The Heiress

by Cathy Gillen Thacker

  Bucky was tenacious, Jack knew. But he wasn’t stupid. Getting arrested would be stupid.

  Daisy was about to say something else, when the doctor came in. The young, plain-faced obstetrician was rail thin and dressed in loose-fitting blue scrubs. She had a gauzy white cap over her dark hair. Jack had had several occasions to talk to Dr. Rametti through the night—she had been nothing but kind and first-rate.

  “How are you feeling?” Dr. Rametti asked Daisy gently.

  Daisy’s fingers clenched the tissue in her hand as she looked at the sheet across her lap. “Okay, I guess,” she answered weakly.

  “I talked to you and your husband both last night, when you were coming out of recovery,” Dr. Rametti continued as she sat down next to Daisy on the bed and took Daisy’s hand in hers, “but I’m guessing you don’t remember much of it.”

  Jack leaned back against the wall, while Daisy nodded in response, acknowledging this was so.

  Briefly, Dr. Rametti explained the simultaneous loss of the fetus and the rupture of Daisy’s fallopian tube, and the resulting laparoscopic surgery to remove both. “The good news is there is nothing to prevent you and your husband from having another baby, Daisy, as you still have one working fallopian tube. I’m going to ask you to wait on that until you heal fully from this, and to hold off on intercourse until after I see you again in two weeks,” she continued as Daisy flushed a bright, embarrassed pink. “Once I check you out and make sure everything is okay, you two can go back to acting like newlyweds again.”

  Except, Jack thought, he and Daisy never had been newlyweds. They’d been adversaries who’d been brought into marriage by the baby she was carrying.

  “Additionally,” Dr. Rametti continued talking to Daisy, “you’re going to be feeling some discomfort for a few days, so I’ve prescribed some pain medication for you. In the meantime, you’re going to need a lot of rest, and I’d like someone to be with you at home while you’re recuperating. You shouldn’t be alone for the next few days,” Dr. Rametti stressed soberly before turning to look at Jack. “Can you handle that, or do we need to arrange for another family member or private nurse?”

  Jack didn’t even want to imagine how Daisy would react if one of the Templetons was called over to care for her. Besides, it was his responsibility, as her husband. “I’ll handle it.”

  Daisy gave Jack a look that her obstetrician didn’t see, that said this was not what she wanted.

  That was too bad.

  Jack wasn’t bowing out on his responsibilities now.

  Dr. Rametti picked up the chart on her lap and stood. “Daisy, you or your husband can go ahead and call my office later today and make a follow-up appointment. But right now, the discharge nurse will give you a list of post-op instructions to follow.” Dr. Rametti turned to Jack with an empathetic look. “And see that she does, okay?”

  Jack nodded.

  The doctor looked back at Daisy. “Call me if you have any concerns.”

  Daisy promised she would.

  Dr. Rametti patted Daisy’s arm, the sympathy in her eyes speaking volumes. “You’re going to be weepy. You and your husband have suffered a tremendous loss.”

  At the compassion in Dr. Rametti’s voice, Daisy’s eyes welled with tears.

  “It’s okay to cry. In fact, it will probably help you both.” The doctor looked at Jack, too, as he steeled himself to show no emotion and be as strong as Daisy needed him to be.

  “Plus, your body’s been through a lot. You were pregnant, now you’re not. Your hormones are going to be in an uproar until your body gets itself back to normal. So you may be moody and that’s okay, too. Just give it time. And you—” Dr. Rametti pointed at Jack “—be patient with her, okay?”

  Jack nodded again. He could do that. Hell, he could do a lot more than that if Daisy would only let him. Right now, he wasn’t sure that was the case. Already he could see the walls around her heart going up. Feel her pulling away from him. From what had happened, not just to her, but to both of them.

  “YOU DON’T HAVE to do this, you know,” Daisy said as soon as Dr. Rametti had exited the room.

  Jack knew what she was going to say—that he didn’t have to take care of her, but he didn’t want to hear it. Not yet. Maybe not ever. He knew they had come together for reasons other than love alone, but he wasn’t ready for any of that to end. And especially not now, when she still needed him in her life.

