The Heiress

by Cathy Gillen Thacker

  “Hey, you got your SUV back,” Daisy noted as she took a sip of water.

  Jack smiled, glad to see a little color coming back into her cheeks. “Yep. It was delivered to me about an hour ago at the office. I took it as a sign I was meant to be out here with you, so I told Tom and Mitch that I had to go and came on out.”

  Tears of distress sparkled in Daisy’s eyes. “Just in time to see me—” Her voice broke. She ducked her head, embarrassed, and couldn’t go on.

  “Hey,” Jack said, gently touching the side of her face. “It’s okay. I’m a guy, remember? I spent my entire college career watching guys toss their cookies. Okay, not my entire college career, but a good part of every weekend.” At Vanderbilt, there had been no shortage of fraternity boys with too much money to spend and too little ambition. As a work-study student assigned to a housekeeping crew for the dorms, Jack had cleaned up more than one mess. But this was different. This was his wife. Carrying his child. “You think you’re going to be okay?” Jack stroked her hair.

  “What’s going on here? What’s wrong?” Iris and Richard rushed across the marble porch.

  “It’s all right.” Daisy held up both hands to ward them off. “I just—food poisoning, I think. I knew I shouldn’t have had that chicken salad at lunch,” Daisy explained miserably as fresh tears appeared in her eyes.

  Richard backed up a step, not willing to get too close under the circumstances. Iris looked even more distressed. “You’re sure that’s all it is?” she asked Daisy, concerned and ready to help in any way she could.

  Bypassing the opportunity to tell her family of her pregnancy, Daisy nodded. “I don’t know if I can drive, though.”

  “You could go inside and lie down,” Richard suggested reluctantly after a moment. “I’ve got an appointment with someone, but I’m sure Iris could help the two of you.”

  “No,” Iris quickly overrode her father’s offer. Ignoring the resentment-filled way Daisy was looking at her, Iris glanced at Jack sternly and spoke as if underlining every word. “Daisy needs to go home if she’s not feeling well.”

  “Don’t trust me around all those antiques, huh?” Daisy mugged weakly.

  “We’re having a party here tonight,” Iris explained to Jack and Daisy. “The caterers and staff will be arriving any minute to start setting up.”

  “Well, we certainly don’t want me tossing my cookies again and killing that party mood,” Daisy concurred dryly.

  Iris gave Daisy a look that was more mother in that instant than older sister. Daisy didn’t appear to see it, nor did Richard, but Jack did. The mixture of vulnerability and concern in Iris’s eyes made him realize just how hard it had been for Iris to give Daisy over to her parents to bring up. Clearly, Jack thought, Iris loved Daisy as a daughter, even if Iris didn’t quite know what to do with those feelings except hide them. Oblivious to the direction of Jack’s thoughts, Iris looked at him. “Can you drive her and make sure she’s taken care of?” she asked.

  Jack nodded. “Sure.”

  “And I’ll have one of the staff here drive your car back,” Iris reassured Daisy gently. “Just give me the keys and the address.” Iris held out her hand. Daisy reached into her purse, and handed them over. Jack gave her the address. Richard remained impatiently in the foreground, glancing at his watch and the driveway beyond.

  Concerned with only one thing—his wife—Jack helped Daisy with her seat belt. “Do you need a few more minutes to just sit here?”

  Daisy closed her eyes and relaxed against the back of her seat. “Let’s just go.” She opened her eyes and gripped his hand tightly. “Now, Jack.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  “YOU’RE SURE IT’S NOT food poisoning?” Jack asked again as they neared Charleston.

  “Positive,” Daisy said as she stretched out in the passenger seat beside him, still feeling a little embarrassed about the way she had lost the contents of her stomach back at Rosewood. “For one thing, if it were, I’d probably still be retching.” Since Jack had come to the rescue, she had felt a lot better. “So it’s got to be a bout of morning—or in this case,” she amended, “afternoon sickness.” Brought on by stress, heat, travel and her father’s critical, overbearing attitude.

  Jack slanted her a concerned glance. “Have you been throwing up before today?”

