The Heiress. Cathy Gillen Thacker

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СКАЧАТЬ the year. You were well taken care of, Daisy, with people who loved you and wanted the best for you. It just seemed right to let the matter drop.” Tom paused again, looking even more conflicted. “Even now, I don’t know that you’re actually my child, Daisy. Just that you could be.”

      “Well, I am your child,” Daisy countered hotly, incensed that Tom Deveraux could be trying to duck his responsibility, even now, when she had a red accordion file full of proof sitting on the front seat of her car. “At least according to the nuns at the convent in Switzerland, where my mother stayed when she was pregnant.” At Tom’s blank look, Daisy continued explaining, “Iris confided in one of them. Sister Agatha knew all about you. How you led her on, flirted with her for weeks and weeks, and then—one night—took her to bed, and then afterward, after you got caught by your wife, told her to pretend it had never happened.”

      The skin across Tom’s cheekbones stretched taut as he glared at Daisy. “You’re making it simple. It wasn’t.”

      “Oh, I think it was,” Grace interjected bitterly, standing and addressing everyone in the room for the first time. “Your father screwed around. He got caught. It happens all the time, especially to men of his ilk.”

      Chase looked at his mother, surmising humorlessly, “Dad’s infidelity is why you two divorced, isn’t it?”

      Tears gleaming in her eyes, Grace nodded and continued matter-of-factly, “Lord knows I tried to put it behind me. I really did. But after that, after I walked in on him and Iris, I could never trust him again.”

      Silence fell as everyone contemplated what an ugly scene that must have been, both during and after the philandering.

      Mitch looked at Daisy curiously. “What does your birth mother, er, uh, Iris, and the rest of your family—the Templetons—have to say about this?”

      “I haven’t talked to Charlotte, Richard or Connor yet,” Daisy said quietly.

      “Why not?” Gabe asked gently.

      Daisy threw her hands up in mute frustration. “Because they lied to me for years. All of them.” She looked at Tom again, aware there was a part of her, regardless of how angry, that already thought of him as her father. Just as Richard and Charlotte, who had adopted and reluctantly reared her and guided her through childhood, would always remain Mother and Father to her, too. Daisy sighed, and aware Tom was still waiting, still struggling to understand her motivation as desperately as she was trying to comprehend his, continued with a weariness that came straight from her soul, “And I wanted to hear your side of the story first. Now that I have—” Unable to go on, Daisy shook her head at Tom. Her throat aching unbearably, she turned and headed blindly for the door. “I’ve got to get out of here,” she mumbled. And she fled.

      TOM FOLLOWED THEM BOTH and stopped Jack in the front hall. Knowing he could trust the Deveraux-Heyward Shipping attorney to do whatever needed to be done, he looked Jack in the eye and told him brusquely, “Go after her. Do whatever you have to do, but stay with her and make sure she doesn’t do anything even more foolish or self-destructive than what she did here tonight.” Tom inclined his head toward the elegant front room where the rest of the family was still gathered. “I’ll take care of things here, and then catch up with both of you later.”

      Jack nodded his understanding and headed out after Daisy.

      Relieved that was going to be taken care of, Tom strode back into the double drawing room. One mistake. Who the hell would have known one slip could have blown his entire life to smithereens? But it had, and now, judging from the looks on the faces of his kids and their spouses, and his ex-wife, it was about to get much worse. Grace was seated on the antique sofa, her features tight with resentment. Their children were gathered around her, while their spouses mingled uncertainly in the background, not sure whether to stay or leave, only knowing—like Tom and Grace—that this was one hell of a mess the Deveraux were in.

      “I’m sorry about that,” Tom said.

      “You should be!” Amy cried, as always, the most emotional of the group. She dabbed furiously at the tears on her cheeks. “I can’t believe you would do something like that!” she fumed resentfully. Beside her, Grace seemed to concur.

      “Was there just the one indiscretion?” Gabe asked warily, struggling to understand.

      Chase regarded Tom with his customary cheekiness. “Or should we brace ourselves for other illegitimate heirs, to liven up our family gatherings?”

      Tom glared at his sons. Gabe’s lack of faith and Chase’s sarcasm weren’t helping. Before Tom could censure them, however, his second-oldest son Mitch put in his two cents’. “Chase and Gabe have legitimate questions,” Mitch pointed out, taking his usual businesslike approach. “News like this could affect our reputation in the community. There are some who might not want to do business with Deveraux-Heyward Shipping if we’re embroiled in one scandal after another.”

      “There won’t be any more scandals,” Tom said, disappointed in his family’s seemingly united stand against him. “Nor will there be any more illegitimate children showing up on our doorstep. Now, if you kids will excuse us, your mother and I have a lot to talk about.”

      As soon as everyone left, Tom closed the doors to the double drawing room, and turned to Grace. “I’m sorry,” he said softly. It was lame, but he didn’t know what else to say.

      Grace glared at him with years of pent-up resentment, the look in her eyes making him feel about two inches tall. “You should be, you son of a bitch,” she retorted just as quietly.

      Tom wished she would just haul off and slug him and get it over with, instead of continuing to punish him, day after day, year after year. “Don’t hold anything back,” he advised just as sarcastically, wondering how much longer Grace was going to continue to make him pay for this.

      Since the divorce, they’d been civil to one another at family functions, for the sake of the kids. Every time they had tried to do more than that, either be friends or something more, the issue of his infidelity would come up and they’d end up fighting again. Tom was tired of the discord. He sensed Grace was, too. But as for how to move on, move past this…

      Grace stood and went over to the table where she had left her handbag. Her cheeks pink with distress, she picked it up and head bent, began to rummage through it. Tom studied her, thinking how pretty his former wife looked in the silky turquoise pantsuit. Her blond hair was much shorter these days—worn in attractive layers that framed her face and the nape of her neck—but her figure was still trim, her beautifully girl-next-door face unlined. As always, when he was near her, he found himself wanting to nurture and care for and protect her. Not that she would allow it. Not after what he had done.

      “I always knew this was going to happen someday,” Grace said.

      Grace glared at him. “I hoped it never would.” She fished out her keys and held them in the palm of her hand. “What are you going to do about Daisy?”

      Tom shrugged. Now that he knew what Daisy thought was the truth, he hadn’t a clue. Daisy was one troubled young woman. Tempestuous, wild and unpredictable, and already the talk of Charleston, even without this revelation. The Templetons had spent years trying to control her. To no avail. Tom wondered if what Daisy had been told by Sister Agatha was true. Was Daisy his child? Or had Iris been with someone else in that time frame? And even if he was Daisy’s father, Tom admitted to himself, would he have any better luck, trying to parent Daisy, than Richard and Charlotte Templeton had had, during their tenure, as Daisy’s СКАЧАТЬ