flashed with anger. “Me?”
Tom dropped both the reel and the pliers into the toolbox and reached into the cooler beside him for a beer. Eyes on Grace, he shook the excess water off the bottle and twisted open the top. “Weren’t you the one who always said that sex was something sacred, only to be embarked upon within the love and sanctity of marriage?”
Since their divorce, Tom noted, that view obviously hadn’t lasted. Not that Tom had been a saint, either, in the fifteen years he and Grace had been apart. He had made love to a dozen women over the years, enduring everything from a single one-night stand to a relationship that had lasted almost four months. But none of the entanglements had been satisfying, because he hadn’t loved any of the women, not the way he had once loved Grace.
Grace stood, her slender shoulders stiffening. “This isn’t helping.”
You’re telling me. It had been days now and all he could think of was Grace naked beneath that robe, her young gigolo standing there in a towel. Had Paulo discovered how spectacular her body was? Had she kissed him back like she meant it, or had she simply endured her young lover’s caresses, the way she had often tolerated his?
Grace clamped her lips together. “You have no right to comment on my actions.” She glared at Tom resentfully. “We’re not married anymore.”
Tom stared right back at her. “But you felt compelled to flaunt your affair with that guy in my face anyway,” Tom noted bitterly as he ran his hand across his jaw, which was scraggly with a beard. His gut twisting with jealousy, Tom took another sip then set his bottle down beside him and turned his attention back to his reel.
“I didn’t ask you to show up at my place at the crack of dawn,” Grace continued, defending herself.
Not buying her excuse, Tom stopped rethreading the reel and regarded Grace steadily. “After what had happened the night before, you knew I would come to see you as soon as I could, to talk about Daisy and our four kids. Not that the other morning was the first time. You’ve been with that overrated, overpriced gigolo for weeks now!” And it killed Tom because he had thought—hoped—the relationship was just a flirtation, that at heart it was platonic. How foolish had that fantasy been?
Grace turned her face to the breeze.
Tom watched the soft blond layers of Grace’s hair get whipped around sexily by the salt-scented wind. “Being with him that way is wrong,” he snapped grimly. And you know it.
A mixture of shock and fury widened her eyes as she turned back to him. “Says who?” Grace advanced on him emotionally, looking as though she was tempted to haul off and hit him. “You?” She poked her index finger against his bare chest. “The arbiter of extramarital sex? Please.” Grace threw up both hands in aggravation. “You’ve squired your share of young and beautiful women around since we split. And for all I know, even before we separated.”
That was unfair but typical, Tom thought. He stood, and really pissed off now, squared off with her. “I was only unfaithful to you once,” he said.
“And since?” Grace queried, arching her delicate blond eyebrows at him.
It was Tom’s turn to move his glance away. A muscle working convulsively in his jaw, he shifted to the harbor beyond. “You left me, remember?”
“For good reason, if you recall,” she reminded him.
Tom shook his head in exasperation. “Yeah, because you put a wall between us.”
“We had children, a home together…” She spoke as if she didn’t believe he was turning the tables on her.
But Tom knew it was the truth. And he knew, whether she liked it or not, it was past time his wife faced just how cold and unaffectionate she had been prior to his interlude with Iris. “Yes, Grace, you distanced yourself from me.”
“I was depressed! Finding out I was sterile was a devastating blow.”
Or an excuse. Tom tread nearer, trying not to recall how much he had wanted to make love to her then, how much—despite everything—he still did. “We already had four children, Grace.”
“Five,” Grace countered miserably, “if you count the baby we lost when I miscarried, the year after Amy was born.”
“But you wanted more, didn’t you?” Tom remembered bleakly. And when she couldn’t have them, she had completely turned away from him, in her heart and in their marriage.
“We both wanted more kids. Half a dozen, remember?” Grace’s voice became a strangled sob as she forged on. “Only I couldn’t because of the complications I had after the miscarriage. But that didn’t stop you, did it?” Her eyes gleamed with hurt as she reminded, “Because you went right on to have another child without me—you had Daisy.”
Tom saw it all—the jealousy, envy, resentment—that another woman had given him what Grace no longer could. “That was never meant to be more than one night,” he told her with gut-wrenching honesty.
Grace stared at him and slowly shook her head, appearing as if she could hardly believe his naiveté. “That night created a child, Tom. It destroyed our family.” Tears flooded her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. “But you can’t admit that to yourself even now, can you? You persist in saying and feeling I should just get over it.”
Tom swallowed hard. “Why can’t you?” he demanded, feeling more frustrated than ever.
Grace threw her hands up. “You know why I can’t! Because you betrayed me.”
Tom clamped down on his own hurt. Jaw set, he said, “I made a mistake.” It had been a bad one, yes. But it should not have ended their marriage.
“You ripped my heart in two,” Grace accused with insurmountable bitterness.
And, Tom thought sadly, she had never allowed him to put it back together again.
Grace turned away from him and walked over to the edge of the deck. Her back to the marina, she stared out at the harbor, and the coming together of the Ashley and Cooper Rivers. “It doesn’t matter anyway,” she said in a low, defeated voice.
Tom crossed to her side. Hands on her shoulders, he turned her resisting body to face him. “How can you say that?” he asked hoarsely. Didn’t she understand—would she never understand—his heart had been ripped into pieces, too?
“Because—” Grace turned her sad eyes up to his and continued dejectedly “—it would’ve happened eventually anyway.” She paused, shook her head in silent remonstration. “My grief and depression were just an excuse to do what you already wanted to do in your heart, Tom, what you had probably always wanted to do, which was forget the wife you had at home and bed down with some young, rich and sexy society girl.”
“That’s not true. It was you, Grace, who didn’t want me.”
Anger flared at the corners of her mouth. “Will you stop blaming me for what you did that night?” She balled her hands into fists. “You walked out on me, Tom. You answered Iris’s distress call and went to her apartment. You unzipped your pants, took off your trousers, and you were with her. And you probably would’ve kept right on seeing her if I hadn’t found you two.”
Tom knew it had been an ugly time. All because he’d had too much pride to go to Grace and tell her how lonely—how bereft and shut out—he felt. He should have gotten down on his knees and begged her to love him again. Instead, he had allowed himself to become angry, vengeful. And looked to another woman, who was just as needy and unhappy in her own way, for comfort. And for that, Tom would always blame himself. Just as virulently as Grace blamed him.
Mustering what little patience he had left, Tom explained, “You know I regret what happened that night with all my heart and soul. As for the rest…I stayed with you because I wanted to work it out.”
“No,” Grace corrected. “You stayed with me because you didn’t want to lose custody of your kids or hurt your business or let your infidelity become public knowledge!”
What could Tom say to that? It was true. He hadn’t wanted any of those things to happen. He hadn’t wanted their life to fall apart, any more than it already had. And a divorce would have ensured even more misery than they had already suffered.
“So now you’re blaming me for wanting to stay married to you, is that it?”
“I am blaming you for destroying our family!” She advanced on him, voice breaking, looking if possible even more dejected and disillusioned with the situation they had found themselves in years ago. “You never should have cheated on me—on us—no matter how rejected you felt or what the situation was with us at the time. You should have done whatever we had to do to work it out and make our marriage strong and enduring instead of turning to someone else to warm your bed. And most of all—” she began to cry “—you should have honored the vows that we took, the promises we made to love each other and only each other for as long as we both live. Because if you had—if you had acted less selfishly—we would still be together now. And somewhere deep inside, Tom, you have to know that.”
Tom’s heart exploded with anger. He was tired of being painted the only wrong-doer here, tired of making apologies that fell on deaf ears. Tired of not being given the opportunity to make it up to her. “You know I’d do anything if I could take back what happened,” he said huskily, near breaking down himself. “But I can’t.”
Grace withdrew into herself, into the place where he had no hope of reaching her. “No,” she said before assuming her on-air television personality, “you can’t.”
“And that pleases you,” Tom accused.
Grace stared at him as if she couldn’t possibly have heard right. “What?”
“Let’s be honest here, Grace.” Tom decided to cut the courtesy and lay all their cards on the table. “This wasn’t all bad news to you. You wanted an excuse to lock me out of your heart and keep me out of your bed. Because all you ever wanted me for was the big house and the cushy lifestyle and the kids.”
Grace gasped in indignation. “That’s not true!”
“Isn’t it?” Tom lifted his eyebrow. As much as he loathed to admit it, he knew the truth. “You were never happy being my wife, Grace, even before Iris.”
Grace looked at him then as if she had never known him at all. “Maybe because back then that’s all I was. I needed a career. I needed—”
“Self-esteem?”
Grace reeled backward, as if he had slapped her. “You knew a career was important to me when you married me!”
“And I also knew it shouldn’t have mattered that you grew up in a small town, the daughter of parents who owned and ran a dry-cleaning store,” Tom said bitterly. He looked at his ex-wife, his heart aching. “You were everything to me, Grace. Everything. But you never let yourself believe it.”
“WELL?” Chase said when Grace met her son and his new wife for dinner at a popular downtown-Charleston restaurant.
Chase had come straight from the offices of Modern Man magazine, and was dressed, as usual, in pleated khaki trousers and a short-sleeve linen shirt perfect for the balmy September weather. Bridgett, a financial advisor, and noted author in her own right, was wearing a trim black skirt and silky black-and-white cardigan set. Grace smiled. The two of them looked so strikingly handsome together. Chase, with his wavy dark-brown hair, lively slate-blue eyes and tanned athletic presence. Bridgett, with her auburn hair, deep chocolate eyes and slender feminine frame. And more important, Grace thought, they were happy. And so much in love with each other, it filled her heart with joy.
Grace sat down and spread her napkin across her lap. “I didn’t get anywhere with him, either.”
“So he’s still on the yacht.” Chase returned to his own seat after helping Grace with her chair.
Grace nodded at both Bridgett and Chase, marveling again at how happy—how very much in love—they looked. “Yes,” she said quietly. “But you’ll be relieved to know that your father’s not drinking so much as brooding.” Feeling sorry for himself, angry at the world, at her.
Chase scowled as he opened the menu. “I’d go try and talk to him myself but I want to slug him.”
Having already decided what she wanted—the crab soup and a salad—Grace closed her menu wearily. Chase was her strongest defender, as well as her first-born and oldest son, but in this case he was also dead wrong. She regarded her son steadily and said, “This isn’t your fight, Chase. It’s mine.”
Chase clenched his jaw, at that moment looking very much like his incredibly strong-willed and stubborn father. “Wrong, Mom.” Fierce resentment gleamed in Chase’s slate-blue eyes. “When Dad betrayed you, he betrayed the whole family.”
Grace sighed and shook her head. “You still have to forgive him,” she advised calmly.
“Why?” Chase challenged. “You obviously haven’t, and it’s been what—more than twenty years now?”
What could Grace say to that? It was true. All these years and she hadn’t been able to put it out of her mind, hadn’t been able to believe Tom’s stepping out on her was merely a cry for help. But what if she’d been wrong? What if Tom’s lovemaking with Iris was as emotionally unsatisfying as her tryst with Paulo had been? Had she thrown it all away, refused to ever trust Tom again, for nothing?
CHARLOTTE WAS in the library, updating her social calendar on the computer Iris had given her and taught her how to use, when Richard walked in. He’d spent the afternoon playing tennis at the club, but was now dressed in his customary suit and tie. Knowing now was as good a time as any, Charlotte broached the subject that had been on her mind constantly for days, before he could leave for that evening’s dinner-meeting with their accountant.
“I want to hire a private detective to locate Daisy.”
The look in his eyes becoming pure resentment, Richard’s jaw clenched. “It’s out of the question.”
“Why?” Gearing up for battle, Charlotte saved the data she had just entered and watched as Richard opened the wall safe in the library. “We can afford it.” The growing success of the family antiques business, and their financial stake in it, had seen to that.
Richard released a long breath and turned to Charlotte in exasperation, “Daisy will come home when she’s ready.”
Would she? Charlotte wondered. “She’s been gone for days now,” Charlotte pointed out, unwilling and unable to suppress her worry. “We haven’t heard a word from her.”
“Which, given her likely mood, is probably just as well.” Richard moved the handgun and box of ammunition he insisted they keep for their personal safety to one side and withdrew a fat envelope of cash. He took out a number of bills and returned the envelope to the safe, setting it on top of Charlotte’s jewelry case and copies of their insurance papers, wills and real estate deeds. “Right now, Daisy is behaving like a temperamental child.” Richard shut the door to the safe, covered it with the painting and slid the money into his wallet before looking at Charlotte once again. “And I for one am glad Daisy is not here misbehaving for all our friends to see.”
“I still want to find her,” Charlotte retorted steadily.
“And I still say no.”
Richard gave Charlotte a look to let her know the conversation was closed, then exited the room. Seconds later, the front door shut behind him. The big house was cloaked in silence.
Charlotte stared at the photos of family that decorated the shelves to the right of the heavy antique desk. She didn’t know when or why or even how it happened, but the truth was indisputable now. Somewhere along the way, she had failed both her daughters. Perhaps even their son, Connor, too. During the crisis of Iris’s pregnancy, Charlotte had been so certain she and Richard were doing the right thing, keeping the affair and pregnancy from ten-year-old Connor, and sending Iris to that austere convent in Switzerland to have her baby in secret. Iris hadn’t wanted to go, hadn’t wanted to give Daisy up, but Charlotte and Richard had worked together to convince Iris that her life—indeed, all their lives—would be ruined if she didn’t do as they said.
In return, Charlotte had promised Iris that she and Richard would love Daisy and bring her up as their own. Iris would never have to worry or wonder what had happened to her baby—she would be able to see Daisy every day because they would grow up as sisters. And Charlotte had kept her promise. She had loved Daisy every bit as much as she had loved her own two children, if not more. But she had also known in her heart of hearts that Daisy was her first—maybe her only—grandchild. And consequently, she had tended to be too lenient with Daisy, as grandparents were wont to do. Whereas Richard had gone the other way and been too strict. Poor Daisy had been caught in the middle from day one, as their adopted daughter. No wonder she’d floundered around and felt there was something amiss. Because, Charlotte thought fiercely, there had been.
Now, Daisy knew the truth.
She knew they had all lied to her.
And she couldn’t forget and she couldn’t forgive.
Was Daisy ever going to come home? Charlotte wondered.
And what would she do when she did?
CHAPTER FIVE
IT TOOK JACK ONE MONTH, two days and sixteen hours to find out where Daisy had run off to, and another half day to travel to Nevada. When he finally made it to the crummy studio apartment she had rented at the edge of town, he was mad as hell, and exhausted to boot. And she didn’t look much better when she opened her door to him. Her fair skin held the golden glow of desert sun and she was dressed as sexily as ever, in snug, worn, navel-baring jeans, tangerine tank top and western boots. Her wavy hair was as clean and silky-looking as always and caught up in a clasp on the back of her head. But there were shadows beneath her eyes and a weariness in her body language that hadn’t been there before.
Not that she was about to let him know that, however, Jack noted as their eyes clashed. “I was wondering when you would show up.”
Jack took the open door for invitation and followed her inside. The place was a mess. Although it was nearly noon, what looked like a breakfast of a glass of milk and a sweet roll sat on the table. The sofa bed was still pulled out and unmade. There were clothes, shoes and toiletry items scattered all over the place. He shut the door behind them, noting the laptop computer, printer and digital camera that were hooked up together. Even as they spoke, what looked like color tourist photos were spitting out of the printer one after another. Which explained how she had been getting by once her cash ran out. “It would have been sooner if you’d let me know where you were,” he said.
“What? And take all the fun out of it?” Daisy plucked her glass off the table and took a sip of milk. Expression sobering slightly, she continued, “I was going to contact you soon anyway.”
Jack had expected as much—when Daisy was ready. She was too confrontational to let what had happened between them that night go by without being addressed. Not that he was taking the blame for everything. She was at fault here, too. Figuring she would want him to give as good as he got, he said back, just as dryly, “To return my car, repay the cash you stole and reimburse me for the $2358.29 in credit card charges you racked up the last two days?”
Daisy shook her head, took another sip of milk, and still holding his gaze, said, “To tell you I’m pregnant.”
Her matter-of-fact tone hit him like a sucker punch to the gut. Jack tensed, attempting to frame a retort, only nothing came out. Finally, he said, “That’s not funny, Daisy.”
An emotion he couldn’t quite identify glimmered in her eyes. “Oh, I don’t know.” She waved her hand through the air, some of her customary rebelliousness coming back to her stance. “There’s a certain irony to it, don’t you think? I mean, the bastard of Tom Deveraux having the love child of his most trusted employee slash henchman. If you ask me—” her lips curved with mocking pleasure “—it’s like something straight out of a trashy novel.”
He was beginning to realize she wasn’t kidding. “Except this is real life, Daisy.”
Daisy sighed and put down her milk. “Ain’t that the sad truth,” she agreed.
Jack came closer. Unable to help himself, he looked at her stomach—it seemed as flat as always, but then if the baby was his, and his gut was telling him that it was, she was only four and a half weeks or so along. He swallowed around the unaccustomed tightness in his throat and returned his gaze to her face. “You’re sure about this?”
Daisy wiped her hands on a napkin and walked down to the other end of the narrow kitchen countertop. She plucked a piece of paper out from beneath a little sample bottle of what appeared to be vitamins and handed it to him. “I went to the Lake Tahoe clinic two days ago.”
He noted that the receipt said the clinic had billed her for a pregnancy test, new patient exam and consultation.
In a bored tone, Daisy continued, “You can go check out the test results for yourself if you want. I told them you were the father and you might be coming by.”
Still struggling to absorb the fact that he was going to be a father—that he was going to have a baby with Daisy—never mind figure out what this was going to mean to him, his life and everyone around them, Jack handed back the receipt. “That’s not necessary,” he said stiffly, guilt—and his own sense of failed responsibility—along with the news of his impending fatherhood, combining to hit him with the force of a sledgehammer. He forced the words through numb lips. “I believe you.” Just as he now believed they were in one hell of a mess, that was likely only going to get worse as time went on.
Daisy tilted her head as she studied him with narrowed eyes. After a moment, she noted softly, “You haven’t asked if the baby is yours.”
No. He hadn’t. And why hadn’t he? Jack couldn’t say why he was so sure. He only knew his gut was saying it was his kid. And his street smarts about people, whether they were good, bad or somewhere in between, were never wrong. Daisy might act out wildly, but she would never lie to him about something like this, especially given the way she had grown up, not knowing to whom she had been born. “I’m sure because I know you,” he stated firmly, more sure of that with every second that passed.
For reasons Jack couldn’t understand, his faith in Daisy’s honor upset rather than reassured her. “And how do you know?” she retorted, the deeply cynical look returning to her face. “Oh!” She snapped her fingers as if something just hit her with amazing insight. “I forgot. You and my biological father have been tracing my movements ever since I decided to try and find my real parents a few months ago.” She trod closer, bristling with a mixture of indignation and contempt. “That’s kind of ironic, too, don’t you think? That I hired the same private investigator my biological father hired to keep me from finding out what the Templeton and Deveraux families would’ve preferred I not ever know?”
Yeah, it had been a sticky situation, all right. Hardest on the top-notch P.I. who had unexpectedly found himself at the center of the quandary, being asked to represent both sides. But that was neither here nor there now, Jack thought. He shrugged. “It’s not surprising you both hired Harlan. He’s the best private investigator in the city.”
“I’m surprised he didn’t refuse to help me, given the fact that Tom had signed him first,” Daisy said sulkily.
“Harlan did go to Tom. Told Tom that you wanted to hire him and why and wanted to know what Tom wanted him to do. Harlan said he could refer you elsewhere or help you himself, but he wouldn’t lie to you or take your money or try and stonewall you—do anything else unethical or underhanded.”
“Good for Harlan. If it weren’t for him finding out I had been born in a little convent in the Swiss Alps, instead of Norway as I had always been told, I still wouldn’t know the truth.”
Jack nodded, glad they agreed on this much. “Harlan Decker’s a good guy, all right. Although for the record—” Jack gave Daisy a stern look, letting her know she wasn’t completely off the hook for her actions, either “—Harlan thought I should’ve turned you in for stealing.”
Daisy shrugged. “What can you expect from a former cop?” she volleyed back. Silence fell between them, less tense this time.
Jack studied Daisy knowing he already had his own thoughts on the matter, but wondering where she wanted to go from here. “So what now?” he asked her casually.
Daisy bit her lower lip and regarded Jack uncertainly as her printer finally sputtered to a halt. “You’re really going to take me at my word on this pregnancy?” Clearly, Jack thought, she wasn’t used to being trusted.
Jack watched as Daisy went over, picked up the stack of finished photos from the tray and began thumbing through them. “I don’t have any reason not to believe you.”
Daisy went back to her computer and typed in another series of commands. “Nevertheless,” she said as calmly as if they were discussing the terms of a new photo shoot instead of the permanent interlinking of their lives, “I’d feel better if we went over to the clinic and let you see the results, and maybe have you take a paternity test or whatever it is they do these days to establish paternity.”
Jack pulled up a chair next to her and sat down. “I’d feel better if we just got married and got it over with,” he stated, wondering how long Daisy was going to be able to keep her cool, act as if this hardly mattered, when in reality it was the most earth-shattering revelation of both their lives.
Daisy continued typing in commands until her printer started going again. She turned to him, as yet another series of tourist pictures began spitting out into the tray, the only indication of her heightening emotions the tensing of her jaw. “And why would we want to do that?” she asked steadily.
That, Jack thought, was easy. Letting her know with a look that she and their baby would be able to count on him the way she had apparently never been able to count on anyone else in her life, he said, “So the baby you’re carrying will be born legitimate, and have a mother and a father.”
Once again, Daisy’s teeth raked across her soft, bare lower lip. “This wouldn’t have anything to do with Tom Deveraux, would it? Because I don’t have to tell him we slept together. At least not yet,” Daisy amended hastily before Jack could get a word in edgewise. “When my baby is born, of course I’ll make his or her paternity a matter of public record—there’s no way I’ll ever lie to my child the way my parents lied to me all these years. But until then—I mean, no one has to know. We don’t have to put ourselves in a position where we’re both going to be getting a lot of grief.”
Jack supposed that was true, but he saw no reason in putting off the inevitable, either. “The worst thing we could do is let our kid think we’re ashamed of him or her,” Jack said. He had grown up that way, feeling the slings and arrows surrounding the scandal of his birth. There was no way he was doing it to his own child. Frowning, Jack continued humorlessly, “Tom already knows we slept together.”
Daisy did a double take. “You told him?”
“Not exactly.” Because it was clear she wasn’t going to just let this go, Jack continued reluctantly, “He figured it out when you disappeared the way you did.”
“Because you were acting so guilty, I bet.”
Knowing where she was going with this, Jack pushed the words through his teeth. “I’m not sorry we made love.” Especially now that they had a baby on the way because of it. He gave her a level look. “I’m just sorry about how and why and when it happened.”
The wall around Daisy’s feelings only became stronger and more inaccessible as Daisy scoffed in a cynical tone. “You would have preferred recreational sex, is that it?”
“It was more than that, and you know it.” Jack knew Daisy was trying to shock and turn him off. He wasn’t going to allow her to do it. Especially not now, when they had a child they were going to be responsible for.
“Exercise?”
“It was raw emotion and need—and you know it.”
“I don’t need anyone.”
Yes, Jack thought. You do. They all did. Maybe what he and Daisy had shared wasn’t love. Maybe it would never be love. But they could be there for each other and their child in other equally important ways. And whether she wanted that or not, he was going to see that it happened, because the two of them had more than just themselves to think about now. They had a baby to consider. A baby who would need the love and care and cooperation of both parents.
“But back to Tom Deveraux.” Daisy changed the subject to something safer. She studied Jack curiously. “What did he say when you told him about us?”
Jack recalled the punch that had landed him in the dirt and left his jaw aching for days, and decided Daisy didn’t need to know that Tom was still so angry he was barely speaking to Jack. “Nothing that bears repeating,” Jack finally said.
