The Heiress (27 page)

Daisy regarded Bucky, one up-and-coming professional to another. She didn’t need Bucky Jerome’s ap
proval but she did appreciate the genuine nature of his respect. “Thanks, Bucky,” Daisy said quietly.

He stepped back, a mischievous grin creasing his face. “Say cheese!” Bucky ordered, then took what had to be another very bad photo of Daisy, Jack and her family in front of the photo booth. Daisy rolled her eyes. She could imagine what that was going to look like if it made the society page.

“I’ll make a mention you were working here tonight,” Bucky told Daisy before he ambled off.

“I’d appreciate that,” Daisy said.

“Well, the rest of the family wouldn’t,” Richard interjected unhappily. He looked at Jack for help. “Legally, can we stop Bucky from printing anything about this in the paper?”

“Right,” Daisy said. “You wouldn’t want anyone to see me caught
working.
”

Richard, Charlotte and Iris glared at Daisy, un-amused.

In response to Richard’s question, Jack shook his head. “You don’t need to sign a release for this sort of thing. Daisy is working here. Bucky’s reporting that because he’s covering the event. Period.”

Charlotte put a hand to her forehead as if she felt one of her famous migraines coming on, the kind that in Daisy’s youth had occasionally sent her to bed for days.

Richard glanced into the gymnasium, where Bucky was busy taking photos and chatting it up with other guests. “That boy is a nuisance,” Richard grumbled.

“He’s not a boy, Father.” Daisy found herself in the odd position of defending her high-school boyfriend in front of her current husband. “And he’s just doing his job.”
Like I’m trying to do mine.

Richard looked at Jack. “You’re an attorney! Can’t you do something about this to keep Bucky Jerome away from our family?”

Jack shrugged. “You could try to get a restraining order, but first you’d have to demonstrate how Bucky has harmed your family and remains a threat, and I don’t see that as the case,” Jack replied with an honesty neither Richard nor Charlotte appreciated.

“Well, we’ll see about that.” Richard walked off in a huff, Charlotte right behind him. That left Iris standing there with Daisy and Jack.

“Listen, Daisy, Father is right about this.” Iris continued the campaign where their parents had left off. “Bucky is being a major pest. Can’t you get him to back off?”

Daisy wrinkled her nose at Iris, perplexed. “What do you mean? I don’t have any influence with Bucky.”

“Yes, you do. He’s still got a wild crush on you. If you asked him sweetly to back off and leave our family alone, he would.” Iris glanced at Jack, who was looking disgruntled. “Sorry, Jack, but it’s true. Feminine wiles work. And it’s high time Daisy realized that.”

“Listen, Iris, I know Bucky is a pest, but he has a right to be working this event, same as I do. Besides, experience has demonstrated that if I ignore him long enough he’ll eventually go away and bother someone else.” It was when Daisy let Bucky—or guys like him—know they were annoying the hell out of her that they kept coming back for more.

Looking all the more aggravated, Iris took Daisy by the arm and guided her down to the far end of the hall, well out of earshot of others. Ignoring Jack, who had tagged along and was standing sentry between the two Templeton women and anyone who might want to in
terrupt, Iris continued bluntly, “Don’t you understand what Bucky is trying to do? He’s trying to create scandal where there is none!”

Daisy studied the woman who had given birth to her and then denied it for twenty-three years. “You just don’t want people digging around in your life for fear they’ll uncover your affair with Tom that led to me.”

Iris stiffened. “It’s a lot more complicated than that.”

“Is it?” Daisy wondered out loud. “Tom and Grace are pretty popular people in this town. Friends could feel they had to take sides in what still amounts to a pretty ugly situation. And Grace has a lot more star power than you do, especially with the new TV show she’s taping here.”

Iris sniffed. “Like it or not, Daisy, the prosperity of our family business depends on the respect and goodwill of our customers. I’m not going to be poor again.”

Daisy lifted her eyes to the ceiling and scoffed. “You were never poor.”

“The entire time I was growing up we were broke, Daisy. Leveraged to the hilt. If I hadn’t married Randolph when I did and brought his money into our family, we would have been out on the streets in a matter of weeks. As it was, it took five years to pay off all the creditors, and another ten to put Templeton’s Fine Antiques solidly in the black.”