  “No. It’s my first time for that, and hopefully the last,” Daisy said, speaking with genuine feeling about this much. “Because I gotta tell you, Granger, this part of pregnancy sucks rocks.”

  Jack grinned at the drama—and truth—in her low tone. “Speaking of pregnancy,” he said, reaching over to rub a knuckle gently over her stomach, “don’t you need to be going to a doctor here in Charleston?”

  Daisy tensed until he put both hands back on the steering wheel. Swallowing hard and telling herself she did not want to be foolish enough to fall in love with a man who had only married her out of a sense of duty, she pressed her lips together and said, “I called my doctor when I got back. My first appointment with an obstetrician is next week.”

  Jack’s eyes lit up with enthusiasm. “Is it okay if I go with you?”

  Daisy put her hand on her tummy—unconsciously protecting the baby inside? She studied Jack’s face, unable to help feeling pleased about his excitement. “You’re really getting into this.”

  “Hey—” Jack slanted a glance at her, “—it’s my kid, too.”

  A fact he was taking on faith. How odd was that, Daisy mused, that a man she had slept with but barely knew would trust her about something that important, when her own family had never really trusted her at all. At least not enough to tell her the truth about her parentage.

  Silence fell between them as they drove the causeway that crossed the marshland between Charleston and the beach where Jack lived. Daisy stared down at the intermittent pools of deep blue-gray water and tall marsh grass waving in the wind, beneath the sunny Carolina-blue sky. It was so beautiful here, but also so dangerous beneath the murky depths. She couldn’t help but make the parallel to her life.

  She turned to Jack, aware of a deep sense of foreboding within her. “We’re going to be okay parents, aren’t we?”

  Jack nodded. “The best.”

  “I hope so.” Daisy sighed and bit her lip as she thought about everything that could—maybe even would—go wrong, before everything was said and done. “I don’t want…”

  “What?” Jack pressed when Daisy didn’t go on.

  Daisy shook off her feeling of unease. “I was just going to say I hope I am not as spineless as Charlotte or critical as Richard were when I was growing up. I don’t want our baby to ever feel that he or she isn’t pretty or smart or well behaved enough. Or that he or she doesn’t have parents who will stand up for him or her.”

  “I’m sure our kid will be perfect.” Jack tossed her a confident smile, amending teasingly, “In our eyes anyway.”

  Recognizing the truth of that, Daisy chuckled softly as Jack parked the SUV beneath the carport of his beach cottage. As gallant as always, he circled around to help her with her door and slid a steadying hand beneath her elbow as she got down from the passenger seat. Daisy looked at him in a way that let him know he did not have to handle her with kid gloves. “I’m not an invalid.”

  He slid his arm around her waist. “Just want to make sure you’re okay.”

  “I am. Although I think I need a nap.” The drive out to Rosewood and back, combined with being sick, had left her feeling drained and weary to her bones.

  “Good idea,” Jack said.

  Daisy went straight to the bedroom, kicked off her sandals and curled up on the king-size bed. Jack brought her a blanket from the linen closet and draped it over her. He lingered at the bedside, watching over her tenderly. “Can I get you anything else—some tea maybe?”

  “Soda would be good,” Daisy murmured, snuggling farther into the pillow and closing her eyes. She didn’t know what it was about Jack, but whenever she was with him she felt so safe.

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nbsp; THE INVITATION BUCKY had filched from Iris Templeton’s office said the preferred customer party at Rosewood began at eight o’clock, but just to be on the safe side, Bucky Jerome waited until eight-thirty before he drove up to the gatehouse and handed his official invitation to the uniformed security guard on duty. The guard looked closely at the invitation, then waved Bucky on through the electric gates. Roughly one hundred luxury cars and limousines were parked on both sides of the tree-lined lane leading up to the mansion. In the parking area behind the house were the catering trucks and less expensive vehicles. Bucky found a space in the latter group, for his Volkswagen Jetta. He straightened his tie, got out of the car and headed toward the brightly lit house. He had a digital camera small enough to fit in the palm of his hand tucked into his pocket. And enough questions to fill two books.

