The Heiress (5 page)

Grace moved around, so Tom had no choice but to look into her face. “What do you mean?” she asked, clearly upset.

Tom pried her fingers from his bicep. He stepped back a pace. “You paid me back. In spades.”

Hurt flashed in her eyes at his low, brutal tone. Her lower lip trembled with resentment. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Didn’t she? Tom wondered. “You caught me with Iris. Now I’ve caught you screwing Paulo. We’re even, okay?”

“You don’t have to be crude,” she admonished coldly.

Tom lowered his face to hers, his mood more dangerous than it had been in years. “And what should I be, Grace?” he retorted caustically, wanting to wound her the way she had just hurt him. “Understanding? You sure as hell weren’t!”

Grace compressed her lips together tightly. “We were married then,” she reminded Tom angrily.

And we should still be married now, Tom thought bitterly. If she hadn’t been so damn stubborn and unforgiving. The cell phone in his pocket began to ring. Tom looked at the caller ID screen, saw it was Jack Granger. Probably with news about Daisy. “I have to get this,” he said.

“Of course.” Grace abruptly turned on her heel and headed back toward Paulo, who was lounging in the portal.

Good thing, too, Tom noted, because other residents on the street were beginning to stir. Interior lights going on, exterior lights going off. Others stepping out to get
their morning paper and head to work or out for a jog. Turning his back to Grace and Paulo, Tom answered the call and demanded, “Yeah, what do you have?”

“Daisy spent the night or most of it at the Paradise Resort on Folly Island,” Jack replied, sounding no less stressed and out of sorts than Tom felt.

Tom frowned. “I thought they closed that eyesore last year, when the owner died.”

“They did. The new owner is fixing it up. She’s a friend of Daisy’s and she let us both stay here, although the accommodations are less than stellar.”

“Are you still there?”

A brief hesitation on the other end. “Yes.”

“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.” Tom ended the call, then turned back to his ex-wife, who was scowling at him as resentfully as ever.

“Just go,” Grace said, indicating with a lift of her hand she didn’t want to hear it. Figuring he’d had enough turmoil for one morning, Tom did as she asked and headed back for the Jaguar. What the hell had he been thinking? Tom berated himself grumpily as he drove away. Hoping Grace might finally be willing to work through this problem if not actually forgive him for a misjudgment? Nearly twenty-four years had passed since he’d been with Iris and his ex was still out to punish him, as readily as if it had happened the day before. His involvement with Iris Templeton would never be forgiven. Not ever.

J
ACK
G
RANGER WAS WAITING
for Tom outside cabin five. He was unshaven, bleary-eyed and wearing the same clothes he’d had on the night before. Not, Tom thought, necessarily a good sign. “Where is she?” Tom
demanded, anxious to talk to Daisy. Alone this time. Father to daughter.

“I don’t know,” Jack admitted reluctantly, his low voice as grim as Tom’s mood. “She took off with my SUV, one of my credit cards and all my cash sometime during the night.”

In all the years Jack had worked for Tom, Tom had never known Jack to be foolish or careless. “How the hell did she manage that?” he demanded.

“I don’t know,” Jack said, sounding even more uncomfortable as he tugged at the knot of his tie. “I was asleep when it happened.”

Tom blinked. “With the door unlocked?”

Jack flushed with embarrassment and looked all the more chastened as he admitted reluctantly, “We were…uh, in the same cabin.”

The bad mood Tom had put on hold reared up again. Hands knotted in fists at his sides, he glared at Jack. “You spent the night in the same cabin with my daughter?”

Jack shrugged, the guilty look in his eyes increasing. “That wreck of a car she’s been driving lately broke down. She wanted to come here. I gave her a lift. She checked into cabin six. I checked into cabin five. She was upset and about to do something really reckless and crazy.”

“And you stopped her,” Tom guessed.

Jack looked away before admitting, “Yeah.”

“How?” Tom asked, not liking the sound of this, not one bit.

Silence.

“Don’t tell me you slept with her.”

What the hell was Jack supposed to say to that? He wanted to protect Daisy and keep what had happened
between them strictly between the two of them. But he couldn’t lie to the man who he had looked up to as a trusted mentor. Especially when he knew, given her impetuous nature, that Daisy would probably announce the tryst to her biological father anyway.

Figuring it would be best coming from him, Jack reluctantly owned up to his mistake. “I—we—didn’t mean for it to happen,” Jack said, knowing all the while that even if the impulsive one-night stand had meant something to him, it had been nothing more than yet another form of payback for Daisy.

“The hell you didn’t,” Tom exploded as his fist came flying toward Jack.

