"I'm sorry, Daddy," Lily whispered into the darkness of the cabin. "I didn't mean to make Grandma mad. I just wanted her to like my present."
Jack’s heart fractured all over again. He pulled the SUV over to the shoulder of the empty parkway, putting the hazard lights on. He unbuckled his seatbelt, climbed into the back, and pulled his daughter into a fierce, enveloping hug.
"Listen to me, Lily-bug," Jack said, his voice thick with emotion, looking directly into her wide, tearful blue eyes. "You did nothing wrong. That heart is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. Your grandmother is a sick, unhappy woman who lives in a house full of expensive things because she doesn't have a single person who genuinely loves her. We don't ever need her approval. Do you understand me? You and me—we're a team."
Lily nodded slowly, wiping a tear from her cheek with the back of her hand. "A team."
"Always," Jack promised, kissing the top of her head. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the two broken pieces of the clay heart. "And as soon as we get home, we are going to glue this back together, put a shiny coat of varnish on it, and it's going right on my office desk where everybody can see it."
What Eleanor Van Der Bilt, Vanessa, and the rest of high society did not understand—and what Jack had spent the last five years meticulously concealing—was that Jack Vance was not a poor mechanic struggling to make ends meet.
When Jack had married Vanessa six years ago, he was a newly retired Special Forces logistics operator trying to adjust to civilian life. Eleanor had treated him like dirt, convinced he was a gold-digger after the Van Der Bilt trust fund. When the marriage collapsed under the weight of Eleanor’s constant manipulation and Vanessa's spineless cowardice, Jack had walked away with nothing but 50% custody of Lily. He hadn't asked for a single dime of Van Der Bilt money.