The Heiress. Cathy Gillen Thacker
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 to look into his eyes to know that he was still following orders from her birth father, and probably withholding information from her, too. “Never mind,” Daisy muttered in disgust. She was not sure why it mattered to her at all, but she had not wanted Jack to be there for any reason other than genuine concern for her, and what she was going through. Realizing that wasn’t the case, or anywhere near it, she strode past him, her temper climbing with every second that passed, and headed for the refreshment cove, located on the outside of the main lodge. The covered, concrete-floored portico had an ice dispenser and vending machines containing snacks and beverages. She put in her change, pushed one button. Nothing happened. She punched her fist against the next and the next. Finally, on the fourth try, a can of root beer—which she detested—tumbled through the machine and out of the slot. Daisy picked it up and popped open the top. Aware of Jack loitering just behind her, she held it to her lips and drank a big gulp of the sweet icy-cold liquid.
She wiped the excess moisture off her lips with the back of her hand, and slowly turned around to face him. Wordlessly, he moved by her, and put some change into the machine, too. He also got a can of root beer. Looking content to be there all night, if need be, he popped the top and took a sip.
Daisy didn’t know why Jack was getting to her—maybe it was the way he kept watching over her in that infuriatingly calm and deliberate manner—but she was determined to get a rise out of him. It was the only way, she calculated with a certain weary reluctance, she would ever get rid of him. And that was what she wanted most of all, because she didn’t like seeing herself and her inability to control her feelings reflected in his eyes. “It’s not going to work, you know,” she told him sassily as she leaned against the weather-beaten wooden post.
“What?” Jack asked, taking up a position opposite her.
Her throat unaccountably dry, Daisy watched him take another lazy drink of root beer. “You’re not going to win Tom Deveraux’s approval this way.” She looked him over from head to toe before returning her taunting gaze, ever so vampishly, to his eyes. “That is what this is about, isn’t it?” she queried softly, refusing to accept defeat, knowing this was one—maybe the only—battle she would win. “Your running interference with me for Tom, is simply a way to get in his good graces, to make him think of you as something more than an employee.”
Jack’s broad shoulders expanded against the starched cotton fabric of his white shirt. “Why would you think I would be interested in that?” he asked gruffly.
Knowing she had hit a nerve, Daisy rolled her eyes and continued goading him relentlessly. “Come on. It was all over your face tonight when we were at the Deveraux mansion.” The look in Jack’s eyes, as they had stood outside, had matched what Daisy had been feeling, not just at that moment, but all her life—like she was the little match girl, looking in. Wishing she could join the party. And feel loved and wanted. Like she belonged in such a warm and wonderful place. Only it couldn’t have been that wonderful after all, she reminded herself firmly, or Tom wouldn’t have stepped out on Grace. He wouldn’t have slept with Iris and, in the process, both made a baby and destroyed the happiness of his family.
“What was on my face?” Jack shifted his weight restlessly, abruptly looking as on edge and ready to do combat as she.
Raw emotion. The kind of vulnerability that was missing now that he had his guard up once again. Determined to pierce his armor the way he so easily seemed able to get through hers, Daisy taunted him softly, “You were mortified that you weren’t able to keep me from crashing that Deveraux family party tonight. You were afraid that Tom was going to be ticked off at you—which he clearly was. So now you’re trying to make it up to him by keeping me in your line of vision.”
To her disappointment, Jack didn’t even try to deny it. “You could have tried harder to lose me,” he said, as if he could have cared less how the evening turned out.
“Maybe I didn’t want to,” Daisy baited Jack lazily. “Maybe I was curious.”
The muscles in his shoulders and chest becoming more pronounced, Jack drained his root beer and tossed the can into the trash barrel next to the soda machine. He turned back to her, his expression grim. “About what?” he demanded curtly.
Daisy rubbed her bare toes against the cool concrete. She knew sparring with Jack this way was dangerous. But she couldn’t help it. She needed an outlet for her anger and frustration. Like it or not, this was it. “How far you’d go—or not go, as the case might be—to please Daddy Dearest. For instance—” Able to see she was getting to Jack at long last, Daisy let her lips curve in a soft, goading smile and tossed her soda can, too. “Would you deny yourself a chance to sleep with me?” Ignoring the racing of her heart and the weak funny feeling in her knees, Daisy held Jack’s eyes and undid the string tie at the back of her neck. When he didn’t move—didn’t react in any way—she reached behind her recklessly and released the zipper on her sundress.
Jack’s expression grew even grimmer, more forbidding. Although obviously aroused, he was not in the least bit amused by her antics. “Don’t do this,” Jack said.
“Why not?” Wanting to annoy him the way he had her, Daisy pushed the fabric past her hips, and stepped out of it. Her heart was pounding so hard she could hear it in her ears. “Am