The Heiress

by Cathy Gillen Thacker

  A gasp of surprise went through the crowd as Bucky Jerome stood in the foreground taking photos for the Charleston Herald.

  Iris stepped up in a way that Jack never thought she would. “I kept this news a secret from everyone except my mother and father for years, thinking that it was the best way to shield Daisy from the pain of my foolish indiscretion. But of course it wasn’t, because Daisy deserves to know her father, just as Tom deserves to know his daughter.”

  Iris looked at Daisy, her eyes shining with love and thanks for the forgiveness that had since been afforded her. “I want that to happen as much as they do,” Iris continued gently, “so I would ask that you all lift your glasses and join us in a toast acknowledging our beloved daughter, Daisy.”

  “Hear, hear,” the stunned crowd murmured in unison as they sipped champagne in Daisy’s honor.

  “And I have an important announcement, too,” Daisy said with a brittle smile, removing her hand from Jack’s and stepping away from him.

  She turned to Jack, a mixture of hurt and betrayal flashing in her Deveraux-blue eyes. “It seems tonight is a night for surprises,” Daisy continued in that excessively cordial voice Jack had learned long ago to distrust. It was the voice that usually signaled Daisy about to do some major acting out.

  “For instance, I just found out that my husband, Jack, here, only married me because my birth father, Tom Deveraux, pressured him to do so,” Daisy stated in a crisp, deeply apologetic voice. “And Jack, being an employee of Deveraux-Heyward Shipping, could hardly say no to his boss’s outrageously antiquated demands. Not if he wanted to be a member of this family, anyway. So,” Daisy concluded, her face a polite, blank mask as she turned to face Jack once again, “I am here tonight to tell all of you that Jack and I are getting a divorce.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  JACK CAUGHT UP with Daisy as she reached the rear of the house. He clamped an iron hand on her wrist, another arm about her waist. Smiling tightly at the caterers bustling around the kitchen, he led her through the back hall and up the rear stairs. In all the time he had worked for Tom, he had never been on the second floor of Tom Deveraux’s mansion. He didn’t care. He just wanted Daisy somewhere quiet and private. Somewhere they could make sense of what happened. Taking her down the hall, he ducked into the first available guest bedroom and shut the door behind them. “What the hell was that?” he demanded angrily.

  Daisy whirled away from him. “What do you think it was? I was breaking up with you!”

  Jack’s heart pounded in his chest. He couldn’t believe everything was going so wrong, so fast. Worse, he didn’t have a clue what Daisy’s fury was about! Noting she looked as if she might run again, he positioned himself between Daisy and the door. “Why?”

  Daisy clenched her fists at her sides. She glared at him, the betrayal she felt evident. “Because I heard you and my father,” she stated in a low, embittered voice. “I know why you married me. Because he forced you to do so.”

  Jack couldn’t believe Daisy thought he was that shallow and unfeeling. Not after all they had come to mean to each other. His fury fueled by the depth of her insult, he glared right back at her. “No one forces me to do anything, Daisy,” he said coldly, resenting the implication he was a bought man. “Least of all your father.” If he hadn’t wanted to marry Daisy or stay with her, he wouldn’t have done it, period.

  Daisy tossed her head and began to pace. “You work for him. You would have lost your job.”

  Jack sighed and shoved both his hands through his hair. “That had nothing to do with it.”

  “Right,” Daisy agreed with a provoking sarcasm that hit him where he lived. “It was your innate gallantry. Your desire to protect and defend and go to bat for all things Deveraux, including and especially me, Tom’s illegitimate daughter. Face it—” her voice rose in anguish “—I was your entrée into this much-desired family and your plan almost worked! You almost became what you always wanted to be—a bona fide member of this family through me!”

  Jack stared at her, barely able to comprehend her accusations, they were so far off the mark. “If you think that’s all I’m about, then you don’t know me at all.”