Too stunned and disbelieving to duck, Jack took a right cross on the jaw. The impact knocked him off his feet and sent him flying into the exterior cabin wall. The next thing Jack knew, he was lying on the ground. Tom was standing over him, fists clenched, more angry and disapproving than Jack had ever seen him. Chest heaving, Tom instructed fiercely, “I don’t care what you have to do, but you find her, goddamn it. And when you do—” Tom paused, to let his words sink in “—you bring her to see me.”

B
UCKY
J
EROME’S FATHER
was waiting for him when he arrived at the
Charleston Herald
newspaper offices at five minutes after eight that morning.

With a pointed look at the clock to let his son know he was late and a jerk of his severely balding head, Adlai Jerome motioned Bucky into his office. Adlai gave Bucky another long assessing look, focusing on Bucky’s spiked black hair, rumpled khaki’s and trendy shirt, letting Bucky know he didn’t approve of his son’s “look” any more than he liked Bucky’s writing. Which
was no surprise, Bucky thought, sighing inwardly. He and his “button-up-shirt-and-tie” father had been at odds as long as he could remember. “I’m putting you on the society beat,” Adlai said.

The society beat! His entire 5'8" frame stiffening with tension, Bucky plopped down on the leather sofa in the publisher’s office and stared at his father, knowing Adlai too well to think this was a joke. His dad was one of the original hard-asses, loaded with money in his own right but determined to own and manage the paper that had been in their family for generations, instead of selling out—for millions—to one of the big chains. Bucky respected his father’s determination to make it on his own regardless of their family’s personal wealth. He didn’t like Adlai’s theory that everyone—whatever their pedigree—must begin their work career at the very bottom.

Adlai shrugged and gave Bucky a look, like, What did you expect? “You said you wanted off the obits,” Adlai explained, “so I’m moving you to the society page. Specifically, the ‘Around the City’ column.”

He’d gone to Duke and worked his ass off for four years for this?
“Shirley Rossey already writes that,” Bucky argued, not about to take what he considered a demotion lying down.

“Not anymore.” Adlai took a sip of inky-black coffee, poured from the pot in the newsroom that was, Bucky knew, almost never washed. Just filled and refilled and refilled again. Which, of course, made any coffee brewed in it taste like something from the bottom of a trash barrel.

“She’s being bumped up to lifestyles editor,” Adlai continued explaining in the don’t-give-me-any-crap tone he always used with Bucky. “I’m promoting from
within instead of hiring from the outside. So you’re it, Bucky.” Adlai looked at Bucky over the rim of his
Charleston Herald
mug, which was washed almost as much as the pot. “I want you covering every event. And be sure you take lots of photos. The folks in Charleston like to see their pictures in the paper, especially when they are all gussied up.”

Bucky scowled at his father and gripped the double latte he’d gotten at Starbucks on his way over. “This isn’t fair,” he told Adlai grimly. “I want to do something important.”

Adlai dropped into his swivel chair and turned his attention back to the stack of papers on his desk. “You want to run this paper someday, you’ve got to learn it from the ground up, just like I did. And that means working every single department, Bucky.”

When Adlai had first laid out the deal to his son, Bucky hadn’t taken his father literally on that particular point. He’d figured after his initial mind-numbing stint in the classifieds sales office last summer that he’d work as a reporter for like a year, and then move into the editorial offices alongside his father. Too late, he was beginning to see that might never happen. That he should have tried harder to find a job on one of the big city papers when he had graduated from Duke instead of returning to Charleston.

Desperately, Bucky tried to change his father’s mind. “You promised me the police beat.”

“And you’ll get it,” Adlai agreed smoothly, taking another sip of coffee, “just as soon as you learn how to make even the most mundane interesting.”

Bucky scowled, knowing it would be futile to argue further. Once his father had made up his mind, that was that.

“And concentrate on getting as many under forty mentions as those forty and above,” Adlai cautioned as Bucky pushed to his feet. “We’ve had complaints recently that section of the paper is getting too stodgy.”

No kidding, Bucky thought, trying hard to think how to turn this situation around. The assignment might not be what he wanted, but he was certain if he was smart, he could make it work to their mutual advantage just the same. After all, where there was smoke there was fire and where there was a lot of money there was usually scandal. It was just up to him to uncover it. “Assuming I take this position,”
rather than quit,
“you’ll give me free rein? I can write it like the gossip columnists in the New York City newspapers?”