Daisy stared at Iris in shock. She had always suspected Iris had married the old goat for his money—what other reason could there have been, Randolph Hayes IV hadn’t exactly been Prince Charming. But she hadn’t known the straits had been that dire—the pressure on Iris so intense—she’d thought Richard and Charlotte had been the ones who had put Templeton’s Fine Antiques back in the black! Yet, just talking about
it, Iris looked and acted panicked. “So you sold your self-respect and solved all your problems,” Daisy surmised grimly, sure about the decision she would have made in the same position—the opposite one!

Iris folded her arms in front of her. “It wasn’t like that.”

“Then how was it?” Daisy persisted angrily, really wanting to know.

“I did what I had to do for the sake of this family,” Iris insisted.

Like Scarlett O’Hara after the Civil War, Daisy thought, her exasperation growing by leaps and bounds.

“And now I’m expecting
you
to do the same,” Iris continued sternly.

Stepping closer to Jack, Daisy linked her arm through his. Smiling insolently to cover her hurt, Daisy quipped humorlessly, “Too late. I’ve got Jack here as my hubby. And although he’s not rich, he’s very kind. And very loving.” Which was more than Daisy could remember about the old goat when he had been alive.

Iris’s eyes flashed with anger. “Daisy, please, this once cooperate with me. I don’t want Bucky Jerome to hurt you. I’m afraid he will, given the slightest opportunity.”

“Don’t worry.” Daisy clung to her husband all the more. “Jack’s a lawyer, in addition to being my husband. He and I have already talked about it,” Daisy fibbed, “and he has promised me that he will help me with any and all legal problems that come up. Including those with Bucky or the family or anything potentially troubling in any way, so you don’t need to worry, okay? Everything’s going to be fine. I promise you. All you have to do, Iris, is chill.”

“S
HE SEEMED UPSET
,” Jack said as Iris walked off to mingle with the rest of the guests.

“Yeah, she was,” Daisy agreed as she and Jack walked back to her camera. “They all are. They’re so concerned about their precious reputations. And of course—” Daisy sighed her exasperation, trying not to notice how handsome Jack looked in the casual navy sport coat, creased khakis and light-blue shirt “—Bucky Jerome knows that, which makes it easier for him to get back at them.”

Jack leaned against the wall, arms folded in front of him, while Daisy put out the pens and forms for people to fill out so she could match the photos with the proper names and addresses. “Why would Bucky want to get back at them?” he asked.

Daisy straightened the stack of her business cards, too. “Because they never approved of my relationship with him when we were dating back in high school.”

“Because he was a troublemaker,” Jack guessed, his eyes roving her upswept hair.

“I don’t think that would have mattered had Bucky been rich enough, but he wasn’t.”

Jack’s sandy eyebrow furrowed. “His family owns the newspaper.”

“As well as several other small weeklies, in little towns scattered around the state, but that’s it,” Daisy countered, embarrassed to admit how incredibly snobbish and fortune-minded her adoptive parents née grandparents were. “Adlai Jerome is no Rupert Murdoch. And that’s the kind of wealth they wanted to see me bring into the family. You know. Blue blood is one thing, but blue blood with millions or billions…well, now, that’s a catch. They wanted me to make a fortuitous match, and they saw Bucky as standing in the way of that.”

Jack’s eyes hardened with the depth of his understanding. “What did you want back then?” he asked softly.

Funny, Daisy thought. Jack was the first person who had ever asked her that. “To be happy,” she replied, looking deep into his eyes. “To be loved and accepted for who I am not who people wished I was.” Daisy turned away, adding, “The usual things… The same thing I want now.”

Her senses rioting at Jack’s nearness, Daisy waved at the event organizer, who had come out into the atrium and was pointing impatiently at her watch. Daisy nodded back, signaling she was indeed ready to go. She pivoted to Jack, a ready smile on her face. “Come on. I’ve got to get people lining up for photos. Or I really will be in trouble.”

Jack stroked her arm. “We can talk about this more later if you want.”

Daisy shook her head. She didn’t want to examine her past or Iris’s, or the expectations placed upon them both by Richard and Charlotte as they were growing up. And she certainly didn’t want to talk about how those same unreasonable familial demands had driven Iris into Tom Deveraux’s arms. Because Daisy knew what she would find in the end. No matter what Tom’s DNA tests proved, Iris and Tom Deveraux would never publicly acknowledge Daisy as their child. They would never make her feel better about having been given up. Instead, she was, and would remain, a source of family embarrassment and shame.