  “No, that’s the problem, Jack!” Daisy stormed toward him as hot, angry tears brimmed over and slid down her cheeks. “I do know you!” She jammed a finger at his chest, angrily punctuating every sentence. “I know how long you watched over me, getting me out of one scrape after another. I know how fascinated you were with me. And how much, from that very first night we were alone, you wanted to make love to me!”

  He caught her hand and forced it down between them, before she could jab his sternum again. His fingers closed over hers. “I told you that was a mistake, that it should never have happened that way.”

  Abruptly, Daisy went very still. She tilted her head up to his. “But if it had been up to you, it would have happened.”

  Jack wasn’t going to lie about that. “Eventually, yes,” he admitted with reluctant honesty, “if I’d had my way it would have happened.”

  Daisy shrugged off his grip, stepped back. She studied him, vibrant color sweeping into her cheeks, and continued her prediction. “In a nice tidy socially acceptable way.”

  Jack swallowed, knowing the more he revealed, the deeper his trouble. He also knew now was not the time to lie to her, or withhold anything, since that was what had gotten them in this mess in the first place. He regarded her steadily. “I think that would have been the proper way to go about it, yes. I think the chances of you being hurt by what we did, when we did it, would have been a lot less if we had done things the normal way. But it still wouldn’t have changed the outcome, Daisy.” He still would have fallen in love with her, and unless he was dead wrong, she would have fallen in love with him.

  “Right.” Daisy tossed him a bright and breezy smile that in no way matched up with the pain reflected in her eyes.

  “I still would have lost the baby. Because—” she gave an offhand shrug reminiscent of years of hurt “—that’s just the way my luck seems to run.”

  Jack swallowed and went toward her. “It wouldn’t have kept us apart, because we were destined to be together, Daisy. That wasn’t clear to me then, but I sure as hell know it now.”

  “Well, I don’t.” Daisy spun away before he could wrap her in his arms.

  Jack braced his hands on his waist. Not sure when he had ever felt more frustrated, or more afraid, he scowled at her reproachfully. “You can’t just dump me after a misunderstanding.”

  Daisy scoffed, every wall she’d ever had around her, every wall he’d ever torn down, right back up. She was the hellion he had first started chasing, all over again. “Haven’t you learned anything at all about me by now, Jack? I can and will do whatever I damn well please, no matter who disapproves! And that includes you!”

  A cold sweat broke out on the back of his neck as Daisy assumed her haughtiest society-girl posture and swept around him. “I’m warning you,” he told her grimly. “You walk out that door, Daisy, you give up on us now, after all this, and it’s over.” He wasn’t going to let her hurt him the way the rest of his family had.

  Daisy turned, more sadness than he had ever thought to see in her eyes. “That’s the thing you still refuse to let yourself face, Jack,” she said, the tears she had been defiantly holding back spilling over her lashes once again. “It’s been over ever since I lost our baby. Because that baby was the only reason we were ever together for more than a few hours in the first place. Somewhere deep down, you know it, too—you just haven’t let yourself accept it.”

  THE DOOR CLOSED QUIETLY behind Daisy. Fighting the impulse to go after her—the impulse he supposed he would always have, no matter what, Jack sank onto the bed and put his head in his hands. Upon reflection, he didn’t know why he was surprised by any of this.

  Daisy had never once said she loved him. Even in their most intimate, tender times together, she’d always held herself back, let herself get just so close to Ja
ck and no closer. Like a fool, Jack had kept telling himself that time, and his steady presence, would remedy even that. One day, he had supposed, Daisy would let the rest of her own fears of abandonment go and tell him that she loved him, too. Not lightly or in passing, but with her whole heart and soul.

  But it hadn’t happened, and tonight, with the truth slapping him in the face, he was forced to admit, finally, that it never would. Daisy had been forsaken as a kid, and then left out on a limb even after the truth about her true parentage was known. It didn’t matter to her that all that was changing, that her family was finally doing what they should have done for her from the very beginning—tell the truth and claim her proudly. She was still expecting disaster, and he just couldn’t do it anymore. Couldn’t keep going after a wife who ultimately did not want him in her life.

