The Heiress. Cathy Gillen Thacker

o’clock, the traffic was light as she headed for the downtown Historic District of elegant homes, to the Hayes residence, where Daisy’s older sister, Iris, resided. The stately lemon-colored three-story home, with the black shutters, double wraparound verandas and mansard roof, was one of the larger homes on Concord Street, opposite Waterfront Park.

      Her heart pounding with a mixture of anger and anticipation of the blowup to come, Daisy slammed out of her car, the red accordion file filled with proof in one hand, her fringed buckskin carryall slung over her shoulder, and marched up the steps. Iris’s maid, Consuela, answered the door, and ushered Daisy to the antique-filled morning room, where her much older “sister” was seated.

      Iris had on a sleeveless pale-blue summer sweater and slim white skirt, high-heeled shoes that made the most of her slender, elegant, forty-seven-year-old form. A cardigan had been tied neatly across her shoulders. A strand of pearls and matching earrings were the only accessories aside from the heavy diamond wedding and engagement rings Iris still wore, a year after she had been widowed by one of the city’s wealthiest—and in Daisy’s opinion, most repulsive—men. Copies of Vogue and Town and Country magazine were spread across her lap. Mozart was playing on the stereo.

      Iris took one look at the expression on Daisy’s face and dismissed her maid with a silken-voiced “That will be all, Consuela. And please, shut the doors behind you.”

      Consuela nodded and disappeared as silently as she had come in.

      Daisy’s heartbeat kicked up another notch as she regarded the woman who had secretly given birth to her, and then, just as heartlessly, abandoned her child. “Hello, Mother.”

      For the first time, Iris’s poise faltered. She put aside her magazines. “Daisy. I didn’t know you were back.”

      You mean you were praying I would never come back. “Just got in.”

      Iris wet her lips nervously, swallowed hard enough for Daisy to see it. “I don’t know what you found out over there—”

      Aware her legs were beginning to tremble with a combination of exhaustion and nerves, Daisy eased into a tapered-back Hepplewhite chair, circa 1790. Unable to help herself—hadn’t she promised herself on the plane she would give Iris a chance to explain, before she tore into her?—Daisy countered ever so quietly, “How about the truth?” How about the end of all my childish dreams? She was only twenty-three, but she felt so much older, now that she knew about all the lies.

      “But it’s not anything like what it must seem,” Iris continued.

      “Really,” Daisy replied. She studied the mixture of guilt and regret on the older woman’s face, and knew that her long-held hope of finding out to whom she really belonged was not going to bring her the peace of mind, the love and acceptance she had sought. “Then suppose you explain all the documents I have in this file.” Daisy patted the pleated red folder clenched between her fingers on her right hand. “The birth records that say I was born in Switzerland to American citizen Iris Templeton, and not to two tragically killed parents in Norway—as I was always told. Or the travel visa to Norway and then the United States with my name on it, issued to Charlotte and Richard, by the U.S. embassy. Or the story of the scandalous predicament that got you in trouble and landed you in the convent, recounted to me by the long-retired and still very remorseful Sister Agatha.” Suppose you tell me about all the lies. About your affair with a very married man.

      Silence fell as the color drained from Iris’s beautiful face. Tears glimmered in her eyes as Iris pressed a hand to her pearls and spoke with difficulty. “I was very young when it happened.”

      Not that young. “You were twenty-three—the same age I am now, college-educated and wealthy to boot. I think you could have handled having me if you had wanted to,” Daisy concluded resentfully.

      New color dotted Iris’s flawless cheeks. Iris looked Daisy square in the eye. “It wasn’t that simple, Daisy.”

      “Right,” Daisy agreed bitterly, tears sparkling in her own eyes, too. She wondered why she had ever hoped, even for one overly idealistic second, that the always contained Iris would tell Daisy what was in her heart, then or now. “You had a fortune to amass, a gross old man to marry.”

      Pique simmered in Iris’s pale-green eyes. “I tried to do right by you.”

      Daisy blinked, the self-serving audacity of those closest to her as astounding as ever. “How?” she demanded incredulously. “By lying to me? Having everyone else lie to me?” Iris had known how important it had been to Daisy to discover the true circumstances of her birth, that Daisy had been looking, off and on, for the past five years. And never once lifted a hand to help her, or even act as if she understood Daisy’s quest to discover just what it was about her that made her so secretly loathsome in Daisy’s “parents’” eyes. Now, of course, it all made sense. Richard and Charlotte Templeton had seen Daisy as the living proof of their only real daughter’s scandalous indiscretion, and probably worried Daisy would “go wrong,” too. Whereas Iris had been protecting herself and her reputation. What Daisy had needed or wanted or felt hadn’t mattered, still wouldn’t, she admitted miserably. No, when it came to protecting the family’s good name, Daisy and other individual members were completely dispensable.

      Iris turned her glance away. “Your adoption was for the best,” Iris stated stiffly.

      “For you, maybe,” Daisy replied, her heart aching all the more as she looked around, observing what Iris’s bargain with the devil had earned her. A hefty bank account, all the clothes and cars and jewelry she could ever want and one of the most luxurious mansions in Charleston’s nationally recognized Historic District. “Not for me. Never for me.” But, Daisy realized, Iris was not going to apologize for that, any more than Iris would apologize for pretending to be nothing more than Daisy’s older sister all these years.

      Deciding she’d learned as much as she was liable to learn at that juncture, Daisy stood and headed for the door. Iris followed her as far as the front door, before stopping and drawing her folded cardigan closely to her bare shoulders. “Daisy, for pity’s sake. Think of the family’s standing in the community and don’t do anything to create a scandal.”

      Daisy shot the woman who had given birth to and then promptly disclaimed her a hard look over her shoulder. “A little too late for that, don’t you think?” As far as she was concerned, the damage—and to be honest there had been a hell of a lot of it—had already been done.

      JACK GRANGER HAD BEEN hoping and praying Daisy Templeton wouldn’t show up at Tom Deveraux’s mansion that evening. He didn’t want the impossible task of trying to control the wayward heiress. But it appeared it had fallen to him, nevertheless. Trying to ignore how attractive she looked in the short, pink-floral sundress, fringed suede knee-high boots and dangly turquoise bead earrings, he blocked her path. She was a good bit shorter than he, slender and fit, with sexy legs. Her eyes were blue like a stormy ocean and her sun-kissed blond hair tumbled down around her fair freckled shoulders in loose waves. Her profile was flawless, her chin hitched in determination. She was also eight years younger than he was, in actual years—probably a lot more than that when it came to life experience. And that, plus a lot of other things, made the capricious beauty clearly off-limits to him, Jack reminded himself sternly as he tore his eyes from her soft naturally pink lips. Bracing himself for the emotional argument likely to come, he inclined his head in the direction of Tom Deveraux’s Historic District home and told her flatly, “You can’t go in there.”

      Daisy’s eyes gleamed with audacity as she stomped even nearer. “Oh, really.” She propped her hands on her hips. “Says who?”

      Jack was close enough to inhale her orange-blossom fragrance. “Says me,” he told her firmly.

      “Funny.” Daisy’s soft, kissable lips curved into a taunting smile as she swept around him and headed for the front door. “The last I heard, Jack Granger, you were legal counsel to Deveraux-Heyward Shipping not the bouncer.”

      Jack caught up with her before she had a chance to ring the doorbell