The Heiress (26 page)

Jack admired her hustle. The determination to work and more than carry her own weight was something she shared with him. He looked at her homemade calendar
for the rest of the month. “Are these all gigs? Or are you—we—planning to attend these fund-raisers?” She had something marked for every single evening of the following week.

“They’re gigs.” Daisy smiled at him proudly. “But don’t worry,” she reassured him quickly. “You don’t have to go.”

“I don’t mind.”

Daisy looked at him as if she could care less either way. “Suit yourself.”

“What’s the dress tonight?”

“A little more casual than that suit you’ve got on. Sport coat, shirt, khakis.”

“Tie?”

“Up to you.”

Jack followed her into the bedroom. He dispensed with his own suit jacket and slacks as Daisy stripped down to a transparent pink bra and matching thong, and went into the part of the closet she had commandeered for herself. She came out with a wispy pink and white tropical-print dress that had a high neck, no sleeves and almost no back. Noting there was no way she could wear the bra she had on with that dress, she slipped it off and put the dress over her head. The wispy material clung to her firm, high breasts and jutting nipples. As he watched her smooth the soft, feminine-looking fabric over her waist and hips, and straighten the drape around her knees and calves, Jack felt an instant reaction in his groin. No way, he thought as she turned to allow him to help her with the zipper that went from the small of her back, to just below her waist, she was going to this affair tonight without him.

Jack ripped off his tie and began unbuttoning his
shirt. “I take it this means you didn’t apply for a job at Grace Deveraux’s new TV show.”

“Actually, I did,” Daisy replied in a dispassionate voice. “She told me there was no way she could hire me.”

Even though he at least had expected as much, he was sure that Grace’s rejection must have hurt. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly.

Daisy shrugged. “It’s her loss. Although—” Daisy puckered her lips as she smoothed on soft pink gloss “—it would have been nice had Grace at least taken the time to glance at my portfolio.”

Doing his best to comfort her, Jack said, “Well, maybe this is best.”

Daisy shot him a look that seemed to say, “You wish.”

T
OM FOUND
G
RACE
just where Amy had said Grace would be—checking out the house-in-progress on Sullivan’s Island. She looked beautiful, and surprisingly, given the end of her workday, not at all unhappy to see him there. Tom was shocked about that, to say the least. The last time they had seen each other five weeks ago, they had both been tense and angry. Maybe like him, she had mellowed now that she’d had time to cool down and reflect. Lord knew, he didn’t want rancor defining their relationship. They’d come too far, shared too much of life, including their four kids, and the grandchildren on the way, to let that happen. “Scoping out the new house?” Tom asked casually as he walked across the planks that led up to the foundation.

“What brings you out here?” Grace asked with a winsome smile as she turned gentle eyes to his. The wind off the ocean ruffled the short, sexy layers of her golden hair. She put a slender hand up to push it out of her eyes.

She was in such a good mood Tom almost hated to bring it up. Tom walked farther into the shell of the sprawling two-story beach house. It was made of the new concrete and Styrofoam design, and would be, when finished, strong enough to withstand winds in excess of two hundred miles an hour. So, even if the worst were to happen and a hurricane hit the island, Grace’s
new home would be here for years to come. “Nick and Amy called me…” Tom walked onto the first floor, admiring the number of windows that had been cut out facing the ocean, giving Grace a spectacular view. “They told me about Daisy’s visit to the television studio today to ask you for a job,” he said as he walked over to the blocked-out kitchen, where Grace was standing. “They said you handled it well, at least on the surface, but Amy could tell you were both upset by the time Daisy left your dressing room.”

Regret clouded Grace’s pretty features. Wearing cotton sport pants that fell to just below her knee, a striped tunic and sneakers, Grace paced the spacious room. “Oh, Tom,” she said in a weary voice. “I was awful to her.”

Tom had feared as much. “What’d she say to you?”

Grace shrugged and walked through the open interior walls, to the dining room. “She just wanted to be considered for the job and I refused to do it.” Grace glanced up, checking out the nine-foot-high ceilings before returning her steady gaze to Tom. “Not because she isn’t talented,” Grace continued with painful honesty. “She really is. But because I didn’t want to look at her and be reminded every day of your infidelity. And I suppose my celebrity ego,” she admitted.

Tom released an empathetic sigh. Who would have thought that one mistake could lead to so many years of hurt for so many people? “I’m sorry,” he said quietly, matching her remorse. “I never meant to hurt either of you, but I did.”

Grace headed for the back staircase and sat down on the second step from the bottom, sadness in her eyes. She scooted over so Tom could sit beside her on the bare wood tread. “Not as much as I’ve hurt myself,”
she acknowledged as he settled next to her. She clasped her hands between her bent knees and looked over at him. “I saw myself today, Tom, in Daisy’s eyes, and I didn’t like what I saw.” Grace wrung her hands together and looked even more distressed. “I’ve become bitter, close-minded.”

