in a pot on the stove.
“I’m mad at you, Daniel Addison,” she said, her attention never wavering from what she was cooking. “You haven’t been by to see me in almost three weeks. Do you know how hard it is for a woman my age not seeing the boy I helped raised? I could very well die of a broken heart.”
Daniel chuckled as he kissed the woman’s wrinkled cheek. “I’m sorry, Rosemary, but there’s been a lot going on since Christmas. Will it make you feel better if I try to do better in the future?”
She turned to give him a sympathetic look. “I heard about Miss Lily’s daddy. How is that poor child doing?”
“As well as can be expected under the circumstances,” he answered. The woman had only met Lily once, at the dinner party before the holidays, but she and Lily had hit it off right away.
“My heart goes out to that girl, losing him the way she did,” Rosemary said, her kind brown eyes shining with unshed tears. “You be sure to tell her that I’ve got her and her family in my thoughts and prayers.”
“I’ll do that,” he said, knowing the kind-hearted woman his mother insisted on calling “Cook” was completely sincere with her sympathy.
Continuing into the sitting room, he found Charlotte posed by the window, staring out at Charleston Harbor. It was her favorite place to be when receiving guests.
“I don’t know why you insist on coming in the back way like a common servant, Daniel,” she admonished, turning to face him.
“Hello to you too, Charlotte,” he said, sitting down in one of the chairs by the fireplace. “How have you been?”
His question was all it took to get his mother started on the various charity functions she was helping to plan and the latest gossip circulating through the garden club. Barely listening, something she said suddenly caught his attention.
“What was that?” he asked, sitting up straight in the chair.
“I said that Madelyn Worthington told me all about poor Elizabeth Kincaid’s betrayal by that wretched man,” Charlotte said, patting an imaginary out-of-place hair back into place. “I’ve known for years that Reginald Kincaid was nothing but a low-bred scoundrel and I’m not the least bit surprised he turned out to be such an embarrassment to his family. Having a mistress and two bastard children in Greenville is just a disgrace.”
“Only one of the woman’s sons belongs to Kincaid,” he corrected. “And when did you start feeling sorry for Elizabeth Kincaid?” He distinctly remembered Charlotte referring to the woman as being a fool for marrying beneath her station.
His mother ignored the question, asking one of her own. “Are you still keeping company with that youngest Kincaid girl?”
“As a matter of fact, I am,” he said proudly.
Charlotte looked anything but pleased. “Really? I thought the two of you had a parting of the ways just before Christmas.”
Daniel narrowed his eyes. Now he knew his mother had something to do with his and Lily’s breakup. Otherwise, how would she have known?
“We stopped seeing each other for a few weeks, but just recently started dating again.” Technically they had only gone out once since running into each other at the lawyer’s office, but he fully intended for their trip to the aquarium to be the first of many outings they shared. “Why do you ask?”
“Oh, the night of my dinner party it seemed like she was losing interest in continuing your association,” his mother said calmly.
With years of practice at being a master manipulator, he wasn’t fooled by Charlotte’s disinterested demeanor. His mother knew a lot more about why Lily tried to end their affair than he did and he intended to find out what that was.
“What did you say to her?” he asked. “And don’t tell me you don’t know what I’m talking about, Charlotte. I know exactly how you operate.”
She didn’t so much as flinch at his accusation. “I just pointed out that since your divorce, you’ve made it no secret that you aren’t interested in anything long-term with a woman or marrying to carry on the family name.” Her smug smile caused him to clench his back teeth together so hard, he was surprised it didn’t break his jaw. “She comes from a large family and I’m sure that she has ideas of raising a brood of her own one day. It’s better that she knows now that isn’t what you’re interested in than to give her false hope for the future. Besides, she doesn’t have the breeding of a young woman suited for a man with your standing in the community.”
“And I guess Charisma did?” Daniel retorted.
“I’ll admit that Charisma was a bit high-strung, but you can’t deny she had a suitable background,” Charlotte answered as if the issue was as important to him as it was to her. “Her family has been a part of Charleston society almost as long as the Beauchamps and Addisons. She would have passed along the traits you would want in an offspring.”
“I shouldn’t be surprised that you thought she was good wife material,” he said, unable to keep the bitter tone from his voice. “She’s just like you, and I think that the traits you seem to think are so important would be better off not polluting the next generation.”
“Charisma is like me, isn’t she?” Charlotte said, smiling as if he had paid her a compliment and completely ignoring his disdain for the qualities her grandchild might inherit. She shook her head. “She was my best hope for a grandchild to carry on the family’s esteemed name.”
“Yeah, the two of you were as alike as I’ve ever seen—sweet as honey when things are going your way, but when they aren’t, you turn as vicious as a shark in a feeding frenzy.” He shook his head. “If I had wanted to carry on the family name, it certainly wouldn’t have been with Charisma.”
“Then why did you bother marrying her in the first place?” Charlotte asked, raising one darkly penciled eyebrow.
“Because, like you, she only showed the side of herself that she wanted me to see until she got her hooks in me,” he said, disgusted with himself for not seeing through his ex-wife’s facade sooner. “By the time she showed her true colors, it was too late. We had already walked down the aisle.”
“But you must have cared for her at some point,” his mother persisted. “The two of you were married for almost three years.”
“I tried to make things work, but I’m not like my father,” he stated flatly. “I finally faced the reality of the situation and realized that no matter what I did or how I did it, it was never going to keep her from making my life a living hell. I chose the peace and freedom of being single over a life of the abject misery Dad suffered.”
“Your father needed a strong woman to guide him,” Charlotte said, unabashed by her son’s observations.
“Well, I don’t.” He glared at his mother. “I prefer a woman to be my equal, not one who tells me every move to make and how to make it.”
“Do you honestly believe that Kincaid girl is your equal?” Charlotte scoffed.
“Yes, I do. But that is absolutely none of your concern.” Daniel had heard enough and he didn’t think he could stomach much more of his mother’s