She rolled her eyes. “I’ll bet.”
“Look, Daisy, let’s get out of here,” Jack said, ready to go back East and reclaim his job and whatever was left of any respect Tom Deveraux might still have for him. Hopefully what he was doing now to make an honest woman of Daisy and set things to rights would go a long way in repairing the damage that had been done. And if not, he hoped he would at least continue to have his job with the Deveraux-Heyward Shipping Company. “We’ll get married and hop a plane back to Charleston.”
Daisy took the rest of the printed photos out of the tray and stuck them in an envelope emblazoned with the name Tahoe Mountain Tours. Apparently finished with the work she had to do, she shut off her printer and computer and closed the lid on her laptop. “I’ll marry you for the sake of the baby, Jack, but I’m not going back to Charleston.”
Jack had expected some resistance on that score after the way she had run away, and had prepared for it. “Afraid, are you?”
Daisy shot to her feet and squared off with him. “I’m no coward,” Daisy lashed back.
“Hey.” Jack flattened his hands on his chest and gave her a look of mock innocence. “That’s what a person is who refuses to face the consequences of their actions.”
Daisy thrust her chin out as she slapped both hands on her hips and stomped nearer. “I’ve never been afraid of anything or anyone in my life,” she swore, glaring up at him.
“Then prove it,” Jack threw down the gauntlet, knowing damn well a woman like Daisy would pick it right up and brandish him with it in return. “Marry me. Come home with me. Help me show everyone that we know that we don’t care what they think.”
“There’d have to be a few conditions,” Daisy warned after a moment.
At last, a chink in her emotional armor, Jack noted solemnly. He couldn’t wait to hear those.
The taunting look was back in her Deveraux-blue eyes. “You’ll give my baby a name and we’ll have a physical relationship—that’s it!”
Jack didn’t mind the prospect of hitting the sheets again with Daisy, he also knew they had some very important boundaries to set. “Fine. I also don’t want to be jerked around.”
“Fine.” Daisy glared right back at him.
They seemed to be circling each other like two wary animals—neither willing to make the first move. Maybe the thing to do was to make it real and go from there. They could worry about the details later.
He regarded her sternly, chastening, “And one more thing. No one’s bed but mine, got it?”
A slow, sexy, victor’s grin spread across her face. Looking as if she was the one in the driver’s seat, Daisy shrugged and said, “Whatever.”
DAISY HAD TO ADMIT that like Jack, she didn’t appreciate being manipulated, either. To the point she tended to behave perversely and illogically if she felt she was being used. Nevertheless, Daisy thought as she rummaged through the clothes in her closet, looking for something to don for a quickie wedding, she was very relieved Jack had not only shown up so swiftly, but offered to help her muddle her way through this dilemma she found herself in. Because she had the feeling that the next eight months or so were going to be rough in a lot of ways. And she and the baby needed a man like Jack, who was known for his steady presence and selflessness to help her through all the life changes she was going to have to make if she wanted to be a good mother, and she did.
“How soon can you be ready to go?” Jack asked.
Daisy shrugged as she took several things on hangers into the bathroom and hung them over the shower rod for trying on. “I don’t know. Ten or fifteen minutes.”
It ended up taking her thirty, but that was okay, Daisy thought as she examined herself in the mirror, because with her hair put up in a neat twist on the back of her head and some makeup and dangly earrings on, she looked pretty darn good. Smiling, she spritzed herself with perfume and walked out into the studio in her stocking feet.
Jack had changed clothes too in her absence. The sport shirt he had been wearing when he arrived was now in a carry-on garment bag. He was wearing a navy blazer with his khaki slacks, white shirt and dark-olive tie.
Jack finished zipping up his garment bag and turned to face her. “That’s what you’re going to wear?” His eyebrow lifted in surprise.
Unable to help but note how good Jack looked, not to mention to feel a little hurt he disapproved of her choice, when she had so little to choose from, Daisy shrugged. “What’s wrong with it?”
Jack made a face. “It’s black, for starters.”
Daisy looked down at her long sleeveless dress. It was woven out of a linen-cotton blend that fell just above her ankles. It was cool and summery and yes—with its sensual drape and cutaway armholes, sexy as all get-out. But if he didn’t like it… “I’ve got some pink capri pants,” she said, deliberately suggesting something even more outrageous. “Or a yellow floral mini.”
“Never mind.” Jack picked up Daisy’s computer, printer and camera—which had all been put in their cases while she was changing—and set them in a pile next to the door. “Let’s just load this stuff in my SUV and get going.”
Knowing he had also been on the phone making arrangements while she got ready for the momentous event, Daisy threw the rest of her belongings into a suitcase as quickly as she could. “Which wedding chapel did you pick?”
Jack helped her get the rest of her things together, which admittedly weren’t much, as he told her matter-of-factly, “We’re getting married on the upper deck of a paddlewheel boat on Lake Tahoe.”
Daisy’s eyes widened with surprise. “That’s a little extravagant, isn’t it?”
Jack gave her a look that indicated he didn’t think so. “We’re only going to do this once. It might as well be memorable.”
Daisy wondered if he would have the same view of the wedding night then quickly pushed the thought from her mind. She couldn’t risk making this a romantic occasion, even in her mind, because it simply wasn’t. Methodically, she collected the tourist photos she had to deliver to Tahoe Mountain Tours en route to the ceremony. “What about rings and a license and blood tests?” she asked, mentally making a note to give her notice while she was there so they could find another photographer to take her place.
Jack picked up several of the heavier items, then held the door. “They’ll have everything we need there, including the paddleboat captain who is going to marry us, the marriage certificate, license and two plain solid-gold wedding rings. There’s no waiting period. And no blood tests are required. All we have to do is show up.”
Somehow, Daisy didn’t find that at all encouraging. But refusing to be the first to back out, Daisy merely smiled and said, “Right.” As they loaded Jack’s truck with all her gear and his small travel bag, Daisy kept expecting Jack to renege, demand to go over to the clinic, wait until paternity tests could be completed, and otherwise put off such a risky, impulsive decision. But he didn’t. Instead, she was the one with cold feet about joining their lives on any level—and they both knew it. But every time she faltered, he was right there, giving her that goading look that sent her temper flaming and made her feel all the more reckless and determined not to bow out or back down.
Not that she was going to allow Jack to have the upper hand with her. No one got that. She wasn’t like her older sister slash birth mother Iris, who had married a man twice her age to please her parents. Or her brother, Connor, who prided himself on being able to mediate his way out of every and any situation. She was strong and independent and she did whatever she needed to do to ignore the constant criticism and disapproval coming her way. She knew how to look out for herself because she had learned very early that no one else, either within or outside the family, was going to do it for her.
Jack, of course, didn’t know how impossible Richard and Charlotte Templeton could be, or how much they could—and often did—upset her. But soon he would be subject to the same kind of familial pressure. And would be right there beside her to either deflect it or help her deal with it, Daisy reassured herself seriously as she was handed a bouquet of flowers and she and Jack climbed the metal stairs to the upper deck of the boat. And perhaps in that sense, because she would no longer have to fight every battle alone, Daisy thought as Jack took her hand in his, her life would get better.
Daisy and Jack said their vows at sunset, as the wedding package touted, with the granite mountains towering in the background, above the beautiful blue surface of the mountain lake, and two marina employees serving as their witnesses. To the two of them, it was a solemn, not romantic, occasion, and Daisy couldn’t help but wonder, even as she said their highly personalized vows, how—and if—they could ever be true.
Would she be able to respect, honor and cherish Jack for as long as they both shall live? Or even the rest of the month, once they got back to Charleston and the complications they faced there?
And what about Jack? Would he be able to care for her, in sickness and in health, for richer for poorer, for the rest of their married lives? Or would this, too, end in disaster?
Daisy had no answer. And given the conflicted look in Jack’s eyes as he bent to chastely kiss her lips at the conclusion of the ceremony, he didn’t know, either. But he was determined to do the right thing by her and their baby. That was something, she supposed.
“WE’RE NOT DRIVING HOME?” Daisy asked in disappointment as Jack turned the SUV away from Lake Tahoe and onto the highway that would lead them to the Reno airport.
“No.” Jack set the trip computer on his dash. “That would take several days. I need to get back to Charleston.”
“So I’ll drive.”
He slanted her a look and said dryly, “We’ve done that already. You took off without me.”
Daisy gave him a smile of exaggerated enthusiasm. “Great,” she said, settling deeper into her comfy leather seat. “So how long is this all going to take?” she asked wearily, wishing she had a bed she could just curl up in.
“It’s around four hours from Reno to Dallas–Fort Worth, where we change planes, and another four or so to Charleston. Our flight leaves at midnight. We’ll fly all night and be home by morning.”
Daisy didn’t particularly enjoy sleeping on airplanes, but she reluctantly conceded that was probably better than staying in a hotel and trying to play it cool on what was, technically speaking anyway, their wedding night. So maybe, she decided as Jack busied himself switching on the radio, flying home tonight wasn’t such a bad idea after all…
Jack had booked them into first-class, so they had comfortable seats and plenty of legroom. Daisy was so exhausted she slept on both flights and so did he. When she was awake, she kept herself busy reading, as did he, which meant conversation was at a minimum, and suited Daisy just fine. However, once they landed in Charleston that changed. “How do you want to do this?” Jack asked as they strode through the airport terminal toward the baggage claim.
“Do what?” Daisy asked as she struggled to keep up with his longer strides.
Jack gave her a sidelong glance, and noticing she was struggling, shortened his steps to a slower pace. He took her camera bag and put it over his shoulder, gallantly relieving her of that weight, which left her with just her purse. “I promised Tom I would take you to see him as soon as you got back.”
That might have been Jack’s priority—it wasn’t hers. Especially given the way she still felt about her biological father. Sighing, Daisy consulted her watch. With the three-hour time difference, and the additional time they had spent in the DFW airport changing planes, it was nearly noon, eastern time. Daisy felt grimy and exhausted and nowhere up to another confrontation with Tom Deveraux. “I really want a shower,” Daisy said as they grabbed their luggage off the carousel and headed for the exit.
“Then we’ll go to my—our—place,” Jack said. “We can both get cleaned up and then call Tom and see where he wants to meet—the office or home.”
Daisy tried not to think how intimate “our place” sounded. Never mind how close and cozy their life ahead might be. Daisy studied Jack’s face, realizing she wasn’t about to get out of this meeting with her new husband’s “boss.” “I want to meet at Tom Deveraux’s office,” Daisy stated stubbornly. “It’ll be shorter, less personal, that way.”
Jack lifted a curious eyebrow. “I thought you wanted to get to know him, that’s what your search for your real parents was all about.”
Daisy’s heart hardened a little more as she followed Jack’s lead across the hot pavement to the short-term parking lot. “I probably would want to get to know them if they were strangers. But given the way both Iris and Tom abandoned me, and lied both to and about me, even and especially when both knew how very much I wanted to find my real parents and was looking for them, I really don’t have any interest.” Her feelings had been crushed enough already by the fact Iris hadn’t wanted her, and Tom Deveraux hadn’t even cared enough to find out if she was his child. But instead had been content to let Daisy grow up without so much as ever guessing at her and Tom’s connection. Never mind being as loved as his legitimate children, or made to feel a part of his family, or told she had four half siblings, who as it turned out, she had gotten to know and befriend anyway. Instead of making her feel wanted and loved for the first time in her life, Tom and Iris had left her feeling even more rejected and forsaken. Listening to their excuses, or worse—realizing neither of them felt they really owed her an apology—just made her feel worse. Which was why, of course, Daisy had run away. So she wouldn’t have to help Iris and Tom feel better while she was made to feel even worse than she already did.
His expression unsympathetic, Jack walked to the end of the row and stopped in front of a decade-old red sedan. The vehicle looked familiar to Daisy, with a few exceptions. The hood and door were now painted the same fire-engine red as the rest of the car. In fact, the whole vehicle looked as if it had had a paint job. The dent was gone from the fender. Even the upholstery had had a good cleaning.
Jack shrugged at her stunned look. “You’ve been driving my car, I’ve been driving yours,” he explained.
Daisy could see that. And even as she admired the way he had given as good as he got in assuming the use of her vehicle without her okay, she did not like his presumptuousness in messing with a good thing without her blessing. Daisy scowled at Jack. “I didn’t give you permission to fix it up.” She had liked her secondhand car the way it was. The vehicle’s noticeable disrepair had gotten under countless skins. It’s new spiffed-up appearance would not.
Jack merely quirked an eyebrow and looked at her without an ounce of regret. “You should have thought about that before you left it with me,” he said.
MAYBE IT WAS BECAUSE she had been raised in such a big, cold, forbidding house, but Daisy had always liked small, cozy places. Jack’s home on the beach, a mile or so down from Chase and Bridgett’s and Maggie and Gabe’s, was just what she would have ordered, if she could have afforded to buy a home for herself at that point. The one-story beach cottage was one hundred and fifty yards away from the ocean and built in typical Low Country fashion, with a high, deeply pitched roof and gabled front door. It was small—Daisy guessed no more than twelve hundred square feet, if that. But pretty and very well maintained. Obviously built before it became fashionable to have the parking area beneath the house, the building had dark-gray siding, snowy-white trim, shutters and door and a light-gray roof. Palmetto trees shaded the front of the house, which faced the street. Hedges of tall, neatly trimmed flowering bushes insured maximum privacy from the neighbors on either side, despite the relatively small lot sizes.
“Do you rent this or is it yours?” Daisy asked as they parked in the small gravel driveway and got out.
“It’s mine,” Jack declared with no small amount of pride as he unlocked the door and led the way in. “I’ll show you around and then go back and get the luggage.”
Curious to see how he lived, Daisy followed. The first thing she noticed was that there appeared to be nothing antique or exceedingly valuable in the home—the furnishings were all sturdy, attractive, department-store stock. There were miniblinds, not heavy velvet draperies, on the windows, and practical off-white ceramic tile on the floor.
To the left of the foyer was a living room with a white stone fireplace, to the right a masculinely appointed study complete with a large desk and leather chair, computer, printer, fax and copier, a wall of built-in bookshelves and several black-metal vertical files. The living room had a sectional sofa in the same slate-gray hue as the exterior of the house, an impressively outfitted entertainment center, upholstered reading chair and matching ottoman and not much else. Behind that was a surprisingly well-equipped kitchen and dining area at the rear of the house. A laundry room was located in the middle, just off the covered back porch. Farther down the hallway that ran the width of the home, was a single bathroom with a tub and shower combination, commode and sink all located in a very tiny space, and what appeared to be not just the master bedroom but the only bedroom, Daisy noted.
Daisy studied the king-size bed, with the brown, burgundy and taupe paisley sheets and coverlet. It looked comfortable and seemed to dominate the room. How comfortable it would be if the two of them were in it together, she did not know.
His hand just above her elbow, Jack directed her back to the hall. “The clean linens, towels and washcloths are in here. If you want to go first—” He tilted his head at the shower.
Daisy did.
“I’ll bring in your things.”
DAISY WASTED NO TIME getting into the shower, taking advantage of the time alone no doubt. Jack went to his study at the front of the house to the vertical files. He made sure they were locked then sat down to try to figure out what he was going to do with all the information locked inside. He couldn’t take it to the Deveraux-Heyward Shipping offices, his or Tom’s. There was too much of a chance of it being spotted by someone else. He didn’t want to leave it in a storage facility, where anyone could break in and or come across it and wonder just what the hell Jack had been doing the past ten years at Tom Deveraux’s behest. And he didn’t want to destroy the information, either. Some of it meant too much to him.
One thing was for certain, though, he didn’t want Daisy laying eyes on it. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
GINGER ZARING WAS STARING at the balance in her bank account, wondering how she could magically conjure up the sum she needed, when her daughter, Alyssa, walked into the kitchen, a stack of mail in her hands. She set the envelopes on the counter then went straight to the refrigerator and pulled out a tube of chocolate chip cookie dough. Ignoring Ginger’s frown—Ginger preferred they eat their cookies baked—Alyssa chopped off a liberal chunk and set it on a plate.
“Anything interesting in the mail?” Ginger asked her daughter.
“Yeah.” Alyssa tugged off the butter-stained polo she had to wear for her movie-theater concessions job and, still clad in a black T-shirt and black cotton slacks, collapsed wearily onto one of the breakfast-bar stools. She paused to pop a chunk of dough into her mouth. “I got another reminder from Yale. The rest of my tuition is due in two weeks, and they want my room and board to be paid in full, too.”
Ginger nodded, as if it were no big deal, but inside, her heart was sinking. She had fully expected to have all the money she needed by now, to pay those bills. But she didn’t, and now, as the time approached for her only child to leave for college, the clock was ticking ominously.
Alyssa studied her mother, at eighteen seeing a lot more than Ginger cared to admit. “Maybe it’s not too late for me to go to USC with the rest of my friends,” Alyssa said quietly.
Ginger shook her head, vetoing that. Alyssa had opportunities here that most of her high-school graduating class could only dream about. “Honey, we’ve been through this. I told you if you got accepted to Yale, you’d go.” And Ginger had promised her daughter that, knowing full well that expenses for the year would exceed her thirty-five-thousand-dollar salary. But she’d been determined to provide for her only child, and provide she would.
“But…” Alyssa’s lower lip trembled; her hazel eyes suddenly filled with tears. “We don’t have the money yet. Do we?”
Ginger refused to make this her daughter’s problem—hadn’t she already hurt Alyssa enough by marrying and divorcing such a loser? She explained patiently, “I told you. I don’t want you worrying about this.”
“How can I not worry,” Alyssa demanded plaintively, “when we’re not poor enough to be eligible for any of the need-based scholarships or financial aid, and not rich enough to qualify for the private loans?”
Exactly the problem, Ginger thought. Fortunately for the two of them, where there was a will there was always a way. “Look, I know this is tricky, but I have arranged to get the funds for you.”
“From that private funding source,” Alyssa ascertained uneasily.
“Right,” Ginger said.
“And you’re sure the money has been guaranteed to us?”
“Absolutely.” Ginger smiled.
Alyssa continued to regard her mother suspiciously. “It’s not a loan shark or anything, is it?”
“No. Of course not,” Ginger said firmly. She might be willing to take a little risk, but not that much! “Just a wealthy friend of a friend with a philanthropic streak.”
“Then what’s taking so long?” Alyssa demanded petulantly.
Exactly what I’d like to know, Ginger thought, secretly feeling more than a little irked herself. She’d been working darn hard to hold up her end of that particular bargain for months now. But thus far, despite the generous promises made to her, she had actually garnered only nine thousand in cash from Alyssa and Ginger’s secret benefactor. Not that she was about to let him fail to pony up! Twice last week, he’d told Ginger he was going to bring her the balance of the money when they met. Twice, he had forgotten. Ginger wasn’t about to let him do so again.
“Maybe we could ask Daddy to help us,” Alyssa said hesitantly.
Ginger would have given anything if that were possible. But she knew she couldn’t count on Mack Zaring for anything, and the sad truth was she never had been able to. During the ten years they’d been married he had spent every dime they both brought in, and then some, leaving the three of them deeper and deeper in debt with every year that passed. The final straw, however, had come when Mack turned thirty and decided he hated his life. Telling Ginger privately that the mundaneness of their life together was suffocating him, he walked out on Ginger and eight-year-old Alyssa. Quit his job as an electrical engineer, moved to a shack in the Blue Ridge Mountains and began working on and off as a fishing guide. Since then, he’d been chronically late with child support payments, criminally unenthusiastic about their daughter’s many stellar achievements and completely unsupportive of Alyssa’s goals and ambitions for the future. Personally, Ginger didn’t care if she never saw Mack again, but for Alyssa’s sake, she knew she had to keep some connection going. It was important, Ginger knew, that Alyssa think her father loved her every bit as much as Mack should have loved her. “Honey, I’m sure he would help us if he could,” Ginger fibbed gently. “But your daddy doesn’t have that kind of money. You know that.”
Alyssa ducked her head, discouraged, and Ginger understood full well how dejected Alyssa felt. Her own parents’ lack of money and ingenuity had kept her from going to a great private university. No way was the same thing happening to her daughter. Alyssa, Ginger determined resolutely, was going to have the opportunities in life that Ginger had never had. Alyssa was going to get the Ivy League education, and the prestige and hefty salary that went along with a degree. Even if it meant Ginger had to forfeit her pride and keep moonlighting at her second “job” in addition to her work as an airlines reservation agent. Deciding it was best to simply change the subject to something more hopeful, Ginger asked, “Do you still have that list of things you’re going to need for your dorm room—like extra-long twin sheets—for your bed?”
Alyssa nodded. “It’s on my desk.”
“Well, why don’t you go get it?” Ginger suggested cheerfully. “And we’ll go to the outlet mall and get what you need as soon as I finish up here.”
Alyssa’s face broke out into a relieved smile, sure now that everything was going to be all right. “You mean that?” she asked excitedly.
“Absolutely.” Ginger hugged her daughter warmly. “Just give me a few minutes.”
As soon as Alyssa dashed upstairs to her room, Ginger picked up her cell phone. Knowing this was a good time of day to get him, she walked outside onto the patio, where she couldn’t be overheard, and grimly dialed the number she knew by heart. That man had made her a promise. And by God, whether he wanted to or not, he was going to keep it.
CHAPTER SIX
DAISY CAUGHT JACK’S ARM before they could enter the Deveraux-Heyward Shipping Company executive office building. As Jack looked down at her, he couldn’t help but note how beautiful and fragile she looked in the snug-fitting capri pants and white sleeveless tank top, with a sweater knotted casually around her neck. Her hair fell loose to her bare, freckled shoulders. She abruptly tightened her grip on his bicep and confided in a low, compelling tone, “Before we go in, Jack, we need to make a deal.”
“Okay.” Jack paused in the shadows of the building. The protective way he was feeling right now, she could have whatever she wanted.
She turned to face him and took a bolstering breath. “I don’t want to tell anyone about the pregnancy just yet.”
His wife’s request was surprisingly inconsistent with the rest of her behavior, especially when all along she had been the one demanding the entire truth be brought into the open. Unable to recall ever meeting a woman so full of contradictions, Jack countered just as firmly, “Secrets are trouble, Daisy. You should know that better than anyone.”
“Maybe.” Daisy’s pretty chin took on that familiar stubborn tilt. “But I’m not up to hearing that I shouldn’t do this because I’m not at a point where my life is settled and orderly.”
“And deadly dull?” Jack joked, seeing where this was going.
“You know what I mean.” Daisy’s lower lip shot out petulantly as she dropped her hold on him and stepped back a pace, wedging a little more distance between them. “I wasn’t married yet when it happened, to someone I loved more than life itself. I didn’t have a prosperous career and a house, two cars and a dog—or, as Charlotte and Richard would have wanted, a suitably blue-blooded husband with a bank account to match.”
Ouch! That certainly got him where he lived. But there was nothing Jack could do about growing up on the wrong side of the docks, or being the offspring of a long line of brawny, uneducated dockworkers.
“Sorry,” Daisy amended quickly, realizing she had both insulted him and hurt his feelings. “But that’s how my adopted parents, Charlotte and Richard, are going to feel about my hooking up with you. I guarantee you, the confrontation with them won’t be pleasant.”
Jack had already figured as much, and braced himself for the familial maelstrom to come. “It likely won’t be pleasant with Tom, either,” Jack added with a warning glance.
Daisy looked down at her toes. “In any case—” Daisy’s voice became not just petulant but overly emotional “—I don’t want anyone ruining this pregnancy for either of us with predictions of doom and gloom about what kind of parents we’re going to make.” She looked up at him earnestly. “It’s too special, too new.”