  He was tired of being with people who kept themselves apart from him. Tom Deveraux had put up an emotional firewall between the two of them from the very first that was just now beginning to come down, and that had happened only, Jack knew, because Tom had felt that Jack was making Daisy happy. His grandfather hadn’t known how to love, his mother had been afraid to. And Daisy—Daisy who wasn’t afraid of anything else in this life, simply wouldn’t let herself open up her heart and take the risk.

  Jack had learned early on not to ask for anything for himself. As a kid, he had known he had to watch out for himself because no one else was going to do it for him, no one was going to just be there for him, seeing that he got what he needed, never mind wanted. So with the exception of the encouragement and the mentoring he had received from Tom, which again was something that’d had its limits, he’d had to do for himself.

  As long as Jack had lived by that credo, he had been okay. Maybe not really happy, and a little too lonely, but his life had hummed along on an even, acceptable keel. It figured the one time he had let himself hope for something more, something important and wonderful and emotionally fulfilling, he’d get shot down so hard and fast and cruelly he still found it difficult to believe.

  Well, no more, Jack thought resentfully as he swallowed around the tight knot of bitterness rising in his throat. He stood, jerking off his tie and the designer-label suit jacket that had never suited his blue-collar upbringing. He wasn’t going after Daisy, wasn’t staying here a moment longer. This time he was through.

  CHARLOTTE APPEARED in the doorway to Daisy’s old room. Despite the fact her life had been turned upside down, too, earlier in the week, the woman Daisy had known all her life as her mother, looked calmer and more in control than she had in years. It was Daisy who was confined to her big old canopy bed, several stuffed animals from her childhood tucked under the covers with her.

  Charlotte gave Daisy a pitying glance. It was clear, Daisy thought, that her mother did not know what to say. “Honey, you can’t stay in there all day.”

  “I don’t see why not,” Daisy mumbled, pressing her face deeper into the down pillow with the soft-as-silk pink cotton-cover. After the horrible scene she had created last night, on the very eve that Tom and Iris finally claimed her as their own, she didn’t see how she could ever show her face in Charleston again. That being the case, she felt the best place she could be was deep beneath the covers of her childhood bed.

  Looking pretty and in control in a red suit and Italian-leather pumps, Charlotte folded her arms in front of her. “You’re really not getting up?”

  “No,” Daisy said stubbornly, aware she had never needed mothering as much as she did today and that Charlotte was giving her just that.

  “Okay then. I’ll just send your visitor up.” Charlotte smiled at Daisy mysteriously, then floated off before Daisy could guess who her visitor might be.

  Daisy took two seconds to consider. Was it possible? Was it Jack? Oh, Lord! Daisy put a hand to her hair, which was a rumpled mess, and leaped out of the bed. She dashed across to her old-fashioned dressing table, caught sight of her red, swollen eyes in the oval mirror attached to the back of it, groaned and sprinted back to the bed just as footsteps came back down the hall. But they weren’t heavy masculine footsteps, Daisy noted, frowning. They were light, feminine ones that sounded as if they were made by high heels.

  Seconds later, as Daisy was dragging a brush dispiritedly through her hair, Grace Deveraux rounded the corner. To Daisy’s increasing despair, and, Daisy told herself firmly, relief, Grace Deveraux was alone.

  “I figured you might be having a hard time,” Grace said sympathetically. Looking every bit as pretty and together as Charlotte, albeit in a gold silk shantung pantsuit, Grace came closer and sat on the edge of Daisy’s bed, much as Charlotte had earlier that same morning.

  Daisy didn’t have that much experience dealing with Grace, but she knew when she was being double-teamed by a pair of experienced mothers, and Grace and Charlotte were now working on her in tandem.

  Which really ticked Daisy off.

  All her life she had been told to either ignore or forget her feelings, no matter how devastating or infuriating the event that had her upset, and act genteely—that is, as if nothing had ever happened. This was one time when she damn well was not going to do it, Daisy decided furiously. She wasn’t going to pretend that what she had overheard last night between her husband and her birth father hadn’t been the very last straw in a long line of last straws, because it had.