  “We’ll talk about this later, Daisy,” Jack told her sternly as he moved to help her get dressed in the same clothes she had come in to the emergency room the night before.

  Daisy shot him a contentious look, a hint of her old spirit showing through her grief. “I think we should.”

  “Nope. And it would help me out immensely,” Jack continued as he knelt next to the bed and pulled her panties up over her knees, “if you would pay attention to what you’re doing here.”

  He needed to think about something besides what a beautiful body she had, off-limits as it was. He needed to think about something other than taking her into his arms and holding her close and making love to her again and again until some of the happiness came back into her sad eyes.

  But that wasn’t going to happen, at least not for a couple of weeks. So he’d have to devise another way to try and keep her in his life. Have to find another way to get to know her as deeply and intimately as he wanted to know her.

  “I’m trying to pay attention,” Daisy countered in a slightly slurred voice as she struggled to line up her feet with the leg holes in her jeans. A task apparently not as easy as it would, on the surface, seem. “But this pain medication is making me woozy.”

  Jack could tell. His body reacting at the soft and sexy feel of her, he clasped the bare silky skin of one calf, fit it into the leg of her jeans, then did the other. Using both hands, he brought the denim carefully over her hips and the enticing curve of her buttocks.

  “Oh, man.” Daisy sighed as they both realized at once the futility of trying to zip up the jeans that had fit her so well only the night before. “I can’t fasten these all the way.”

  Jack noted, even if she had been able to get past all the air Dr. Rametti had pumped into Daisy’s stomach during the laparoscopy, to enable the surgeon to see what she was doing and make the needed repairs, the denim would not have covered the clear plastic bandage Daisy had over her navel. No, thanks to the shirt she had been wearing the night before, that would still be in plain view. Knowing that wouldn’t do—Daisy felt self-conscious enough already—Jack tugged his short-sleeve blue polo shirt over his head and handed it to her. “You can wear this.”

  Daisy frowned even as her delicate hands curled around the fabric. “What about you?”

  Jack shrugged. “I’ve still got a T-shirt on.”

  Daisy shot him a lopsided grin. “Yeah, well, without the polo shirt you look like a James Dean wanna-be. Or you would if you had a pack of cigarettes rolled up in the sleeve.”

  Jack slid the blue polo gently over her head. He knew his shirt smelled as if he had spent the night in it, but figured what the hell. It was something for her to wear home, and the sooner he got her back to the beach, the better.

  Looking as if she wanted to get out of there as much as he wanted to get her out of there, Daisy grudgingly pulled her arms through. The sleeves of the polo, which landed just below the curve of his biceps, came down past her elbows, and the hem of it fell well past her lap. Nevertheless, she looked very feminine swallowed up that way in something of his. She looked up at him hesitantly. “You sure you don’t mind? I feel bad about taking the shirt right off your back.”

  Or in other words, Jack thought, disappointed, she still resisted the idea of leaning on him, even for a few minutes. “It’s okay,” Jack said gruffly, telling himself that this wasn’t the end of him and Daisy, despite the ever-retreating look in her eyes that said yes, it damn well was. That she had experienced as much of life—and loss—with him as she wanted to already. Wordlessly, he handed D
aisy her red baseball cap and the coated elastic band that had been in her hair when she arrived, and watched as she fastened her hair in a ponytail, pulled the end through the half-moon-shaped back of her cap, then settled the brim down across her forehead. What she was thinking at that moment, as she finished dressing and held his eyes, Jack couldn’t decipher and wasn’t sure he wanted to know, anyway. Before either of them could say anything else, the discharge nurse came in.

  She and Jack accompanied Daisy down together, and the nurse stayed with the wheelchair-bound Daisy while Jack dashed out to get his SUV. He parked beneath the portico and got out to help the nurse move Daisy into the passenger seat. As Jack helped Daisy out of the chair, not surprisingly she began to cry. Probably because she was thinking the same thing he was, Jack determined grimly. That this should have been a joyous occasion, she should have been leaving the hospital seven and a half months from now, with their happy healthy baby in her arms. But it hadn’t happened that way, Jack told himself sternly as he wiped the tears from Daisy’s face with his fingertips, gave her a comforting one-armed hug and pressed a kiss to her temple. And like it or not, he told himself as he swallowed hard against the tight knot of emotion in his own throat, they were just going to have to deal.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  TOM WALKED INTO HIS SON Mitch’s Deveraux-Heyward Shipping office at 7:00 p.m. “Do you and Lauren have any plans for dinner this evening?” Tom asked.