  Parties at Rosewood were common—it was a well-known fact that Templeton’s Fine Antiques sold run-of-the-mill antiques to tourists and modestly wealthy clients out of their King Street shop, but hosted galas for their very best clients and catered to the elite at their private country estate, where the most expensive pieces were kept. It was the way they kept their customers happy and managed to keep moving the high-end pieces no matter the state of the economy. So it was no surprise to Bucky to see that the place was packed.

  What was unusual was for a mere airlines reservation agent to go to Iris, behave with demonstrated unhappiness and then get an invitation to the party. Bucky had grown up in Charleston. He knew everyone on the social register, all the prettiest girls at the prep schools and around town. Some of whom were prone—like Daisy Templeton—to rebel against their uptight, blue-blooded parents by dressing and acting like anything but well-bred young heiresses. Ginger Zaring was not one of that group. And he sincerely doubted she could afford even the least expensive of the very fine antiques housed at the Templetons’ Rosewood estate.

  Which made Bucky wonder what Ginger would be doing at Rosewood tonight. As Bucky neared the front door of the house, he got his invitation out again. Showed it to the butler answering the door. The butler gave Bucky a deferential look and ushered Bucky inside.

  It took Bucky less than five minutes to make his way through the throngs of wealthy patrons populating the downstairs rooms. The auburn-haired Ginger Zaring was stationed near the bar. Unlike many of the other stodgily dressed females there, Ginger was wearing a low-cut scarlet dress that ended several inches above her knees, and what Bucky liked to think of as hooker heels. She looked uncomfortable. Nervous even, as she fended off the passes of one wealthy man after another.

  More curious than ever, Bucky plucked a flute of champagne off a passing tray and started toward Ginger. Before he could get to her, she glanced at her watch, put her glass aside and began making her way through the guests, toward the rear of the mansion. Curious, because she seemed so deliberate now, when she had been so uncertain just moments earlier, Bucky followed her. When she reached the kitchen, she picked up her pace, as did Bucky, moving through the uniformed caterers toward what looked like a large butler’s pantry on the far wall. Wondering what the heck the woman would be doing in there, Bucky hastened to catch up with her. And that was when Iris Templeton caught his arm from behind then stepped around in front of him. “Bucky,” Iris exclaimed, smiling broadly. “I’m surprised to see you here this evening.” Her eyes narrowed. “I wasn’t aware we had given you an invitation.”

  Bucky shrugged as casually as if he had actually been invited. “I heard about the party and thought I’d drop by.” At Iris’s penetrating stare, he continued, fibbing easily. “I’m still looking for that gift for my dad, and I thought maybe you might have something out here.”

  Iris smiled even more. “What a wonderful idea. And you’re right. We probably do have something exactly right.”

  The butler appeared at Iris’s side, said, “Several guests are asking for your father.”

  “He’s out in the barns, doing a last-minute check of our inventory,” Iris said. “I’m going to take Bucky out there, so I’ll give my father the message and have him come back inside.”

  Shoot, Bucky thought. He had wanted to follow the woman, see what she was up to in the butler’s pantry. Now he wasn’t going to have the chance.

  Iris gripped Bucky’s arm just above the elbow. “Shall we…?”

  Figuring he could catch up with the auburn-haired Ginger later, Bucky nodded. Making small talk all the while about what might be an appropriate gift for Bucky’s father, Iris led him outside via the back entrance, through the impeccably manicured gardens and across the lawns, toward the barns. “I assume you want to spend between three and five thousand dollars,” Iris said.

  Bucky winced. This was getting to be an expensive investigation. “More like five hundred,” he specified.

  Iris’s lips tightened into a perplexed frown. “Well, that does limit things quite a bit,” she said.

  Bucky had figured as much.

  “But I’m sure we can find something.”

  Something turned out to be a cuckoo clock, circa 1812.

  Trying not to appear as impatient as he felt, Bucky handed over a bad check that he fortunately had in his wallet. Two minutes later, Iris in tow, he was carrying his find toward his car. And that was when he saw Ginger emerging alone from the rear of the mansion. She looked as if she’d had a tumble. There was a run in one stocking. Her hair was mussed, lipstick off. Seeing her hasten toward a small economy car and climb in, Iris frowned.

