The Heiress. Cathy Thacker Gillen

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.

      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,