Jack nodded, in that respect knowing exactly how his wife felt. “For me, too,” he said quietly. Because although Daisy’s pregnancy had been unexpected and unplanned, it had also brought joy to Jack’s life, and, as he adjusted to the idea of becoming a father, under these less-than-ideal circumstances, hope for the future unlike anything he had ever experienced. “All right, we won’t tell anyone until we both feel the time is right,” Jack promised.
“Thanks.” Relief shining on her face, Daisy stood on tiptoe and pressed a quick, casual kiss to his cheek. Together, they headed up to the executive suites.
Tom was waiting for them in his office. To Jack’s relief, Tom seemed genuinely happy and relieved to see them both. “I’m glad you’re back, Daisy,” he told her in a cordial tone as he ushered Daisy to one of the two armchairs flanking the sofa in the corner. Tom took a place on the sofa closest to Daisy, leaving Jack to the chair at the far end of the coffee table. “I was really worried about you.”
“Yeah.” Daisy sighed, morphing into the smart-ass she became whenever she felt threatened. And Tom, and his ability to hurt her, threatened her, Jack noted as the hair on the back of his neck prickled, the way it always did before a business meeting totally broke down.
“Nothing like having a wild cannon on the loose,” Daisy continued, giving Tom a vaguely reassuring wink, “but you don’t need to worry. Because I am not going to tell anyone outside the family that you’re my father.”
That was news to Jack. Daisy hadn’t said anything of the kind to him! Furthermore, he was surprised she would agree to that, given all she had gone through these past five years to uncover the truth about her real identity.
Oblivious of the impending danger, Tom shot Jack a grateful look, giving Jack credit where none was due. “I think that’s wise,” Tom said, pleased.
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Cathy Gillen Thacker
Jack Granger, counselor to the Deveraux shipping empire and totally devoted to the senior Deveraux, has been shadowing the love child of his mentor for nearly a decade. Granger had watched Daisy grow up from a petulant rich girl into a driven young woman with a mission to find her roots–a quest he had long prevented her from ever accomplishing…harboring his desire for her all the while.Both were outcasts searching for redemption and truth in an unforgiving world of wealth and deception. Instead, they found each other…without pretense or promises. But at what cost would they seek the future?
THE DEVERAUX LEGACY LIVES ON!
“Am I getting to you?” Daisy asked.
Jack’s eyes narrowed. Perspiration beaded his temple. “This won’t help your situation.”
Daisy laughed softly. When he didn’t move—didn’t react in any way—she recklessly reached behind her and released the zipper on her sundress.
Jack’s expression grew even grimmer, more forbidding. Although she could tell he wanted her, he was not in the least bit amused by her antics. “Don’t do this,” Jack whispered. His fingers gently encircled her wrist, forcing her hand down. “It wouldn’t help either of us,” he said sternly.
More tired than she could ever say of being told what to do, think, even feel, Daisy replied, “We’ll just see about that.” And before Jack Granger could respond, she stood on tiptoe, wrapped her free hand around the back of his neck, tilted his head down and pressed her lips to his….
Dear Reader,
Have you ever felt that you just didn’t belong somewhere? Or that everyone knew what was really going on behind the scenes but you? Heiress Daisy Templeton has felt that way her entire life. Her intuition tells her there are secrets that have something to do with her adoption into the blue-blooded Templeton clan, and she is determined to discover the truth about her heritage. When she does, it rocks her world. She is a true heir to the Deveraux legacy. Her real mother and real father have been in her life all along!
Jack Granger, on the other hand, knows more than he cares to about his sordid past and wishes fervently he were a member of a family like the Deveraux. That isn’t possible, until he’s given the assignment by his boss Tom Deveraux to keep the beautiful and spirited Daisy safe. A job that soon becomes a lot more personal for Jack.
Daisy doesn’t want Jack around or cleaning up Tom’s mess. But soon their lives are entangled more deeply and irrevocably than they ever could have imagined.
I hope you enjoy this book and the rest of THE DEVERAUX LEGACY as much as I have enjoyed writing all six books. And don’t forget to look for Taking Over the Tycoon, coming in June 2003 from Harlequin American Romance.
Happy reading!
The Heiress
Cathy Gillen Thacker
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Cathy Gillen Thacker has published over sixty books, more than fifty with Harlequin American Romance. And with good reason! The family dramas and romantic comedies are very close to her heart. Her books have made numerous appearances on bestseller lists and are published in seventeen languages and thirty-five countries around the world. She lives in North Carolina with her family.
To my darling daughter Sarah—
who understands the “creative process”/art of
storytelling like only another former English lit
major/Web site designer/law student can. Thanks for
listening, kiddo. (A lot!) This one is for you.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER ONE
WE HAVE TO STOP MEETING like this, Daisy Templeton thought.
Not that she and Jack Granger were really socializing. Just that, for the last month or so, the two of them had been showing up at the same locations in Charleston, South Carolina, at the same time with disturbing regularity. Sometimes, the handsome attorney said hello and engaged her in the kind of brief chitchat one had with an acquaintance. On other occasions—like tonight—the sexy bachelor kept his distance, remaining clear on the other side of the airport baggage claim.
Daisy knew Jack Granger hadn’t been on her return flight from Switzerland in any case. The tall sandy-haired southerner with the nicely chiseled jaw would have been impossible to miss. But, as company counsel, he certainly could have been somewhere for Deveraux-Heyward Shipping. He was dressed in a dark-blue pin-striped business suit, white shirt, tie. As always, his clothes were sharp, if a little worn.
He had been standing there, arms crossed, leaning up against the far wall, when Daisy walked through the security gate that separated arrivals and departures from the rest of the Charleston, South Carolina, airport. Dark aviator sunglasses on, a cell phone pressed to his ear, he appeared to be waiting for someone or something. But unlike everyone else—Daisy included—who was gathered around the motionless baggage claim, waiting impatiently for their luggage, Jack Granger didn’t seem to care whether the ear-splitting warning buzzer ever sounded. He appeared more interested in whatever was being said to him on the other end of the line.
Not that it should matter to her what Jack Granger was doing, Daisy reminded herself as the red light flashed and the conveyer belt finally began to move. Others crowded in. She wedged her way in once she saw her case, grabbed it by the handle, lifted it off the conveyor belt, pulled up the handle, then wheeled it toward the automatic doors.
The August heat was intense, the South Carolina air was warm, moist and scented with saltwater. Grateful to be back home, even if she wasn’t happy about what she had to do next, Daisy headed quickly for the long-term parking lot, and the car she had purchased six weeks ago after she had been disinherited. Her adopted parents hated the beat-up red sedan with the dented fender, yellowing hood and two pine-green doors, but for Daisy, the reconditioned, decade-old vehicle was a crowning symbol of her achievement. She had paid for the car in cash, using money she had earned as a professional photographer. And it had facilitated her during her search for the truth about her heritage. Now that she was back in the States again, she was going to take herself to confront her biological mother and father.
Eight o’clock, the traffic was light as she headed for the downtown Historic District of elegant homes, to the Hayes residence, where Daisy’s older sister, Iris, resided. The stately lemon-colored three-story home, with the black shutters, double wraparound verandas and mansard roof, was one of the larger homes on Concord Street, opposite Waterfront Park.
Her heart pounding with a mixture of anger and anticipation of the blowup to come, Daisy slammed out of her car, the red accordion file filled with proof in one hand, her fringed buckskin carryall slung over her shoulder, and marched up the steps. Iris’s maid, Consuela, answered the door, and ushered Daisy to the antique-filled morning room, where her much older “sister” was seated.
Iris had on a sleeveless pale-blue summer sweater and slim white skirt, high-heeled shoes that made the most of her slender, elegant, forty-seven-year-old form. A cardigan had been tied neatly across her shoulders. A strand of pearls and matching earrings were the only accessories aside from the heavy diamond wedding and engagement rings Iris still wore, a year after she had been widowed by one of the city’s wealthiest—and in Daisy’s opinion, most repulsive—men. Copies of Vogue and Town and Country magazine were spread across her lap. Mozart was playing on the stereo.
Iris took one look at the expression on Daisy’s face and dismissed her maid with a silken-voiced “That will be all, Consuela. And please, shut the doors behind you.”
Consuela nodded and disappeared as silently as she had come in.
Daisy’s heartbeat kicked up another notch as she regarded the woman who had secretly given birth to her, and then, just as heartlessly, abandoned her child. “Hello, Mother.”
For the first time, Iris’s poise faltered. She put aside her magazines. “Daisy. I didn’t know you were back.”
You mean you were praying I would never come back. “Just got in.”
Iris wet her lips nervously, swallowed hard enough for Daisy to see it. “I don’t know what you found out over there—”
Aware her legs were beginning to tremble with a combination of exhaustion and nerves, Daisy eased into a tapered-back Hepplewhite chair, circa 1790. Unable to help herself—hadn’t she promised herself on the plane she would give Iris a chance to explain, before she tore into her?—Daisy countered ever so quietly, “How about the truth?” How about the end of all my childish dreams? She was only twenty-three, but she felt so much older, now that she knew about all the lies.
“But it’s not anything like what it must seem,” Iris continued.
“Really,” Daisy replied. She studied the mixture of guilt and regret on the older woman’s face, and knew that her long-held hope of finding out to whom she really belonged was not going to bring her the peace of mind, the love and acceptance she had sought. “Then suppose you explain all the documents I have in this file.” Daisy patted the pleated red folder clenched between her fingers on her right hand. “The birth records that say I was born in Switzerland to American citizen Iris Templeton, and not to two tragically killed parents in Norway—as I was always told. Or the travel visa to Norway and then the United States with my name on it, issued to Charlotte and Richard, by the U.S. embassy. Or the story of the scandalous predicament that got you in trouble and landed you in the convent, recounted to me by the long-retired and still very remorseful Sister Agatha.” Suppose you tell me about all the lies. About your affair with a very married man.
Silence fell as the color drained from Iris’s beautiful face. Tears glimmered in her eyes as Iris pressed a hand to her pearls and spoke with difficulty. “I was very young when it happened.”
Not that young. “You were twenty-three—the same age I am now, college-educated and wealthy to boot. I think you could have handled having me if you had wanted to,” Daisy concluded resentfully.
New color dotted Iris’s flawless cheeks. Iris looked Daisy square in the eye. “It wasn’t that simple, Daisy.”
“Right,” Daisy agreed bitterly, tears sparkling in her own eyes, too. She wondered why she had ever hoped, even for one overly idealistic second, that the always contained Iris would tell Daisy what was in her heart, then or now. “You had a fortune to amass, a gross old man to marry.”
Pique simmered in Iris’s pale-green eyes. “I tried to do right by you.”
Daisy blinked, the self-serving audacity of those closest to her as astounding as ever. “How?” she demanded incredulously. “By lying to me? Having everyone else lie to me?” Iris had known how important it had been to Daisy to discover the true circumstances of her birth, that Daisy had been looking, off and on, for the past five years. And never once lifted a hand to help her, or even act as if she understood Daisy’s quest to discover just what it was about her that made her so secretly loathsome in Daisy’s “parents’” eyes. Now, of course, it all made sense. Richard and Charlotte Templeton had seen Daisy as the living proof of their only real daughter’s scandalous indiscretion, and probably worried Daisy would “go wrong,” too. Whereas Iris had been protecting herself and her reputation. What Daisy had needed or wanted or felt hadn’t mattered, still wouldn’t, she admitted miserably. No, when it came to protecting the family’s good name, Daisy and other individual members were completely dispensable.
Iris turned her glance away. “Your adoption was for the best,” Iris stated stiffly.
“For you, maybe,” Daisy replied, her heart aching all the more as she looked around, observing what Iris’s bargain with the devil had earned her. A hefty bank account, all the clothes and cars and jewelry she could ever want and one of the most luxurious mansions in Charleston’s nationally recognized Historic District. “Not for me. Never for me.” But, Daisy realized, Iris was not going to apologize for that, any more than Iris would apologize for pretending to be nothing more than Daisy’s older sister all these years.
Deciding she’d learned as much as she was liable to learn at that juncture, Daisy stood and headed for the door. Iris followed her as far as the front door, before stopping and drawing her folded cardigan closely to her bare shoulders. “Daisy, for pity’s sake. Think of the family’s standing in the community and don’t do anything to create a scandal.”
Daisy shot the woman who had given birth to and then promptly disclaimed her a hard look over her shoulder. “A little too late for that, don’t you think?” As far as she was concerned, the damage—and to be honest there had been a hell of a lot of it—had already been done.
JACK GRANGER HAD BEEN hoping and praying Daisy Templeton wouldn’t show up at Tom Deveraux’s mansion that evening. He didn’t want the impossible task of trying to control the wayward heiress. But it appeared it had fallen to him, nevertheless. Trying to ignore how attractive she looked in the short, pink-floral sundress, fringed suede knee-high boots and dangly turquoise bead earrings, he blocked her path. She was a good bit shorter than he, slender and fit, with sexy legs. Her eyes were blue like a stormy ocean and her sun-kissed blond hair tumbled down around her fair freckled shoulders in loose waves. Her profile was flawless, her chin hitched in determination. She was also eight years younger than he was, in actual years—probably a lot more than that when it came to life experience. And that, plus a lot of other things, made the capricious beauty clearly off-limits to him, Jack reminded himself sternly as he tore his eyes from her soft naturally pink lips. Bracing himself for the emotional argument likely to come, he inclined his head in the direction of Tom Deveraux’s Historic District home and told her flatly, “You can’t go in there.”
Daisy’s eyes gleamed with audacity as she stomped even nearer. “Oh, really.” She propped her hands on her hips. “Says who?”
Jack was close enough to inhale her orange-blossom fragrance. “Says me,” he told her firmly.
“Funny.” Daisy’s soft, kissable lips curved into a taunting smile as she swept around him and headed for the front door. “The last I heard, Jack Granger, you were legal counsel to Deveraux-Heyward Shipping not the bouncer.”
Jack caught up with her before she had a chance to ring the doorbell and again blocked her way. “I still am.”
“Uh-huh.” Daisy looked him up and down in a way that stirred his blood. “Then why are you here tonight, screening guests? Do you provide the same service to the airport?”
She was looking at him with a mixture of suspicion and disdain. So she remembered seeing him at the baggage claim. What she didn’t know was that he had been at the airport only to see if she had made it safely back to the States, and what—if anything—she planned to do upon her return from Switzerland. When she had gone straight to see her sister, Iris, he had hoped—unrealistically, he now saw—that she would leave any confrontations with Tom Deveraux until tomorrow.
“Why aren’t you inside with the others?” Daisy continued. “Why were you sitting out here in your SUV watching that mansion and that party—” Daisy pointed to the Deveraux clan, visible through the windows, milling about in the formal front rooms “—like some little match boy looking in?”
Because that’s exactly what I am, Jack thought. A kid from the docks, who just works for these people. Aware he’d get nowhere if he let his emotions get the best of him, Jack did his best to contain a weary sigh. He faced Daisy stoically. “Because Tom asked me to try and talk to you if you showed up here tonight.” Looking for trouble.
Bitterness clouded Daisy’s Deveraux-blue eyes. “And why did he think I might do that?” she asked in a dangerously soft, sexy voice. She regarded Jack carefully, as if trying to gauge how much he knew. And whether or not it might be possible to get him on her side, instead of his boss’s.
As the seconds—and silence—drew out, Jack ignored the vulnerability suddenly emanating from Daisy. He had a job to do here—it was Tom he was protecting, not her. Jack shrugged and continued to keep his own emotions out of it. “Tom knew you were headed back from Switzerland. That you’d be tired—” and perhaps overwrought “—when you got here.” Not to mention confused, angry, hurt.
Jack had been instructed to provide the strong shoulder to cry on and the voice of reason until Tom could get to Daisy and deal with her tomorrow once she settled down.
“Then he also knows what I found out while I was over there.” Daisy’s vulnerability disappeared as suddenly as it had bloomed. “Perfect.”
Jack ignored the reproach in her tone. “It’s not what it seems, Daisy.”
“Of course not.” Daisy shook her head in mute disapproval. “Which is why Tom Deveraux is suddenly so desperate to keep me away from him and his family.” Daisy reached around Jack and punched the doorbell. Seconds later, Theresa Owens, Tom’s housekeeper answered the door. She was wearing a navy-blue uniform-dress with a white collar. Her auburn hair was drawn into a knot on the top of her head. “I need to see Tom,” Daisy said without preamble.
Theresa hesitated. “This really isn’t a good time, Ms. Templeton. The family is having a private dinner this evening.”
Daisy smiled in a way Jack didn’t begin to trust. “You mean they’re all here,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Even the former Mrs. Deveraux?”
“Yes.”
“Splendid.” Head held high, Daisy pushed past Theresa and advanced through the foyer.
Jack swore silently to himself. Short of dashing after Daisy, tossing her over his shoulder and carrying her out to the curb, there was no way to stop her from making a scene. All he could do now was try to limit the damage. “I’ll handle this,” Jack promised Theresa as he strode after Daisy, who was already following the laughter and marching into the double drawing room, where, from the looks and sound of it, a wonderful, warm and intimate family party was going on.
Tom’s oldest son, Chase, was the first Deveraux to spot Daisy. Champagne in hand, the magazine editor made his way toward her. “Hey, Daisy,” Chase greeted her cheerfully with a kiss on the cheek. “You’re just in time to toast the newest members of the Deveraux clan. Amy and Gabe’s wife, Maggy, are both pregnant. And the entire family is, as you can imagine, thrilled to be expanding.”
Jack noted that news only made Daisy’s expression turn more turbulent. “Too bad that hasn’t always been the case.”
Chase’s forehead creased. As did Amy’s, Gabe’s and Mitch’s, all of whom were standing within earshot. Watching, it was all Jack could do not to groan out loud. There was no telling how Tom’s children with Grace were going to react to the news of their father’s digression years ago. Chase was probably the best bet for understanding. The oldest son, and publisher of the popular Modern Man magazine, had sowed a few wild oats of his own before he married his childhood sweetheart and settled down. Mitch was a possibility, too. The most like his dad, he was a pragmatic businessman, who could always be counted on to see through the murkiness of any situation, get to the bottom line and do whatever was necessary to correct the situation. Third-oldest son Gabe was known for his compassion, and as a critical-care physician, he was no stranger to people’s most private problems. Amy, the baby of the family and the owner of her own redecorating business, was always pulling for a reunification of her divorced parents, despite past hurts. Might not want to start with her, Jack thought.
Unfortunately, even if Tom and Grace’s children eventually understood and accepted what had happened years ago, Tom’s ex-wife, recently unemployed network television mornings-news show host, Grace Deveraux, probably would not. All of which, of course, Jack’s boss, Tom Deveraux, realized. Which was why Tom was glaring at Jack, as if he couldn’t believe the way Jack had let him down, now, of all times.
Desperate to control the damage, Jack grabbed Daisy’s arm and pulled her against him, so her slender back was pressed against his chest. Bad enough, Jack figured, that Daisy had barged in here, uninvited, despite Theresa Owens warning this was not an appropriate time to be a drop-in guest. Tom didn’t need all four of his children, their spouses and his ex-wife, witnessing this confrontation, too. “You don’t want to do this,” Jack murmured persuasively in Daisy’s ear. “Not now. Not this way.”
“The hell I don’t!” Daisy jerked free of Jack’s staying grip and whirled to face him. Temper shimmered in her eyes. “I’ve been hidden in the shadows long enough!”
“Daisy—what are you talking about?” Amy asked, aghast. “What’s wrong?”
Tom threaded his way through the group, while Grace hung back looking, if possible, even more distressed.
Jack wrapped his arm around Daisy’s shoulders companionably and leaned down to whisper in her ear. “I think you’ve made your point, now let’s go,” Jack said firmly. “I’ll make sure you get to talk to Tom alone first thing tomorrow morning.”
“Thanks, but I’d rather make a scene.” Daisy broke loose and strode forward, heading straight for Tom. “No more pretending, Daddy. The secret’s out.”
DAISY’S TEMPER skyrocketed as Amy regarded her father in confusion. “What secret?” Amy demanded, upset. “And why is Daisy so mad at you?”
Even more color drained from Grace’s face. A mixture of guilt and culpability shimmered in her eyes. Which meant, Daisy thought, even more hurt, that Grace had known, too. And had helped—maybe even encouraged—Daisy’s birth father to walk away…and pretend that Daisy had never existed. Or was she the reason Tom and Grace had eventually divorced? Daisy wondered. Or had there been other, even more devastating problems, too?
“Daisy and I need to talk privately,” Tom told everyone in the room sternly.
Deep in her heart, Daisy had hoped that there was a highly romantic and even laudable reason Tom Deveraux had never lifted a finger to rescue her from her unhappy childhood. In the wake of the cold disapproval emanating from him, however, the guilt and the grim resignation, her misguided hopes fled. Like it or not, she had to face it. She had been willfully and wrongly abandoned—by both her birth mother and birth father. Even worse, to this day, neither of her real parents wanted her in their lives. She was to Tom and Grace and Iris, and God only knew who else, exactly what she was to Richard and Charlotte Templeton—a sordid, unwanted reminder of a time best forgotten. Well, no more. She was tired of feeling ashamed, of being blamed for something that was definitely not her doing! “Don’t look to me to perpetuate any more dirty little secrets,” Daisy warned the man who, more than anyone, was responsible for her lifelong unhappiness. Because she wasn’t going to do it!
Mitch frowned as he struggled to make sense of what was going on. “Have you been drinking?” he demanded of Daisy, striding closer.
“Not yet. But as they say, the evening is young,” Daisy continued sarcastically, picking up the bottle of champagne and waving it in front of her like a red flag in front of a bull. “And we have much to celebrate.”
Gabe moved forward and just as promptly removed the heavy dark-green bottle from her hand. “Look, Daisy,” Gabe said, setting the magnum aside, “I don’t know what’s going on here, but you’re obviously upset, and—”
Daisy gritted her teeth, her anger and disillusionment building to an untenable degree. There were times when she welcomed Gabe’s inherently good nature—this wasn’t one of them. “That a medical opinion, brother Gabe, or just a personal observation?” she asked with a saccharine smile.
Trembling visibly, Grace murmured, “God help us,” and sank into a chair, covering her face with her hands.
Tom gave Jack another look, even sterner and more commanding than before. No words were necessary between the two men. Daisy knew what the orders were—Jack was to get her out of the house, pronto. Ever the faithful, loyal Deveraux-Heyward Shipping Company employee, Jack slid an arm around Daisy’s waist and held her tight. “Obviously, Daisy is in no condition to be talking to anyone here tonight. So Daisy and I are going to be leaving now,” Jack announced firmly but pleasantly.
“Not before I tell everyone what I came to tell them,” Daisy said, looking around at the tense, wary expressions on her half siblings’ faces. “That I’m Tom Deveraux’s love child.”
AMY GASPED, Jack grimaced, Grace moaned. All three of Tom’s sons were shocked, silent. “It wasn’t love,” Tom corrected Daisy impatiently.
Yet another illusion down the drain. “A mistake,” Daisy guessed.
“And there’s no proof you’re even my child,” Tom continued, even more defensively.
Daisy reeled at his unwillingness to claim her as his, even now. She knew what a loving father Tom was to his other children, that being a father was one of the primary joys of his life, aside from his work at Deveraux-Heyward Shipping. It was evident in everything he did and said. Hell, he’d even been a surrogate father to his housekeeper, Theresa Owen’s illegitimate child, Bridgett, over the years, out of nothing more than the goodness of his heart. Which made his refusal to claim her, Daisy thought, all the more stinging. Shoulders stiffening, Daisy regarded Tom resentfully. “You’re denying you slept with my birth mother?”
Tom’s jaw clenched. “It was a one-night fling.”
Like that excused and explained everything, Daisy thought even more furiously.
“Daddy! You cheated on Mom?” Amy said.
Tom shook his head and released a short, aggravated breath. “It was one night,” he defended himself impatiently.
“But once, as they say, is enough,” Grace added in a low voice thick with tears.
