The Heiress (4 page)

“What the hell are you doing?” She walked barefoot through the grass to confront him.

“Same as you. Bunking down here for the night.” Jack took the hotel-size bar of soap and stack of threadbare linens Kristy had given him and put them inside cabin five.

“Why?” Suddenly, Daisy was angry. Angrier than she had been the whole night.

Jack removed a cheaply made Paradise Resort toothbrush and tiny bottle of shampoo from his shirt pocket and tossed them onto the stack. “I want to be nearby in case you need anything.”

“Like what?” Daisy retorted, aware that the emotions she had successfully kept under control all evening were beginning to spiral out of control. Way out of control. “The truth?” Her pulse pounding harder with every second that passed, Daisy lingered in the open doorway of his cottage. She glared at Jack resentfully. She didn’t understand why she felt so betrayed by him. She just knew that she did. “You weren’t exactly instrumental in helping me get that in the weeks before I went to Switzerland.” Instead, he’d kept bumping into her, in a way that she now saw was anything but accidental. Kept striking up idle conversation, surreptitiously trying to get closer to her. Not because he was interested in her as a person, or her plight to uncover the mystery of her birth. But because
he had been trying to subtly stay one step ahead of her while simultaneously running interference for his boss.

“You never asked me to do that.”

Daisy slanted a glance at the private home some one hundred yards down the beach. Unlike the resort, it looked expensive and brand new. And there was someone—a man maybe—seated on his deck, looking their way.

Annoyed at being observed without her consent yet again, Daisy turned back to Jack. “And if I had asked?” she wondered out loud.

Jack shrugged his broad shoulders and came back outside to stand in the warm, salt-scented breeze. “I couldn’t have helped you because I didn’t know until tonight exactly what the connection between you and Tom was.”

Daisy listened to the waves crashing into shore, on the other side of the sand dune. “But you knew there was a connection,” she said as the sea oats waved in the wind.

A guilty silence fell between them. Eventually, Jack looked back at her and said very carefully, “I knew for a fact that Tom was worried about you, that he’d heard from his daughter, Amy, that you had hired Harlan Decker to help find your birth parents. Tom knew those things sometimes went badly or turned out in ways people didn’t expect. Because of that, he felt you might need some help, and that if that was the case, he was prepared to give it.”

“Why?” Daisy asked doubtfully.

“Because he’s, by nature, a generous, compassionate man. Because you were friends with his children, moved in the same social circles, worked as a photographer for the entire Deveraux family and their various
businesses. Maybe it was just due to the fact that he had watched you get into one scrape after another as you grew up and just didn’t want to see you get in any more! Who cares what precisely the connection might be or why he would want to help you get your life under control again? He just did.”

Daisy studied him skeptically. “And I’m supposed to believe that?”

“Believe what you want,” Jack advised her roughly. “It’s the truth. Tom never told me you were—or might be—his biological daughter.”

But had Jack guessed as much on his own? Daisy wondered. And if Jack had, how did that figure into his feelings about her? Was he, like everyone else who knew the truth, seeing her as Tom’s bastard child—somehow less acceptable than Tom’s other kids? Was she a problem to be solved? A liability to be handled? Lawyer style, of course.

Daisy continued to study Jack, certain he was still withholding every bit as much as he was telling her. “And yet you were all too willing to stand guard in front of his mansion tonight,” she probed, wanting desperately to hear the rest of it, whatever it was. “Why?” Had Tom warned Jack there might be trouble? And left it at that?

Jack sighed, his exasperation with her obvious. He gave her a censuring look. “I work for him, Daisy.”

Once again, Daisy decided, that was only half the truth. The half Jack wanted her to know. “As Deveraux-Heyward Shipping’s legal counsel, but my parentage doesn’t have anything to do with that.” Daisy paused warily. “Or does it?” Her mouth dropped into a round “oh” of surprise as the next thought occurred.
“Don’t tell me Tom thinks I’m going to come after a piece of his family company!”

Jack shrugged and stepped closer, his nearness setting off all her internal alarm bells. “As a potential heir, I suppose you could try.”

“But you wouldn’t let me succeed,” Daisy guessed unhappily.

His intent, golden-brown eyes narrowed. “I’ll do whatever Tom tells me to do.”

Despite her determination not to show him any emotion whatsoever, she found herself backing away as she asked sweetly, “Even mix business with personal and spend the entire evening coming after me?”

