The Heiress

Yeah, it had been a sticky situation, all right. Hardest on the top-notch P.I. who had unexpectedly found himself at the center of the quandary, being asked to represent both sides. But that was neither here nor there now, Jack thought. He shrugged. “It’s not surprising you both hired Harlan. He’s the best private investigator in the city.”

“I’m surprised he didn’t refuse to help me, given the fact that Tom had signed him first,” Daisy said sulkily.

“Harlan did go to Tom. Told Tom that you wanted to hire him and why and wanted to know what Tom wanted him to do. Harlan said he could refer you elsewhere or help you himself, but he wouldn’t lie to you or take your money or try and stonewall you—do anything else unethical or underhanded.”

“Good for Harlan. If it weren’t for him finding out I had been born in a little convent in the Swiss Alps, instead of Norway as I had always been told, I still wouldn’t know the truth.”

Jack nodded, glad they agreed on this much. “Harlan Decker’s a good guy, all right. Although for the record—” Jack gave Daisy a stern look, letting her know she wasn’t completely off the hook for her actions, either “—Harlan thought I should’ve turned you in for stealing.”

Daisy shrugged. “What can you expect from a former cop?” she volleyed back. Silence fell between them, less tense this time.

Jack studied Daisy knowing he already had his own thoughts on the matter, but wondering where she wanted to go from here. “So what now?” he asked her casually.

Daisy bit her lower lip and regarded Jack uncertainly as her printer finally sputtered to a halt. “You’re really going to take me at my word on this pregnancy?” Clearly, Jack thought, she wasn’t used to being trusted.

Jack watched as Daisy went over, picked up the stack of finished photos from the tray and began thumbing through them. “I don’t have any reason not to believe you.”

Daisy went back to her computer and typed in another series of commands. “Nevertheless,” she said as calmly as if they were discussing the terms of a new photo shoot instead of the permanent interlinking of their lives, “I’d feel better if we went over to the clinic and let you see the results, and maybe have you take a paternity test or whatever it is they do these days to establish paternity.”

Jack pulled up a chair next to her and sat down. “I’d feel better if we just got married and got it over with,” he stated, wondering how long Daisy was going to be able to keep her cool, act as if this hardly mattered, when in reality it was the most earth-shattering revelation of both their lives.

Daisy continued typing in commands until her printer started going again. She turned to him, as yet another series of tourist pictures began spitting out into the tray, the only indication of her heightening emotions the tensing of her jaw. “And why would we want to do that?” she asked steadily.

That, Jack thought, was easy. Letting her know with a look that she and their baby would be able to count on him the way she had apparently never been able to count on anyone else in her life, he said, “So the baby you’re carrying will be born legitimate, and have a mother and a father.”

Once again, Daisy’s teeth raked across her soft, bare lower lip. “This wouldn’t have anything to do with Tom Deveraux, would it? Because I don’t have to tell him we slept together. At least not yet,” Daisy amended hastily before Jack could get a word in edgewise. “When my baby is born, of course I’ll make his or her paternity a matter of public record—there’s no way I’ll ever lie to my child the way my parents lied to me all these years. But until then—I mean, no one has to know. We don’t have to put ourselves in a position where we’re both going to be getting a lot of grief.”

Jack supposed that was true, but he saw no reason in putting off the inevitable, either. “The worst thing we could do is let our kid think we’re ashamed of him or her,” Jack said. He had grown up that way, feeling the slings and arrows surrounding the scandal of his birth. There was no way he was doing it to his own child. Frowning, Jack continued humorlessly, “Tom already knows we slept together.”

Daisy did a double take. “You told him?”

“Not exactly.” Because it was clear she wasn’t going to just let this go, Jack continued reluctantly, “He figured it out when you disappeared the way you did.”

“Because you were acting so guilty, I bet.”

Knowing where she was going with this, Jack pushed the words through his teeth. “I’m not sorry we made love.” Especially now that they had a baby on the way because of it. He gave her a level look. “I’m just sorry about how and why and when it happened.”

The wall around Daisy’s feelings only became stronger and more inaccessible as Daisy scoffed in a cynical tone. “You would have preferred recreational sex, is that it?”

“It was more than that, and you know it.” Jack knew Daisy was trying to shock and turn him off. He wasn’t going to allow her to do it. Especially not now, when they had a child they were going to be responsible for.

“Exercise?”

“It was raw emotion and need—and you know it.”

“I don’t need anyone.”

