The Heiress. Cathy Gillen Thacker

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СКАЧАТЬ place” sounded. Never mind how close and cozy their life ahead might be. Daisy studied Jack’s face, realizing she wasn’t about to get out of this meeting with her new husband’s “boss.” “I want to meet at Tom Deveraux’s office,” Daisy stated stubbornly. “It’ll be shorter, less personal, that way.”

      Jack lifted a curious eyebrow. “I thought you wanted to get to know him, that’s what your search for your real parents was all about.”

      Daisy’s heart hardened a little more as she followed Jack’s lead across the hot pavement to the short-term parking lot. “I probably would want to get to know them if they were strangers. But given the way both Iris and Tom abandoned me, and lied both to and about me, even and especially when both knew how very much I wanted to find my real parents and was looking for them, I really don’t have any interest.” Her feelings had been crushed enough already by the fact Iris hadn’t wanted her, and Tom Deveraux hadn’t even cared enough to find out if she was his child. But instead had been content to let Daisy grow up without so much as ever guessing at her and Tom’s connection. Never mind being as loved as his legitimate children, or made to feel a part of his family, or told she had four half siblings, who as it turned out, she had gotten to know and befriend anyway. Instead of making her feel wanted and loved for the first time in her life, Tom and Iris had left her feeling even more rejected and forsaken. Listening to their excuses, or worse—realizing neither of them felt they really owed her an apology—just made her feel worse. Which was why, of course, Daisy had run away. So she wouldn’t have to help Iris and Tom feel better while she was made to feel even worse than she already did.

      His expression unsympathetic, Jack walked to the end of the row and stopped in front of a decade-old red sedan. The vehicle looked familiar to Daisy, with a few exceptions. The hood and door were now painted the same fire-engine red as the rest of the car. In fact, the whole vehicle looked as if it had had a paint job. The dent was gone from the fender. Even the upholstery had had a good cleaning.

      Jack shrugged at her stunned look. “You’ve been driving my car, I’ve been driving yours,” he explained.

      Daisy could see that. And even as she admired the way he had given as good as he got in assuming the use of her vehicle without her okay, she did not like his presumptuousness in messing with a good thing without her blessing. Daisy scowled at Jack. “I didn’t give you permission to fix it up.” She had liked her secondhand car the way it was. The vehicle’s noticeable disrepair had gotten under countless skins. It’s new spiffed-up appearance would not.

      Jack merely quirked an eyebrow and looked at her without an ounce of regret. “You should have thought about that before you left it with me,” he said.

      MAYBE IT WAS BECAUSE she had been raised in such a big, cold, forbidding house, but Daisy had always liked small, cozy places. Jack’s home on the beach, a mile or so down from Chase and Bridgett’s and Maggie and Gabe’s, was just what she would have ordered, if she could have afforded to buy a home for herself at that point. The one-story beach cottage was one hundred and fifty yards away from the ocean and built in typical Low Country fashion, with a high, deeply pitched roof and gabled front door. It was small—Daisy guessed no more than twelve hundred square feet, if that. But pretty and very well maintained. Obviously built before it became fashionable to have the parking area beneath the house, the building had dark-gray siding, snowy-white trim, shutters and door and a light-gray roof. Palmetto trees shaded the front of the house, which faced the street. Hedges of tall, neatly trimmed flowering bushes insured maximum privacy from the neighbors on either side, despite the relatively small lot sizes.

      “Do you rent this or is it yours?” Daisy asked as they parked in the small gravel driveway and got out.

      “It’s mine,” Jack declared with no small amount of pride as he unlocked the door and led the way in. “I’ll show you around and then go back and get the luggage.”

      Curious to see how he lived, Daisy followed. The first thing she noticed was that there appeared to be nothing antique or exceedingly valuable in the home—the furnishings were all sturdy, attractive, department-store stock. There were miniblinds, not heavy velvet draperies, on the windows, and practical off-white ceramic tile on the floor.

      To the left of the foyer was a living room with a white stone fireplace, to the right a masculinely appointed study complete with a large desk and leather chair, computer, printer, fax and copier, a wall of built-in bookshelves and several black-metal vertical files. The living room had a sectional sofa in the same slate-gray hue as the exterior of the house, an impressively outfitted entertainment center, upholstered reading chair and matching ottoman and not much else. Behind that was a surprisingly well-equipped kitchen and dining area at the rear of the house. A laundry room was located in the middle, just off the covered back porch. Farther down the hallway that ran the width of the home, was a single bathroom with a tub and shower combination, commode and sink all located in a very tiny space, and what appeared to be not just the master bedroom but the only bedroom, Daisy noted.

      Daisy studied the king-size bed, with the brown, burgundy and taupe paisley sheets and coverlet. It looked comfortable and seemed to dominate the room. How comfortable it would be if the two of them were in it together, she did not know.

      His hand just above her elbow, Jack directed her back to the hall. “The clean linens, towels and washcloths are in here. If you want to go first—” He tilted his head at the shower.

      Daisy did.

      “I’ll bring in your things.”

      DAISY WASTED NO TIME getting into the shower, taking advantage of the time alone no doubt. Jack went to his study at the front of the house to the vertical files. He made sure they were locked then sat down to try to figure out what he was going to do with all the information locked inside. He couldn’t take it to the Deveraux-Heyward Shipping offices, his or Tom’s. There was too much of a chance of it being spotted by someone else. He didn’t want to leave it in a storage facility, where anyone could break in and or come across it and wonder just what the hell Jack had been doing the past ten years at Tom Deveraux’s behest. And he didn’t want to destroy the information, either. Some of it meant too much to him.

      One thing was for certain, though, he didn’t want Daisy laying eyes on it. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

      GINGER ZARING WAS STARING at the balance in her bank account, wondering how she could magically conjure up the sum she needed, when her daughter, Alyssa, walked into the kitchen, a stack of mail in her hands. She set the envelopes on the counter then went straight to the refrigerator and pulled out a tube of chocolate chip cookie dough. Ignoring Ginger’s frown—Ginger preferred they eat their cookies baked—Alyssa chopped off a liberal chunk and set it on a plate.

      “Anything interesting in the mail?” Ginger asked her daughter.

      “Yeah.” Alyssa tugged off the butter-stained polo she had to wear for her movie-theater concessions job and, still clad in a black T-shirt and black cotton slacks, collapsed wearily onto one of the breakfast-bar stools. She paused to pop a chunk of dough into her mouth. “I got another reminder from Yale. The rest of my tuition is due in two weeks, and they want my room and board to be paid in full, too.”

      Ginger nodded, as if it were no big deal, but inside, her heart was sinking. She had fully expected to have all the money she needed by now, to pay those bills. But she didn’t, and now, as the time approached for her only child to leave for college, the clock was ticking ominously.

      Alyssa studied her mother, at eighteen seeing a lot more than Ginger cared to admit. “Maybe it’s not too late for me to go to USC with the rest of my friends,” Alyssa said quietly.

      Ginger СКАЧАТЬ