H
ALF AN HOUR LATER
, figuring he’d gotten all the society news he could out of the charity event, Bucky
was just about ready to leave the elementary school, when he saw Ginger Zaring getting out of the back of Richard Templeton’s limousine. The voluptuous redhead was dressed in a short, ruffled sundress with a deep V neckline that did very little to cover her ample breasts, very high heels and way more makeup than he had ever seen her wear before.

Bucky snorted in disgust, aware that it very much looked like one of his original theories—that Ginger Zaring wasn’t just shaking down the Templetons but playing the hooker for them at various events with the Templetons’ society friends, too—just might be true. Not that this was in itself so surprising, Bucky thought as he ducked behind a tree so as not to be seen. Any number of high-expenditure businesses had been supplying high-class call girls to favorite clients as a perk of doing business with them for centuries. And working girls for the truly upper crust often also did something else as their day jobs. Their moonlighting was just for extra cash and/or kicks or entrée into a world they would never otherwise see.

In Ginger Zaring’s case, Bucky was betting it was for cash. Because the voluptuous redhead hadn’t looked to be particularly enjoying herself the night he had seen her biding her time at Rosewood, and she didn’t look particularly happy to be there tonight, either.

Oblivious to Bucky’s presence in the deserted schoolyard, Ginger looked around furtively, and a moment later headed for the side of the elementary school, away from the entrance to the gymnasium.

Bucky waited until the Templeton limousine drove off, then made his way around to that part of the school building, too. The fire door had been wedged open with
a small wooden block. The wing of classrooms was dark and empty. At the end of the long corridor was another.

Bucky wandered down the hall, checking out each room in turn, finding nothing and no one until he reached the school library. His eyes widened in stunned amazement as he caught a glimpse of Ginger Zaring and the male she was there to service, and what they were doing was definitely X-rated.

B
UCKY HUNG AROUND
until the private party in the school library had ended and Richard Templeton had dismissed his girlfriend. He then returned to the
Charleston Herald
newspaper office. He still couldn’t believe what he had seen, but there was no denying the sordid liaison. He was just glad Daisy hadn’t seen it.

Not that he should care about Daisy at all after the way she had humiliated him years ago, dumping him the way she had, when everyone knew, or at least guessed the two of them had gone off to that hotel room to have sex for the very first time.

Okay. He’d probably always resent her for that—the fact she hadn’t given him a chance to make it up to her, because he knew her first time had been astoundingly lousy. Over in about sixty seconds, once he had gotten her onto the bed. But she’d looked so sexy in her secretly altered parent-approved prom dress. He couldn’t help himself.

Bucky didn’t mean to get carried away, or push Daisy into something he knew—deep down—she wasn’t really ready for. But he had done it, anyway, despite Daisy’s last minute reservations. Hoping that once the deed was done, she would loosen up a little, relax, start to enjoy herself. Instead, she had only
seemed to feel worse in the aftermath. And then she’d fled, the look on her face telling him she knew she had made a huge mistake, even going up to the hotel room with Bucky.

She’d never seen him after that night.

And after a few futile tries to talk to her on the phone he’d let it go. But now that they were both back in Charleston again, Bucky was surprised at how vulnerable Daisy seemed, how pale and drawn and sad beneath the surface bravura. Bucky didn’t know what was going on with her and Jack. He didn’t think it was love—he didn’t think Daisy would ever let herself be emotionally accessible enough for that. But it was probably something—given the way those two looked at each other—that she should hang on to.

Meanwhile, Bucky thought, there was Daisy’s father.

Bucky sighed and shook his head, thinking about how many lectures on responsibility and comporting-himself-with-dignity-so-as-not-to-sully-Daisy’s-reputation he’d endured from that blue-blooded butt-wipe. Someone had to get that hypocrite back in line, Bucky thought as he ignored the paper’s no-smoking policy and lit a cigarette. Bucky figured it might as well be him.

“T
HIS IS HORRIBLE
,” Charlotte Templeton said the next morning over breakfast. Furthermore, she couldn’t believe Adlai Jerome was letting his son publish such rubbish!