Cathy Gillen - The Heiress

“I still want to come in,” Tom repeated flatly. Not waiting for an invitation that was unlikely to come anyway, he brushed past her.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” a low male voice said.

Tom stopped, shocked, and looked up. A buff, long-haired man the same age as their sons stood at the top of the stairs. He was naked except for the towel around his waist as he came down the stairs, acting more like the man of the house than Grace’s yoga instructor.

The color in Grace’s cheeks went from pink to white. She held out an imploring hand. “Paulo, please.”

Jealousy ripping through his gut, a muscle working in his cheek, Tom swung back around to his ex-wife. “A little early for a naked yoga lesson, isn’t it?” he asked sarcastically before he could stop himself.

“She asked you to go,” Paulo said as he joined them at the foot of the stairs.

“Gladly,” Tom said. Feeling as if he’d been kicked in the gut by a mule, Tom thrust the bag of baked goods at Grace and said sourly, “Enjoy your breakfast.”

Pushing Paulo aside with one hand, Grace followed Tom out onto the stoop. “Tom…”

When he kept going, her delicate hand curved around his arm, tightening until he stopped his flight. Tom tensed. Whatever she was going to say, he didn’t want to hear it. He continued looking out at the street. “We’re even, right?”

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.

JACK GRANGER 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.”

BUCKY JEROME’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.