Jack didn’t say anything, but then he didn’t have to. Daisy had only to look into his eyes to know that he was still following orders from her birth father, and probably withholding information from her, too. “Never mind,” Daisy muttered in disgust. She was not sure why it mattered to her at all, but she had not wanted Jack to be there for any reason other than genuine concern for her, and what she was going through. Realizing that wasn’t the case, or anywhere near it, she strode past him, her temper climbing with every second that passed, and headed for the refreshment cove, located on the outside of the main lodge. The covered, concrete-floored portico had an ice dispenser and vending machines containing snacks and beverages. She put in her change, pushed one button. Nothing happened. She punched her fist against the next and the next. Finally, on the fourth try, a can of root beer—which she detested—tumbled through the machine and out of the slot. Daisy picked it up and popped open the top. Aware of Jack loitering just behind her, she held it to her lips and drank a big gulp of the sweet icy-cold liquid.

She wiped the excess moisture off her lips with the back of her hand, and slowly turned around to face him. Wordlessly, he moved by her, and put some change into the machine, too. He also got a can of root beer. Looking content to be there all night, if need be, he popped the top and took a sip.

Daisy didn’t know why Jack was getting to her—maybe it was the way he kept watching over her in that infuriatingly calm and deliberate manner—but she was determined to get a rise out of him. It was the only way, she calculated with a certain weary reluctance, she would ever get rid of him. And that was what she wanted most of all, because she didn’t like seeing herself and her inability to control her feelings reflected in his eyes. “It’s not going to work, you know,” she told him sassily as she leaned against the weather-beaten wooden post.

“What?” Jack asked, taking up a position opposite her.

Her throat unaccountably dry, Daisy watched him take another lazy drink of root beer. “You’re not going to win Tom Deveraux’s approval this way.” She looked him over from head to toe before returning her taunting gaze, ever so vampishly, to his eyes. “That is what this is about, isn’t it?” she queried softly, refusing to accept defeat, knowing this was one—maybe the only—battle she would win. “Your running interference with me for Tom, is simply a way to get in his good graces, to make him think of you as something more than an employee.”

Jack’s broad shoulders expanded against the starched cotton fabric of his white shirt. “Why would you think I would be interested in that?” he asked gruffly.

Knowing she had hit a nerve, Daisy rolled her eyes
and continued goading him relentlessly. “Come on. It was all over your face tonight when we were at the Deveraux mansion.” The look in Jack’s eyes, as they had stood outside, had matched what Daisy had been feeling, not just at that moment, but all her life—like she was the little match girl, looking in. Wishing she could join the party. And feel loved and wanted. Like she belonged in such a warm and wonderful place. Only it couldn’t have been that wonderful after all, she reminded herself firmly, or Tom wouldn’t have stepped out on Grace. He wouldn’t have slept with Iris and, in the process, both made a baby and destroyed the happiness of his family.

“What was on my face?” Jack shifted his weight restlessly, abruptly looking as on edge and ready to do combat as she.

Raw emotion. The kind of vulnerability that was missing now that he had his guard up once again. Determined to pierce his armor the way he so easily seemed able to get through hers, Daisy taunted him softly, “You were mortified that you weren’t able to keep me from crashing that Deveraux family party tonight. You were afraid that Tom was going to be ticked off at you—which he clearly was. So now you’re trying to make it up to him by keeping me in your line of vision.”

To her disappointment, Jack didn’t even try to deny it. “You could have tried harder to lose me,” he said, as if he could have cared less how the evening turned out.

“Maybe I didn’t want to,” Daisy baited Jack lazily. “Maybe I was curious.”

The muscles in his shoulders and chest becoming more pronounced, Jack drained his root beer and tossed
the can into the trash barrel next to the soda machine. He turned back to her, his expression grim. “About what?” he demanded curtly.

Daisy rubbed her bare toes against the cool concrete. She knew sparring with Jack this way was dangerous. But she couldn’t help it. She needed an outlet for her anger and frustration. Like it or not, this was it. “How far you’d go—or not go, as the case might be—to please Daddy Dearest. For instance—” Able to see she was getting to Jack at long last, Daisy let her lips curve in a soft, goading smile and tossed her soda can, too. “Would you deny yourself a chance to sleep with me?” Ignoring the racing of her heart and the weak funny feeling in her knees, Daisy held Jack’s eyes and undid the string tie at the back of her neck. When he didn’t move—didn’t react in any way—she reached behind her recklessly and released the zipper on her sundress.

Jack’s expression grew even grimmer, more forbidding. Although obviously aroused, he was not in the least bit amused by her antics. “Don’t do this,” Jack said.