  Bucky looked at Iris. “I wonder if she found what she wanted tonight,” he said.

  “WE HAD A DEAL,” Iris told her father furiously as she climbed into the limo that would take them back to Charleston, shortly after midnight. “I run the business. You don’t get in my way. Tonight—” she regarded him steadily, thinking about what sordidness Bucky Jerome had almost stumbled onto “—you got in my way.”

  Richard regarded her with the same disrespect he had always shown her, when not under the watchful eyes of others. “Nonsense. I sold fifty thousand dollars’ of antiques tonight.”

  Iris’s voice shook with emotion. “I told you. I won’t stand to be used like I was in the past, as a cover for your peccadilloes. And I won’t let our business fill that role, either.”

  Richard gave Iris an impassive look that said he didn’t care what they had agreed, then or now. “I’ll live my life any way I please. You worry about yourself and getting Daisy and her latest scandal off the society page.”

  Iris glared at her father in frustration. “Daisy has never listened to me, you know that, and now she resents me more than ever.” And for that, Iris couldn’t blame her. If only she had been stronger when she was pregnant with Daisy, she could have stood up to her parents and found a way to keep her baby. Either alone, or with her new husband. Instead, she had been talked into giving Daisy over to them and pushed into a marriage with a man who had never wanted or would have accepted children. That union had given her a life of luxury and enabled her to save the family business, but had never made her happy. All the while, watching helplessly, as her child was brought up by her parents.

  She had thought—hoped—Charlotte’s love, and the stipulations Iris had put on Richard and his philandering, would be enough to ensure Daisy a happier childhood than Iris had been blessed with. But she’d been wrong. In the end, Richard had done to Daisy what he had done to Iris. He’d made her feel insecure and reluctant to trust men. And for that, Iris was having a hard time forgiving him.

  His expression one of pure aggravation, Richard helped himself to a shot of whiskey from the bar in the back of the limo. “What was Bucky Jerome doing at the party tonight?”

  Iris shrugged, and passed on her father’s wordless offer of something alcoholic. “Nosing around, obviously.”

  Richard put the bottle back in its holder. He took a sip and regarded Iris over the rim of the glass. “For what?”

  Iris rubbed at the knotted muscles at the back of her neck. “He saw Ginger Zaring at
my shop today.”

  Her father’s eyes narrowed as he demanded, “Did he overhear anything?”

  Iris hesitated. “I don’t think so. I took her back to my private office to have our discussion.”

  “Then why was he at Rosewood tonight?” Richard insisted.

  Iris glared at Richard, resenting her father’s third degree almost as much as his careless actions. “Because obviously he knew something was up and your girlfriend was going to be there.” At Richard’s warning look, Iris lowered her tone with effort. “Bucky must have seen me give Ginger Zaring an invitation and then helped himself to one also when I wasn’t looking. Because that’s the only way he could have gotten into the party tonight.”

  Richard took a moment to mull that over, then asked, “Why was he at the store?”

  Iris shrugged, and thought, dumb luck. “He’s been interested in Daisy’s elopement,” Iris said finally. “I think he senses something more going on with her than what anyone is saying.”

  Richard leaned forward urgently. “Tell me there’s no way he could find out what you did.”

  Iris flushed. Why was she still guilty over that? Her unexpected pregnancy was ancient history. “He’ll never hear it from me,” she retorted stonily. And she hoped like heck that Bucky wouldn’t ever hear it from Daisy, either. Iris couldn’t imagine trying to explain to their friends and customers why she had allowed herself to be bullied into giving up the one thing, besides the family antiques business, she had ever really truly loved.

  “He’d better not find out about Daisy’s parentage. The family reputation is at stake.”

  Unable to help herself, Iris scoffed. “It seems to me if you were really concerned about that, you would have used more discretion this evening, Father.”

  Richard gave Iris a quelling look. “You worry about Daisy and destroying any physical proof of her origins she dug up in Switzerland. I’ll worry about me.”