“Man, Dad.” Chase shook his head.
“I don’t believe this!” Gabe murmured in horror.
Mitch was silent, tense as he struggled to make sense of it, too.
“But you knew you made Iris pregnant,” Daisy continued probing.
Amy blinked and whirled to face Daisy. “Iris…?” she echoed.
“Templeton-Hayes,” Daisy supplied the rest. “My sister. At least the woman I always thought was my adopted sister. Turns out she was really my birth mother and my adopted parents—Charlotte and Richard Templeton—are really my biological grandparents. And Connor is my uncle not my adopted brother. Funny, huh?” Not waiting for a response from the shocked half siblings around her, Daisy turned back to Tom, still struggling to find a way to obtain her own peace of mind. “Which brings us back to you. Why did you turn your back on me?” And please, Daisy prayed silently, let it be good.
Tom uttered another long, tortured sigh. “Because I never knew for certain that you were mine.”
“You never asked?” Daisy regarded him incredulously. How was that possible? A wealthy, self-assured, successful CEO, he wasn’t afraid of anything. And he certainly wasn’t shy about going after what he wanted! Tom ran his hands through his short, gray-brown hair and began to pace. “Iris went to Europe to learn the antique business, after our interlude. It seemed like a good move, a way to get both our lives back on track, and I wished her well.” Tom paused and frowned. “It wasn’t until Richard and Charlotte unexpectedly and suddenly adopted a baby some nine months later that I realized it was possible she’d become pregnant during the encounter and you were mine. So I confronted Iris.”
“And…?” Daisy questioned impatiently.
Tom shrugged his broad shoulders restively. “She denied ever having a child. I asked for a blood test anyway.” Tom scowled, recalling, “She said I would have to sue her publicly to get it, and if I did, she would not only refuse to take the test but countersue me for slander.” He looked at the assembled group, pleading for understanding. “I was trying to put my marriage to Grace back together, Iris was engaged to be married to Randolph Hayes IV in what was shaping up to be the wedding of the year. You were well taken care of, Daisy, with people who loved you and wanted the best for you. It just seemed right to let the matter drop.” Tom paused again, looking even more conflicted. “Even now, I don’t know that you’re actually my child, Daisy. Just that you could be.”
“Well, I am your child,” Daisy countered hotly, incensed that Tom Deveraux could be trying to duck his responsibility, even now, when she had a red accordion file full of proof sitting on the front seat of her car. “At least according to the nuns at the convent in Switzerland, where my mother stayed when she was pregnant.” At Tom’s blank look, Daisy continued explaining, “Iris confided in one of them. Sister Agatha knew all about you. How you led her on, flirted with her for weeks and weeks, and then—one night—took her to bed, and then afterward, after you got caught by your wife, told her to pretend it had never happened.”
The skin across Tom’s cheekbones stretched taut as he glared at Daisy. “You’re making it simple. It wasn’t.”
“Oh, I think it was,” Grace interjected bitterly, standing and addressing everyone in the room for the first time. “Your father screwed around. He got caught. It happens all the time, especially to men of his ilk.”
Chase looked at his mother, surmising humorlessly, “Dad’s infidelity is why you two divorced, isn’t it?”
Tears gleaming in her eyes, Grace nodded and continued matter-of-factly, “Lord knows I tried to put it behind me. I really did. But after that, after I walked in on him and Iris, I could never trust him again.”
Silence fell as everyone contemplated what an ugly scene that must have been, both during and after the philandering.
Mitch looked at Daisy curiously. “What does your birth mother, er, uh, Iris, and the rest of your family—the Templetons—have to say about this?”
“I haven’t talked to Charlotte, Richard or Connor yet,” Daisy said quietly.
“Why not?” Gabe asked gently.
Daisy threw her hands up in mute frustration. “Because they lied to me for years. All of them.” She looked at Tom again, aware there was a part of her, regardless of how angry, that already thought of him as her father. Just as Richard and Charlotte, who had adopted and reluctantly reared her and guided her through childhood, would always remain Mother and Father to her, too. Daisy sighed, and aware Tom was still waiting, still struggling to understand her motivation as desperately as she was trying to comprehend his, continued with a weariness that came straight from her soul, “And I wanted to hear your side of the story first. Now that I have—” Unable to go on, Daisy shook her head at Tom. Her throat aching unbearably, she turned and headed blindly for the door. “I’ve got to get out of here,” she mumbled. And she fled.
TOM FOLLOWED THEM BOTH and stopped Jack in the front hall. Knowing he could trust the Deveraux-Heyward Shipping attorney to do whatever needed to be done, he looked Jack in the eye and told him brusquely, “Go after her. Do whatever you have to do, but stay with her and make sure she doesn’t do anything even more foolish or self-destructive than what she did here tonight.” Tom inclined his head toward the elegant front room where the rest of the family was still gathered. “I’ll take care of things here, and then catch up with both of you later.”
Jack nodded his understanding and headed out after Daisy.
Relieved that was going to be taken care of, Tom strode back into the double drawing room. One mistake. Who the hell would have known one slip could have blown his entire life to smithereens? But it had, and now, judging from the looks on the faces of his kids and their spouses, and his ex-wife, it was about to get much worse. Grace was seated on the antique sofa, her features tight with resentment. Their children were gathered around her, while their spouses mingled uncertainly in the background, not sure whether to stay or leave, only knowing—like Tom and Grace—that this was one hell of a mess the Deveraux were in.
“I’m sorry about that,” Tom said.
“You should be!” Amy cried, as always, the most emotional of the group. She dabbed furiously at the tears on her cheeks. “I can’t believe you would do something like that!” she fumed resentfully. Beside her, Grace seemed to concur.
“Was there just the one indiscretion?” Gabe asked warily, struggling to understand.
Chase regarded Tom with his customary cheekiness. “Or should we brace ourselves for other illegitimate heirs, to liven up our family gatherings?”
Tom glared at his sons. Gabe’s lack of faith and Chase’s sarcasm weren’t helping. Before Tom could censure them, however, his second-oldest son Mitch put in his two cents’. “Chase and Gabe have legitimate questions,” Mitch pointed out, taking his usual businesslike approach. “News like this could affect our reputation in the community. There are some who might not want to do business with Deveraux-Heyward Shipping if we’re embroiled in one scandal after another.”
“There won’t be any more scandals,” Tom said, disappointed in his family’s seemingly united stand against him. “Nor will there be any more illegitimate children showing up on our doorstep. Now, if you kids will excuse us, your mother and I have a lot to talk about.”
As soon as everyone left, Tom closed the doors to the double drawing room, and turned to Grace. “I’m sorry,” he said softly. It was lame, but he didn’t know what else to say.
Grace glared at him with years of pent-up resentment, the look in her eyes making him feel about two inches tall. “You should be, you son of a bitch,” she retorted just as quietly.
Tom wished she would just haul off and slug him and get it over with, instead of continuing to punish him, day after day, year after year. “Don’t hold anything back,” he advised just as sarcastically, wondering how much longer Grace was going to continue to make him pay for this.
Since the divorce, they’d been civil to one another at family functions, for the sake of the kids. Every time they had tried to do more than that, either be friends or something more, the issue of his infidelity would come up and they’d end up fighting again. Tom was tired of the discord. He sensed Grace was, too. But as for how to move on, move past this…
Grace stood and went over to the table where she had left her handbag. Her cheeks pink with distress, she picked it up and head bent, began to rummage through it. Tom studied her, thinking how pretty his former wife looked in the silky turquoise pantsuit. Her blond hair was much shorter these days—worn in attractive layers that framed her face and the nape of her neck—but her figure was still trim, her beautifully girl-next-door face unlined. As always, when he was near her, he found himself wanting to nurture and care for and protect her. Not that she would allow it. Not after what he had done.
“I always knew this was going to happen someday,” Grace said.
Grace glared at him. “I hoped it never would.” She fished out her keys and held them in the palm of her hand. “What are you going to do about Daisy?”
Tom shrugged. Now that he knew what Daisy thought was the truth, he hadn’t a clue. Daisy was one troubled young woman. Tempestuous, wild and unpredictable, and already the talk of Charleston, even without this revelation. The Templetons had spent years trying to control her. To no avail. Tom wondered if what Daisy had been told by Sister Agatha was true. Was Daisy his child? Or had Iris been with someone else in that time frame? And even if he was Daisy’s father, Tom admitted to himself, would he have any better luck, trying to parent Daisy, than Richard and Charlotte Templeton had had, during their tenure, as Daisy’s adopted mom and dad? Aware Grace was still waiting for his answer, Tom said bluntly, “I don’t know. I’ll give her until morning to simmer down, and then see if I can reason with her. And go from there.”
Grace arched her elegant eyebrows in skeptical fashion. “Good luck with that.”
He would need it, Tom admitted. And even then it might not be enough. Just as his apologies over the years hadn’t been enough. “Grace…”
She paused en route to the foyer. Wheeling halfway to face him, she said, “What?”
“You can’t leave.” Tom held out a beseeching hand. “Not like this.”
Grace shook her head, refusing his plea to stay, and at least try to work things out. She regarded him with a mixture of contempt and displeasure. “Daisy isn’t the only one who needs time to cool off.”
GRACE KNEW she shouldn’t have walked out on Tom like that. She should have stayed and tried to work out a way to deal with this very explosive situation. Publicly, it could be disastrous, if word got out right now. She had a new TV show in the works. She didn’t need this kind of bad publicity in the wake of her firing from Rise and Shine, America!
It had been bad enough going from one of the most watched women on morning television, from the coveted cohost position she had held for fifteen years, to being unemployed. But now this…
Grace didn’t know if she could handle living in the same city with Tom again, if she had to confront his illegitimate child—and therefore his infidelity—day after day after day.
It wasn’t that she didn’t want to forget and forgive.
But that she couldn’t.
Lord knew she had tried. But every time he had touched her or tried to kiss her or hold her, she’d ended up flashing back to the day she had found him making love with Iris. Every time she had run into Daisy, or Iris, or any member of the Templeton family, she had experienced the same sick feeling inside her. Along with the feeling that she would never be smart or sophisticated or sexy enough to hold Tom. Not in any real or lasting way. Because if Tom could cheat on her once, the practical side of Grace knew, he could cheat on her again. And eventually, after nearly nine years of trying to work things out, and failing, she had known their marriage had to end. So she’d told him she wanted a divorce. And, in the end, he’d had no choice but to give her what she wanted, because she wasn’t coming back, not to him, and not to his bed.
Lately, of course, that had begun to change. In the wake of her job loss and public humiliation, she had flirted with the idea of trying again. Seeing if maybe she and Tom couldn’t find a way to work things out, to resurrect the love they had once shared. But now, with the resurgence of Daisy in their lives—as his illegitimate daughter no less—she knew she had just been fooling herself. She had to move on. Put him out of her heart and mind forever. And there was only one way, Grace knew, that she would ever be able to do that.
CHAPTER TWO
DAISY COULDN’T BELIEVE Jack Granger was still following her. It had been nearly two hours, and he was still on her tail. She’d been all over Charleston, out to Sullivan’s Island, Kiawah and back to Folly Beach and he was still right behind her in his black SUV, trailing her around the countryside. Not that she cared much one way or another, Daisy told herself as she drove past several rural churches, which were dark and silent that time of night, and into the marshland that comprised much of the island. Ignoring the turnoff for a summer camp, she drove past several large farms and a tomato-packing shed, thought briefly about stopping in at a down and dirty-looking honky-tonk just to see what Tom Deveraux’s “henchman,” Jack Granger, might do about that, and then continued cruising toward the center of the island.
Sooner or later, Daisy told herself as the warm ocean air blew in through her open driver-side window, caressing her body and ruffling her hair, Jack Granger had to get bored or give up and go home. Go back to her uncaring and irresponsible birth father. Something. Anything. So she could go unencumbered where she was really headed for that night. Because right now all she wanted was to be alone. To try and deal. Not that that was going to be easy, either, she acknowledged with a beleaguered sigh. And that was when it happened. The bad day to end all days became even worse as her car began to sputter and shake.
“I don’t believe it.” Daisy swore as her car came to a trembling halt on the side of the two-lane road. She looked at her dashboard, and saw the red light flashing the words Service Engine. Swearing even more passionately, Daisy tried to restart the car. There had to be a gas station around here somewhere. Otherwise she’d have to get a tow truck and another ride.
Jack Granger pulled up behind her. He left his engine and lights on as he stepped out of the car and walked up to her window. He leaned down, like a policeman giving a ticket and rapped on the glass, his jacket off, tie loosened and shirtsleeves rolled up. “Problem?”
She stared straight ahead. “Nothing I can’t handle. Now go away.”
“Sorry.” He remained beside her, hands braced on his hips. “I can’t do that.”
“Suit yourself.” Daisy tried once more to start her car, and then gave up. She took her keys out of the ignition, grabbed her purse, and deciding he could be responsible for getting himself out of her way, bolted out of the car.
“I’ll give you a ride,” Jack said.
“No.” Daisy tucked her purse under her arm and started walking in the direction she’d been headed.
Jack caught her arm and swung her around to face him, his big strong body dwarfing her petite frame. His touch gentling ever so slightly, he regarded her impatiently. “Look, I know you’re a strong, independent woman and all that, but you can’t gallivant around here alone this late at night. It’s not safe.”
Daisy surveyed the rumpled state of his sandy-blond hair, the evening beard lining his face, and knew he had to feel every bit in need of a long hot shower and a good night’s sleep as she did at that moment. Refusing to let him tell her what to do, or when to do it, she merely drawled, “Is that so.”
Half his lips curved upward in a coaxing smile. He held his ground just as resolutely, promising kindly, “I’ll take you where you want to go.”
Daisy sighed. The truth was, she was exhausted from the long flight home, the confrontations with Iris and Tom and the driving around aimlessly. Right now she wanted a safe, quiet place, and a bed to call her own. She didn’t want Jack Granger—or anyone else—knowing where she was, but she supposed at the moment anyway that couldn’t be helped. “Fine,” she said tersely. “Take me to Folly Beach and I’ll direct you from there.”
“THERE” turned out to be a run-down lodge and a dozen or so private cottages in equally miserable shape. Jack knew Folly Beach had been devastated during a particularly bad hurricane some years back, and for a while few had vacationed there because of the huge amount of devastation, but that was once again changing. Expensive vacation homes were cropping up amidst the various businesses and year-round residences.
Jack looked at the weathered buildings, with the unkempt grounds and peeling paint. “If it’s a hotel room you’re needing, we can do a lot better than this,” he said, surveying the faded sign that proclaimed it Paradise Resort. “Let me take you to one of the premium resorts or hotels.”
Predictably, Daisy ignored his attempt to help her. “This’ll do just fine,” she said, her soft lips tightening mutinously as she disregarded his offer and slid out of the car. She slung her purse and camera around her neck, and picked up her red accordion file while Jack reluctantly got her wheeled suitcase out of the rear of his SUV. Taking it from him, she headed for the lodge, leaving Jack no choice but to follow. By the time Jack got inside the lobby, Daisy was already being greeted by a thirtyish woman in cutoffs and a T-shirt. Slender and dark-haired, with lively dark-brown eyes, she had a paint roller in her hand and pale-green paint streaked across one golden-skinned cheek. “Hey, Daisy. I didn’t expect you back so soon!” She paused to rip off a plastic painting glove and extend her hand to Jack. “I’m Kristy Neumeyer—I own this place.”
“Jack Granger.” Jack took her hand and shook it warmly, his regard for the establishment being renovated becoming abruptly more positive. A little elbow grease and some tender loving care would go a long way to making Paradise Resort a top-notch vacation hideaway.
Kristy turned back to Daisy, her pretty smile widening even more. “I thought you were staying in Europe indefinitely.” Kristy easily picked up her conversation with Daisy.
“I’m back.” Daisy said, her weariness abruptly beginning to show. “And I need a place to stay tonight.” Daisy looked at Kristy, as if knowing what a big favor she was asking, under the circumstances. “Can you rent me one of the cottages?”
Kristy regarded Jack curiously, then turned back to Daisy. “Uh… Listen…I…none of the cottages are ready yet. In fact, they’re all in pretty dismal shape. As you can see, I haven’t even gotten the lobby painted.”
“But you and your twins are living here,” Daisy protested.
Kristy held up her hands with a helpless shrug. “Susie and Sally are eight. They just like being close to the beach, and being able to build sand castles and collect seashells every single day.”
“Where are they now?” Jack asked.
“Asleep for the night. Which leaves me free to resume my efforts to spruce up this place enough to get it open for business again. Hopefully, by October fifteenth. Meanwhile, I’m closed to guests.”
“I just need a place to lay my head,” Daisy told Kristy persuasively. “If there’s a pillow and a mattress or even a floor, that’s really all I need.”
Kristy studied Daisy. Understanding passed between them as Kristy realized how badly Daisy needed refuge. “Well, in that case…” Kristy stepped around the paint pan and roller and slipped behind the desk. She lifted a drop cloth, then came up with a key. “You can take cabin six. It’s at the other end.”
“Thanks,” Daisy said gratefully.
“Need help with your luggage?” Kristy asked.
Daisy shook her head. She turned to Jack and offered him a tight you-can-get-lost-now-that-you’re-no-longer-useful smile. “See you around,” she said, grabbing the handle of her wheeled suitcase once again. And then she was gone.
“SO DAISY CONFRONTED her biological father tonight, too,” Richard Templeton said shortly after midnight.
Iris looked at her parents grimly, nodding. Richard and Charlotte had been at a charity function and were still in their evening clothes. As always they made a very striking couple. Both were slim and fit, blessed with elegant, aristocratic looks and an inordinate sense of style, but Iris couldn’t help but note, only her mother looked her age. Mostly because Charlotte refused to take advantage of the latest plastic surgery techniques or dye her chin-length silver hair. Richard, however, had no such compunction. He’d had not one—but two—face-lifts over the years and had been “keeping” his dark-brown hair that hue with regular visits to the salon. All Richard’s efforts to retain his youthful visage had paid off. Although Richard and Charlotte were both sixty-seven, Richard looked a good ten years younger than his wife. Iris knew that bothered her father, but her mother didn’t seem to care.
Aware they were still waiting for her answer, Iris said, “Tom Deveraux called me half an hour ago and told me about the scene Daisy created at his home this evening.” Briefly, Iris explained about the family party Daisy had disrupted.
Charlotte Templeton removed her diamond and sapphire necklace and earrings, and put them back in the case. “And you say Grace Deveraux was there, also?”
“Yes.” Iris watched her father open the safe in the library and put the jewelry case carefully inside, with the others. “Apparently, Grace and the rest of the family were very upset.”
Charlotte frowned, her resentment of the man who had turned her eldest child’s life upside down, evident. “I imagine they would be.”
“Are the children going to tell anyone about this?” Richard demanded.
“Tom made them swear to keep it quiet. Apparently, they all agreed. None of them want to endure the public humiliation of a scandal.”
“That was decent of Grace,” Charlotte said.
Because she was among family, Iris made no effort to hide her dislike of the woman the media had once dubbed America’s Sweetheart. “There was nothing noble about what she did. Grace Deveraux was protecting herself, as much as Daisy and Tom and the rest of their kids,” Iris countered. After all, it was Grace’s fault Iris and Tom had never married. If Grace hadn’t been determined to save her marriage—a marriage that had ultimately failed anyway—Iris could have told Tom about the pregnancy and gotten him to marry her. She would never have had to marry Randolph Hayes IV to get the cash to fill the Templeton-family coffers and save her family from public disgrace. She wouldn’t have had to pretend all these years that she was Daisy’s adopted sister instead of her mother. And best of all, Daisy would’ve been brought up by her real parents.
“In any case, we need to talk to Daisy and make her see reason,” Richard said.
“I agree. And as soon as we find her, I plan to do just that,” Iris said, hoping that by then Daisy would be more willing to listen to their side of things, and continue to keep quiet about what had happened in the past.
“And you’re sure Daisy isn’t at your home?” Charlotte said, looking increasingly worried.
“Consuela has instructions to keep her there, and call me on my cell, if she does show up. So far, nothing.” Iris hadn’t heard from her housekeeper. Which meant Daisy could be anywhere, doing anything.
“What about Connor—has he seen her?” Richard asked, looking equally worried about what the unpredictable Daisy might do. They all knew Daisy was never more prone to act out than when hurting emotionally.
“Not yet. But I called him and told him to be on the alert.” Iris paused. “We’re going to have to tell him what we’ve done, too.”
“We’ll get to that,” Richard promised. “Not that we have anything to worry about when it comes to your brother. He knows how to see both sides of every issue, no matter how complex.”
That was true, Iris knew. Connor was the peacemaker in the family. But even he would probably have trouble dealing with this. Not to mention the fact that he, too, had been lied to many times over the years.
“We can’t let Daisy’s parentage become public knowledge,” Charlotte said. “It would ruin us socially, if people were to know just how we covered up your mistake.”
Which was, Iris thought, part of the problem. Even after all these years, of loving and caring for her, her parents couldn’t quite forget how Daisy had come to be.
Richard looked at Iris in disapproval. “This is your fault, you know. If you had let me instill more discipline in Daisy the way I did in you, Daisy would be following our orders without question instead of causing one episode after another.”
Iris’s insides twisted as she recalled the unrelenting pressure she had received from her father when she was growing up. Richard felt then—as now—he had been helping her to be a better person. And to an extent he was right. His continual upbraiding had made her stronger. Strong enough to save her family by marrying a man years older than herself whom she had never loved or even liked, and still present a happy face to the world. Strong enough to take the family antiques business that Richard had nearly ruined with mismanagement and neglect and turn it into a profitable operation once again. Strong enough to find a way to be happy and content in her life despite all of that.
But Daisy hadn’t needed to go through the same social and emotional regimentation she had. Iris had known that and taken steps to protect her, before giving her baby over to her parents to adopt and rear as their own. “That would have only made things worse,” Iris stated, knowing if she had done one good thing in her life, it had been to protect Daisy from being forced to select a mate and marry for money and social position rather than love. She hadn’t been able to keep her parents from cutting off all Daisy’s funds several weeks ago, but she still hoped—over time—to remedy that, too, and return Daisy to a position filled with choices, rather than one directed by an absence of funds.
“So you’ve said,” Richard returned coolly. He walked to the bar and poured a healthy splash of bourbon into his glass. His expression grim, he regarded her steadily over the rim of his glass. “We’ll see if you still feel that way if that bastard child of yours ruins your reputation—and ours—in the community.”
KRISTY HADN’T BEEN kidding when she said the place still needed an awful lot of work, Daisy thought as she let herself into cottage six and deposited the stack of threadbare linens and hotel-size bar of soap on the water-marked table. The paint was peeling off the walls, rust stains coated the sink and the shower, and the bed—well, lumpy didn’t begin to describe it, Daisy thought, sitting down on the edge of the mattress to test it out. But it was a place to sleep that she could afford. It faced the ocean. Daisy didn’t know why, but sitting and watching the timeless motion of waves rolling onto sand always soothed her. And after the past couple of days, she needed soothing more than she could say. Sighing wearily, Daisy removed her fringed suede boots and socks, grabbed enough change for the soda machine located between the lodge and the cottages, and headed back outside. And that was when she saw Jack Granger checking in to the cottage beside hers.
“What the hell are you doing?” She walked barefoot through the grass to confront him.
“Same as you. Bunking down here for the night.” Jack took the hotel-size bar of soap and stack of threadbare linens Kristy had given him and put them inside cabin five.
“Why?” Suddenly, Daisy was angry. Angrier than she had been the whole night.
Jack removed a cheaply made Paradise Resort toothbrush and tiny bottle of shampoo from his shirt pocket and tossed them onto the stack. “I want to be nearby in case you need anything.”