Already losing interest in the conversation, Adlai began booting up his computer. “You have to concentrate on the people who actually live here or are visiting the Charleston area. But yes, as long as it’s not actionable, or too editorialish, you can do what you want. Your goal should be to get people so excited about reading ‘Around the City’ that they’ll turn to that section of the newspaper the moment they pick up their papers.”

Bucky knew that was the same stock advice his father gave to all the journalists on his paper, with the exception of the obits. There, Adlai just cautioned that the items should be the best obits—the most concise, loving and compassionate—anyone had ever read. But Bucky was going to take Adlai’s advice to heart anyway, and use the column to make a name for himself.

“Who knows,” Adlai continued in an obvious effort to motivate Bucky to do his best, “if it’s good enough, snippets of your column could even get picked up and run in other papers, too.”

He was right about that, Bucky mused. They did have
at least one national celebrity in their midst. Grace Deveraux. Who, rumor had it, was currently seeing some model-type half her age. If he could get something on that, something factual and not actionable, proving the relationship wasn’t just a platonic one, maybe it would get picked up by other newspapers. Or get him noticed by one of the big outfits in New York City.

Adlai handed Bucky a typewritten sheet of paper. “Here’s a list of society parties and other gala events this week. Make sure you put in an appearance at all of them.”

“No problem,” Bucky said, his spirits already lifting as he savored the excitement and notoriety ahead. Adlai might think he’d just given Bucky a low-level assignment, but nothing could have been further from the truth.

“S
O, SHE GOT YOUR
SUV, your AMEX card and three hundred in cash from your wallet,” Harlan Decker stated as he sat back in his swivel chair and lit a cigar.

Jack nodded and looked over at the casually dressed private investigator, feeling damn embarrassed. As always, the burly ex-cop was dressed like a tourist, in a loud shirt, knee-length plaid shorts, wide-brimmed straw hat, knee-high crew socks and well-worn running shoes. He had a camera slung around his neck and a street map sticking out of his shirt pocket. His face and neck were sunburned, his gray hair damp with perspiration from the heat and humidity outside. Jack knew Harlan’s disguise worked like a charm—Harlan could wander in practically anywhere, look a little lost and distracted, and not be paid any mind. He was also an ace at both uncovering and keeping secrets.

Too tense to stay seated for any length of time, Jack got up to pace the P.I.’s office. Knowing he could trust Harlan to guard the Deveraux family and shipping company’s reputation the way he always had, Jack warned, “Tom doesn’t want any publicity. This is a private family matter. He wants it to stay that way.”

Harlan’s glance cut to the bruise on Jack’s face. Too discreet to inquire how
that
might have occurred, Harlan picked up his pen and asked, “How much money did Miss Templeton have on her own, do you know?”

“Probably not much,” Jack predicted, worrying a little about that. The lack of ready cash, combined with her need to stay hidden, could lead Daisy to some dives that were not necessarily safe. Jack didn’t want to think about anything happening to her, especially when he was the one who had prompted her to take off the way she had. If only he had been able to walk away from temptation and contain his lust for her…. The situation might be very different now. Jack let out a long, self-effacing breath, aware Harlan was waiting for him to continue. “As you probably already know, since you just got finished doing a job for Daisy yourself, the Templetons cut Daisy off weeks ago and she just returned from several weeks in Switzerland that, according to Amy, had Daisy down to her last couple of bucks.”

Harlan made a note on the pad in front of him. “I’ll start checking the airports and train stations, but my guess is she’s still driving your SUV.”

That was Jack’s theory, too.

“Less chance of her movements being traced.”

And more of a chance of being arrested and creating a situation embarrassing to both families. If there was one thing Daisy Templeton was interested in, it was payback. And Jack had the feeling she wouldn’t rest until she’d gotten it. Knowing how upset she still was and, Jack admitted reluctantly, probably had every right to be, he slid his hands in his pockets and looked out the window at the parking lot below. In retrospect, he knew he should have expected Daisy would pull something after they made love. He should have talked to her, tried to work things out verbally. Or at least try to discuss what had just happened between them. But like an infatuated fool, he had figured conversation could
wait until morning and wrapped her in his arms and held her until she—they both—fell asleep.

Now, thanks to his lack of foresight, Daisy was out there somewhere, feeling the way he had for as long as he could remember—like no one had ever really loved her, or ever would. Like she was a source of shame, existing only to sully the family honor. And that was a miserable way to live, Jack knew.

“Eventually, though,” Harlan continued pragmatically, “she’ll start working somewhere and have to use her social security number, or she’ll have to start charging on your credit card.”

And that was how they would locate her. “I’ll check my American Express account daily for any transactions,” Jack promised, his customary confidence beginning to return.

