Upstairs Downstairs Baby (Sweet Tea And Scandal 1)

“What woman?” Claire demanded, gripping her car keys as her blood ran cold. Who would go to all the trouble to do something like that?

“She didn’t give us her name, but she said she was from Charleston and had met you at a party.” Jasper’s father looked disgusted. “Is that what you’ve been doing since you’ve been here? Neglecting our granddaughter while you go out carousing at night?”

“The only party I’ve attended was one I catered recently. I was working, not carousing.”

Claire thought back to Bettina’s party. Was it possible that one of the guests had suspected something was going on between her and Linc and decided that she needed to be out of the picture? That was crazy. No one in their right mind would consider Claire competition. But what other explanation could there be? And how would anyone have known how to find Jasper’s parents? She hadn’t told anyone his last name. Would someone have gone so far as to have her investigated? If so, it was a despicable thing to do.

“What about the baseball player you’re shacked up with?” Doug asked. “Is he doing drugs and partying? What sort of environment is that for our granddaughter?”

If she wasn’t used to their harassment, these sorts of accusations might’ve shocked Claire. But it wasn’t much different from what they’d thrown at her in San Francisco and reinforced why she’d left. Even though she’d told herself that it was difficult for grandparents to take custody of a child away from its mother, she didn’t trust that the system always worked the way it was supposed to. Nor did she have the means to fight a lengthy battle against Jasper’s parents.

“He doesn’t party,” Claire said. “And where I’m living is none of your business.”

“I’ll bet he has money,” Jasper’s father said, his eyes narrowing to slits.

She shook her head. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Maybe you don’t want to lose your m

eal ticket.”

“My meal ticket?” Until Jasper’s death, Claire hadn’t had any contact with his parents and everything since then had been negative, but this was beyond anything she’d expected. “What are you talking about?”

“Seems to us that you have a sweet situation here.”

What was he trying to get at? Claire looked from Doug to Sharon and back again. The disgust on their faces set something off. Shame flooded her. She wasn’t the horrible person they imagined, but there was no question that she’d been sleeping with Linc and behaving recklessly.

“Give us our sweet baby,” Sharon said, “and we’ll leave you be.”

“She’s not your sweet baby.” Fury burned away Claire’s confusion. The idea of running again filled her with dread, but the last thing she was going to do was let Jasper’s parents take her daughter. “Jasper didn’t want you in his life and he certainly didn’t want you in his daughter’s life, either.”

“Better us than you. We’re going to get her one way or another.”

Claire shook her head and tried to look confident, even as she cringed inside. “You have no grounds to take Honey away from me.”

“I’m sure there is a judge in California that would disagree with you.”

“But we’re not in California.” It was all a huge bluff on her part. Claire wasn’t sure if what had happened when she was twenty would have any bearing on a court case here in South Carolina.

“You might think you’re safe here, but we could make things pretty uncomfortable for you,” Jasper’s mother said.

“You and that Linc Thurston fellow,” Doug Patmore agreed.

When Jasper’s dad spoke Linc’s name, Claire went cold all over. The last thing she wanted to do was drag Linc into a scandal, and it looked like Jasper’s father was eager to make trouble.

“I’m not going to give you my daughter,” Claire growled, feeling very much like a cornered mama bear. The more time she spent with Jasper’s parents, the more convinced she became that she would do whatever it took to keep Honey away from them.

“Then give us the hundred thousand dollars she got.”

“What hundred thousand dollars?”

“Don’t play dumb with us. She’s the beneficiary of his death benefit for being killed in active duty. That’s a hundred thousand tax-free.”

With those words, the whole reason for their interest in their granddaughter became crystal clear. As Honey’s guardians, they would be able to control that death benefit. A hundred thousand dollars was a lot of money.

“I don’t have it.” In truth, it had never occurred to her that there might be something Honey would receive after Jasper’s death.

“You are a terrible liar,” Doug said. “Of course you have it.”