“Like what?” Daisy retorted, aware that the emotions she had successfully kept under control all evening were beginning to spiral out of control. Way out of control. “The truth?” Her pulse pounding harder with every second that passed, Daisy lingered in the open doorway of his cottage. She glared at Jack resentfully. She didn’t understand why she felt so betrayed by him. She just knew that she did. “You weren’t exactly instrumental in helping me get that in the weeks before I went to Switzerland.” Instead, he’d kept bumping into her, in a way that she now saw was anything but accidental. Kept striking up idle conversation, surreptitiously trying to get closer to her. Not because he was interested in her as a person, or her plight to uncover the mystery of her birth. But because he had been trying to subtly stay one step ahead of her while simultaneously running interference for his boss.
“You never asked me to do that.”
Daisy slanted a glance at the private home some one hundred yards down the beach. Unlike the resort, it looked expensive and brand new. And there was someone—a man maybe—seated on his deck, looking their way.
Annoyed at being observed without her consent yet again, Daisy turned back to Jack. “And if I had asked?” she wondered out loud.
Jack shrugged his broad shoulders and came back outside to stand in the warm, salt-scented breeze. “I couldn’t have helped you because I didn’t know until tonight exactly what the connection between you and Tom was.”
Daisy listened to the waves crashing into shore, on the other side of the sand dune. “But you knew there was a connection,” she said as the sea oats waved in the wind.
A guilty silence fell between them. Eventually, Jack looked back at her and said very carefully, “I knew for a fact that Tom was worried about you, that he’d heard from his daughter, Amy, that you had hired Harlan Decker to help find your birth parents. Tom knew those things sometimes went badly or turned out in ways people didn’t expect. Because of that, he felt you might need some help, and that if that was the case, he was prepared to give it.”
“Why?” Daisy asked doubtfully.
“Because he’s, by nature, a generous, compassionate man. Because you were friends with his children, moved in the same social circles, worked as a photographer for the entire Deveraux family and their various businesses. Maybe it was just due to the fact that he had watched you get into one scrape after another as you grew up and just didn’t want to see you get in any more! Who cares what precisely the connection might be or why he would want to help you get your life under control again? He just did.”
Daisy studied him skeptically. “And I’m supposed to believe that?”
“Believe what you want,” Jack advised her roughly. “It’s the truth. Tom never told me you were—or might be—his biological daughter.”
But had Jack guessed as much on his own? Daisy wondered. And if Jack had, how did that figure into his feelings about her? Was he, like everyone else who knew the truth, seeing her as Tom’s bastard child—somehow less acceptable than Tom’s other kids? Was she a problem to be solved? A liability to be handled? Lawyer style, of course.
Daisy continued to study Jack, certain he was still withholding every bit as much as he was telling her. “And yet you were all too willing to stand guard in front of his mansion tonight,” she probed, wanting desperately to hear the rest of it, whatever it was. “Why?” Had Tom warned Jack there might be trouble? And left it at that?
Jack sighed, his exasperation with her obvious. He gave her a censuring look. “I work for him, Daisy.”
Once again, Daisy decided, that was only half the truth. The half Jack wanted her to know. “As Deveraux-Heyward Shipping’s legal counsel, but my parentage doesn’t have anything to do with that.” Daisy paused warily. “Or does it?” Her mouth dropped into a round “oh” of surprise as the next thought occurred. “Don’t tell me Tom thinks I’m going to come after a piece of his family company!”
Jack shrugged and stepped closer, his nearness setting off all her internal alarm bells. “As a potential heir, I suppose you could try.”
“But you wouldn’t let me succeed,” Daisy guessed unhappily.
His intent, golden-brown eyes narrowed. “I’ll do whatever Tom tells me to do.”
Despite her determination not to show him any emotion whatsoever, she found herself backing away as she asked sweetly, “Even mix business with personal and spend the entire evening coming after me?”
Jack didn’t say anything, but then he didn’t have to. Daisy had only to look into his eyes to know that he was still following orders from her birth father, and probably withholding information from her, too. “Never mind,” Daisy muttered in disgust. She was not sure why it mattered to her at all, but she had not wanted Jack to be there for any reason other than genuine concern for her, and what she was going through. Realizing that wasn’t the case, or anywhere near it, she strode past him, her temper climbing with every second that passed, and headed for the refreshment cove, located on the outside of the main lodge. The covered, concrete-floored portico had an ice dispenser and vending machines containing snacks and beverages. She put in her change, pushed one button. Nothing happened. She punched her fist against the next and the next. Finally, on the fourth try, a can of root beer—which she detested—tumbled through the machine and out of the slot. Daisy picked it up and popped open the top. Aware of Jack loitering just behind her, she held it to her lips and drank a big gulp of the sweet icy-cold liquid.
She wiped the excess moisture off her lips with the back of her hand, and slowly turned around to face him. Wordlessly, he moved by her, and put some change into the machine, too. He also got a can of root beer. Looking content to be there all night, if need be, he popped the top and took a sip.
Daisy didn’t know why Jack was getting to her—maybe it was the way he kept watching over her in that infuriatingly calm and deliberate manner—but she was determined to get a rise out of him. It was the only way, she calculated with a certain weary reluctance, she would ever get rid of him. And that was what she wanted most of all, because she didn’t like seeing herself and her inability to control her feelings reflected in his eyes. “It’s not going to work, you know,” she told him sassily as she leaned against the weather-beaten wooden post.
“What?” Jack asked, taking up a position opposite her.
Her throat unaccountably dry, Daisy watched him take another lazy drink of root beer. “You’re not going to win Tom Deveraux’s approval this way.” She looked him over from head to toe before returning her taunting gaze, ever so vampishly, to his eyes. “That is what this is about, isn’t it?” she queried softly, refusing to accept defeat, knowing this was one—maybe the only—battle she would win. “Your running interference with me for Tom, is simply a way to get in his good graces, to make him think of you as something more than an employee.”
Jack’s broad shoulders expanded against the starched cotton fabric of his white shirt. “Why would you think I would be interested in that?” he asked gruffly.
Knowing she had hit a nerve, Daisy rolled her eyes and continued goading him relentlessly. “Come on. It was all over your face tonight when we were at the Deveraux mansion.” The look in Jack’s eyes, as they had stood outside, had matched what Daisy had been feeling, not just at that moment, but all her life—like she was the little match girl, looking in. Wishing she could join the party. And feel loved and wanted. Like she belonged in such a warm and wonderful place. Only it couldn’t have been that wonderful after all, she reminded herself firmly, or Tom wouldn’t have stepped out on Grace. He wouldn’t have slept with Iris and, in the process, both made a baby and destroyed the happiness of his family.
“What was on my face?” Jack shifted his weight restlessly, abruptly looking as on edge and ready to do combat as she.
Raw emotion. The kind of vulnerability that was missing now that he had his guard up once again. Determined to pierce his armor the way he so easily seemed able to get through hers, Daisy taunted him softly, “You were mortified that you weren’t able to keep me from crashing that Deveraux family party tonight. You were afraid that Tom was going to be ticked off at you—which he clearly was. So now you’re trying to make it up to him by keeping me in your line of vision.”
To her disappointment, Jack didn’t even try to deny it. “You could have tried harder to lose me,” he said, as if he could have cared less how the evening turned out.
“Maybe I didn’t want to,” Daisy baited Jack lazily. “Maybe I was curious.”
The muscles in his shoulders and chest becoming more pronounced, Jack drained his root beer and tossed the can into the trash barrel next to the soda machine. He turned back to her, his expression grim. “About what?” he demanded curtly.
Daisy rubbed her bare toes against the cool concrete. She knew sparring with Jack this way was dangerous. But she couldn’t help it. She needed an outlet for her anger and frustration. Like it or not, this was it. “How far you’d go—or not go, as the case might be—to please Daddy Dearest. For instance—” Able to see she was getting to Jack at long last, Daisy let her lips curve in a soft, goading smile and tossed her soda can, too. “Would you deny yourself a chance to sleep with me?” Ignoring the racing of her heart and the weak funny feeling in her knees, Daisy held Jack’s eyes and undid the string tie at the back of her neck. When he didn’t move—didn’t react in any way—she reached behind her recklessly and released the zipper on her sundress.
Jack’s expression grew even grimmer, more forbidding. Although obviously aroused, he was not in the least bit amused by her antics. “Don’t do this,” Jack said.
“Why not?” Wanting to annoy him the way he had her, Daisy pushed the fabric past her hips, and stepped out of it. Her heart was pounding so hard she could hear it in her ears. “Am I getting to you?”
His eyes narrowed. “Put your dress back on,” he ordered roughly.
“I don’t think so.” Daisy reached for the clasp on her strapless bra.
He caught her hand before she could undo it. Perspiration beaded on his temple. “This won’t help your situation.”
Daisy laughed, softly and bitterly. “You mean it won’t help you to be caught sleeping with the boss’s other daughter.”
His fingers gently encircling her wrist, he forced her hand down between them. “It wouldn’t help either of us,” he said sternly.
More tired than she could ever say, of being told what to do, think, even feel, Daisy replied back, “We’ll just see about that.” And before Jack Granger could respond, she stood on tiptoe, wrapped her free hand around the back of his neck, tilted his head down and pressed her lips to his.
CHAPTER THREE
JACK KNEW he could get fired for this, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself from responding to the fervor of her soft lips, any more than Daisy seemed able to put an end to what she was doing. Not that Jack hadn’t known going into this assignment that Daisy Templeton was wild and reckless to a fault. But this was something different, Jack realized as Daisy flattened the softness of her breasts against his chest as she kissed him. Even through the starched cotton of his shirt, and the transparent lace of her bra, he could feel her nipples budding, her skin heating.
“No,” he said, tearing his mouth from hers. Afraid of what might happen if he didn’t call a halt to this, and soon, he took her abruptly by the shoulders. Doing his best to keep his eyes from straying lower, to the tempting curves spilling out of her next-to-nothing underclothes, he forced her inside, to the safety of her cabin. “No.”
The misery pouring out of her faded, ending the possibility that she might just burst into tears and get rid of her pent-up emotions that way. As Daisy locked glances with Jack, hurt flashed in her eyes, then defiance. And unbelievably, Jack knew he was in an even worse quandary than before. He was the protector here, the defender. Not the man who took advantage…of any woman in turmoil.
“Okay.” Daisy smiled fiendishly and stepped back, reached behind her once again, and successfully unfastened her bra. She whisked it off and let it drop to the floor.
Jack immediately grew hard as a rock—like never before. He swallowed again, his whole body aching, and pretended he didn’t want to give Daisy what she was asking—no, begging—for. “Cut it out,” he told her grimly.
“Nope.” Daisy continued to hold his gaze as she tucked her thumbs into the edges of her thong panties, and slid them down, to reveal her downy soft curls.
Jack tried to appear unaffected by Daisy’s striptease, but it was impossible. She was without a doubt the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Her skin glowed with vitality, her breasts high and full and round. Her nipples were as rosy and tempting as ripe raspberries. Her stomach flat and sexy, her mound covered with curls a shade darker than her wavy blond hair.
Delighting in his perusal, she lifted her arms above her head and stretched. Slowly, deliberately, she pirouetted, giving him ample time to study her tiny waist and curving buttocks, the long slender thighs, firm calves, trim ankles and dimpled knees. Turning all the way back to face him, she smiled again, and reached for a towel on the rack. “I think I’ll go for a swim.”
Not naked, she wasn’t. The last thing he needed was to have her either arrested—or assaulted—on the beach. And given that even the private beaches such as this were patrolled periodically during the evenings by local law enforcement, Jack moved to block her way. “You can’t do that,” he told her firmly. “Not without a swimsuit.”
“Sure I can. You can, too.” She sashayed forward, tucked her fingertips in the front of his trousers. “Haven’t you ever skinny-dipped?”
“Put your clothes on, Daisy. Now,” he ordered gruffly and succinctly.
“Why?” She batted her eyelashes at him flirtatiously and continued to play the vamp. “Am I bothering you?”
More than you could ever know.
“Just go to bed,” Jack continued to suggest with deceptive casualness. And sleep off your hurt and your fury.
“Sure thing.” Daisy sashayed closer in a drift of orange-blossom perfume. “But only if you join me.”
His heart thudding at the seductiveness of her smile, Jack asked in a taut, strangled voice, “Why are you doing this?” And why was he even considering giving in to temptation and making her his? Especially when he could see she was nearly as apprehensive as she was eager.
“I think the real question is, why are you resisting?” Daisy went up on tiptoe, linked both hands around his neck, and like a daring kid playing a game of Truth or Dare, pressed her nude body against the clothed length of his.
The heat of his desire burned through Jack’s skin. And it was all he could do not to tumble her back on the bed and see how silky wet and sweetly accommodating he could make her. “You know the answer to that.” As much as he wanted to make love to her—here, now—using her that way would hurt her, and Jack did not want her to suffer any more pain. She’d borne enough at the hands of her family.
Daisy’s Deveraux-blue eyes glimmered with a mixture of relief and wounded pride. “What I know,” she stated in a low tone, “is that you’re afraid and I’m bored. And I hate to be bored.”
Her chin set stubbornly, she moved past him toward the door. Jack caught her by the arm before she could step outside the cabin. He could see that she had been torn apart inside by the lies and the betrayal. But making love out of spite was no way to fix the mess she was in. All that would do, Jack knew, besides potentially cause him to lose the job he had worked long and hard for, was increase her emotional devastation. Maybe not now, while blindly reaching out for any comfort or distraction she could find, but when her frustration with the situation, with those close to her, subsided, Daisy would regret her rash behavior here tonight. Of that, he was very sure. Just as he was certain he would not be able to just talk her down. “You’re hell-bent on stirring up even more trouble tonight, aren’t you?”
Daisy shrugged her slender shoulders, attempting unsuccessfully to break free of him once again. “I have to give them something to talk about. The way I see it—” the corners of her lips turned down mutinously “—I have just enough time to get arrested and make the morning papers.”
Not on his watch, she wasn’t, Jack thought. Not after what she had already pulled earlier, when she had gotten past him and crashed the Deveraux-family gathering. Using his firm but gentle grip on her wrist, he reeled her in, not stopping until she was positioned close against him once again. With his free hand, he smoothed the silky blond hair from her cheek and tilted her face up to his. They weren’t even kissing yet, and he was already throbbing. “This is really what you want?” he said, making sure they were clear. “To go to bed with me?”
“Yes,” Daisy said even more stubbornly. “It is. But if you’re not going to play—”
“Oh, I’ll play all right,” Jack said. If it was the only way to keep her out of jail and out of the papers. “I’ll play,” he repeated softly. And then he did what he had been wanting to do for what seemed like forever. He traced the sexy bow-shaped outline of her lips with the pad of his thumb and slowly, deliberately, lowered his mouth to hers.
IN THE PAST, the only thing Daisy had changed more than her colleges or her clothes was the men in her life. With the exception of one disastrous roll in the hay, which was over almost before it began, she had no sexual experience with guys, save the occasional boring kiss—and with good reason. She got rid of her dates before they could make demands or try to get close to her, place demands on her.
Now, as Jack Granger wrapped her in his arms and folded her against the warm, strong length of him, kissing her hotly and thrillingly all the while, she wondered what she had been saving herself for. It wasn’t as if she believed in marriage. Or even, at this point, love. On the other hand, sex was supposed to be great. And Jack Granger was the kind of man who knew what he was doing in the sack, she reasoned securely, the kind of man who could and would give a woman pleasure. And right now Daisy was desperate for even a smidgen of happiness in her life, no matter how fleeting. She wanted that and she wanted revenge on all those who had hurt her. Jack Granger was perfect for both. And they both knew it.
Moaning softly, she let him guide her over to the bed. He let her go long enough to throw a sheet over the bare mattress, and while she watched, dry-mouthed and trembling, shuck his clothes. The next thing she knew, that Adonis-beautiful body was next to her again, and the two of them were tumbling down onto the bed. It had felt lumpy earlier. Now, with Jack draped overtop her, kissing her, touching her, their berth felt like sweetest heaven. She had never experienced desire like this, and an overwhelming flood of emotion swept through her, as timeless, as unstoppable as the tides, as he stroked her, gently and ephemerally, until something wonderful was happening to her, something beyond her control. And yet, even as he spread her thighs and prepared to enter her, she wasn’t afraid. She could feel his iron control as he entered her with aching slowness, kissing her all the while, letting her body adjust to the size and pulsing heat of him.
He took his time possessing her, lifting her hips in his hands, adjusting the angle of penetration until it was just so, until she was kissing him back madly and rocking urgently in rhythm with him. Until he was reaching that sought-after inner place, the one guaranteed to send a woman over the edge. And he did, Daisy thought as she moaned softly and shattered and fell apart in his ever-so-capable hands.
Seconds later, Jack followed in a blissful, overpowering rush of sensation and the two of them collapsed together, breath still coming rapidly. Unhappily, though, the physical release did little to ease the deeply lonely and conflicted way Daisy was feeling inside. Too late, she realized, even having a fling with an accomplished lover would do nothing to make her forget or feel better. Oh, Jack knew the moves, all right. He could even make her come, without half trying, which was something no one else had ever even come close to doing, but he couldn’t touch her heart or her soul. And without that, Daisy realized sadly, there really was no connection. Not one that meant a damn anyway. Once again, Daisy mused as she extricated her body from Jack’s and curled onto her side, facing away from him, she was adrift and alone. She knew who she was now, where she’d come from. She’d even made love with a man successfully. But sadly, nothing of importance in her life had changed.
TOM SLEPT very little during the night. At 6:00 a.m., he finally got up and shaved, showered and dressed. Going down to the kitchen, he found Theresa getting a tray of lemon-blueberry muffins out of the oven. He nodded at the sugary confection. “Pack a half dozen or so of those in a paper bag for me, please.”
Theresa did as he asked and handed it to him wordlessly. Relieved his longtime housekeeper was sensitive enough to appear not to recall what had happened the night before, Tom murmured his thanks and walked out to his Jaguar.
Banking on the fact that Grace had been no more able to rest than he, given the tumultuous turn their lives had taken, Tom drove the short distance through the downtown Historic District of residential homes to the single house Grace had leased from their daughter-in-law, Lauren. As usual, parking in the area was limited. It took him a while to find a space. When he did, he doubled back to her place, saw a light on upstairs and what looked to be movement behind the lacy white curtains. Feeling more confident now—that his ex-wife was not only awake but up, he took his cell phone out of his pocket and dialed. Grace picked up on the second ring. Working to conceal his uneasiness, he said, “It’s me. I’m on the front stoop.”
He stepped back so she could see him. Saw the curtains part. He lifted the bag of muffins and continued speaking quietly into the phone. “I brought breakfast. We need to talk, Grace.”
“Tom…” Just one word. Her reluctance was evident.
Refusing to take no for an answer, Tom said, “Come to the door, Grace,” and severed the connection before she could argue further.
Seconds later, he saw a slender silhouette coming down the stairs through the frosted glass on either side of the portal. The lock turned and the door opened. Grace was in a satin robe and, it appeared, to Tom’s discomfort, little else. Her cheeks were flushed, her lips unusually red, almost chapped. “This isn’t a good time.”
It was a perfect time, Tom disagreed silently, aware all over again how sexy Grace was when she had just tumbled out of bed, with her hair mussed and her eyes still soft with slumber. Their divorce had done nothing to limit his desire for her. Tom knew he would always want her. Even if she never again wanted him. That was just the way it was.
Grace continued to regard Tom resentfully.
Which wasn’t a surprise to Tom, either.
For years, he and Grace had had this secret hanging over them, curtailing their closeness. Now that Daisy’s parentage was out in the open, at least as far as the family went, anyway, the two of them could finally begin dealing with his infidelity and Daisy’s presence in their lives. Tom knew there was anger and disappointment in him among Grace and their kids, but even that was probably less than the disappointment he felt in himself. Even now, years later, he found it difficult to believe he had been foolish enough to throw it all away for one clandestine tumble in the sack. But he had, and like it or not, they all had to deal with that, and hopefully, at long last, just move on.
“I still want to come in,” Tom repeated flatly. Not waiting for an invitation that was unlikely to come anyway, he brushed past her.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” a low male voice said.
Tom stopped, shocked, and looked up. A buff, long-haired man the same age as their sons stood at the top of the stairs. He was naked except for the towel around his waist as he came down the stairs, acting more like the man of the house than Grace’s yoga instructor.
The color in Grace’s cheeks went from pink to white. She held out an imploring hand. “Paulo, please.”
Jealousy ripping through his gut, a muscle working in his cheek, Tom swung back around to his ex-wife. “A little early for a naked yoga lesson, isn’t it?” he asked sarcastically before he could stop himself.
“She asked you to go,” Paulo said as he joined them at the foot of the stairs.
“Gladly,” Tom said. Feeling as if he’d been kicked in the gut by a mule, Tom thrust the bag of baked goods at Grace and said sourly, “Enjoy your breakfast.”
Pushing Paulo aside with one hand, Grace followed Tom out onto the stoop. “Tom…”
When he kept going, her delicate hand curved around his arm, tightening until he stopped his flight. Tom tensed. Whatever she was going to say, he didn’t want to hear it. He continued looking out at the street. “We’re even, right?”
Grace moved around, so Tom had no choice but to look into her face. “What do you mean?” she asked, clearly upset.
Tom pried her fingers from his bicep. He stepped back a pace. “You paid me back. In spades.”
Hurt flashed in her eyes at his low, brutal tone. Her lower lip trembled with resentment. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Didn’t she? Tom wondered. “You caught me with Iris. Now I’ve caught you screwing Paulo. We’re even, okay?”
“You don’t have to be crude,” she admonished coldly.
Tom lowered his face to hers, his mood more dangerous than it had been in years. “And what should I be, Grace?” he retorted caustically, wanting to wound her the way she had just hurt him. “Understanding? You sure as hell weren’t!”
Grace compressed her lips together tightly. “We were married then,” she reminded Tom angrily.
And we should still be married now, Tom thought bitterly. If she hadn’t been so damn stubborn and unforgiving. The cell phone in his pocket began to ring. Tom looked at the caller ID screen, saw it was Jack Granger. Probably with news about Daisy. “I have to get this,” he said.
“Of course.” Grace abruptly turned on her heel and headed back toward Paulo, who was lounging in the portal.
Good thing, too, Tom noted, because other residents on the street were beginning to stir. Interior lights going on, exterior lights going off. Others stepping out to get their morning paper and head to work or out for a jog. Turning his back to Grace and Paulo, Tom answered the call and demanded, “Yeah, what do you have?”
“Daisy spent the night or most of it at the Paradise Resort on Folly Island,” Jack replied, sounding no less stressed and out of sorts than Tom felt.
Tom frowned. “I thought they closed that eyesore last year, when the owner died.”
“They did. The new owner is fixing it up. She’s a friend of Daisy’s and she let us both stay here, although the accommodations are less than stellar.”
“Are you still there?”
A brief hesitation on the other end. “Yes.”
“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.” Tom ended the call, then turned back to his ex-wife, who was scowling at him as resentfully as ever.
“Just go,” Grace said, indicating with a lift of her hand she didn’t want to hear it. Figuring he’d had enough turmoil for one morning, Tom did as she asked and headed back for the Jaguar. What the hell had he been thinking? Tom berated himself grumpily as he drove away. Hoping Grace might finally be willing to work through this problem if not actually forgive him for a misjudgment? Nearly twenty-four years had passed since he’d been with Iris and his ex was still out to punish him, as readily as if it had happened the day before. His involvement with Iris Templeton would never be forgiven. Not ever.
JACK GRANGER WAS WAITING for Tom outside cabin five. He was unshaven, bleary-eyed and wearing the same clothes he’d had on the night before. Not, Tom thought, necessarily a good sign. “Where is she?” Tom demanded, anxious to talk to Daisy. Alone this time. Father to daughter.
“I don’t know,” Jack admitted reluctantly, his low voice as grim as Tom’s mood. “She took off with my SUV, one of my credit cards and all my cash sometime during the night.”