  As Tom feared his son would, Mitch hesitated, looking less than enthused. “Actually—”

  “I thought we could go out together if you didn’t have plans,” Tom continued casually, not above being pushy if it resulted in him getting some time with family again. For the past five weeks they had all treated him like the pariah he supposed he deserved to be. Tom understood why they were angry and disappointed in him. Hell, he was disillusioned with his past behavior, too! His infidelity hadn’t made sense at the time. It made even less now. But there was no point in wallowing in regret. That wouldn’t change anything. And they all still had the rest of their lives ahead of them. Tom didn’t want to spend his missing Grace and the kids, knowing he was the architect of their broken family. Not when he could still do something to fix things, even if it meant groveling a little, something else he never did.

  Mitch buried his gaze in the papers on his desk and mumbled eventually, “Uh, sorry, Dad. It’s not going to be possible. Maybe Gabe—”

  Refusing to accept the brush-off yet again, Tom sat down in one of the chairs in front of his son’s desk. “Gabe’s on call tonight.” And Tom knew without even asking, the answer would be the same from his other two children. Amy and Chase would both cook up some excuse, real or imagined in order to continue keeping their distance from Tom. Not surprisingly, none of them had any trouble relating to Grace. In fact, from what Tom could see, they were spending more time than ever with his ex. According to Jack, all four of his children had even made an overture to Daisy the evening before. But Tom was persona non grata, and he was beginning to wonder dispiritedly if that would ever change.

  “And anyway,” Mitch continued, “I want to stop by to see Daisy.”

  The elephant in the living room. Feeling as if a cold draft had blown across his neck at the thought of the tragedy in his illegitimate daughter’s life, Tom looked at Mitch. He wondered if his second-oldest son’s information was more up-to-date than his own. “How’s she doing?” Tom asked.

  “I don’t know.” Mitch’s eyebrows drew together in a worried frown as he rose and stuffed a stack of papers and his laptop computer into a leather carrying case. “I thought maybe you might know something.”

  Tom shook his head. “Jack hasn’t called since nine this morning.” Daisy had still been sleeping then, and hence, hadn’t yet been told about the miscarriage. Jack had told Tom he planned to break the sad news to her himself. Tom hadn’t envied him that. But he respected him for doing it.

  Tom picked up the phone and telephoned the hospital to see if Daisy was allowed to have visitors.

  “She okay?” Mitch asked as soon as the conversation was concluded.

  Not bothering to hide his relief, Tom hung up. “Apparently so—she was released around noon today.” He looked at Mitch, deciding it was time to stop shielding his legitimate children from his illegitimate one. “I think I’ll drive out to the beach and check on her.”

  Mitch nodded as he got up from behind his desk. The resentful look on his face was back—the one that said he still couldn’t believe Tom had cheated on Grace—the one that said he might not ever be able to forgive his father for the transgression. Then Mitch was gone. Computer case slung over his shoulder, already heading down the hall, for the elevators.

  Tom closed up shop, too, then deciding not to call—he didn’t want Daisy telling him she didn’t want to see him, either—Tom looked up Jack’s home address and headed down to his car. He drove out to the beach, stopped at a flower shop and bought a nice arrangement of pink roses then continued, paying careful attention to the street signs and house numbers. He had never been there before, never been to anyplace Jack lived, as it wasn’t his practice to visit employees at their residences. Eventually, however, he found the small dark-gray beach cottage with the light-gray roof. He parked his Jaguar and got out.

  JACK WAS IN HIS HOME office preparing a set of contracts that should have gone out earlier that day, when he heard the car door. He got up, looked out the window and saw Tom Deveraux getting out of his car. He had a large bouquet of flowers in his hand.