Tom laced a comforting arm around Grace’s waist, aware what it was like to wake up one day and realize you had turned into what you never wanted to be. “You had good reason to feel resentful.”

“Then,” Grace agreed. “But it’s been years. And we’ve both moved on.” She shook her head self-effacingly, continued emotionally, “I should be past this.”

“I used to think that, too,” Tom interjected quietly as he let go of Grace and dropped his arm back to his side. “Until the day I saw you fresh out of bed with that young yoga instructor.” Tom paused as the anger and jealousy hit him all over again. “I’m not a violent person.” He forced himself to be as honest as Grace had been with him. “You know that. But I swear to God, I wanted to pummel him with my fists, and I’ve felt that way every time I’ve caught sight of Paulo since. It embarrasses me to admit it, but I can’t picture that feeling ever going away.”

“Paulo and I haven’t seen each other since that morning you found us together,” she told him firmly.

Tom shrugged and admitted in a tortured voice, “It doesn’t make any difference, Grace. I close my eyes, and there it is. You in that robe and nothing else. Paulo in only a towel. Walking down the stairs like he owned the place. I can only imagine how horrible it was for you, finding me en flagrante in Iris’s apartment when we were still married.”

Grace’s eyes glistened. She drew a breath and had to turn away for a second. “Pretty bad.”

Tom reached over and took her hand in his, holding it tightly. “So we’re even now.”

“Except,” Grace said sadly, covering their clasped hands with hers, “I don’t have a child by someone else to deal with. You do. And for the sake of everyone—especially the children you and I share—I’ve got to do better, Tom.” She gripped his hand tightly. “I’ve got to get to know Daisy and be able to look her in the eye and feel warmly toward her because she and our children are siblings. Which is why I’ve decided to give her the job on the show.” Grace disengaged their hands and stood. She braced her slender shoulders accordingly. “I’m going to call her tomorrow and offer it to her myself,” she declared.

Tom studied her face. “You’d do that?”

Grace pivoted to face him. “For all of us, yes, I would,” she replied resolutely. Looking deep into his eyes, she continued softly, maternally, “I want you to be able to love Daisy the way she deserves to be loved by her biological father, Tom. I want her to feel a part of her Deveraux sister and brothers’ lives, and to be a real integral part of all family gatherings. And most of all, I want us all to be a family again.”

“I’d like that,” Tom said. He stood, too, aware he had never felt so relieved or at peace as he was at that moment. He continued in a rusty-sounding voice, “You reaching out to Daisy this way—”
your forgiving me my transgressions
“—means the world to me, Grace.”

Grace closed the distance between them. Abruptly, her eyes were shimmering with unshed tears. “But is it enough?” Grace countered softly, emotionally.

“What do you mean?” Tom asked, almost afraid to hope for more than what he had just been given.

Grace gripped his hands hard and searched his eyes. “Can the two of us start fresh, too?”

H
ERE IT WAS
, Grace thought as Tom stared at her in silent apprehension. The fifty-thousand-dollar question. The one she had been thinking about for weeks and not had the courage to voice for fear she would be rejected. She swallowed hard, and knowing it was now or never, pressed on, “I want us to be friends, Tom. More than friends.”

Because he didn’t look opposed to the idea, she forced herself to continue in a low, quavering voice before she could lose her nerve. “My affair with Paulo was a mistake. I realize that now. Because I didn’t love him. I was just using his interest in me to try and feel better about myself, about getting fired because I was suddenly too old to attract the right demographics for
Rise and Shine, America!
When the truth is—” Grace paused and hung her head “—the last thing I should have been doing was making a fool of myself over a much younger man.”

Not surprisingly, Grace noted, Tom didn’t argue that point.

Nor did he try to extricate himself from the tight grip she had on both his hands.

“I’m not cut out for casual sex or an affair,” Grace continued. “I know that now.”

This time Tom did pull away from her. “But it happened, Grace.”

Grace’s heart was pounding so hard she could hear it. “And…?’

“Like I told you,” Tom said, raking a hand through
his hair, “I’m not sure I can forget. Especially after the way I misinterpreted things after you got fired, when you came back to Charleston, for good this time.” Tom shook his head grimly, recalling. “I thought your asking me to pick you up at the airport, the fact you wanted us both to stay at the house, instead of one of us going to a hotel, meant that you wanted a reconciliation, Grace.”

Grace released a quavering breath. “I did,” she declared emotionally.

Tom looked at Grace and corrected her sternly, “Until Daisy came into the picture again with the news she was going to be looking for her real parents, and stirred the fires of your jealousy and resentment again. Then everything went all to hell.” Tom looked completely defeated. “I can’t keep going through that, Grace. And I don’t think you can, either.”