In all the years Jack had worked for Tom, Tom had never known Jack to be foolish or careless. “How the hell did she manage that?” he demanded.
“I don’t know,” Jack said, sounding even more uncomfortable as he tugged at the knot of his tie. “I was asleep when it happened.”
Tom blinked. “With the door unlocked?”
Jack flushed with embarrassment and looked all the more chastened as he admitted reluctantly, “We were…uh, in the same cabin.”
The bad mood Tom had put on hold reared up again. Hands knotted in fists at his sides, he glared at Jack. “You spent the night in the same cabin with my daughter?”
Jack shrugged, the guilty look in his eyes increasing. “That wreck of a car she’s been driving lately broke down. She wanted to come here. I gave her a lift. She checked into cabin six. I checked into cabin five. She was upset and about to do something really reckless and crazy.”
“And you stopped her,” Tom guessed.
Jack looked away before admitting, “Yeah.”
“How?” Tom asked, not liking the sound of this, not one bit.
Silence.
“Don’t tell me you slept with her.”
What the hell was Jack supposed to say to that? He wanted to protect Daisy and keep what had happened between them strictly between the two of them. But he couldn’t lie to the man who he had looked up to as a trusted mentor. Especially when he knew, given her impetuous nature, that Daisy would probably announce the tryst to her biological father anyway.
Figuring it would be best coming from him, Jack reluctantly owned up to his mistake. “I—we—didn’t mean for it to happen,” Jack said, knowing all the while that even if the impulsive one-night stand had meant something to him, it had been nothing more than yet another form of payback for Daisy.
“The hell you didn’t,” Tom exploded as his fist came flying toward Jack.
Too stunned and disbelieving to duck, Jack took a right cross on the jaw. The impact knocked him off his feet and sent him flying into the exterior cabin wall. The next thing Jack knew, he was lying on the ground. Tom was standing over him, fists clenched, more angry and disapproving than Jack had ever seen him. Chest heaving, Tom instructed fiercely, “I don’t care what you have to do, but you find her, goddamn it. And when you do—” Tom paused, to let his words sink in “—you bring her to see me.”
BUCKY JEROME’S FATHER was waiting for him when he arrived at the Charleston Herald newspaper offices at five minutes after eight that morning.
With a pointed look at the clock to let his son know he was late and a jerk of his severely balding head, Adlai Jerome motioned Bucky into his office. Adlai gave Bucky another long assessing look, focusing on Bucky’s spiked black hair, rumpled khaki’s and trendy shirt, letting Bucky know he didn’t approve of his son’s “look” any more than he liked Bucky’s writing. Which was no surprise, Bucky thought, sighing inwardly. He and his “button-up-shirt-and-tie” father had been at odds as long as he could remember. “I’m putting you on the society beat,” Adlai said.
The society beat! His entire 5'8" frame stiffening with tension, Bucky plopped down on the leather sofa in the publisher’s office and stared at his father, knowing Adlai too well to think this was a joke. His dad was one of the original hard-asses, loaded with money in his own right but determined to own and manage the paper that had been in their family for generations, instead of selling out—for millions—to one of the big chains. Bucky respected his father’s determination to make it on his own regardless of their family’s personal wealth. He didn’t like Adlai’s theory that everyone—whatever their pedigree—must begin their work career at the very bottom.
Adlai shrugged and gave Bucky a look, like, What did you expect? “You said you wanted off the obits,” Adlai explained, “so I’m moving you to the society page. Specifically, the ‘Around the City’ column.”
He’d gone to Duke and worked his ass off for four years for this? “Shirley Rossey already writes that,” Bucky argued, not about to take what he considered a demotion lying down.
“Not anymore.” Adlai took a sip of inky-black coffee, poured from the pot in the newsroom that was, Bucky knew, almost never washed. Just filled and refilled and refilled again. Which, of course, made any coffee brewed in it taste like something from the bottom of a trash barrel.
“She’s being bumped up to lifestyles editor,” Adlai continued explaining in the don’t-give-me-any-crap tone he always used with Bucky. “I’m promoting from within instead of hiring from the outside. So you’re it, Bucky.” Adlai looked at Bucky over the rim of his Charleston Herald mug, which was washed almost as much as the pot. “I want you covering every event. And be sure you take lots of photos. The folks in Charleston like to see their pictures in the paper, especially when they are all gussied up.”
Bucky scowled at his father and gripped the double latte he’d gotten at Starbucks on his way over. “This isn’t fair,” he told Adlai grimly. “I want to do something important.”
Adlai dropped into his swivel chair and turned his attention back to the stack of papers on his desk. “You want to run this paper someday, you’ve got to learn it from the ground up, just like I did. And that means working every single department, Bucky.”
When Adlai had first laid out the deal to his son, Bucky hadn’t taken his father literally on that particular point. He’d figured after his initial mind-numbing stint in the classifieds sales office last summer that he’d work as a reporter for like a year, and then move into the editorial offices alongside his father. Too late, he was beginning to see that might never happen. That he should have tried harder to find a job on one of the big city papers when he had graduated from Duke instead of returning to Charleston.
Desperately, Bucky tried to change his father’s mind. “You promised me the police beat.”
“And you’ll get it,” Adlai agreed smoothly, taking another sip of coffee, “just as soon as you learn how to make even the most mundane interesting.”
Bucky scowled, knowing it would be futile to argue further. Once his father had made up his mind, that was that.
“And concentrate on getting as many under forty mentions as those forty and above,” Adlai cautioned as Bucky pushed to his feet. “We’ve had complaints recently that section of the paper is getting too stodgy.”
No kidding, Bucky thought, trying hard to think how to turn this situation around. The assignment might not be what he wanted, but he was certain if he was smart, he could make it work to their mutual advantage just the same. After all, where there was smoke there was fire and where there was a lot of money there was usually scandal. It was just up to him to uncover it. “Assuming I take this position,” rather than quit, “you’ll give me free rein? I can write it like the gossip columnists in the New York City newspapers?”
Already losing interest in the conversation, Adlai began booting up his computer. “You have to concentrate on the people who actually live here or are visiting the Charleston area. But yes, as long as it’s not actionable, or too editorialish, you can do what you want. Your goal should be to get people so excited about reading ‘Around the City’ that they’ll turn to that section of the newspaper the moment they pick up their papers.”
Bucky knew that was the same stock advice his father gave to all the journalists on his paper, with the exception of the obits. There, Adlai just cautioned that the items should be the best obits—the most concise, loving and compassionate—anyone had ever read. But Bucky was going to take Adlai’s advice to heart anyway, and use the column to make a name for himself.
“Who knows,” Adlai continued in an obvious effort to motivate Bucky to do his best, “if it’s good enough, snippets of your column could even get picked up and run in other papers, too.”
He was right about that, Bucky mused. They did have at least one national celebrity in their midst. Grace Deveraux. Who, rumor had it, was currently seeing some model-type half her age. If he could get something on that, something factual and not actionable, proving the relationship wasn’t just a platonic one, maybe it would get picked up by other newspapers. Or get him noticed by one of the big outfits in New York City.
Adlai handed Bucky a typewritten sheet of paper. “Here’s a list of society parties and other gala events this week. Make sure you put in an appearance at all of them.”
“No problem,” Bucky said, his spirits already lifting as he savored the excitement and notoriety ahead. Adlai might think he’d just given Bucky a low-level assignment, but nothing could have been further from the truth.
CHAPTER FOUR
“SO, SHE GOT YOUR SUV, your AMEX card and three hundred in cash from your wallet,” Harlan Decker stated as he sat back in his swivel chair and lit a cigar.
Jack nodded and looked over at the casually dressed private investigator, feeling damn embarrassed. As always, the burly ex-cop was dressed like a tourist, in a loud shirt, knee-length plaid shorts, wide-brimmed straw hat, knee-high crew socks and well-worn running shoes. He had a camera slung around his neck and a street map sticking out of his shirt pocket. His face and neck were sunburned, his gray hair damp with perspiration from the heat and humidity outside. Jack knew Harlan’s disguise worked like a charm—Harlan could wander in practically anywhere, look a little lost and distracted, and not be paid any mind. He was also an ace at both uncovering and keeping secrets.
Too tense to stay seated for any length of time, Jack got up to pace the P.I.’s office. Knowing he could trust Harlan to guard the Deveraux family and shipping company’s reputation the way he always had, Jack warned, “Tom doesn’t want any publicity. This is a private family matter. He wants it to stay that way.”
Harlan’s glance cut to the bruise on Jack’s face. Too discreet to inquire how that might have occurred, Harlan picked up his pen and asked, “How much money did Miss Templeton have on her own, do you know?”
“Probably not much,” Jack predicted, worrying a little about that. The lack of ready cash, combined with her need to stay hidden, could lead Daisy to some dives that were not necessarily safe. Jack didn’t want to think about anything happening to her, especially when he was the one who had prompted her to take off the way she had. If only he had been able to walk away from temptation and contain his lust for her…. The situation might be very different now. Jack let out a long, self-effacing breath, aware Harlan was waiting for him to continue. “As you probably already know, since you just got finished doing a job for Daisy yourself, the Templetons cut Daisy off weeks ago and she just returned from several weeks in Switzerland that, according to Amy, had Daisy down to her last couple of bucks.”
Harlan made a note on the pad in front of him. “I’ll start checking the airports and train stations, but my guess is she’s still driving your SUV.”
That was Jack’s theory, too.
“Less chance of her movements being traced.”
And more of a chance of being arrested and creating a situation embarrassing to both families. If there was one thing Daisy Templeton was interested in, it was payback. And Jack had the feeling she wouldn’t rest until she’d gotten it. Knowing how upset she still was and, Jack admitted reluctantly, probably had every right to be, he slid his hands in his pockets and looked out the window at the parking lot below. In retrospect, he knew he should have expected Daisy would pull something after they made love. He should have talked to her, tried to work things out verbally. Or at least try to discuss what had just happened between them. But like an infatuated fool, he had figured conversation could wait until morning and wrapped her in his arms and held her until she—they both—fell asleep.
Now, thanks to his lack of foresight, Daisy was out there somewhere, feeling the way he had for as long as he could remember—like no one had ever really loved her, or ever would. Like she was a source of shame, existing only to sully the family honor. And that was a miserable way to live, Jack knew.
“Eventually, though,” Harlan continued pragmatically, “she’ll start working somewhere and have to use her social security number, or she’ll have to start charging on your credit card.”
And that was how they would locate her. “I’ll check my American Express account daily for any transactions,” Jack promised, his customary confidence beginning to return.
“And I’ll start looking for her right away,” Harlan retorted with a narrow glance. “How fast I find her will depend on just how badly she doesn’t want to be found.”
PAULO LIFTED HIS LIPS from Grace’s breast, the frustration he felt evident on his face. “Why are you pretending?”
Grace’s skin warmed self-consciously. She shifted away from Paulo and tugged the sheet upward to cover her nakedness. “I don’t know what you mean,” she said in the cool polite voice she used to keep people at bay.
“Last night. This morning.” Like a scientist in the midst of a perplexing experiment, Paulo stroked his hand across her belly. “You merely pretended to feel pleasure. Why?”
A shiver of revulsion ghosted over her insides. “What makes you think that’s the case?” Grace tried hard to keep the defensiveness out of her voice. And how was it this man knew what Tom had never once guessed in all their years of marriage?
“You moan, you sigh, you go through the motions, but you’re not wet here unless I wet you with my tongue.” Paulo gently caressed her between the thighs, and Grace felt…nothing. Except the wish he would stop touching her. “Your nipples bead when I touch them but you don’t tremble with arousal. Instead, you fake it. And I want to know why,” Paulo insisted. “I want to know if it’s me, if it’s something I’m not doing or should be doing to excite you, or if it’s just that you can’t relax the way you want to right now.”
Her body taut with equal parts frustration and embarrassment, she sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed. “I think you should leave.” She didn’t talk about this. Never had. Never would. Her mother had been right. Sex was dirty. Meant for bringing children into the world and little else, except maybe a man’s gratification.
“Grace—”
“I mean it, Paulo.” Grace reached for her satin robe and shrugged the sensual fabric over her shoulders, loving the way it felt, the way she had never loved a man’s touch. Feeling more humiliated than she had when she’d been fired, she continued in a low, flat tone, “Being with you was a mistake. I was just too caught up with emotion to tell you, and that was wrong on my part.” Despite their failure to bring each other genuine pleasure, she was grateful to the sensual young man for trying, for being so patient with her, even when it didn’t work. She swallowed around the lump of emotion in her throat. “I’m sorry.” She didn’t know why she had even tried this, after years of abstinence, after being with no one but Tom. She looked her yoga instructor in the eye, knowing after what had just happened those lessons were going to have to end, too, because she would never be able to have his hands on her again without thinking about this. And she didn’t want to think about this, any more than she wanted to think about all the times she had put aside her dislike of sex and feigned enjoyment with Tom.
She swallowed hard around the tight knot of emotion in her throat, even as she yearned for a long hot cleansing shower, the kind that had relaxed her so much in the past. “If you think I led you on—”
Paulo shook his head. He stood and, taking her cue, began to dress, as well. “I knew when Tom showed up this morning what the problem was.” Paulo looked sad but not surprised. “You’re still in love with him, aren’t you?”
Grace didn’t respond. But then, she thought sadly as she put on her slippers and exited the bedroom, she didn’t have to. Everyone knew the answer to that, just as they knew their marriage never had, and never would, work. The problems she and Tom had had in the bedroom—with her not wanting him, and him eventually not wanting her, either—had only been the half of it. She had two things she could count on to make her happy—her kids and her work. And that was it.
GRACE SPENT the next week and a half immersing herself in her work. At the soundstage, she was overseeing the construction of the kitchen, bedroom and living-room sets for her new television show, when Amy came to see her. Grace knew immediately there was trouble—she could tell by the pinched look on her only daughter’s face.
“Mom, I’m worried about Dad.”
Grace did not want to talk about Tom, and especially not at the soundstage, with various grips, cameramen and set designers around. Grace put the fabric swatches for the sofas aside and regarded her daughter stoically. “Amy, I’m trying to work here,” Grace murmured with as much patience as she could muster, and it wasn’t a lot.
Amy took her mother by the elbow and led Grace over to a deserted corner of the warehouselike building, where At Home with Grace was going to be taped. Ignoring Grace’s wish they save this for later, Amy continued anxiously, “He hasn’t gone to the office for ten days.”
Grace smiled at Amy as if they were discussing something as mundane and happy as Amy’s imminent need of a shopping expedition for maternity clothes. “I suspect he’s probably long overdue for a vacation.”
Amy clamped her arms over her gently rounded belly and regarded Grace mutinously. “He isn’t taking a vacation.”
Grace put up a hand to ward off the approach of a staff member and continued talking to Amy. “Then what is he doing?”
Amy sighed, her blue eyes abruptly filling with unshed tears. “Not much of anything from what any of us can tell,” she said in a low, quavering voice.
Grace knew Amy was more emotional now—the hormones of pregnancy ensured that—but that didn’t mean Grace would change her feelings when it came to her ex. “Honey,” Grace said as gently as possible, “this isn’t my concern.” And she didn’t want it to be, ever again.
“Then who else is going to get Daddy off the yacht?”
Grace blinked. Amy had lost her. “What are you talking about?”
Amy drew a tremulous breath. “Apparently, after the party, Daddy didn’t leave the house for about three days. He didn’t shave or shower, he just sat in the library brooding and drinking. Theresa was concerned—she wanted to call a doctor. Daddy wouldn’t let her, so she called Mitch and he went over and found Dad. Not drunk but not exactly sober, either. Dad wouldn’t talk to him. So Mitch called Gabe and Gabe went over.”
“And?” Grace prodded anxiously. If anyone would be able to tell if there was something medically wrong, causing Tom—the epitome of tranquillity under stress—to behave that way, Grace knew it would have been Gabe.
Amy shrugged. “Gabe said that medically there was nothing wrong with Daddy—he wasn’t clinically depressed—he was just totally devastated.”
“Well, he’s allowed to take a break,” Grace said, telling herself Tom’s emotional state had nothing to do with finding Paulo at her place, and everything to do with being identified as a philanderer to his grown children.
Amy laid a hand over her heart. “That’s what we all thought initially. But now that it’s been going on for nearly two weeks, we’re beginning to get scared.”
Grace had to agree, that didn’t sound like Tom. Not at all. Even in the midst of the divorce and their darkest days together, he had never taken off work. But instead had sought solace and refuge in his work, just as Grace was doing now.
Grace paused, still trying to make sense of Tom’s actions. “Is he taking the yacht out?” Tom did love to go boating, always had. And it was an affection he had passed on to all their children.
“Occasionally.” Amy stuck her hands in the front of her overalls, which were emblazoned with the name of her redecorating business. “Mostly he just sits on the yacht and broods.”
That didn’t sound good, but it didn’t sound lethal, either. Grace sighed and for the benefit of staff around them kept the carefully composed smile on her face. “Have you talked to your father about this?”
Amy hesitated. She ducked her head, studying the toe of her sneaker. “I haven’t seen him.”
Grace wasn’t surprised. In the past, when she and Tom had been quarreling, their children had pretty much run for the hills and tried to stay as far away from any familial turmoil as they could. None of them had wanted to take sides in Grace and Tom’s marital problems, and Grace couldn’t blame them. Their mutual anger and resentment had been hard enough for her and Tom to deal with. Neither of them had wished it on their children. Besides, their four kids—five if you counted Daisy now for Tom—had their own problems, careers and lives to attend to, and each other to go to for comfort and counsel. But, Grace determined that didn’t mean Amy could identify a problem, dump it on Grace’s doorstep and then run away. “If you’re so concerned—and I can see that you are—why haven’t you seen your dad?” Grace asked quietly.
Amy’s chin took on a petulant tilt and her eyes glowed with blue fire. “Because I’m still mad at him, and I don’t want to make things worse, and anyway—Nick said I should wait until I cool off and can listen objectively to what Daddy has to say about what happened.”
That sounded like Amy’s husband, Grace thought, realizing all over again how glad she was that Nick was now a member of the Deveraux clan. Nick had not only helped Grace find a new career path to take in the wake of her firing from Rise and Shine, America! by signing her to do a television show for his production company, he had given Amy the tenderness, stability and practical guidance Grace’s ever-so-romantic daughter needed to remain grounded and optimistic.
“But honestly, I don’t know when that will be. Chase, Mitch, Gabe and I have had several discussions about this, and we are all still very mad at him—even Mitch—who is Dad’s lieutenant in just about everything. I mean, all these years we thought you were responsible for the divorce, that you going to New York City to take the job when you knew Dad’s work and all our lives were here in Charleston, was what caused the breakup. But now we know the truth.” Amy’s voice dropped to an anguished murmur as the production staff and construction workers continued to give Grace and Amy wide berth. “We know what Daddy did to you. And we still can’t believe that he slept with Iris Templeton! My God!” Amy’s eyes welled with tears once again.
Grace saw the disillusionment in her daughter’s eyes, remembered full well how that felt, and her heart went out to her. “Oh, Amy, honey—” Grace put her arm around Amy’s shoulders.
“And poor Daisy,” Amy interrupted before Grace could comfort her further. “She’s apparently disappeared, too.”
Grace paused as that news sank in. “What do you mean, disappeared?” Grace demanded uneasily.
Amy drew a deep, quavering breath. “She took off with Jack Granger’s SUV and his credit card, and she even stole some cash out of his wallet. They’ve got that P.I. Dad likes—Harlan Decker—looking for her, but there’s no telling how long it will be before they find her.”
As always, the mention of Tom’s illegitimate child, and the problems Daisy perpetually seemed to cause, ignited a core of resentment within Grace. Try as she might, she couldn’t see the young woman as anything but proof of Tom’s betrayal. But figuring Amy didn’t need to know that, Grace turned the conversation back to Tom once again. “I’m the last person your father would want to see right now.”
Amy shrugged. “That may be true, Mom.” Her voice dropped beseechingly. “But you’re probably also the only person who can help.”
TOM HAD FIGURED Grace would show up sooner or later—he figured the kids would send her. So it was no surprise when she walked across the gangplank onto his yacht at 5:00 p.m. Thursday evening. Unlike Tom, who was wearing only a pair of navy-blue swim trunks and a pair of sunglasses, she looked pretty and professional in a white silk pantsuit. She also looked irked, and she didn’t waste any time starting in on him, either. “What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded, propping her hands on her hips.
Tom continued disassembling the reel he’d been working on. “Exactly what it looks like, I’m repairing my fishing rod.” It had taken a heck of a beating the last ten days or so, given the way he’d been using it.
Grace strode closer, her high heels clicking across the deck. She held a hand above her eyes to protect them from the glare of the sun. “People are going to start to talk.”
Tom shrugged. Like he gave a damn about that.
When he made no move to defend or explain himself, Grace released a short, aggravated breath, dragged a deck chair over and sat down beside him. She leaned forward. “Do you really want to disillusion our children any more than you already have with this extended vacation of yours?”
If Tom didn’t know better, he would’ve thought she cared about him, given the way she was acting. “Is that what I’m doing?” he asked dryly. He reached down into the toolbox beside him for a pair of pliers.
Grace huffed and spoke between tightly gritted teeth. “If you stay out here on the boat much longer, people will realize you’re not just taking a much-deserved few days off from work.”
Reassuring his ex would have been easy, but Tom decided not to tell Grace he had already determined he would return to work the following day, the Deveraux mansion that very night. After all, it wasn’t her business what he did, just as it wasn’t his business what she did.
Grimacing as the reel refused to cooperate with him, he decided to remind her she was hardly one to talk. “I’m surprised you were able to tear yourself away from your young lover.”
Pink color that had nothing to do with the summer heat and humidity flooded Grace’s cheeks. “I won’t discuss Paulo with you.”
Tom nodded gravely. “And no wonder,” he returned sarcastically, “since being with him makes you a hypocrite.”
Grace’s eyes flashed with anger. “Me?”
Tom dropped both the reel and the pliers into the toolbox and reached into the cooler beside him for a beer. Eyes on Grace, he shook the excess water off the bottle and twisted open the top. “Weren’t you the one who always said that sex was something sacred, only to be embarked upon within the love and sanctity of marriage?”
Since their divorce, Tom noted, that view obviously hadn’t lasted. Not that Tom had been a saint, either, in the fifteen years he and Grace had been apart. He had made love to a dozen women over the years, enduring everything from a single one-night stand to a relationship that had lasted almost four months. But none of the entanglements had been satisfying, because he hadn’t loved any of the women, not the way he had once loved Grace.
Grace stood, her slender shoulders stiffening. “This isn’t helping.”
You’re telling me. It had been days now and all he could think of was Grace naked beneath that robe, her young gigolo standing there in a towel. Had Paulo discovered how spectacular her body was? Had she kissed him back like she meant it, or had she simply endured her young lover’s caresses, the way she had often tolerated his?
Grace clamped her lips together. “You have no right to comment on my actions.” She glared at Tom resentfully. “We’re not married anymore.”
Tom stared right back at her. “But you felt compelled to flaunt your affair with that guy in my face anyway,” Tom noted bitterly as he ran his hand across his jaw, which was scraggly with a beard. His gut twisting with jealousy, Tom took another sip then set his bottle down beside him and turned his attention back to his reel.
“I didn’t ask you to show up at my place at the crack of dawn,” Grace continued, defending herself.
Not buying her excuse, Tom stopped rethreading the reel and regarded Grace steadily. “After what had happened the night before, you knew I would come to see you as soon as I could, to talk about Daisy and our four kids. Not that the other morning was the first time. You’ve been with that overrated, overpriced gigolo for weeks now!” And it killed Tom because he had thought—hoped—the relationship was just a flirtation, that at heart it was platonic. How foolish had that fantasy been?
Grace turned her face to the breeze.
Tom watched the soft blond layers of Grace’s hair get whipped around sexily by the salt-scented wind. “Being with him that way is wrong,” he snapped grimly. And you know it.