  Not sure how Daisy would react to either the flowers or the father who had more or less abandoned her years ago, Jack stepped outside, quietly shutting the front door behind him.

  “How is she?” Tom asked.

  Jack didn’t know how to answer that. She was heart-broken over the loss—so was he. “I think she’s still a little stunned,” Jack said finally, deciding not to try and sugarcoat things, even if Tom was his boss and probably would have preferred to hear that everything was just fine.

  Tom raked his free hand through his hair, looking more uneasy than Jack had ever seen him. “Is she resting?”

  “Yes.” And Jack wanted to keep it that way. Daisy had been through hell the last twenty-four hours. If she could get a little sleep, all the better.

  “Maybe the two of us could talk privately then,” Tom suggested, handing the bouquet to Jack. “I don’t want her to overhear.”

  Jack nodded his assent. “Let’s go out back then, to the deck. We won’t disturb her there.” They walked around the house. When they reached the deck, Jack ducked inside momentarily, to put the flowers in the kitchen, to give to Daisy later. He came back out, two bottles of cold beer in hand and gave one to Tom.

  Tom accepted his with a nod of thanks and twisted off the top. An awkward silence fell between them as they each took a drink. “I’m sorry about your loss,” Tom said, sitting down in one of the Adirondack chairs overlooking the ocean.

  Jack sat down beside him, knowing it was necessary for them to go through the motions of acknowledging their mutual grief over the loss, but wishing they didn’t have to do it just the same. For him, the loss of their baby was just too painful to discuss. “Thank you,” he said politely.

  Tom stared at the waves rolling slowly in to shore. “Even though I wished you would have been up front with me from the start—” Tom turned back to Jack soberly “—you should have told me.”

  “I know that,” Jack said. He also knew it hadn’t been easy for Tom to be civil to him since he’d found out that Jack and Daisy had slept together that night.

  Looking as if he was beginning to swelter in the heat and humidity of the summer evening, Tom took off his suit coat, laid it beside him, then loosened his tie and the first two buttons on his shirt. “I’ve had some time to think the past five weeks. I realize part of what happened is probably my fault. I never should have had you watching over her all these years,” Tom confessed in a low, sorrowful tone. He fired a pointed look at
Jack. “It lent an element of intimate understanding to your relationship with her that would not have been there otherwise.”

  In other words, Jack thought, Tom was saying that in the process of so closely keeping tabs on Daisy, Jack had become enamored of Daisy in some not necessarily healthy way. But Jack knew there was a difference between a fascination with someone and what had happened between him and Daisy. A lot of people fascinated him. No one else grabbed hold of his heart and soul the way Daisy had the night they’d come together. No one else left him unable to sleep, or think, or do much of anything. No one else conjured up such fiercely protective, genuinely tender or even highly exasperated feelings. “I could have said no to your request,” Jack replied. “I didn’t.”

  “Could you?” Tom regarded Jack skeptically. He took another sip of his beer. “Looking back on it, I think it was more or less part of the job requirement at Deveraux-Heyward Shipping. Whatever I needed done, in a legal or even clandestine sense, you did.”

  Jack ran his fingers over the condensation collecting on the outside of his beer. “I understood that you had your reasons.”

  “You just didn’t know at the time what those reasons were,” Tom said.

  Jack shrugged, aware he wouldn’t have trusted anyone else on a gut level the way he had trusted Tom Deveraux. He gave his mentor a man-to-man look as he replied, “I took your motivation to be honorable.”

  Tom picked at the curling edge of the label on his bottle, drawing it farther away from the glass. “Yes, it was, even if the initial transgression that got me into this predicament was not. The point is, Jack,” Tom emphasized bluntly as his gaze clashed strongly with Jack’s once again, “I vilified you for doing exactly what I had done—slept with someone on impulse.”

  Jack stared briefly at the weathered boards between his feet. “I don’t think you know why I slept with Daisy that night.” Jack paused, and leaned forward earnestly in his chair. “And I sure don’t know why you—” Jack realized, from the sudden, annoyed look on Tom’s face, he better tread carefully in what he alleged. He swallowed and ignored the uneasiness twisting in his gut. “Bottom line, I think our situations are as different as night and day.”