The Heiress (39 page)

Daisy breathed a sigh of relief and looked up at him, admitting softly and shyly, “I’m glad, Jack, because I like you just the way you are, too.”

He studied her eyes, sensing there was still something amiss. “But?”

Daisy figured while they were at it, they might as well put all their cards on the table. “We need love, too—the real, enduring enough-to-last-a-lifetime kind.”

“Oh, Daisy, don’t you know?” Jack kissed her sweetly, passionately, and then tenderly once again.
“Given the way I love you, and the way you love me, the way we feel about each other is never going to go away.”

“S
O, YOU’RE REALLY
hanging up your own shingle?” Tom asked several days later as Jack and Daisy worked together to clear out Jack’s office at Deveraux-Heyward Shipping Company.

Jack nodded as he removed his diplomas from the wall. “I’ll be available to help during the transition, with whomever you hire to replace me as company counsel, but from now on my office is going to be at the beach.”

Daisy took Jack’s law books from the shelves and put them into moving boxes. She turned to look at Tom, knowing they had a ways to go before they would ever feel like father and daughter, but also that with time it was going to happen. And that Tom would accept her the way her adoptive father slash grandfather, Richard Templeton, never had. With that knowledge had come an inner peace and happiness Daisy was still marveling over. “My brother, Connor, helped Jack and I find space in a commercial building on the Isle of Palms,” she told Tom. “We’ve rented suites that are side by side.”

“Does that mean you’re going to leave Grace’s show, too?” Tom asked curiously.

“No,” Daisy said. “I’ll be there for a while longer, but eventually I want to go out on my own, too.”

“Good for you.” Tom gave Daisy the same kind of approval Jack had, then paused as he looked at both her and Jack. “I know I’ve let you both down—” Tom began with difficulty.

“It’s all right,” Daisy interjected quietly as she
linked hands with Jack and held on tight. “We forgive you.”

Jack nodded, letting Tom know this was so, that he and Daisy were in unison.

“And we ask that you forgive us for all our mistakes, too,” Daisy continued. Because she and Jack had certainly made a lot of them on their way to falling and staying in love, and making a real commitment that would last not just for however long it was convenient, but for a lifetime.

“Done, then,” Tom said. A contented silence fell between them.

“I read in Bucky Jerome’s column this morning that you and Grace are getting married again,” Daisy remarked.

Tom clapped a hand to the back of his neck and massaged the tense muscles there. “I don’t know how he found out about that. Grace and I hadn’t told any of the kids. Heck, we hadn’t told anyone.”

That was something, Daisy thought, that Bucky Jerome could have guessed. One look at Tom’s and Grace’s faces, not to mention the way they couldn’t seem to stop touching each other whenever they were together, was clue enough. The older couple was in love again, and in fact, Daisy realized, had probably never truly been out of love with each other, despite their difficulties. “Then it’s true?” Jack asked happily.

Grace entered Jack’s office. Like Daisy, she had come over straight from work at the television studio. “Yes.” Grace smiled as she stepped into Tom’s waiting arms. “It really is.”

“When and where?” Daisy asked.

“On the yacht, at sunset tomorrow night,” Tom said.

“We want you two to be there,” Grace added. “You’re family now, you know. Both of you.”

Daisy and Jack knew. And nothing had ever felt better.