The Delacourt Scandal (4 page)

“I was fifteen when my dad died,” she said.

Tyler saw the pain behind her stoic expression, heard the sorrow in her voice. As irritating as he often found his father, he couldn’t imagine losing him. Last year’s heart attack, though mild, had scared all of them, reminding them that even the larger-than-life Bryce Delacourt was merely mortal.

“That must have been hard,” he said sympathetically.

“It was.”

Since she didn’t seem inclined to say more, he asked, “And your mom?”

“My mother died just last year, but she was never really the same after my dad died.”

Since both of them seemed to have valid reasons for not wanting to delve any more deeply into family history, Tyler changed the subject. “What do you do for a living, Maddie Kent?”

“I’m…” She turned away, then finally met his gaze. “I’m between jobs right now.”

Tyler couldn’t tell whether pride had put that embarrassed flush in her cheeks or whether it was because she was lying. He had spent enough time around women to sense when one wasn’t being completely honest with him. And something was telling him now that Maddie Kent had been skirting the truth from the moment he’d met her.

“Is that why you came to Houston, to find work?”

She nodded. “I thought it might be easier in a big city, that there would be a lot of opportunities.”

“The classifieds are definitely full of jobs. No nibbles yet?”

“Not yet, but I’m still hopeful,” she said cheerfully.

“What kind of work are you looking for? I could check at Delacourt Oil. Maybe there’s an opening there that would suit you.”

An odd expression crossed her face, but Tyler couldn’t quite interpret it.

“I’m pretty flexible, actually, but I don’t want you to go to any trouble. I’m sure I’ll find something anyday now.” There was a touch of stubborn, if admirable, pride in the lift of her chin.

“There’s nothing wrong with getting a little help, Maddie. A lot of people find their jobs through networking. It’s the way the corporate world works. Why do you think so many women fought to get into clubs that were open only to men? They knew that’s where the men were finding out about job openings.”

“Is that how you found your job?”

Tyler laughed for the first time in days. “No, I’m afraid I got mine through nepotism, pure and simple. The truth is I’d have a hard time
not
working at Delacourt Oil.”

“Then you work for your father?”

He met her bright gaze, tried to discern if there was something more than curiosity behind her questions. “Yes, unfortunately.”

“On one of the company’s rigs?”

“For the moment,” he said tersely. “Could we talk about something else? The weather, maybe?”

“Your job’s a sore point?”

“Oh, yeah,” he said fervently.

“How come?”

“If you knew my father, you’d understand.”

“Since I don’t, why don’t you explain it to me? I’m a good listener.”

He was surprisingly tempted to do just that, to share all of the hopes and frustrations he’d been keeping bottled up inside since Jen’s death. The mental comparison with Jen was enough to bring him up short.

“So you’ve said, but I’ve taken up enough of your time, Maddie.” He stood up abruptly and looked pointedly toward the door.

Maddie didn’t budge at first, but then her eyes widened. “Oh,” she said softly. “You want me to go. I suppose I did burst in uninvited and disrupt your plans for the evening. I’m sorry.”

Oddly enough, he realized that he didn’t want her to leave, not really. And that made him more determined than ever to get her out the door. She asked too many questions. Sooner or later she would work the conversation back to that baby picture. Or to his father. Or to his job. None were topics he cared to explore just now.

Sooner or later he would have to kiss her just to shut her up. Just thinking about it made him feel disloyal to Jen’s memory.

That was another thing that was worrisome about Ms. Maddie Kent. No other woman had been able to make him forget about Jen, not even for a second, but
for a little while tonight he’d been aware only of the woman who’d bullied her way into his apartment simply because she was concerned about him. Somehow she had managed to banish some of his suspicions about her in the process. He’d been counting on that wariness to keep him from getting in too deep.

“Yeah,” he said gruffly. “No offense, but I want you to go. It’s getting late. Do you need a ride home? I can call a cab for you.”

She shook her head. “My car’s over by O’Reilly’s. I can walk.”

Tyler bit back an oath of pure frustration. “Not alone, not at this hour,” he said. “I’ll walk with you.”

Her chin rose stubbornly. “It’s a few blocks. I’ll be perfectly safe.”

“With me along, you will be,” he agreed. “Got everything?”

She patted her purse. “Right here.”

“Then let’s go.”

Outside, there was something about the heavy night air closing in around them that made Tyler feel as if they were still all alone. It was the kind of atmosphere that invited confidences. But instead, they walked in surprisingly companionable silence for a bit. Tyler hadn’t realized Maddie could be so quiet for so long. Thrown off guard by it, he felt a sudden need to figure out what made this woman tick, to unravel the contradictions he’d sensed in her.

“Maddie, what really brought you to my place tonight?”

She regarded him with surprise. “I told you, I was concerned when you didn’t show up at O’Reilly’s.”