A mixture of shock and fury widened her eyes as she turned back to him. “Says who?” Grace advanced on him emotionally, looking as though she was tempted to haul off and hit him. “You?” She poked her index finger against his bare chest. “The arbiter of extramarital sex? Please.” Grace threw up both hands in aggravation. “You’ve squired your share of young and beautiful women around since we split. And for all I know, even before we separated.”
That was unfair but typical, Tom thought. He stood, and really pissed off now, squared off with her. “I was only unfaithful to you once,” he said.
“And since?” Grace queried, arching her delicate blond eyebrows at him.
It was Tom’s turn to move his glance away. A muscle working convulsively in his jaw, he shifted to the harbor beyond. “You left me, remember?”
“For good reason, if you recall,” she reminded him.
Tom shook his head in exasperation. “Yeah, because you put a wall between us.”
“We had children, a home together…” She spoke as if she didn’t believe he was turning the tables on her.
But Tom knew it was the truth. And he knew, whether she liked it or not, it was past time his wife faced just how cold and unaffectionate she had been prior to his interlude with Iris. “Yes, Grace, you distanced yourself from me.”
“I was depressed! Finding out I was sterile was a devastating blow.”
Or an excuse. Tom tread nearer, trying not to recall how much he had wanted to make love to her then, how much—despite everything—he still did. “We already had four children, Grace.”
“Five,” Grace countered miserably, “if you count the baby we lost when I miscarried, the year after Amy was born.”
“But you wanted more, didn’t you?” Tom remembered bleakly. And when she couldn’t have them, she had completely turned away from him, in her heart and in their marriage.
“We both wanted more kids. Half a dozen, remember?” Grace’s voice became a strangled sob as she forged on. “Only I couldn’t because of the complications I had after the miscarriage. But that didn’t stop you, did it?” Her eyes gleamed with hurt as she reminded, “Because you went right on to have another child without me—you had Daisy.”
Tom saw it all—the jealousy, envy, resentment—that another woman had given him what Grace no longer could. “That was never meant to be more than one night,” he told her with gut-wrenching honesty.
Grace stared at him and slowly shook her head, appearing as if she could hardly believe his naiveté. “That night created a child, Tom. It destroyed our family.” Tears flooded her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. “But you can’t admit that to yourself even now, can you? You persist in saying and feeling I should just get over it.”
Tom swallowed hard. “Why can’t you?” he demanded, feeling more frustrated than ever.
Grace threw her hands up. “You know why I can’t! Because you betrayed me.”
Tom clamped down on his own hurt. Jaw set, he said, “I made a mistake.” It had been a bad one, yes. But it should not have ended their marriage.
“You ripped my heart in two,” Grace accused with insurmountable bitterness.
And, Tom thought sadly, she had never allowed him to put it back together again.
Grace turned away from him and walked over to the edge of the deck. Her back to the marina, she stared out at the harbor, and the coming together of the Ashley and Cooper Rivers. “It doesn’t matter anyway,” she said in a low, defeated voice.
Tom crossed to her side. Hands on her shoulders, he turned her resisting body to face him. “How can you say that?” he asked hoarsely. Didn’t she understand—would she never understand—his heart had been ripped into pieces, too?
“Because—” Grace turned her sad eyes up to his and continued dejectedly “—it would’ve happened eventually anyway.” She paused, shook her head in silent remonstration. “My grief and depression were just an excuse to do what you already wanted to do in your heart, Tom, what you had probably always wanted to do, which was forget the wife you had at home and bed down with some young, rich and sexy society girl.”
“That’s not true. It was you, Grace, who didn’t want me.”
Anger flared at the corners of her mouth. “Will you stop blaming me for what you did that night?” She balled her hands into fists. “You walked out on me, Tom. You answered Iris’s distress call and went to her apartment. You unzipped your pants, took off your trousers, and you were with her. And you probably would’ve kept right on seeing her if I hadn’t found you two.”
Tom knew it had been an ugly time. All because he’d had too much pride to go to Grace and tell her how lonely—how bereft and shut out—he felt. He should have gotten down on his knees and begged her to love him again. Instead, he had allowed himself to become angry, vengeful. And looked to another woman, who was just as needy and unhappy in her own way, for comfort. And for that, Tom would always blame himself. Just as virulently as Grace blamed him.
Mustering what little patience he had left, Tom explained, “You know I regret what happened that night with all my heart and soul. As for the rest…I stayed with you because I wanted to work it out.”
“No,” Grace corrected. “You stayed with me because you didn’t want to lose custody of your kids or hurt your business or let your infidelity become public knowledge!”
What could Tom say to that? It was true. He hadn’t wanted any of those things to happen. He hadn’t wanted their life to fall apart, any more than it already had. And a divorce would have ensured even more misery than they had already suffered.
“So now you’re blaming me for wanting to stay married to you, is that it?”
“I am blaming you for destroying our family!” She advanced on him, voice breaking, looking if possible even more dejected and disillusioned with the situation they had found themselves in years ago. “You never should have cheated on me—on us—no matter how rejected you felt or what the situation was with us at the time. You should have done whatever we had to do to work it out and make our marriage strong and enduring instead of turning to someone else to warm your bed. And most of all—” she began to cry “—you should have honored the vows that we took, the promises we made to love each other and only each other for as long as we both live. Because if you had—if you had acted less selfishly—we would still be together now. And somewhere deep inside, Tom, you have to know that.”
Tom’s heart exploded with anger. He was tired of being painted the only wrong-doer here, tired of making apologies that fell on deaf ears. Tired of not being given the opportunity to make it up to her. “You know I’d do anything if I could take back what happened,” he said huskily, near breaking down himself. “But I can’t.”
Grace withdrew into herself, into the place where he had no hope of reaching her. “No,” she said before assuming her on-air television personality, “you can’t.”
“And that pleases you,” Tom accused.
Grace stared at him as if she couldn’t possibly have heard right. “What?”
“Let’s be honest here, Grace.” Tom decided to cut the courtesy and lay all their cards on the table. “This wasn’t all bad news to you. You wanted an excuse to lock me out of your heart and keep me out of your bed. Because all you ever wanted me for was the big house and the cushy lifestyle and the kids.”
Grace gasped in indignation. “That’s not true!”
“Isn’t it?” Tom lifted his eyebrow. As much as he loathed to admit it, he knew the truth. “You were never happy being my wife, Grace, even before Iris.”
Grace looked at him then as if she had never known him at all. “Maybe because back then that’s all I was. I needed a career. I needed—”
“Self-esteem?”
Grace reeled backward, as if he had slapped her. “You knew a career was important to me when you married me!”
“And I also knew it shouldn’t have mattered that you grew up in a small town, the daughter of parents who owned and ran a dry-cleaning store,” Tom said bitterly. He looked at his ex-wife, his heart aching. “You were everything to me, Grace. Everything. But you never let yourself believe it.”
“WELL?” Chase said when Grace met her son and his new wife for dinner at a popular downtown-Charleston restaurant.
Chase had come straight from the offices of Modern Man magazine, and was dressed, as usual, in pleated khaki trousers and a short-sleeve linen shirt perfect for the balmy September weather. Bridgett, a financial advisor, and noted author in her own right, was wearing a trim black skirt and silky black-and-white cardigan set. Grace smiled. The two of them looked so strikingly handsome together. Chase, with his wavy dark-brown hair, lively slate-blue eyes and tanned athletic presence. Bridgett, with her auburn hair, deep chocolate eyes and slender feminine frame. And more important, Grace thought, they were happy. And so much in love with each other, it filled her heart with joy.
Grace sat down and spread her napkin across her lap. “I didn’t get anywhere with him, either.”
“So he’s still on the yacht.” Chase returned to his own seat after helping Grace with her chair.
Grace nodded at both Bridgett and Chase, marveling again at how happy—how very much in love—they looked. “Yes,” she said quietly. “But you’ll be relieved to know that your father’s not drinking so much as brooding.” Feeling sorry for himself, angry at the world, at her.
Chase scowled as he opened the menu. “I’d go try and talk to him myself but I want to slug him.”
Having already decided what she wanted—the crab soup and a salad—Grace closed her menu wearily. Chase was her strongest defender, as well as her first-born and oldest son, but in this case he was also dead wrong. She regarded her son steadily and said, “This isn’t your fight, Chase. It’s mine.”
Chase clenched his jaw, at that moment looking very much like his incredibly strong-willed and stubborn father. “Wrong, Mom.” Fierce resentment gleamed in Chase’s slate-blue eyes. “When Dad betrayed you, he betrayed the whole family.”
Grace sighed and shook her head. “You still have to forgive him,” she advised calmly.
“Why?” Chase challenged. “You obviously haven’t, and it’s been what—more than twenty years now?”
What could Grace say to that? It was true. All these years and she hadn’t been able to put it out of her mind, hadn’t been able to believe Tom’s stepping out on her was merely a cry for help. But what if she’d been wrong? What if Tom’s lovemaking with Iris was as emotionally unsatisfying as her tryst with Paulo had been? Had she thrown it all away, refused to ever trust Tom again, for nothing?
CHARLOTTE WAS in the library, updating her social calendar on the computer Iris had given her and taught her how to use, when Richard walked in. He’d spent the afternoon playing tennis at the club, but was now dressed in his customary suit and tie. Knowing now was as good a time as any, Charlotte broached the subject that had been on her mind constantly for days, before he could leave for that evening’s dinner-meeting with their accountant.
“I want to hire a private detective to locate Daisy.”
The look in his eyes becoming pure resentment, Richard’s jaw clenched. “It’s out of the question.”
“Why?” Gearing up for battle, Charlotte saved the data she had just entered and watched as Richard opened the wall safe in the library. “We can afford it.” The growing success of the family antiques business, and their financial stake in it, had seen to that.
Richard released a long breath and turned to Charlotte in exasperation, “Daisy will come home when she’s ready.”
Would she? Charlotte wondered. “She’s been gone for days now,” Charlotte pointed out, unwilling and unable to suppress her worry. “We haven’t heard a word from her.”
“Which, given her likely mood, is probably just as well.” Richard moved the handgun and box of ammunition he insisted they keep for their personal safety to one side and withdrew a fat envelope of cash. He took out a number of bills and returned the envelope to the safe, setting it on top of Charlotte’s jewelry case and copies of their insurance papers, wills and real estate deeds. “Right now, Daisy is behaving like a temperamental child.” Richard shut the door to the safe, covered it with the painting and slid the money into his wallet before looking at Charlotte once again. “And I for one am glad Daisy is not here misbehaving for all our friends to see.”
“I still want to find her,” Charlotte retorted steadily.
“And I still say no.”
Richard gave Charlotte a look to let her know the conversation was closed, then exited the room. Seconds later, the front door shut behind him. The big house was cloaked in silence.
Charlotte stared at the photos of family that decorated the shelves to the right of the heavy antique desk. She didn’t know when or why or even how it happened, but the truth was indisputable now. Somewhere along the way, she had failed both her daughters. Perhaps even their son, Connor, too. During the crisis of Iris’s pregnancy, Charlotte had been so certain she and Richard were doing the right thing, keeping the affair and pregnancy from ten-year-old Connor, and sending Iris to that austere convent in Switzerland to have her baby in secret. Iris hadn’t wanted to go, hadn’t wanted to give Daisy up, but Charlotte and Richard had worked together to convince Iris that her life—indeed, all their lives—would be ruined if she didn’t do as they said.
In return, Charlotte had promised Iris that she and Richard would love Daisy and bring her up as their own. Iris would never have to worry or wonder what had happened to her baby—she would be able to see Daisy every day because they would grow up as sisters. And Charlotte had kept her promise. She had loved Daisy every bit as much as she had loved her own two children, if not more. But she had also known in her heart of hearts that Daisy was her first—maybe her only—grandchild. And consequently, she had tended to be too lenient with Daisy, as grandparents were wont to do. Whereas Richard had gone the other way and been too strict. Poor Daisy had been caught in the middle from day one, as their adopted daughter. No wonder she’d floundered around and felt there was something amiss. Because, Charlotte thought fiercely, there had been.
Now, Daisy knew the truth.
She knew they had all lied to her.
And she couldn’t forget and she couldn’t forgive.
Was Daisy ever going to come home? Charlotte wondered.
And what would she do when she did?
CHAPTER FIVE
IT TOOK JACK ONE MONTH, two days and sixteen hours to find out where Daisy had run off to, and another half day to travel to Nevada. When he finally made it to the crummy studio apartment she had rented at the edge of town, he was mad as hell, and exhausted to boot. And she didn’t look much better when she opened her door to him. Her fair skin held the golden glow of desert sun and she was dressed as sexily as ever, in snug, worn, navel-baring jeans, tangerine tank top and western boots. Her wavy hair was as clean and silky-looking as always and caught up in a clasp on the back of her head. But there were shadows beneath her eyes and a weariness in her body language that hadn’t been there before.
Not that she was about to let him know that, however, Jack noted as their eyes clashed. “I was wondering when you would show up.”
Jack took the open door for invitation and followed her inside. The place was a mess. Although it was nearly noon, what looked like a breakfast of a glass of milk and a sweet roll sat on the table. The sofa bed was still pulled out and unmade. There were clothes, shoes and toiletry items scattered all over the place. He shut the door behind them, noting the laptop computer, printer and digital camera that were hooked up together. Even as they spoke, what looked like color tourist photos were spitting out of the printer one after another. Which explained how she had been getting by once her cash ran out. “It would have been sooner if you’d let me know where you were,” he said.
“What? And take all the fun out of it?” Daisy plucked her glass off the table and took a sip of milk. Expression sobering slightly, she continued, “I was going to contact you soon anyway.”
Jack had expected as much—when Daisy was ready. She was too confrontational to let what had happened between them that night go by without being addressed. Not that he was taking the blame for everything. She was at fault here, too. Figuring she would want him to give as good as he got, he said back, just as dryly, “To return my car, repay the cash you stole and reimburse me for the $2358.29 in credit card charges you racked up the last two days?”
Daisy shook her head, took another sip of milk, and still holding his gaze, said, “To tell you I’m pregnant.”
Her matter-of-fact tone hit him like a sucker punch to the gut. Jack tensed, attempting to frame a retort, only nothing came out. Finally, he said, “That’s not funny, Daisy.”
An emotion he couldn’t quite identify glimmered in her eyes. “Oh, I don’t know.” She waved her hand through the air, some of her customary rebelliousness coming back to her stance. “There’s a certain irony to it, don’t you think? I mean, the bastard of Tom Deveraux having the love child of his most trusted employee slash henchman. If you ask me—” her lips curved with mocking pleasure “—it’s like something straight out of a trashy novel.”
He was beginning to realize she wasn’t kidding. “Except this is real life, Daisy.”
Daisy sighed and put down her milk. “Ain’t that the sad truth,” she agreed.
Jack came closer. Unable to help himself, he looked at her stomach—it seemed as flat as always, but then if the baby was his, and his gut was telling him that it was, she was only four and a half weeks or so along. He swallowed around the unaccustomed tightness in his throat and returned his gaze to her face. “You’re sure about this?”
Daisy wiped her hands on a napkin and walked down to the other end of the narrow kitchen countertop. She plucked a piece of paper out from beneath a little sample bottle of what appeared to be vitamins and handed it to him. “I went to the Lake Tahoe clinic two days ago.”
He noted that the receipt said the clinic had billed her for a pregnancy test, new patient exam and consultation.
In a bored tone, Daisy continued, “You can go check out the test results for yourself if you want. I told them you were the father and you might be coming by.”
Still struggling to absorb the fact that he was going to be a father—that he was going to have a baby with Daisy—never mind figure out what this was going to mean to him, his life and everyone around them, Jack handed back the receipt. “That’s not necessary,” he said stiffly, guilt—and his own sense of failed responsibility—along with the news of his impending fatherhood, combining to hit him with the force of a sledgehammer. He forced the words through numb lips. “I believe you.” Just as he now believed they were in one hell of a mess, that was likely only going to get worse as time went on.
Daisy tilted her head as she studied him with narrowed eyes. After a moment, she noted softly, “You haven’t asked if the baby is yours.”
No. He hadn’t. And why hadn’t he? Jack couldn’t say why he was so sure. He only knew his gut was saying it was his kid. And his street smarts about people, whether they were good, bad or somewhere in between, were never wrong. Daisy might act out wildly, but she would never lie to him about something like this, especially given the way she had grown up, not knowing to whom she had been born. “I’m sure because I know you,” he stated firmly, more sure of that with every second that passed.
For reasons Jack couldn’t understand, his faith in Daisy’s honor upset rather than reassured her. “And how do you know?” she retorted, the deeply cynical look returning to her face. “Oh!” She snapped her fingers as if something just hit her with amazing insight. “I forgot. You and my biological father have been tracing my movements ever since I decided to try and find my real parents a few months ago.” She trod closer, bristling with a mixture of indignation and contempt. “That’s kind of ironic, too, don’t you think? That I hired the same private investigator my biological father hired to keep me from finding out what the Templeton and Deveraux families would’ve preferred I not ever know?”
Yeah, it had been a sticky situation, all right. Hardest on the top-notch P.I. who had unexpectedly found himself at the center of the quandary, being asked to represent both sides. But that was neither here nor there now, Jack thought. He shrugged. “It’s not surprising you both hired Harlan. He’s the best private investigator in the city.”
“I’m surprised he didn’t refuse to help me, given the fact that Tom had signed him first,” Daisy said sulkily.
“Harlan did go to Tom. Told Tom that you wanted to hire him and why and wanted to know what Tom wanted him to do. Harlan said he could refer you elsewhere or help you himself, but he wouldn’t lie to you or take your money or try and stonewall you—do anything else unethical or underhanded.”
“Good for Harlan. If it weren’t for him finding out I had been born in a little convent in the Swiss Alps, instead of Norway as I had always been told, I still wouldn’t know the truth.”
Jack nodded, glad they agreed on this much. “Harlan Decker’s a good guy, all right. Although for the record—” Jack gave Daisy a stern look, letting her know she wasn’t completely off the hook for her actions, either “—Harlan thought I should’ve turned you in for stealing.”
Daisy shrugged. “What can you expect from a former cop?” she volleyed back. Silence fell between them, less tense this time.
Jack studied Daisy knowing he already had his own thoughts on the matter, but wondering where she wanted to go from here. “So what now?” he asked her casually.
Daisy bit her lower lip and regarded Jack uncertainly as her printer finally sputtered to a halt. “You’re really going to take me at my word on this pregnancy?” Clearly, Jack thought, she wasn’t used to being trusted.
Jack watched as Daisy went over, picked up the stack of finished photos from the tray and began thumbing through them. “I don’t have any reason not to believe you.”
Daisy went back to her computer and typed in another series of commands. “Nevertheless,” she said as calmly as if they were discussing the terms of a new photo shoot instead of the permanent interlinking of their lives, “I’d feel better if we went over to the clinic and let you see the results, and maybe have you take a paternity test or whatever it is they do these days to establish paternity.”
Jack pulled up a chair next to her and sat down. “I’d feel better if we just got married and got it over with,” he stated, wondering how long Daisy was going to be able to keep her cool, act as if this hardly mattered, when in reality it was the most earth-shattering revelation of both their lives.
Daisy continued typing in commands until her printer started going again. She turned to him, as yet another series of tourist pictures began spitting out into the tray, the only indication of her heightening emotions the tensing of her jaw. “And why would we want to do that?” she asked steadily.
That, Jack thought, was easy. Letting her know with a look that she and their baby would be able to count on him the way she had apparently never been able to count on anyone else in her life, he said, “So the baby you’re carrying will be born legitimate, and have a mother and a father.”
Once again, Daisy’s teeth raked across her soft, bare lower lip. “This wouldn’t have anything to do with Tom Deveraux, would it? Because I don’t have to tell him we slept together. At least not yet,” Daisy amended hastily before Jack could get a word in edgewise. “When my baby is born, of course I’ll make his or her paternity a matter of public record—there’s no way I’ll ever lie to my child the way my parents lied to me all these years. But until then—I mean, no one has to know. We don’t have to put ourselves in a position where we’re both going to be getting a lot of grief.”
Jack supposed that was true, but he saw no reason in putting off the inevitable, either. “The worst thing we could do is let our kid think we’re ashamed of him or her,” Jack said. He had grown up that way, feeling the slings and arrows surrounding the scandal of his birth. There was no way he was doing it to his own child. Frowning, Jack continued humorlessly, “Tom already knows we slept together.”
Daisy did a double take. “You told him?”
“Not exactly.” Because it was clear she wasn’t going to just let this go, Jack continued reluctantly, “He figured it out when you disappeared the way you did.”
“Because you were acting so guilty, I bet.”
Knowing where she was going with this, Jack pushed the words through his teeth. “I’m not sorry we made love.” Especially now that they had a baby on the way because of it. He gave her a level look. “I’m just sorry about how and why and when it happened.”
The wall around Daisy’s feelings only became stronger and more inaccessible as Daisy scoffed in a cynical tone. “You would have preferred recreational sex, is that it?”
“It was more than that, and you know it.” Jack knew Daisy was trying to shock and turn him off. He wasn’t going to allow her to do it. Especially not now, when they had a child they were going to be responsible for.
“Exercise?”
“It was raw emotion and need—and you know it.”
“I don’t need anyone.”
Yes, Jack thought. You do. They all did. Maybe what he and Daisy had shared wasn’t love. Maybe it would never be love. But they could be there for each other and their child in other equally important ways. And whether she wanted that or not, he was going to see that it happened, because the two of them had more than just themselves to think about now. They had a baby to consider. A baby who would need the love and care and cooperation of both parents.
“But back to Tom Deveraux.” Daisy changed the subject to something safer. She studied Jack curiously. “What did he say when you told him about us?”
Jack recalled the punch that had landed him in the dirt and left his jaw aching for days, and decided Daisy didn’t need to know that Tom was still so angry he was barely speaking to Jack. “Nothing that bears repeating,” Jack finally said.
She rolled her eyes. “I’ll bet.”
“Look, Daisy, let’s get out of here,” Jack said, ready to go back East and reclaim his job and whatever was left of any respect Tom Deveraux might still have for him. Hopefully what he was doing now to make an honest woman of Daisy and set things to rights would go a long way in repairing the damage that had been done. And if not, he hoped he would at least continue to have his job with the Deveraux-Heyward Shipping Company. “We’ll get married and hop a plane back to Charleston.”
Daisy took the rest of the printed photos out of the tray and stuck them in an envelope emblazoned with the name Tahoe Mountain Tours. Apparently finished with the work she had to do, she shut off her printer and computer and closed the lid on her laptop. “I’ll marry you for the sake of the baby, Jack, but I’m not going back to Charleston.”
Jack had expected some resistance on that score after the way she had run away, and had prepared for it. “Afraid, are you?”
Daisy shot to her feet and squared off with him. “I’m no coward,” Daisy lashed back.
“Hey.” Jack flattened his hands on his chest and gave her a look of mock innocence. “That’s what a person is who refuses to face the consequences of their actions.”
Daisy thrust her chin out as she slapped both hands on her hips and stomped nearer. “I’ve never been afraid of anything or anyone in my life,” she swore, glaring up at him.
“Then prove it,” Jack threw down the gauntlet, knowing damn well a woman like Daisy would pick it right up and brandish him with it in return. “Marry me. Come home with me. Help me show everyone that we know that we don’t care what they think.”
“There’d have to be a few conditions,” Daisy warned after a moment.
At last, a chink in her emotional armor, Jack noted solemnly. He couldn’t wait to hear those.
The taunting look was back in her Deveraux-blue eyes. “You’ll give my baby a name and we’ll have a physical relationship—that’s it!”
Jack didn’t mind the prospect of hitting the sheets again with Daisy, he also knew they had some very important boundaries to set. “Fine. I also don’t want to be jerked around.”