“And I’ll start looking for her right away,” Harlan retorted with a narrow glance. “How fast I find her will depend on just how badly she doesn’t want to be found.”

P
AULO LIFTED HIS LIPS
from Grace’s breast, the frustration he felt evident on his face. “Why are you pretending?”

Grace’s skin warmed self-consciously. She shifted away from Paulo and tugged the sheet upward to cover her nakedness. “I don’t know what you mean,” she said in the cool polite voice she used to keep people at bay.

“Last night. This morning.” Like a scientist in the midst of a perplexing experiment, Paulo stroked his hand across her belly. “You merely pretended to feel pleasure. Why?”

A shiver of revulsion ghosted over her insides.
“What makes you think that’s the case?” Grace tried hard to keep the defensiveness out of her voice. And how was it this man knew what Tom had never once guessed in all their years of marriage?

“You moan, you sigh, you go through the motions, but you’re not wet here unless I wet you with my tongue.” Paulo gently caressed her between the thighs, and Grace felt…nothing. Except the wish he would stop touching her. “Your nipples bead when I touch them but you don’t tremble with arousal. Instead, you fake it. And I want to know why,” Paulo insisted. “I want to know if it’s me, if it’s something I’m not doing or should be doing to excite you, or if it’s just that you can’t relax the way you want to right now.”

Her body taut with equal parts frustration and embarrassment, she sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed. “I think you should leave.” She didn’t talk about this. Never had. Never would. Her mother had been right. Sex was dirty. Meant for bringing children into the world and little else, except maybe a man’s gratification.

“Grace—”

“I mean it, Paulo.” Grace reached for her satin robe and shrugged the sensual fabric over her shoulders, loving the way it felt, the way she had never loved a man’s touch. Feeling more humiliated than she had when she’d been fired, she continued in a low, flat tone, “Being with you was a mistake. I was just too caught up with emotion to tell you, and that was wrong on my part.” Despite their failure to bring each other genuine pleasure, she was grateful to the sensual young man for trying, for being so patient with her, even when it didn’t work. She swallowed around the lump of emotion in her throat. “I’m sorry.” She didn’t know why she had
even tried this, after years of abstinence, after being with no one but Tom. She looked her yoga instructor in the eye, knowing after what had just happened those lessons were going to have to end, too, because she would never be able to have his hands on her again without thinking about this. And she didn’t want to think about this, any more than she wanted to think about all the times she had put aside her dislike of sex and feigned enjoyment with Tom.

She swallowed hard around the tight knot of emotion in her throat, even as she yearned for a long hot cleansing shower, the kind that had relaxed her so much in the past. “If you think I led you on—”

Paulo shook his head. He stood and, taking her cue, began to dress, as well. “I knew when Tom showed up this morning what the problem was.” Paulo looked sad but not surprised. “You’re still in love with him, aren’t you?”

Grace didn’t respond. But then, she thought sadly as she put on her slippers and exited the bedroom, she didn’t have to. Everyone knew the answer to that, just as they knew their marriage never had, and never would, work. The problems she and Tom had had in the bedroom—with her not wanting him, and him eventually not wanting her, either—had only been the half of it. She had two things she could count on to make her happy—her kids and her work. And that was it.

G
RACE SPENT
the next week and a half immersing herself in her work. At the soundstage, she was overseeing the construction of the kitchen, bedroom and living-room sets for her new television show, when Amy came to see her. Grace knew immediately there was trouble—
she could tell by the pinched look on her only daughter’s face.

“Mom, I’m worried about Dad.”

Grace did not want to talk about Tom, and especially not at the soundstage, with various grips, cameramen and set designers around. Grace put the fabric swatches for the sofas aside and regarded her daughter stoically. “Amy, I’m trying to work here,” Grace murmured with as much patience as she could muster, and it wasn’t a lot.

Amy took her mother by the elbow and led Grace over to a deserted corner of the warehouselike building, where
At Home with Grace
was going to be taped. Ignoring Grace’s wish they save this for later, Amy continued anxiously, “He hasn’t gone to the office for ten days.”

Grace smiled at Amy as if they were discussing something as mundane and happy as Amy’s imminent need of a shopping expedition for maternity clothes. “I suspect he’s probably long overdue for a vacation.”

Amy clamped her arms over her gently rounded belly and regarded Grace mutinously. “He isn’t taking a vacation.”

Grace put up a hand to ward off the approach of a staff member and continued talking to Amy. “Then what is he doing?”

Amy sighed, her blue eyes abruptly filling with unshed tears. “Not much of anything from what any of us can tell,” she said in a low, quavering voice.