Grace rushed forward urgently, not aware until that very moment how very much she wanted Tom back in her life again—and not just as an ex or a friend. “Which is why I’m determined to befriend Daisy the way I would any family member through marriage. Look, I know my jealousy and resentment has been a problem in the past,” she confessed guiltily.

His frustration with her apparent, Tom abruptly dropped his hands to his sides. “An understatement if I ever heard one.”

“But that was before I knew firsthand how meaningless a tryst, with the wrong person, embarked upon for all the wrong reasons, could be. Now, having actually done it myself, I know how little value something like that has.” She knew it had caused her nothing but grief. And all the mere dating she had done during her years
in New York had not brought her any emotional satisfaction, either.

“Well, that much is true,” Tom sighed, conceding reluctantly as he jerked loose the knot of his tie. “I have no romantic feelings for Iris.”

If her years on her own and subsequent affair with Paulo had taught her anything, it was that she was never going to love any man the way she loved Tom. Maybe they would always have problems, Grace admitted practically. Maybe she would always disappoint him in bed and never be able to overcome her secret frigidity. But there was more to life than lovemaking. “So can’t we move on?” Grace asked plaintively. “Try again, just one more time?” Grace was sure they could be happy again if Tom just gave them a chance to really move on this time and forgive each other their mistakes.

“I don’t know,” Tom returned seriously, looking every bit as hesitant as he was tempted. “There’s a part of me, Grace, that wants that more than anything. And there’s another part that says we’ve already hurt each other way too much.”

T
O SAVE MONEY
and allow more of the proceeds of the five-hundred-dollar-a-plate picnic dinner to go to the charity, the Protect the Children annual fund-raiser was being held in a local elementary school in lieu of a hotel ballroom. The evening had a summer-camp theme. Gingham-covered picnic tables had been set up around the gymnasium. Bunches of wildflowers in galvanized buckets served as centerpieces. The waitstaff was dressed in camp counselor uniforms. And the fare being set up on the buffet tables included barbecued chicken, potato salad, corn on the cob, watermelon and cup-cakes. Dozens of balloons clung to the gymnasium ceil
ing, and large murals, painted by the abused children the charity helped, decorated all the walls. A small group of musicians from the Charleston symphony were performing favorite childhood tunes onstage. At the far end of the gym, in the atrium just outside the doors that separated the gym from the principal’s office, Daisy was setting up lights for the picture taking that would occur during the second half of the gala evening, while Jack put up the large background screen.

“Is this okay?” he asked.

“I think it should be pushed back a little farther against the wall,” Daisy said. She waited while Jack made the adjustment. “Yeah. That’s good.” She measured the distance from the tripod to the screen. Turning, it was all Daisy could do to contain a beleaguered sigh as she came face-to-face with three members of the Templeton family—Richard, Charlotte and Iris—all of whom were dressed for a “picnic” à la
Martha Stewart Living.

“You’re embarrassing the family again,” Richard said, looking as well put together as always. “I want you to come away from there right now, Daisy.”

“I can’t.” Trying not to show her hurt at her father’s lack of support for her efforts to establish herself in her chosen career, Daisy went back to setting up her camera. “I’ve been hired to take photos of all the guests tonight who want them, in exchange for supporting this very worthy cause. They’ll make a nice party favor, so if you and Mother would like to be first,” she offered as graciously as she was able.

Charlotte moved in closer, nervously fiddling with one of the pearl buttons on her tailored pastel-green sheath dress and matching jacket. Trying to smooth things over, she leaned forward and whispered help
fully, “Daisy, someone else could do this. You and Jack should be guests at this function not hired workers.”

Iris sipped her mint julep and backed up Richard and Charlotte. “If you really want to begin a business like this, Daisy, you’ve got to do it in a top-drawer way. You can’t lower yourself to take routine photos like this.” Iris waved at the area disparagingly and regarded Daisy as if despairing over her lack of business sense. “You’ve got to be exclusive, sought after.”

“And broke?” Daisy couldn’t resist adding dryly. There was such a thing as letting your pride go before the fall. Not to mention drive you nuts with boredom.

“We could underwrite a studio for you in a prestigious location,” Richard said, looking increasingly irritated.

Charlotte nodded vigorously, leaping to help. “I’ll call my decorator in the morning.”

“Thanks, but no thanks.” Daisy held up a silencing hand. “I’d prefer to do this on my own.”

“Isn’t this like old times,” Bucky Jerome drawled as he came up. He had a camera slung around his neck, a notepad and pen in his hand, and was obviously covering the event for the newspaper.

Bucky picked up one of Daisy’s business cards, shoved it into the pocket of his shirt and gave her a sympathetic wink that spoke volumes about what he thought her family was doing to her with their lack of support. “Way cool, Daisy Waizy,” he told her with a friendly smile that took Daisy back a few years to the time when the two of them had gotten along.