“Why not?” Wanting to annoy him the way he had her, Daisy pushed the fabric past her hips, and stepped out of it. Her heart was pounding so hard she could hear it in her ears. “Am I getting to you?”

His eyes narrowed. “Put your dress back on,” he ordered roughly.

“I don’t think so.” Daisy reached for the clasp on her strapless bra.

He caught her hand before she could undo it. Perspiration beaded on his temple. “This won’t help your situation.”

Daisy laughed, softly and bitterly. “You mean it
won’t help you to be caught sleeping with the boss’s other daughter.”

His fingers gently encircling her wrist, he forced her hand down between them. “It wouldn’t help
either
of us,” he said sternly.

More tired than she could ever say, of being told what to do, think, even feel, Daisy replied back, “We’ll just see about that.” And before Jack Granger could respond, she stood on tiptoe, wrapped her free hand around the back of his neck, tilted his head down and pressed her lips to his.

J
ACK KNEW
he could get fired for this, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself from responding to the fervor of her soft lips, any more than Daisy seemed able to put an end to what she was doing. Not that Jack hadn’t known going into this assignment that Daisy Templeton was wild and reckless to a fault. But this was something different, Jack realized as Daisy flattened the softness of her breasts against his chest as she kissed him. Even through the starched cotton of his shirt, and the transparent lace of her bra, he could feel her nipples budding, her skin heating.

“No,” he said, tearing his mouth from hers. Afraid of what might happen if he didn’t call a halt to this, and soon, he took her abruptly by the shoulders. Doing his best to keep his eyes from straying lower, to the tempting curves spilling out of her next-to-nothing underclothes, he forced her inside, to the safety of her cabin. “No.”

The misery pouring out of her faded, ending the possibility that she might just burst into tears and get rid of her pent-up emotions that way. As Daisy locked glances with Jack, hurt flashed in her eyes, then defiance. And unbelievably, Jack knew he was in an even worse quandary than before. He was the protector here, the defender. Not the man who took advantage…of any woman in turmoil.

“Okay.” Daisy smiled fiendishly and stepped back, reached behind her once again, and successfully unfastened her bra. She whisked it off and let it drop to the floor.

Jack immediately grew hard as a rock—like never before. He swallowed again, his whole body aching, and pretended he didn’t want to give Daisy what she was asking—no, begging—for. “Cut it out,” he told her grimly.

“Nope.” Daisy continued to hold his gaze as she tucked her thumbs into the edges of her thong panties, and slid them down, to reveal her downy soft curls.

Jack tried to appear unaffected by Daisy’s striptease, but it was impossible. She was without a doubt the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Her skin glowed with vitality, her breasts high and full and round. Her nipples were as rosy and tempting as ripe raspberries. Her stomach flat and sexy, her mound covered with curls a shade darker than her wavy blond hair.

Delighting in his perusal, she lifted her arms above her head and stretched. Slowly, deliberately, she pirouetted, giving him ample time to study her tiny waist and curving buttocks, the long slender thighs, firm calves, trim ankles and dimpled knees. Turning all the way back to face him, she smiled again, and reached for a towel on the rack. “I think I’ll go for a swim.”

Not naked, she wasn’t. The last thing he needed was to have her either arrested—or assaulted—on the beach. And given that even the private beaches such as this were patrolled periodically during the evenings by local law enforcement, Jack moved to block her way. “You can’t do that,” he told her firmly. “Not without a swimsuit.”

“Sure I can. You can, too.” She sashayed forward,
tucked her fingertips in the front of his trousers. “Haven’t you ever skinny-dipped?”

“Put your clothes on, Daisy. Now,” he ordered gruffly and succinctly.

“Why?” She batted her eyelashes at him flirtatiously and continued to play the vamp. “Am I bothering you?”

More than you could ever know.

“Just go to bed,” Jack continued to suggest with deceptive casualness.
And sleep off your hurt and your fury.

“Sure thing.” Daisy sashayed closer in a drift of orange-blossom perfume. “But only if you join me.”

His heart thudding at the seductiveness of her smile, Jack asked in a taut, strangled voice, “Why are you doing this?” And why was he even considering giving in to temptation and making her his? Especially when he could see she was nearly as apprehensive as she was eager.

“I think the real question is, why are you resisting?” Daisy went up on tiptoe, linked both hands around his neck, and like a daring kid playing a game of Truth or Dare, pressed her nude body against the clothed length of his.