Yes, Jack thought. You do. They all did. Maybe what he and Daisy had shared wasn’t love. Maybe it would never be love. But they could be there for each other and their child in other equally important ways. And whether she wanted that or not, he was going to see that it happened, because the two of them had more than just themselves to think about now. They had a baby to consider. A baby who would need the love and care and cooperation of both parents.

“But back to Tom Deveraux.” Daisy changed the subject to something safer. She studied Jack curiously. “What did he say when you told him about us?”

Jack recalled the punch that had landed him in the dirt and left his jaw aching for days, and decided Daisy didn’t need to know that Tom was still so angry he was barely speaking to Jack. “Nothing that bears repeating,” Jack finally said.

She rolled her eyes. “I’ll bet.”

“Look, Daisy, let’s get out of here,” Jack said, ready to go back East and reclaim his job and whatever was left of any respect Tom Deveraux might still have for him. Hopefully what he was doing now to make an honest woman of Daisy and set things to rights would go a long way in repairing the damage that had been done. And if not, he hoped he would at least continue to have his job with the Deveraux-Heyward Shipping Company. “We’ll get married and hop a plane back to Charleston.”

Daisy took the rest of the printed photos out of the tray and stuck them in an envelope emblazoned with the name Tahoe Mountain Tours. Apparently finished with the work she had to do, she shut off her printer and computer and closed the lid on her laptop. “I’ll marry you for the sake of the baby, Jack, but I’m not going back to Charleston.”

Jack had expected some resistance on that score after the way she had run away, and had prepared for it. “Afraid, are you?”

Daisy shot to her feet and squared off with him. “I’m no coward,” Daisy lashed back.

“Hey.” Jack flattened his hands on his chest and gave her a look of mock innocence. “That’s what a person is who refuses to face the consequences of their actions.”

Daisy thrust her chin out as she slapped both hands on her hips and stomped nearer. “I’ve never been afraid of anything or anyone in my life,” she swore, glaring up at him.

“Then prove it,” Jack threw down the gauntlet, knowing damn well a woman like Daisy would pick it right up and brandish him with it in return. “Marry me. Come home with me. Help me show everyone that we know that we don’t care what they think.”

“There’d have to be a few conditions,” Daisy warned after a moment.

At last, a chink in her emotional armor, Jack noted solemnly. He couldn’t wait to hear those.

The taunting look was back in her Deveraux-blue eyes. “You’ll give my baby a name and we’ll have a physical relationship—that’s it!”

Jack didn’t mind the prospect of hitting the sheets again with Daisy, he also knew they had some very important boundaries to set. “Fine. I also don’t want to be jerked around.”

“Fine.” Daisy glared right back at him.

They seemed to be circling each other like two wary animals—neither willing to make the first move. Maybe the thing to do was to make it real and go from there. They could worry about the details later.

He regarded her sternly, chastening, “And one more thing. No one’s bed but mine, got it?”

A slow, sexy, victor’s grin spread across her face. Looking as if she was the one in the driver’s seat, Daisy shrugged and said, “Whatever.”

DAISY HAD TO ADMIT that like Jack, she didn’t appreciate being manipulated, either. To the point she tended to behave perversely and illogically if she felt she was being used. Nevertheless, Daisy thought as she rummaged through the clothes in her closet, looking for something to don for a quickie wedding, she was very relieved Jack had not only shown up so swiftly, but offered to help her muddle her way through this dilemma she found herself in. Because she had the feeling that the next eight months or so were going to be rough in a lot of ways. And she and the baby needed a man like Jack, who was known for his steady presence and selflessness to help her through all the life changes she was going to have to make if she wanted to be a good mother, and she did.

“How soon can you be ready to go?” Jack asked.

Daisy shrugged as she took several things on hangers into the bathroom and hung them over the shower rod for trying on. “I don’t know. Ten or fifteen minutes.”

It ended up taking her thirty, but that was okay, Daisy thought as she examined herself in the mirror, because with her hair put up in a neat twist on the back of her head and some makeup and dangly earrings on, she looked pretty darn good. Smiling, she spritzed herself with perfume and walked out into the studio in her stocking feet.

Jack had changed clothes too in her absence. The sport shirt he had been wearing when he arrived was now in a carry-on garment bag. He was wearing a navy blazer with his khaki slacks, white shirt and dark-olive tie.

Jack finished zipping up his garment bag and turned to face her. “That’s what you’re going to wear?” His eyebrow lifted in surprise.

Unable to help but note how good Jack looked, not to mention to feel a little hurt he disapproved of her choice, when she had so little to choose from, Daisy shrugged. “What’s wrong with it?”