“You have to admit it’s unusual to take such an interest in a virtual stranger.”

Her gaze met his. “Not for me.”

“Then you make a habit of riding to the rescue of people you barely know?” The thought bothered him for some reason he couldn’t quite explain. On some purely masculine level, he wanted to be different, which was absurd when not five minutes ago he’d feared getting any more deeply involved with her.

“Only the ones with potential,” she teased lightly.

“Potential?”

“Of becoming friends.”

Friends.
The word echoed in his head, annoying him irrationally. Had he been misreading the signals that badly?

“Can you believe how hot and muggy it is?” she said, stealing the chance for him to question the limitation she seemed to be placing on their relationship. “It feels like rain. Maybe that will cool things off.”

Because she seemed so determined to move to an impersonal, innocuous topic, Tyler deliberately gave the conversation a provocative turn.

“Some people think there’s something sexy about a sultry night like this.” His gaze locked with hers. “The weather gets you all hot and bothered. You start stripping off clothes till you’re down to almost nothing.”

Maddie swallowed hard, but she didn’t look away. “Sounds…” Her voice trailed off.

“Tempting?” he inquired, amused by her sudden breathlessness, relieved that he hadn’t lost his touch, after all.

She blinked away the hint of yearning in her eyes,
seemed to struggle to regain her composure. “Disgustingly sweaty,” she said tartly. She turned away, then stopped, looking relieved. “Here’s my car.”

“Well, good night, then. Drive carefully.”

“I always do.”

For some reason he didn’t entirely understand, he impulsively captured her chin in his hand and brushed a light kiss across her lush mouth. Maybe it was just so he could catch one more glimpse of that startled flaring of heat in her eyes. He was amply rewarded for his efforts. She stared at him in openmouthed astonishment, but unfortunately that quick taste and her surprise didn’t seem to be quite enough to satisfy him. Besides, her lips were soft as silk and sweet as sugar. What man could resist?

But even as he lowered his head to claim another kiss, she ducked away and slid into her car. The rejection might have stung if he hadn’t noted the way her hands trembled ever so slightly before she clutched the steering wheel tightly.

“Good night,” he said again, but the words were lost as she started the engine.

He watched her drive away. Then, instead of turning toward home, he headed for O’Reilly’s, his throat suddenly parched. Rather than simplifying his life as he’d planned to tonight, he had a feeling he’d just made it a whole lot more complicated.

T
his was going to be much more difficult than she’d anticipated, Maddie concluded as she drove slowly away, trying to calm her jittery nerves after that unexpected kiss. She should have seen it coming, should have steeled herself against it. After all, wasn’t Tyler’s easygoing flirtatiousness one of the very reasons she’d chosen him as the best Delacourt to approach?

However, her instantaneous reaction was a warning. She had to get a grip, find some way to avoid being alone with him on hot, sultry nights that held the promise of romance in the air. Otherwise this investigation of hers was going to get very dicey.

And, unfortunately, that wasn’t the only potential problem she’d discovered tonight. She’d also realized that the man didn’t trust her. Apparently she wasn’t nearly as good at deception as she’d hoped to be.
He’d watched her suspiciously from the instant she’d arrived on his doorstep, then deftly skirted many of her questions. Obviously, she was going to have to work harder to gain his trust.

Of course, the worst glitch of all, the most unexpected was the fact that she instinctively liked him. Hormones were one thing, but actually relating to the man was something else entirely—and in some ways even more seductive and dangerous. Tyler was a funny, low-key kind of guy, surprisingly unpretentious for a man with the Delacourt wealth and standing in the community. Under other circumstances…

She caught herself before that particular thought could take shape. The circumstances were what they were. She couldn’t let herself like Tyler, or any other Delacourt. If that meant reminding herself that they were the enemy a hundred times a day, then that was exactly what she had to do. She was up to her fiftieth reminder so far tonight, and the message apparently wasn’t getting through.

Unfortunately, she was as certain as ever that Tyler was the key to getting what she needed. All of her preliminary research indicated that his brothers and his sister were leading exemplary lives. And since Tyler was the only remaining bachelor, he was the only one who was readily accessible to her. It had been easy enough to discover his usual routine, the places he tended to haunt. O’Reilly’s was one, but there were more locations where she was certain she could bump into him “accidentally” to keep the contact alive.

After all, if there were skeletons in anyone’s closet, Tyler would know. Whether she could get him to re
veal the information was something else entirely. Although he’d given a cursory sketch of the various family members willingly enough, he had definitely balked whenever she’d pressed for details. Was that natural reticence, protectiveness of their privacy…or something more? Were there secrets he was trying to guard?