Grace knew Amy was more emotional now—the hormones of pregnancy ensured that—but that didn’t mean Grace would change her feelings when it came to her ex. “Honey,” Grace said as gently as possible, “this
isn’t my concern.” And she didn’t want it to be, ever again.

“Then who else is going to get Daddy off the yacht?”

Grace blinked. Amy had lost her. “What are you talking about?”

Amy drew a tremulous breath. “Apparently, after the party, Daddy didn’t leave the house for about three days. He didn’t shave or shower, he just sat in the library brooding and drinking. Theresa was concerned—she wanted to call a doctor. Daddy wouldn’t let her, so she called Mitch and he went over and found Dad. Not drunk but not exactly sober, either. Dad wouldn’t talk to him. So Mitch called Gabe and Gabe went over.”

“And?” Grace prodded anxiously. If anyone would be able to tell if there was something medically wrong, causing Tom—the epitome of tranquillity under stress—to behave that way, Grace knew it would have been Gabe.

Amy shrugged. “Gabe said that medically there was nothing wrong with Daddy—he wasn’t clinically depressed—he was just totally devastated.”

“Well, he’s allowed to take a break,” Grace said, telling herself Tom’s emotional state had nothing to do with finding Paulo at her place, and everything to do with being identified as a philanderer to his grown children.

Amy laid a hand over her heart. “That’s what we all thought initially. But now that it’s been going on for nearly two weeks, we’re beginning to get scared.”

Grace had to agree, that didn’t sound like Tom. Not at all. Even in the midst of the divorce and their darkest days together, he had never taken off work. But instead
had sought solace and refuge in his work, just as Grace was doing now.

Grace paused, still trying to make sense of Tom’s actions. “Is he taking the yacht out?” Tom did love to go boating, always had. And it was an affection he had passed on to all their children.

“Occasionally.” Amy stuck her hands in the front of her overalls, which were emblazoned with the name of her redecorating business. “Mostly he just sits on the yacht and broods.”

That didn’t sound good, but it didn’t sound lethal, either. Grace sighed and for the benefit of staff around them kept the carefully composed smile on her face. “Have you talked to your father about this?”

Amy hesitated. She ducked her head, studying the toe of her sneaker. “I haven’t seen him.”

Grace wasn’t surprised. In the past, when she and Tom had been quarreling, their children had pretty much run for the hills and tried to stay as far away from any familial turmoil as they could. None of them had wanted to take sides in Grace and Tom’s marital problems, and Grace couldn’t blame them. Their mutual anger and resentment had been hard enough for her and Tom to deal with. Neither of them had wished it on their children. Besides, their four kids—five if you counted Daisy now for Tom—had their own problems, careers and lives to attend to, and each other to go to for comfort and counsel. But, Grace determined that didn’t mean Amy could identify a problem, dump it on Grace’s doorstep and then run away. “If you’re so concerned—and I can see that you are—why haven’t you seen your dad?” Grace asked quietly.

Amy’s chin took on a petulant tilt and her eyes glowed with blue fire. “Because I’m still mad at him,
and I don’t want to make things worse, and anyway—Nick said I should wait until I cool off and can listen objectively to what Daddy has to say about what happened.”

That sounded like Amy’s husband, Grace thought, realizing all over again how glad she was that Nick was now a member of the Deveraux clan. Nick had not only helped Grace find a new career path to take in the wake of her firing from
Rise and Shine, America!
by signing her to do a television show for his production company, he had given Amy the tenderness, stability and practical guidance Grace’s ever-so-romantic daughter needed to remain grounded and optimistic.

“But honestly, I don’t know when that will be. Chase, Mitch, Gabe and I have had several discussions about this, and we are all still very mad at him—even Mitch—who is Dad’s lieutenant in just about everything. I mean, all these years we thought you were responsible for the divorce, that you going to New York City to take the job when you knew Dad’s work and all our lives were here in Charleston, was what caused the breakup. But now we know the truth.” Amy’s voice dropped to an anguished murmur as the production staff and construction workers continued to give Grace and Amy wide berth. “We know what Daddy did to you. And we still can’t believe that he slept with Iris Templeton! My God!” Amy’s eyes welled with tears once again.

Grace saw the disillusionment in her daughter’s eyes, remembered full well how that felt, and her heart went out to her. “Oh, Amy, honey—” Grace put her arm around Amy’s shoulders.

“And poor Daisy,” Amy interrupted before Grace
could comfort her further. “She’s apparently disappeared, too.”

Grace paused as that news sank in. “What do you mean, disappeared?” Grace demanded uneasily.