The Heiress. Cathy Thacker Gillen

the only person who can help.”

      TOM HAD FIGURED Grace would show up sooner or later—he figured the kids would send her. So it was no surprise when she walked across the gangplank onto his yacht at 5:00 p.m. Thursday evening. Unlike Tom, who was wearing only a pair of navy-blue swim trunks and a pair of sunglasses, she looked pretty and professional in a white silk pantsuit. She also looked irked, and she didn’t waste any time starting in on him, either. “What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded, propping her hands on her hips.

      Tom continued disassembling the reel he’d been working on. “Exactly what it looks like, I’m repairing my fishing rod.” It had taken a heck of a beating the last ten days or so, given the way he’d been using it.

      Grace strode closer, her high heels clicking across the deck. She held a hand above her eyes to protect them from the glare of the sun. “People are going to start to talk.”

      Tom shrugged. Like he gave a damn about that.

      When he made no move to defend or explain himself, Grace released a short, aggravated breath, dragged a deck chair over and sat down beside him. She leaned forward. “Do you really want to disillusion our children any more than you already have with this extended vacation of yours?”

      If Tom didn’t know better, he would’ve thought she cared about him, given the way she was acting. “Is that what I’m doing?” he asked dryly. He reached down into the toolbox beside him for a pair of pliers.

      Grace huffed and spoke between tightly gritted teeth. “If you stay out here on the boat much longer, people will realize you’re not just taking a much-deserved few days off from work.”

      Reassuring his ex would have been easy, but Tom decided not to tell Grace he had already determined he would return to work the following day, the Deveraux mansion that very night. After all, it wasn’t her business what he did, just as it wasn’t his business what she did.

      Grimacing as the reel refused to cooperate with him, he decided to remind her she was hardly one to talk. “I’m surprised you were able to tear yourself away from your young lover.”

      Pink color that had nothing to do with the summer heat and humidity flooded Grace’s cheeks. “I won’t discuss Paulo with you.”

      Tom nodded gravely. “And no wonder,” he returned sarcastically, “since being with him makes you a hypocrite.”

      Grace’s eyes flashed with anger. “Me?”

      Tom dropped both the reel and the pliers into the toolbox and reached into the cooler beside him for a beer. Eyes on Grace, he shook the excess water off the bottle and twisted open the top. “Weren’t you the one who always said that sex was something sacred, only to be embarked upon within the love and sanctity of marriage?”

      Since their divorce, Tom noted, that view obviously hadn’t lasted. Not that Tom had been a saint, either, in the fifteen years he and Grace had been apart. He had made love to a dozen women over the years, enduring everything from a single one-night stand to a relationship that had lasted almost four months. But none of the entanglements had been satisfying, because he hadn’t loved any of the women, not the way he had once loved Grace.

      Grace stood, her slender shoulders stiffening. “This isn’t helping.”

      You’re telling me. It had been days now and all he could think of was Grace naked beneath that robe, her young gigolo standing there in a towel. Had Paulo discovered how spectacular her body was? Had she kissed him back like she meant it, or had she simply endured her young lover’s caresses, the way she had often tolerated his?

      Grace clamped her lips together. “You have no right to comment on my actions.” She glared at Tom resentfully. “We’re not married anymore.”

      Tom stared right back at her. “But you felt compelled to flaunt your affair with that guy in my face anyway,” Tom noted bitterly as he ran his hand across his jaw, which was scraggly with a beard. His gut twisting with jealousy, Tom took another sip then set his bottle down beside him and turned his attention back to his reel.

      “I didn’t ask you to show up at my place at the crack of dawn,” Grace continued, defending herself.

      Not buying her excuse, Tom stopped rethreading the reel and regarded Grace steadily. “After what had happened the night before, you knew I would come to see you as soon as I could, to talk about Daisy and our four kids. Not that the other morning was the first time. You’ve been with that overrated, overpriced gigolo for weeks now!” And it killed Tom because he had thought—hoped—the relationship was just a flirtation, that at heart it was platonic. How foolish had that fantasy been?

      Grace turned her face to the breeze.

      Tom watched the soft blond layers of Grace’s hair get whipped around sexily by the salt-scented wind. “Being with him that way is wrong,” he snapped grimly. And you know it.

      A mixture of shock and fury widened her eyes as she turned back to him. “Says who?” Grace advanced on him emotionally, looking as though she was tempted to haul off and hit him. “You?” She poked her index finger against his bare chest. “The arbiter of extramarital sex? Please.” Grace threw up both hands in aggravation. “You’ve squired your share of young and beautiful women around since we split. And for all I know, even before we separated.”

      That was unfair but typical, Tom thought. He stood, and really pissed off now, squared off with her. “I was only unfaithful to you once,” he said.

      “And since?” Grace queried, arching her delicate blond eyebrows at him.

      It was Tom’s turn to move his glance away. A muscle working convulsively in his jaw, he shifted to the harbor beyond. “You left me, remember?”

      “For good reason, if you recall,” she reminded him.

      Tom shook his head in exasperation. “Yeah, because you put a wall between us.”

      “We had children, a home together…” She spoke as if she didn’t believe he was turning the tables on her.

      But Tom knew it was the truth. And he knew, whether she liked it or not, it was past time his wife faced just how cold and unaffectionate she had been prior to his interlude with Iris. “Yes, Grace, you distanced yourself from me.”

      “I was depressed! Finding out I was sterile was a devastating blow.”

      Or an excuse. Tom tread nearer, trying not to recall how much he had wanted to make love to her then, how much—despite everything—he still did. “We already had four children, Grace.”

      “Five,” Grace countered miserably, “if you count the baby we lost when I miscarried, the year after Amy was born.”

      “But you wanted more, didn’t you?” Tom remembered bleakly. And when she couldn’t have them, she had completely turned away from him, in her heart and in their marriage.

      “We both wanted more kids. Half a dozen, remember?” Grace’s voice became a strangled sob as she forged on. “Only I couldn’t because of the complications I had after the miscarriage. But that didn’t stop you, did it?” Her eyes gleamed with hurt as she reminded, “Because you went right on to have another child without me—you had Daisy.”

      Tom saw it all—the jealousy, envy, resentment—that another woman had given him what Grace no longer could. “That was never meant to be more than one night,” he told her with gut-wrenching honesty.

      Grace stared at him and slowly shook her head, appearing as if she could hardly believe his naiveté. “That night created a child, Tom. It destroyed our family.” Tears flooded her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. “But you can’t admit that to yourself even now, can you? You persist in saying and feeling I should just get over it.”

      Tom swallowed hard. “Why can’t you?” he demanded, feeling more frustrated than ever.

      Grace threw her hands up. “You know why I can’t! Because