During her first couple of years in journalism, Maddie had gotten used to being in an adversarial position with some of the people she interviewed. She was putting them on the spot, asking them about things they might not want their neighbors to read about over their morning coffee. She’d developed a technique for disarming them, straightforward honesty tinged with sympathy. She told them up-front that, like it or not, the story was going to appear in the paper, but she was giving them a chance to shape it in their favor by telling their side. It almost always worked.

She could hardly do that with Tyler. Unlike the everyday assignments she’d had for her first small daily newspaper, she had to work undercover on this one, get as much information as she could before approaching Bryce Delacourt armed with the facts that would bring him down or, at the very least, publicly humiliate him.

But as she’d learned tonight, the deception was definitely going to be trickier than she’d anticipated. It went against her natural penchant for the truth, which was what had brought her into journalism in the first place. But in this case she was convinced that the end justified the means. She tried not to dwell on the fact
that the saying originated with Machiavelli, the princely advisor renowned for his duplicity.

Remember the goal,
she reminded herself sternly. Retribution, revenge…whatever it was called, it was going to make a few uncomfortable weeks of staying in Tyler Delacourt’s face—a few weeks of lying to him—worthwhile.

When she reached the small but well-furnished apartment that Griffin Carpenter had arranged for her, she opened her purse and took out the tiny, voice-activated recorder. Flipping on the tape, she listened again to Tyler’s description of his family. Despite herself, she was filled with an inexplicable envy. He had grown up surrounded by the kind of love, the kind of security, she and her brothers
should
have had, the kind Bryce Delacourt’s arrogant, hard-hearted actions had cost them.

An image of the Delacourt family portrait, taken last Christmas, flashed in her head. She had been struck by how happy they’d looked. She’d almost been able to hear the sounds of teasing and laughter as the camera recorded the moment. And in the center of the group sat Bryce Delacourt, the subject of their devotion, the man they all looked up to.

What a contrast to her own holiday season last year. Her mother’s funeral had been held the day after Thanksgiving. Maddie hadn’t even been able to locate her brothers to notify them. She had stood all alone beside the grave, mourning the woman she had really lost years before.

That was the moment she had formulated her precise plans for bringing down the Delacourts. The rest of the holidays had passed in a blur. She had spent
the intervening months looking at back issues of newspapers around the state trying to determine which one might be open to such an exposé.
Hard Truths,
as distasteful as she found its tactics and reporting to be, had clearly been her best shot.

Remember the goal,
she had reminded herself a dozen times as she had placed that first, fateful call to Griffin Carpenter to arrange an interview. It appeared she was going to have to repeat that refrain a lot before all was said and done.

When her tape of the conversation with Tyler ended, she began making notes of everything else she could recall about the evening, from the decor of his apartment to his sexily rumpled appearance. She tried not to linger too much over the latter because it kept bringing her back to the kiss, and that was definitely not a memory she wanted to encourage.

“Think, Maddie,” she ordered herself sternly. “Did he say anything, anything at all that could be a lead?”

It was less what he’d said than what he
hadn’t
said, she finally concluded, thinking of his curt responses to many of her questions. Then there was the fact that he’d clammed up about that baby picture. That was promising.

Who was it? she wondered. Not a niece or nephew. He’d said that much. Then why not just say it was a cousin or a friend’s child or any of the other myriad innocent explanations he could have given? Why had he looked as if he’d wanted to snatch it out of her hands?

Could the child be his? He’d never been married, according to her research, but that didn’t mean he
hadn’t fathered a child. An illegitimate Delacourt baby wasn’t the scandal she’d been hoping for, but it would make for some great headlines just the same.

Even as the thought occurred to her, she winced. It wasn’t Tyler Delacourt she wanted to bring down or embarrass. It was his father. The baby picture might be a lead, but if it turned out to be linked to Tyler, would she use it just because he and Bryce shared the same last name? She honestly didn’t know.

And for one tiny moment she wasn’t sure she liked what that said about her or this path she was heading down.

After nursing a single beer for an hour at O’Reilly’s and giving the bar owner a good deal of grief about sending Maddie on her supposed mission of mercy, Tyler eventually went home. To his surprise, the apartment felt a whole lot emptier. Had that brief visit by Maddie counteracted years of solitude here, made him yearn for the female companionship he’d lost after Jen’s death? This apartment had always been a bachelor pad, a retreat. Even before he’d met Jen, he’d rarely brought a woman here, preferring to visit his dates at their homes. This place had been his sanctuary.

So why, suddenly, was he so restless in his own world? Was it because of the woman whose lips had been warm and yielding under his? Or was it simply because of the decision he’d been alternately wrestling with and avoiding for the past few days?

He was still holding the same internal debate in the morning. Because he’d tired of it, he grabbed up the
newspaper and headed down the block to a restaurant that specialized in strong coffee and greasy food. Today he needed eggs, bacon and hash browns, not gourmet bran muffins or whole-wheat pancakes. Maybe once he was fortified with a hearty breakfast, he’d be able to handle a meeting with his father. Maybe he’d even produce a compromise they could both live with.

