The Heiress. Cathy Gillen Thacker

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СКАЧАТЬ she had received from her father when she was growing up. Richard felt then—as now—he had been helping her to be a better person. And to an extent he was right. His continual upbraiding had made her stronger. Strong enough to save her family by marrying a man years older than herself whom she had never loved or even liked, and still present a happy face to the world. Strong enough to take the family antiques business that Richard had nearly ruined with mismanagement and neglect and turn it into a profitable operation once again. Strong enough to find a way to be happy and content in her life despite all of that.

      But Daisy hadn’t needed to go through the same social and emotional regimentation she had. Iris had known that and taken steps to protect her, before giving her baby over to her parents to adopt and rear as their own. “That would have only made things worse,” Iris stated, knowing if she had done one good thing in her life, it had been to protect Daisy from being forced to select a mate and marry for money and social position rather than love. She hadn’t been able to keep her parents from cutting off all Daisy’s funds several weeks ago, but she still hoped—over time—to remedy that, too, and return Daisy to a position filled with choices, rather than one directed by an absence of funds.

      “So you’ve said,” Richard returned coolly. He walked to the bar and poured a healthy splash of bourbon into his glass. His expression grim, he regarded her steadily over the rim of his glass. “We’ll see if you still feel that way if that bastard child of yours ruins your reputation—and ours—in the community.”

      KRISTY HADN’T BEEN kidding when she said the place still needed an awful lot of work, Daisy thought as she let herself into cottage six and deposited the stack of threadbare linens and hotel-size bar of soap on the water-marked table. The paint was peeling off the walls, rust stains coated the sink and the shower, and the bed—well, lumpy didn’t begin to describe it, Daisy thought, sitting down on the edge of the mattress to test it out. But it was a place to sleep that she could afford. It faced the ocean. Daisy didn’t know why, but sitting and watching the timeless motion of waves rolling onto sand always soothed her. And after the past couple of days, she needed soothing more than she could say. Sighing wearily, Daisy removed her fringed suede boots and socks, grabbed enough change for the soda machine located between the lodge and the cottages, and headed back outside. And that was when she saw Jack Granger checking in to the cottage beside hers.

      “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 СКАЧАТЬ