The Heiress

WE HAVE TO STOP MEETING like this, Daisy Templeton thought.

Not that she and Jack Granger were really socializing. Just that, for the last month or so, the two of them had been showing up at the same locations in Charleston, South Carolina, at the same time with disturbing regularity. Sometimes, the handsome attorney said hello and engaged her in the kind of brief chitchat one had with an acquaintance. On other occasions—like tonight—the sexy bachelor kept his distance, remaining clear on the other side of the airport baggage claim.

Daisy knew Jack Granger hadn’t been on her return flight from Switzerland in any case. The tall sandy-haired southerner with the nicely chiseled jaw would have been impossible to miss. But, as company counsel, he certainly could have been somewhere for Deveraux-Heyward Shipping. He was dressed in a dark-blue pin-striped business suit, white shirt, tie. As always, his clothes were sharp, if a little worn.

He had been standing there, arms crossed, leaning up against the far wall, when Daisy walked through the security gate that separated arrivals and departures from the rest of the Charleston, South Carolina, airport. Dark aviator sunglasses on, a cell phone pressed to his ear, he appeared to be waiting for someone or something. But unlike everyone else—Daisy included—who was gathered around the motionless baggage claim, waiting impatiently for their luggage, Jack Granger didn’t seem to care whether the ear-splitting warning buzzer ever sounded. He appeared more interested in whatever was being said to him on the other end of the line.

Not that it should matter to her what Jack Granger was doing, Daisy reminded herself as the red light flashed and the conveyer belt finally began to move. Others crowded in. She wedged her way in once she saw her case, grabbed it by the handle, lifted it off the conveyor belt, pulled up the handle, then wheeled it toward the automatic doors.

The August heat was intense, the South Carolina air was warm, moist and scented with saltwater. Grateful to be back home, even if she wasn’t happy about what she had to do next, Daisy headed quickly for the long-term parking lot, and the car she had purchased six weeks ago after she had been disinherited. Her adopted parents hated the beat-up red sedan with the dented fender, yellowing hood and two pine-green doors, but for Daisy, the reconditioned, decade-old vehicle was a crowning symbol of her achievement. She had paid for the car in cash, using money she had earned as a professional photographer. And it had facilitated her during her search for the truth about her heritage. Now that she was back in the States again, she was going to take herself to confront her biological mother and father.

Eight o’clock, the traffic was light as she headed for the downtown Historic District of elegant homes, to the Hayes residence, where Daisy’s older sister, Iris, resided. The stately lemon-colored three-story home, with the black shutters, double wraparound verandas and mansard roof, was one of the larger homes on Concord Street, opposite Waterfront Park.

Her heart pounding with a mixture of anger and anticipation of the blowup to come, Daisy slammed out of her car, the red accordion file filled with proof in one hand, her fringed buckskin carryall slung over her shoulder, and marched up the steps. Iris’s maid, Consuela, answered the door, and ushered Daisy to the antique-filled morning room, where her much older “sister” was seated.

Iris had on a sleeveless pale-blue summer sweater and slim white skirt, high-heeled shoes that made the most of her slender, elegant, forty-seven-year-old form. A cardigan had been tied neatly across her shoulders. A strand of pearls and matching earrings were the only accessories aside from the heavy diamond wedding and engagement rings Iris still wore, a year after she had been widowed by one of the city’s wealthiest—and in Daisy’s opinion, most repulsive—men. Copies of Vogue and Town and Country magazine were spread across her lap. Mozart was playing on the stereo.

Iris took one look at the expression on Daisy’s face and dismissed her maid with a silken-voiced “That will be all, Consuela. And please, shut the doors behind you.”

Consuela nodded and disappeared as silently as she had come in.

Daisy’s heartbeat kicked up another notch as she regarded the woman who had secretly given birth to her, and then, just as heartlessly, abandoned her child. “Hello, Mother.”

For the first time, Iris’s poise faltered. She put aside her magazines. “Daisy. I didn’t know you were back.”

You mean you were praying I would never come back. “Just got in.”

Iris wet her lips nervously, swallowed hard enough for Daisy to see it. “I don’t know what you found out over there—”

Aware her legs were beginning to tremble with a combination of exhaustion and nerves, Daisy eased into a tapered-back Hepplewhite chair, circa 1790. Unable to help herself—hadn’t she promised herself on the plane she would give Iris a chance to explain, before she tore into her?—Daisy countered ever so quietly, “How about the truth?” How about the end of all my childish dreams? She was only twenty-three, but she felt so much older, now that she knew about all the lies.