  Daisy tossed her hairbrush on top of the covers and glared at Grace. “If you’re here to get me to apologize to Tom—”

  Grace shook her head and perched a little more comfortably on the end of the big four-poster canopy bed. “I’m here to see to you, dear.”

  Daisy didn’t like the expression in those deep-blue eyes. Grace was looking as if she could wait Daisy out all day. “There’s nothing you can do to help,” she stated plainly.

  Grace’s eyes turned even kinder, more reflective. “That’s what I said, too, after I lost my baby.”

  Daisy blinked. Now they were headed into uncharted territory. “What are you talking about?” she asked warily.

  Sorrow clouded Grace’s face and crept into her low, deeply commiserating tone. “I had a miscarriage, Daisy, the year after Amy was born. And I’ll be honest with you—the experience damn near ripped my heart out.”

  Daisy knew, because that was how she had felt, too. She swallowed hard, glad to finally be able to talk to someone who had been through the same. “People think it shouldn’t matter because the pregnancy wasn’t very far along.”

  “Well, then they’re wrong! From the moment you start carrying that baby inside you, that life is real to you, and your every instinct, as a mother and a woman, is to protect that infant.”

  Daisy nodded, tears welling in her eyes.

  “I know I wasn’t even showing, but our baby was real to me.”

  “And to Jack,” Grace countered.

  “And to Jack.” Because Jack had grieved, too, every bit as deeply as she had, Daisy knew. That was one thing they’d had in common.

  “Of course,” Grace continued discussing their dual situations pragmatically, “my situation was a little better because I already had four children with Tom. And a little worse because complications of that miscarriage left me unable to bear any more children, ever.”

  That wasn’t the case for Daisy. And she was very glad.

  “I’m sorry,” Daisy replied softly. She reached across the covers to touch Grace’s arm in silent sympathy. “I didn’t know.”

  “And there’s more, Daisy.” The sorrow was back in Grace’s eyes. Along with the firsthand compassion and understanding Daisy needed. “I became depressed after I lost the baby,” Grace admitted reluctantly. “But I wouldn’t admit it to myself, or anyone else. I withdrew. I held people at arm’s length, especially Tom. And that wasn’t fair.”

  Daisy understood why Grace had reacted that way, because that was how she had felt in the days and weeks that followed her miscarriage, too. But there was a huge difference in their situations. And Grace needed to know that
. “Jack and I married for the sake of the baby,” she stated firmly.

  Grace lifted her exquisitely plucked eyebrow. “But you love him.”

  Daisy settled deeper into the covers. “He was just with me to please Tom.”

  Grace slowly shook her head and regarded Daisy with an unending supply of patience. “Daisy, Jack is a grown man, and one of the most disciplined, goal-minded individuals I have ever been privileged to know. He made himself what he is today. I know he thinks Tom is to credit for that, because Tom encouraged Jack when Jack was at a real crossroads in his life. But the truth of the matter is that Jack would have figured out he was meant to go to college and law school and live a different kind of life than the one in which he had been raised, whether Tom was there to mentor him or not. It might have taken a little longer, but I have no doubt that Jack would have made something of himself no matter what.”

  Daisy felt that, too. “So what’s your point?” she demanded, unable to keep the belligerence from her tone.

  Grace looked Daisy straight in the eye. “Jack risked everything he held dear to go after you, to love and protect and care for you. And he did it at great cost to himself and his career.”

  Daisy shrugged, and kept the ice intact around her heart. “He seems to have landed on his feet.”

  “Really.”

  “I’m sure Tom will forgive him eventually for what I did last night,” Daisy continued defiantly.

  Grace moved delicately to her feet. Glancing down, she smoothed the nonexistent wrinkles from her pantsuit. “That’s a moot point now.”

  Something in Daisy unthawed just a tad. “What do you mean?”