“Fine.” Daisy glared right back at him.
They seemed to be circling each other like two wary animals—neither willing to make the first move. Maybe the thing to do was to make it real and go from there. They could worry about the details later.
He regarded her sternly, chastening, “And one more thing. No one’s bed but mine, got it?”
A slow, sexy, victor’s grin spread across her face. Looking as if she was the one in the driver’s seat, Daisy shrugged and said, “Whatever.”
DAISY HAD TO ADMIT that like Jack, she didn’t appreciate being manipulated, either. To the point she tended to behave perversely and illogically if she felt she was being used. Nevertheless, Daisy thought as she rummaged through the clothes in her closet, looking for something to don for a quickie wedding, she was very relieved Jack had not only shown up so swiftly, but offered to help her muddle her way through this dilemma she found herself in. Because she had the feeling that the next eight months or so were going to be rough in a lot of ways. And she and the baby needed a man like Jack, who was known for his steady presence and selflessness to help her through all the life changes she was going to have to make if she wanted to be a good mother, and she did.
“How soon can you be ready to go?” Jack asked.
Daisy shrugged as she took several things on hangers into the bathroom and hung them over the shower rod for trying on. “I don’t know. Ten or fifteen minutes.”
It ended up taking her thirty, but that was okay, Daisy thought as she examined herself in the mirror, because with her hair put up in a neat twist on the back of her head and some makeup and dangly earrings on, she looked pretty darn good. Smiling, she spritzed herself with perfume and walked out into the studio in her stocking feet.
Jack had changed clothes too in her absence. The sport shirt he had been wearing when he arrived was now in a carry-on garment bag. He was wearing a navy blazer with his khaki slacks, white shirt and dark-olive tie.
Jack finished zipping up his garment bag and turned to face her. “That’s what you’re going to wear?” His eyebrow lifted in surprise.
Unable to help but note how good Jack looked, not to mention to feel a little hurt he disapproved of her choice, when she had so little to choose from, Daisy shrugged. “What’s wrong with it?”
Jack made a face. “It’s black, for starters.”
Daisy looked down at her long sleeveless dress. It was woven out of a linen-cotton blend that fell just above her ankles. It was cool and summery and yes—with its sensual drape and cutaway armholes, sexy as all get-out. But if he didn’t like it… “I’ve got some pink capri pants,” she said, deliberately suggesting something even more outrageous. “Or a yellow floral mini.”
“Never mind.” Jack picked up Daisy’s computer, printer and camera—which had all been put in their cases while she was changing—and set them in a pile next to the door. “Let’s just load this stuff in my SUV and get going.”
Knowing he had also been on the phone making arrangements while she got ready for the momentous event, Daisy threw the rest of her belongings into a suitcase as quickly as she could. “Which wedding chapel did you pick?”
Jack helped her get the rest of her things together, which admittedly weren’t much, as he told her matter-of-factly, “We’re getting married on the upper deck of a paddlewheel boat on Lake Tahoe.”
Daisy’s eyes widened with surprise. “That’s a little extravagant, isn’t it?”
Jack gave her a look that indicated he didn’t think so. “We’re only going to do this once. It might as well be memorable.”
Daisy wondered if he would have the same view of the wedding night then quickly pushed the thought from her mind. She couldn’t risk making this a romantic occasion, even in her mind, because it simply wasn’t. Methodically, she collected the tourist photos she had to deliver to Tahoe Mountain Tours en route to the ceremony. “What about rings and a license and blood tests?” she asked, mentally making a note to give her notice while she was there so they could find another photographer to take her place.
Jack picked up several of the heavier items, then held the door. “They’ll have everything we need there, including the paddleboat captain who is going to marry us, the marriage certificate, license and two plain solid-gold wedding rings. There’s no waiting period. And no blood tests are required. All we have to do is show up.”
Somehow, Daisy didn’t find that at all encouraging. But refusing to be the first to back out, Daisy merely smiled and said, “Right.” As they loaded Jack’s truck with all her gear and his small travel bag, Daisy kept expecting Jack to renege, demand to go over to the clinic, wait until paternity tests could be completed, and otherwise put off such a risky, impulsive decision. But he didn’t. Instead, she was the one with cold feet about joining their lives on any level—and they both knew it. But every time she faltered, he was right there, giving her that goading look that sent her temper flaming and made her feel all the more reckless and determined not to bow out or back down.
Not that she was going to allow Jack to have the upper hand with her. No one got that. She wasn’t like her older sister slash birth mother Iris, who had married a man twice her age to please her parents. Or her brother, Connor, who prided himself on being able to mediate his way out of every and any situation. She was strong and independent and she did whatever she needed to do to ignore the constant criticism and disapproval coming her way. She knew how to look out for herself because she had learned very early that no one else, either within or outside the family, was going to do it for her.
Jack, of course, didn’t know how impossible Richard and Charlotte Templeton could be, or how much they could—and often did—upset her. But soon he would be subject to the same kind of familial pressure. And would be right there beside her to either deflect it or help her deal with it, Daisy reassured herself seriously as she was handed a bouquet of flowers and she and Jack climbed the metal stairs to the upper deck of the boat. And perhaps in that sense, because she would no longer have to fight every battle alone, Daisy thought as Jack took her hand in his, her life would get better.
Daisy and Jack said their vows at sunset, as the wedding package touted, with the granite mountains towering in the background, above the beautiful blue surface of the mountain lake, and two marina employees serving as their witnesses. To the two of them, it was a solemn, not romantic, occasion, and Daisy couldn’t help but wonder, even as she said their highly personalized vows, how—and if—they could ever be true.
Would she be able to respect, honor and cherish Jack for as long as they both shall live? Or even the rest of the month, once they got back to Charleston and the complications they faced there?
And what about Jack? Would he be able to care for her, in sickness and in health, for richer for poorer, for the rest of their married lives? Or would this, too, end in disaster?
Daisy had no answer. And given the conflicted look in Jack’s eyes as he bent to chastely kiss her lips at the conclusion of the ceremony, he didn’t know, either. But he was determined to do the right thing by her and their baby. That was something, she supposed.
“WE’RE NOT DRIVING HOME?” Daisy asked in disappointment as Jack turned the SUV away from Lake Tahoe and onto the highway that would lead them to the Reno airport.
“No.” Jack set the trip computer on his dash. “That would take several days. I need to get back to Charleston.”
“So I’ll drive.”
He slanted her a look and said dryly, “We’ve done that already. You took off without me.”
Daisy gave him a smile of exaggerated enthusiasm. “Great,” she said, settling deeper into her comfy leather seat. “So how long is this all going to take?” she asked wearily, wishing she had a bed she could just curl up in.
“It’s around four hours from Reno to Dallas–Fort Worth, where we change planes, and another four or so to Charleston. Our flight leaves at midnight. We’ll fly all night and be home by morning.”
Daisy didn’t particularly enjoy sleeping on airplanes, but she reluctantly conceded that was probably better than staying in a hotel and trying to play it cool on what was, technically speaking anyway, their wedding night. So maybe, she decided as Jack busied himself switching on the radio, flying home tonight wasn’t such a bad idea after all…
Jack had booked them into first-class, so they had comfortable seats and plenty of legroom. Daisy was so exhausted she slept on both flights and so did he. When she was awake, she kept herself busy reading, as did he, which meant conversation was at a minimum, and suited Daisy just fine. However, once they landed in Charleston that changed. “How do you want to do this?” Jack asked as they strode through the airport terminal toward the baggage claim.
“Do what?” Daisy asked as she struggled to keep up with his longer strides.
Jack gave her a sidelong glance, and noticing she was struggling, shortened his steps to a slower pace. He took her camera bag and put it over his shoulder, gallantly relieving her of that weight, which left her with just her purse. “I promised Tom I would take you to see him as soon as you got back.”
That might have been Jack’s priority—it wasn’t hers. Especially given the way she still felt about her biological father. Sighing, Daisy consulted her watch. With the three-hour time difference, and the additional time they had spent in the DFW airport changing planes, it was nearly noon, eastern time. Daisy felt grimy and exhausted and nowhere up to another confrontation with Tom Deveraux. “I really want a shower,” Daisy said as they grabbed their luggage off the carousel and headed for the exit.
“Then we’ll go to my—our—place,” Jack said. “We can both get cleaned up and then call Tom and see where he wants to meet—the office or home.”
Daisy tried not to think how intimate “our place” sounded. Never mind how close and cozy their life ahead might be. Daisy studied Jack’s face, realizing she wasn’t about to get out of this meeting with her new husband’s “boss.” “I want to meet at Tom Deveraux’s office,” Daisy stated stubbornly. “It’ll be shorter, less personal, that way.”
Jack lifted a curious eyebrow. “I thought you wanted to get to know him, that’s what your search for your real parents was all about.”
Daisy’s heart hardened a little more as she followed Jack’s lead across the hot pavement to the short-term parking lot. “I probably would want to get to know them if they were strangers. But given the way both Iris and Tom abandoned me, and lied both to and about me, even and especially when both knew how very much I wanted to find my real parents and was looking for them, I really don’t have any interest.” Her feelings had been crushed enough already by the fact Iris hadn’t wanted her, and Tom Deveraux hadn’t even cared enough to find out if she was his child. But instead had been content to let Daisy grow up without so much as ever guessing at her and Tom’s connection. Never mind being as loved as his legitimate children, or made to feel a part of his family, or told she had four half siblings, who as it turned out, she had gotten to know and befriend anyway. Instead of making her feel wanted and loved for the first time in her life, Tom and Iris had left her feeling even more rejected and forsaken. Listening to their excuses, or worse—realizing neither of them felt they really owed her an apology—just made her feel worse. Which was why, of course, Daisy had run away. So she wouldn’t have to help Iris and Tom feel better while she was made to feel even worse than she already did.
His expression unsympathetic, Jack walked to the end of the row and stopped in front of a decade-old red sedan. The vehicle looked familiar to Daisy, with a few exceptions. The hood and door were now painted the same fire-engine red as the rest of the car. In fact, the whole vehicle looked as if it had had a paint job. The dent was gone from the fender. Even the upholstery had had a good cleaning.
Jack shrugged at her stunned look. “You’ve been driving my car, I’ve been driving yours,” he explained.
Daisy could see that. And even as she admired the way he had given as good as he got in assuming the use of her vehicle without her okay, she did not like his presumptuousness in messing with a good thing without her blessing. Daisy scowled at Jack. “I didn’t give you permission to fix it up.” She had liked her secondhand car the way it was. The vehicle’s noticeable disrepair had gotten under countless skins. It’s new spiffed-up appearance would not.
Jack merely quirked an eyebrow and looked at her without an ounce of regret. “You should have thought about that before you left it with me,” he said.
MAYBE IT WAS BECAUSE she had been raised in such a big, cold, forbidding house, but Daisy had always liked small, cozy places. Jack’s home on the beach, a mile or so down from Chase and Bridgett’s and Maggie and Gabe’s, was just what she would have ordered, if she could have afforded to buy a home for herself at that point. The one-story beach cottage was one hundred and fifty yards away from the ocean and built in typical Low Country fashion, with a high, deeply pitched roof and gabled front door. It was small—Daisy guessed no more than twelve hundred square feet, if that. But pretty and very well maintained. Obviously built before it became fashionable to have the parking area beneath the house, the building had dark-gray siding, snowy-white trim, shutters and door and a light-gray roof. Palmetto trees shaded the front of the house, which faced the street. Hedges of tall, neatly trimmed flowering bushes insured maximum privacy from the neighbors on either side, despite the relatively small lot sizes.
“Do you rent this or is it yours?” Daisy asked as they parked in the small gravel driveway and got out.
“It’s mine,” Jack declared with no small amount of pride as he unlocked the door and led the way in. “I’ll show you around and then go back and get the luggage.”
Curious to see how he lived, Daisy followed. The first thing she noticed was that there appeared to be nothing antique or exceedingly valuable in the home—the furnishings were all sturdy, attractive, department-store stock. There were miniblinds, not heavy velvet draperies, on the windows, and practical off-white ceramic tile on the floor.
To the left of the foyer was a living room with a white stone fireplace, to the right a masculinely appointed study complete with a large desk and leather chair, computer, printer, fax and copier, a wall of built-in bookshelves and several black-metal vertical files. The living room had a sectional sofa in the same slate-gray hue as the exterior of the house, an impressively outfitted entertainment center, upholstered reading chair and matching ottoman and not much else. Behind that was a surprisingly well-equipped kitchen and dining area at the rear of the house. A laundry room was located in the middle, just off the covered back porch. Farther down the hallway that ran the width of the home, was a single bathroom with a tub and shower combination, commode and sink all located in a very tiny space, and what appeared to be not just the master bedroom but the only bedroom, Daisy noted.
Daisy studied the king-size bed, with the brown, burgundy and taupe paisley sheets and coverlet. It looked comfortable and seemed to dominate the room. How comfortable it would be if the two of them were in it together, she did not know.
His hand just above her elbow, Jack directed her back to the hall. “The clean linens, towels and washcloths are in here. If you want to go first—” He tilted his head at the shower.
Daisy did.
“I’ll bring in your things.”
DAISY WASTED NO TIME getting into the shower, taking advantage of the time alone no doubt. Jack went to his study at the front of the house to the vertical files. He made sure they were locked then sat down to try to figure out what he was going to do with all the information locked inside. He couldn’t take it to the Deveraux-Heyward Shipping offices, his or Tom’s. There was too much of a chance of it being spotted by someone else. He didn’t want to leave it in a storage facility, where anyone could break in and or come across it and wonder just what the hell Jack had been doing the past ten years at Tom Deveraux’s behest. And he didn’t want to destroy the information, either. Some of it meant too much to him.
One thing was for certain, though, he didn’t want Daisy laying eyes on it. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
GINGER ZARING WAS STARING at the balance in her bank account, wondering how she could magically conjure up the sum she needed, when her daughter, Alyssa, walked into the kitchen, a stack of mail in her hands. She set the envelopes on the counter then went straight to the refrigerator and pulled out a tube of chocolate chip cookie dough. Ignoring Ginger’s frown—Ginger preferred they eat their cookies baked—Alyssa chopped off a liberal chunk and set it on a plate.
“Anything interesting in the mail?” Ginger asked her daughter.
“Yeah.” Alyssa tugged off the butter-stained polo she had to wear for her movie-theater concessions job and, still clad in a black T-shirt and black cotton slacks, collapsed wearily onto one of the breakfast-bar stools. She paused to pop a chunk of dough into her mouth. “I got another reminder from Yale. The rest of my tuition is due in two weeks, and they want my room and board to be paid in full, too.”
Ginger nodded, as if it were no big deal, but inside, her heart was sinking. She had fully expected to have all the money she needed by now, to pay those bills. But she didn’t, and now, as the time approached for her only child to leave for college, the clock was ticking ominously.
Alyssa studied her mother, at eighteen seeing a lot more than Ginger cared to admit. “Maybe it’s not too late for me to go to USC with the rest of my friends,” Alyssa said quietly.
Ginger shook her head, vetoing that. Alyssa had opportunities here that most of her high-school graduating class could only dream about. “Honey, we’ve been through this. I told you if you got accepted to Yale, you’d go.” And Ginger had promised her daughter that, knowing full well that expenses for the year would exceed her thirty-five-thousand-dollar salary. But she’d been determined to provide for her only child, and provide she would.
“But…” Alyssa’s lower lip trembled; her hazel eyes suddenly filled with tears. “We don’t have the money yet. Do we?”
Ginger refused to make this her daughter’s problem—hadn’t she already hurt Alyssa enough by marrying and divorcing such a loser? She explained patiently, “I told you. I don’t want you worrying about this.”
“How can I not worry,” Alyssa demanded plaintively, “when we’re not poor enough to be eligible for any of the need-based scholarships or financial aid, and not rich enough to qualify for the private loans?”
Exactly the problem, Ginger thought. Fortunately for the two of them, where there was a will there was always a way. “Look, I know this is tricky, but I have arranged to get the funds for you.”
“From that private funding source,” Alyssa ascertained uneasily.
“Right,” Ginger said.
“And you’re sure the money has been guaranteed to us?”
“Absolutely.” Ginger smiled.
Alyssa continued to regard her mother suspiciously. “It’s not a loan shark or anything, is it?”
“No. Of course not,” Ginger said firmly. She might be willing to take a little risk, but not that much! “Just a wealthy friend of a friend with a philanthropic streak.”
“Then what’s taking so long?” Alyssa demanded petulantly.
Exactly what I’d like to know, Ginger thought, secretly feeling more than a little irked herself. She’d been working darn hard to hold up her end of that particular bargain for months now. But thus far, despite the generous promises made to her, she had actually garnered only nine thousand in cash from Alyssa and Ginger’s secret benefactor. Not that she was about to let him fail to pony up! Twice last week, he’d told Ginger he was going to bring her the balance of the money when they met. Twice, he had forgotten. Ginger wasn’t about to let him do so again.
“Maybe we could ask Daddy to help us,” Alyssa said hesitantly.
Ginger would have given anything if that were possible. But she knew she couldn’t count on Mack Zaring for anything, and the sad truth was she never had been able to. During the ten years they’d been married he had spent every dime they both brought in, and then some, leaving the three of them deeper and deeper in debt with every year that passed. The final straw, however, had come when Mack turned thirty and decided he hated his life. Telling Ginger privately that the mundaneness of their life together was suffocating him, he walked out on Ginger and eight-year-old Alyssa. Quit his job as an electrical engineer, moved to a shack in the Blue Ridge Mountains and began working on and off as a fishing guide. Since then, he’d been chronically late with child support payments, criminally unenthusiastic about their daughter’s many stellar achievements and completely unsupportive of Alyssa’s goals and ambitions for the future. Personally, Ginger didn’t care if she never saw Mack again, but for Alyssa’s sake, she knew she had to keep some connection going. It was important, Ginger knew, that Alyssa think her father loved her every bit as much as Mack should have loved her. “Honey, I’m sure he would help us if he could,” Ginger fibbed gently. “But your daddy doesn’t have that kind of money. You know that.”
Alyssa ducked her head, discouraged, and Ginger understood full well how dejected Alyssa felt. Her own parents’ lack of money and ingenuity had kept her from going to a great private university. No way was the same thing happening to her daughter. Alyssa, Ginger determined resolutely, was going to have the opportunities in life that Ginger had never had. Alyssa was going to get the Ivy League education, and the prestige and hefty salary that went along with a degree. Even if it meant Ginger had to forfeit her pride and keep moonlighting at her second “job” in addition to her work as an airlines reservation agent. Deciding it was best to simply change the subject to something more hopeful, Ginger asked, “Do you still have that list of things you’re going to need for your dorm room—like extra-long twin sheets—for your bed?”
Alyssa nodded. “It’s on my desk.”
“Well, why don’t you go get it?” Ginger suggested cheerfully. “And we’ll go to the outlet mall and get what you need as soon as I finish up here.”
Alyssa’s face broke out into a relieved smile, sure now that everything was going to be all right. “You mean that?” she asked excitedly.
“Absolutely.” Ginger hugged her daughter warmly. “Just give me a few minutes.”
As soon as Alyssa dashed upstairs to her room, Ginger picked up her cell phone. Knowing this was a good time of day to get him, she walked outside onto the patio, where she couldn’t be overheard, and grimly dialed the number she knew by heart. That man had made her a promise. And by God, whether he wanted to or not, he was going to keep it.
CHAPTER SIX
DAISY CAUGHT JACK’S ARM before they could enter the Deveraux-Heyward Shipping Company executive office building. As Jack looked down at her, he couldn’t help but note how beautiful and fragile she looked in the snug-fitting capri pants and white sleeveless tank top, with a sweater knotted casually around her neck. Her hair fell loose to her bare, freckled shoulders. She abruptly tightened her grip on his bicep and confided in a low, compelling tone, “Before we go in, Jack, we need to make a deal.”
“Okay.” Jack paused in the shadows of the building. The protective way he was feeling right now, she could have whatever she wanted.
She turned to face him and took a bolstering breath. “I don’t want to tell anyone about the pregnancy just yet.”
His wife’s request was surprisingly inconsistent with the rest of her behavior, especially when all along she had been the one demanding the entire truth be brought into the open. Unable to recall ever meeting a woman so full of contradictions, Jack countered just as firmly, “Secrets are trouble, Daisy. You should know that better than anyone.”
“Maybe.” Daisy’s pretty chin took on that familiar stubborn tilt. “But I’m not up to hearing that I shouldn’t do this because I’m not at a point where my life is settled and orderly.”
“And deadly dull?” Jack joked, seeing where this was going.
“You know what I mean.” Daisy’s lower lip shot out petulantly as she dropped her hold on him and stepped back a pace, wedging a little more distance between them. “I wasn’t married yet when it happened, to someone I loved more than life itself. I didn’t have a prosperous career and a house, two cars and a dog—or, as Charlotte and Richard would have wanted, a suitably blue-blooded husband with a bank account to match.”
Ouch! That certainly got him where he lived. But there was nothing Jack could do about growing up on the wrong side of the docks, or being the offspring of a long line of brawny, uneducated dockworkers.
“Sorry,” Daisy amended quickly, realizing she had both insulted him and hurt his feelings. “But that’s how my adopted parents, Charlotte and Richard, are going to feel about my hooking up with you. I guarantee you, the confrontation with them won’t be pleasant.”
Jack had already figured as much, and braced himself for the familial maelstrom to come. “It likely won’t be pleasant with Tom, either,” Jack added with a warning glance.
Daisy looked down at her toes. “In any case—” Daisy’s voice became not just petulant but overly emotional “—I don’t want anyone ruining this pregnancy for either of us with predictions of doom and gloom about what kind of parents we’re going to make.” She looked up at him earnestly. “It’s too special, too new.”
Jack nodded, in that respect knowing exactly how his wife felt. “For me, too,” he said quietly. Because although Daisy’s pregnancy had been unexpected and unplanned, it had also brought joy to Jack’s life, and, as he adjusted to the idea of becoming a father, under these less-than-ideal circumstances, hope for the future unlike anything he had ever experienced. “All right, we won’t tell anyone until we both feel the time is right,” Jack promised.
“Thanks.” Relief shining on her face, Daisy stood on tiptoe and pressed a quick, casual kiss to his cheek. Together, they headed up to the executive suites.
Tom was waiting for them in his office. To Jack’s relief, Tom seemed genuinely happy and relieved to see them both. “I’m glad you’re back, Daisy,” he told her in a cordial tone as he ushered Daisy to one of the two armchairs flanking the sofa in the corner. Tom took a place on the sofa closest to Daisy, leaving Jack to the chair at the far end of the coffee table. “I was really worried about you.”
“Yeah.” Daisy sighed, morphing into the smart-ass she became whenever she felt threatened. And Tom, and his ability to hurt her, threatened her, Jack noted as the hair on the back of his neck prickled, the way it always did before a business meeting totally broke down.
“Nothing like having a wild cannon on the loose,” Daisy continued, giving Tom a vaguely reassuring wink, “but you don’t need to worry. Because I am not going to tell anyone outside the family that you’re my father.”
That was news to Jack. Daisy hadn’t said anything of the kind to him! Furthermore, he was surprised she would agree to that, given all she had gone through these past five years to uncover the truth about her real identity.
Oblivious of the impending danger, Tom shot Jack a grateful look, giving Jack credit where none was due. “I think that’s wise,” Tom said, pleased.
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Cathy Thacker
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: Jack Granger, counselor to the Deveraux shipping empire and totally devoted to the senior Deveraux, has been shadowing the love child of his mentor for nearly a decade. Granger had watched Daisy grow up from a petulant rich girl into a driven young woman with a mission to find her roots–a quest he had long prevented her from ever accomplishing…harboring his desire for her all the while.Both were outcasts searching for redemption and truth in an unforgiving world of wealth and deception. Instead, they found each other…without pretense or promises. But at what cost would they seek the future?