At nine o’clock the place was still bustling with its own form of blue-collar power breakfast. The waitresses were sassy, the service quick. Tyler had a steaming plate of food in front of him before he could scan the front-page headlines. He had company before he could taste the first forkful.

“Looks dangerous,” Maddie observed, staring at the eggs swimming in butter and the strips of crisp bacon.

Tyler thought
she
looked a whole lot more dangerous in her snug-fitting tank top and thigh-skimming skirt. Her hair looked as if she’d done little more than run her fingers through it. The effect was rumpled and sexy and had an effect on his pulse he didn’t like one bit.

“What brings you to a place like this if you don’t like the menu?” he asked.

“The coffee,” she said at once. “It’s lethal.”

He grinned at that. “It is indeed.” His gaze strayed over her formfitting outfit. “Going job hunting?”

She returned his gaze with an innocent expression. “You disapprove?”

“Darlin’, I could never disapprove of anything that shows your assets to such advantage, but it might just be a tad underdressed for the average office.”

“Maybe I’m not looking for an office job.”

“What, then? Or should I ask? Vice squad maybe?”

She frowned at him. “You do disapprove.”

Tyler wasn’t sure why he was making such an issue of it. What Maddie wore was none of his business. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that every man’s mouth had dropped open when she’d walked in. He’d instinctively wanted to wrap her in a blanket and bundle her off to some place out of view.

No, he corrected, what he’d really wanted to do was pummel those men until they thought twice about staring, then take her somewhere private and strip away the scanty attire she
was
wearing. Bad ideas, both of them.

“Just a little friendly job-hunting advice,” he said mildly. “First impressions count, and this isn’t freewheeling California or trendy New York. We’re in Texas, darlin’.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

To his surprise her eyes were bright with amusement as she sipped her coffee and watched him over the rim of the cup. He deliberately turned his attention to his food.

“So, what are your plans for the day?” she asked.

“As soon as I’ve eaten, I’m going to drop by the office.”

“Really?” She did her own slow survey of his jeans and dark-blue T-shirt. “A little underdressed for the executive suite, aren’t you?”

Tyler scowled. “Okay, touché. But unlike you, I already have a job, and I’m definitely well acquainted with the boss. I doubt he’ll fire me.”

Of course, as he’d told Daniel the day before, his father might very well grumble about his lack of attention to corporate image. Maybe that was why he’d deliberately chosen these particular clothes this morning, just to goad his father into remembering who he was: Tyler, not his clotheshorse brother Michael, who had standing appointments to have his suits custom tailored.

Maddie studied him, her expression thoughtful. “But you’d like him to, wouldn’t you?”

Tyler was startled by the observation. “Like him to do what? Fire me?”

“Yes.”

“Of course not.”

“Are you sure about that?” she probed. “You never really got into what it was that had you so down, but I’m guessing from a couple of offhand remarks you made that it has something to do with work. You apparently love working on the rig, yet you’re here. What’s that all about?”

“Command performance,” he said succinctly. “I’ll be back in the Gulf of Mexico in no time.”

“Really?”

One way or another, he would be, he decided right then. This constant push-pull for power between him and his father had to stop. Now was as good a time as any to make it happen.

“Really,” he said very firmly.

“Why do I have the feeling that you just came to a decision about something?” she asked.

“Because I did,” Tyler said, shoving his plate away and tossing down his napkin. He took one last
swallow of coffee, then stood. “Thanks, Maddie Kent. Order something. Breakfast’s on me.”

“Why?”

He grinned. “Just because.”

“You’re a very enigmatic man, Tyler Delacourt.”

“I certainly hope so.” In fact, he’d always been the most tight-lipped of the Delacourts, the one who displayed a lot of flash and dazzle for the world but kept his innermost thoughts to himself.

Why, then, had Maddie Kent—a woman who’d known him for only a few days—been able to read him like a book? He had a feeling he’d better figure that out soon, before she zeroed in on things he’d never shared with anyone.

In the meantime he had his father to deal with. He arrived at Delacourt Oil twenty minutes later and went straight to his father’s office.

“You sure you want to go in there?” his father’s secretary asked. “You’ve been avoiding his calls. He is not amused.”

“All the more reason to get this over with,” Tyler said. “You might want to go to the coffee shop in case there’s fallout from the explosion.”

She winked at him. “I can take it. I’ve known the man since before you were born. He doesn’t scare me.”

“Then you’re the only one.”

Tyler drew in a deep breath and opened the door. His father was on the phone. He scowled at the interruption, but when he spotted Tyler, he muttered a curt goodbye to whoever was on the other end of the line.