“But it’s not anything like what it must seem,” Iris continued.

“Really,” Daisy replied. She studied the mixture of guilt and regret on the older woman’s face, and knew that her long-held hope of finding out to whom she really belonged was not going to bring her the peace of mind, the love and acceptance she had sought. “Then suppose you explain all the documents I have in this file.” Daisy patted the pleated red folder clenched between her fingers on her right hand. “The birth records that say I was born in Switzerland to American citizen Iris Templeton, and not to two tragically killed parents in Norway—as I was always told. Or the travel visa to Norway and then the United States with my name on it, issued to Charlotte and Richard, by the U.S. embassy. Or the story of the scandalous predicament that got you in trouble and landed you in the convent, recounted to me by the long-retired and still very remorseful Sister Agatha.” Suppose you tell me about all the lies. About your affair with a very married man.

Silence fell as the color drained from Iris’s beautiful face. Tears glimmered in her eyes as Iris pressed a hand to her pearls and spoke with difficulty. “I was very young when it happened.”

Not that young. “You were twenty-three—the same age I am now, college-educated and wealthy to boot. I think you could have handled having me if you had wanted to,” Daisy concluded resentfully.

New color dotted Iris’s flawless cheeks. Iris looked Daisy square in the eye. “It wasn’t that simple, Daisy.”

“Right,” Daisy agreed bitterly, tears sparkling in her own eyes, too. She wondered why she had ever hoped, even for one overly idealistic second, that the always contained Iris would tell Daisy what was in her heart, then or now. “You had a fortune to amass, a gross old man to marry.”

Pique simmered in Iris’s pale-green eyes. “I tried to do right by you.”

Daisy blinked, the self-serving audacity of those closest to her as astounding as ever. “How?” she demanded incredulously. “By lying to me? Having everyone else lie to me?” Iris had known how important it had been to Daisy to discover the true circumstances of her birth, that Daisy had been looking, off and on, for the past five years. And never once lifted a hand to help her, or even act as if she understood Daisy’s quest to discover just what it was about her that made her so secretly loathsome in Daisy’s “parents’” eyes. Now, of course, it all made sense. Richard and Charlotte Templeton had seen Daisy as the living proof of their only real daughter’s scandalous indiscretion, and probably worried Daisy would “go wrong,” too. Whereas Iris had been protecting herself and her reputation. What Daisy had needed or wanted or felt hadn’t mattered, still wouldn’t, she admitted miserably. No, when it came to protecting the family’s good name, Daisy and other individual members were completely dispensable.

Iris turned her glance away. “Your adoption was for the best,” Iris stated stiffly.

“For you, maybe,” Daisy replied, her heart aching all the more as she looked around, observing what Iris’s bargain with the devil had earned her. A hefty bank account, all the clothes and cars and jewelry she could ever want and one of the most luxurious mansions in Charleston’s nationally recognized Historic District. “Not for me. Never for me.” But, Daisy realized, Iris was not going to apologize for that, any more than Iris would apologize for pretending to be nothing more than Daisy’s older sister all these years.

Deciding she’d learned as much as she was liable to learn at that juncture, Daisy stood and headed for the door. Iris followed her as far as the front door, before stopping and drawing her folded cardigan closely to her bare shoulders. “Daisy, for pity’s sake. Think of the family’s standing in the community and don’t do anything to create a scandal.”

Daisy shot the woman who had given birth to and then promptly disclaimed her a hard look over her shoulder. “A little too late for that, don’t you think?” As far as she was concerned, the damage—and to be honest there had been a hell of a lot of it—had already been done.