The heat of his desire burned through Jack’s skin. And it was all he could do not to tumble her back on the bed and see how silky wet and sweetly accommodating he could make her. “You know the answer to that.” As much as he wanted to make love to her—here, now—using her that way would hurt her, and Jack did not want her to suffer any more pain. She’d borne enough at the hands of her family.

Daisy’s Deveraux-blue eyes glimmered with a mixture of relief and wounded pride. “What I know,” she
stated in a low tone, “is that you’re afraid and I’m bored. And I hate to be bored.”

Her chin set stubbornly, she moved past him toward the door. Jack caught her by the arm before she could step outside the cabin. He could see that she had been torn apart inside by the lies and the betrayal. But making love out of spite was no way to fix the mess she was in. All that would do, Jack knew, besides potentially cause
him
to lose the job he had worked long and hard for, was increase her emotional devastation. Maybe not now, while blindly reaching out for any comfort or distraction she could find, but when her frustration with the situation, with those close to her, subsided, Daisy would regret her rash behavior here tonight. Of that, he was very sure. Just as he was certain he would not be able to just talk her down. “You’re hell-bent on stirring up even more trouble tonight, aren’t you?”

Daisy shrugged her slender shoulders, attempting unsuccessfully to break free of him once again. “I have to give them something to talk about. The way I see it—” the corners of her lips turned down mutinously “—I have just enough time to get arrested and make the morning papers.”

Not on his watch, she wasn’t, Jack thought. Not after what she had already pulled earlier, when she had gotten past him and crashed the Deveraux-family gathering. Using his firm but gentle grip on her wrist, he reeled her in, not stopping until she was positioned close against him once again. With his free hand, he smoothed the silky blond hair from her cheek and tilted her face up to his. They weren’t even kissing yet, and he was already throbbing. “This is really what you
want?” he said, making sure they were clear. “To go to bed with me?”

“Yes,” Daisy said even more stubbornly. “It is. But if you’re not going to play—”

“Oh, I’ll play all right,” Jack said. If it was the only way to keep her out of jail and out of the papers. “I’ll play,” he repeated softly. And then he did what he had been wanting to do for what seemed like forever. He traced the sexy bow-shaped outline of her lips with the pad of his thumb and slowly, deliberately, lowered his mouth to hers.

I
N THE PAST
, the only thing Daisy had changed more than her colleges or her clothes was the men in her life. With the exception of one disastrous roll in the hay, which was over almost before it began, she had no sexual experience with guys, save the occasional boring kiss—and with good reason. She got rid of her dates before they could make demands or try to get close to her, place demands on her.

Now, as Jack Granger wrapped her in his arms and folded her against the warm, strong length of him, kissing her hotly and thrillingly all the while, she wondered what she had been saving herself for. It wasn’t as if she believed in marriage. Or even, at this point, love. On the other hand, sex was supposed to be great. And Jack Granger was the kind of man who knew what he was doing in the sack, she reasoned securely, the kind of man who could and would give a woman pleasure. And right now Daisy was desperate for even a smidgen of happiness in her life, no matter how fleeting. She wanted that and she wanted revenge on all those who had hurt her. Jack Granger was perfect for both. And they both knew it.

Moaning softly, she let him guide her over to the bed. He let her go long enough to throw a sheet over the bare mattress, and while she watched, dry-mouthed and trembling, shuck his clothes. The next thing she knew, that Adonis-beautiful body was next to her again, and the two of them were tumbling down onto the bed. It had felt lumpy earlier. Now, with Jack draped overtop her, kissing her, touching her, their berth felt like sweetest heaven. She had never experienced desire like this, and an overwhelming flood of emotion swept through her, as timeless, as unstoppable as the tides, as he stroked her, gently and ephemerally, until something wonderful was happening to her, something beyond her control. And yet, even as he spread her thighs and prepared to enter her, she wasn’t afraid. She could feel his iron control as he entered her with aching slowness, kissing her all the while, letting her body adjust to the size and pulsing heat of him.

He took his time possessing her, lifting her hips in his hands, adjusting the angle of penetration until it was just so, until she was kissing him back madly and rocking urgently in rhythm with him. Until he was reaching that sought-after inner place, the one guaranteed to send a woman over the edge. And he did, Daisy thought as she moaned softly and shattered and fell apart in his ever-so-capable hands.