JACK GRANGER HAD BEEN hoping and praying Daisy Templeton wouldn’t show up at Tom Deveraux’s mansion that evening. He didn’t want the impossible task of trying to control the wayward heiress. But it appeared it had fallen to him, nevertheless. Trying to ignore how attractive she looked in the short, pink-floral sundress, fringed suede knee-high boots and dangly turquoise bead earrings, he blocked her path. She was a good bit shorter than he, slender and fit, with sexy legs. Her eyes were blue like a stormy ocean and her sun-kissed blond hair tumbled down around her fair freckled shoulders in loose waves. Her profile was flawless, her chin hitched in determination. She was also eight years younger than he was, in actual years—probably a lot more than that when it came to life experience. And that, plus a lot of other things, made the capricious beauty clearly off-limits to him, Jack reminded himself sternly as he tore his eyes from her soft naturally pink lips. Bracing himself for the emotional argument likely to come, he inclined his head in the direction of Tom Deveraux’s Historic District home and told her flatly, “You can’t go in there.”

Daisy’s eyes gleamed with audacity as she stomped even nearer. “Oh, really.” She propped her hands on her hips. “Says who?”

Jack was close enough to inhale her orange-blossom fragrance. “Says me,” he told her firmly.

“Funny.” Daisy’s soft, kissable lips curved into a taunting smile as she swept around him and headed for the front door. “The last I heard, Jack Granger, you were legal counsel to Deveraux-Heyward Shipping not the bouncer.”

Jack caught up with her before she had a chance to ring the doorbell and again blocked her way. “I still am.”

“Uh-huh.” Daisy looked him up and down in a way that stirred his blood. “Then why are you here tonight, screening guests? Do you provide the same service to the airport?”

She was looking at him with a mixture of suspicion and disdain. So she remembered seeing him at the baggage claim. What she didn’t know was that he had been at the airport only to see if she had made it safely back to the States, and what—if anything—she planned to do upon her return from Switzerland. When she had gone straight to see her sister, Iris, he had hoped—unrealistically, he now saw—that she would leave any confrontations with Tom Deveraux until tomorrow.

“Why aren’t you inside with the others?” Daisy continued. “Why were you sitting out here in your SUV watching that mansion and that party—” Daisy pointed to the Deveraux clan, visible through the windows, milling about in the formal front rooms “—like some little match boy looking in?”

Because that’s exactly what I am, Jack thought. A kid from the docks, who just works for these people. Aware he’d get nowhere if he let his emotions get the best of him, Jack did his best to contain a weary sigh. He faced Daisy stoically. “Because Tom asked me to try and talk to you if you showed up here tonight.” Looking for trouble.

Bitterness clouded Daisy’s Deveraux-blue eyes. “And why did he think I might do that?” she asked in a dangerously soft, sexy voice. She regarded Jack carefully, as if trying to gauge how much he knew. And whether or not it might be possible to get him on her side, instead of his boss’s.

As the seconds—and silence—drew out, Jack ignored the vulnerability suddenly emanating from Daisy. He had a job to do here—it was Tom he was protecting, not her. Jack shrugged and continued to keep his own emotions out of it. “Tom knew you were headed back from Switzerland. That you’d be tired—” and perhaps overwrought “—when you got here.” Not to mention confused, angry, hurt.

Jack had been instructed to provide the strong shoulder to cry on and the voice of reason until Tom could get to Daisy and deal with her tomorrow once she settled down.

“Then he also knows what I found out while I was over there.” Daisy’s vulnerability disappeared as suddenly as it had bloomed. “Perfect.”

Jack ignored the reproach in her tone. “It’s not what it seems, Daisy.”

“Of course not.” Daisy shook her head in mute disapproval. “Which is why Tom Deveraux is suddenly so desperate to keep me away from him and his family.” Daisy reached around Jack and punched the doorbell. Seconds later, Theresa Owens, Tom’s housekeeper answered the door. She was wearing a navy-blue uniform-dress with a white collar. Her auburn hair was drawn into a knot on the top of her head. “I need to see Tom,” Daisy said without preamble.

Theresa hesitated. “This really isn’t a good time, Ms. Templeton. The family is having a private dinner this evening.”

Daisy smiled in a way Jack didn’t begin to trust. “You mean they’re all here,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Even the former Mrs. Deveraux?”

“Yes.”

“Splendid.” Head held high, Daisy pushed past Theresa and advanced through the foyer.

Jack swore silently to himself. Short of dashing after Daisy, tossing her over his shoulder and carrying her out to the curb, there was no way to stop her from making a scene. All he could do now was try to limit the damage. “I’ll handle this,” Jack promised Theresa as he strode after Daisy, who was already following the laughter and marching into the double drawing room, where, from the looks and sound of it, a wonderful, warm and intimate family party was going on.