Seconds later, Jack followed in a blissful, overpowering rush of sensation and the two of them collapsed together, breath still coming rapidly. Unhappily, though, the physical release did little to ease the deeply lonely and conflicted way Daisy was feeling inside. Too late, she realized, even having a fling with an accomplished lover would do nothing to make her forget or feel better. Oh, Jack knew the moves, all right. He could
even make her come, without half trying, which was something no one else had ever even come close to doing, but he couldn’t touch her heart or her soul. And without that, Daisy realized sadly, there really was no connection. Not one that meant a damn anyway. Once again, Daisy mused as she extricated her body from Jack’s and curled onto her side, facing away from him, she was adrift and alone. She knew who she was now, where she’d come from. She’d even made love with a man successfully. But sadly, nothing of importance in her life had changed.

T
OM SLEPT
very little during the night. At 6:00 a.m., he finally got up and shaved, showered and dressed. Going down to the kitchen, he found Theresa getting a tray of lemon-blueberry muffins out of the oven. He nodded at the sugary confection. “Pack a half dozen or so of those in a paper bag for me, please.”

Theresa did as he asked and handed it to him wordlessly. Relieved his longtime housekeeper was sensitive enough to appear not to recall what had happened the night before, Tom murmured his thanks and walked out to his Jaguar.

Banking on the fact that Grace had been no more able to rest than he, given the tumultuous turn their lives had taken, Tom drove the short distance through the downtown Historic District of residential homes to the single house Grace had leased from their daughter-in-law, Lauren. As usual, parking in the area was limited. It took him a while to find a space. When he did, he doubled back to her place, saw a light on upstairs and what looked to be movement behind the lacy white curtains. Feeling more confident now—that his ex-wife was not only awake but up, he took his cell phone out
of his pocket and dialed. Grace picked up on the second ring. Working to conceal his uneasiness, he said, “It’s me. I’m on the front stoop.”

He stepped back so she could see him. Saw the curtains part. He lifted the bag of muffins and continued speaking quietly into the phone. “I brought breakfast. We need to talk, Grace.”

“Tom…” Just one word. Her reluctance was evident.

Refusing to take no for an answer, Tom said, “Come to the door, Grace,” and severed the connection before she could argue further.

Seconds later, he saw a slender silhouette coming down the stairs through the frosted glass on either side of the portal. The lock turned and the door opened. Grace was in a satin robe and, it appeared, to Tom’s discomfort, little else. Her cheeks were flushed, her lips unusually red, almost chapped. “This isn’t a good time.”

It was a perfect time, Tom disagreed silently, aware all over again how sexy Grace was when she had just tumbled out of bed, with her hair mussed and her eyes still soft with slumber. Their divorce had done nothing to limit his desire for her. Tom knew he would always want her. Even if she never again wanted him. That was just the way it was.

Grace continued to regard Tom resentfully.

Which wasn’t a surprise to Tom, either.

For years, he and Grace had had this secret hanging over them, curtailing their closeness. Now that Daisy’s parentage was out in the open, at least as far as the family went, anyway, the two of them could finally begin dealing with his infidelity and Daisy’s presence in their lives. Tom knew there was anger and disappoint
ment in him among Grace and their kids, but even that was probably less than the disappointment he felt in himself. Even now, years later, he found it difficult to believe he had been foolish enough to throw it all away for one clandestine tumble in the sack. But he had, and like it or not, they all had to deal with that, and hopefully, at long last, just move on.

“I still want to come in,” Tom repeated flatly. Not waiting for an invitation that was unlikely to come anyway, he brushed past her.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” a low male voice said.

Tom stopped, shocked, and looked up. A buff, long-haired man the same age as their sons stood at the top of the stairs. He was naked except for the towel around his waist as he came down the stairs, acting more like the man of the house than Grace’s yoga instructor.

The color in Grace’s cheeks went from pink to white. She held out an imploring hand. “Paulo, please.”

Jealousy ripping through his gut, a muscle working in his cheek, Tom swung back around to his ex-wife. “A little early for a naked yoga lesson, isn’t it?” he asked sarcastically before he could stop himself.

“She asked you to go,” Paulo said as he joined them at the foot of the stairs.

“Gladly,” Tom said. Feeling as if he’d been kicked in the gut by a mule, Tom thrust the bag of baked goods at Grace and said sourly, “Enjoy your breakfast.”

Pushing Paulo aside with one hand, Grace followed Tom out onto the stoop. “Tom…”

When he kept going, her delicate hand curved around his arm, tightening until he stopped his flight. Tom tensed. Whatever she was going to say, he didn’t want
to hear it. He continued looking out at the street. “We’re even, right?”