The Delacourt Scandal (6 page)

“You’re way too young to sound so cynical.”

“Twenty-six is not that young. I’ve lost both parents, and to all intents and purposes I’ve lost my brothers. That’s enough to change your perspective on the world.
You
wouldn’t know, though. You’ve apparently never lost anything or anyone important.”

No sooner were the words out of her mouth than she realized her mistake. Even as Tyler’s eyes became turbulent, his expression turned bleak. Before she could apologize for making such an assumption about his life, he whirled around and headed outside. The groceries lay forgotten on the countertop.

Maddie started to rush after him, then hesitated. Obviously she’d said something terribly wrong. She needed to give him a minute alone before she went after him and badgered him with questions he probably wouldn’t want to answer.

She took her time and put the food away, then popped the tops on a couple of beers before venturing onto the deck.

Tyler was standing at the railing, staring out at the sparkling water. Something told her he wasn’t just appreciating the scenery. In fact, his expression was filled with such sorrow it almost broke her heart.
What memories had she unwittingly unleashed with her careless remark?

Without saying a word, she went to stand next to him and held out the cold drink. He accepted it without comment, without so much as a glance in her direction.

“I’m sorry,” she said finally.

The apology was greeted by more silence.

“Tyler, I truly am sorry. I had no right to say such a thing.”

“No,” he said coldly. “You didn’t. You know nothing about me, nothing at all about what I have or haven’t lost.”

“Then tell me,” she pleaded. For once, the request had nothing to do with the story she was trying to piece together and everything to do with understanding this man who was turning out to be far more complex than she’d been led to believe by the media reports.

He shook his head. “No. It’s not something I discuss. Not ever.”

“Keeping that kind of pain bottled up inside can’t be good for you,” she said softly.

“Drop it, Maddie. I want to forget, not dissect it to death.” He turned to her then, reaching for her as he did. “There’s only one way I know to do that.”

Before she could anticipate his intentions, his mouth covered hers in a hard, punishing kiss that had her senses ricocheting wildly and had her clinging to him. There was nothing gentle or tender, just fierce, primal need. She was gasping for breath by the time he pushed her away, his expression miserable.

“Now I’m the one who’s sorry,” he said, his gaze avoiding hers. “I had no right to do that.”

“It’s okay,” she stammered, touching a finger to her still-tender lips. She had deserved some sort of retribution for her insensitivity, though a punishing kiss hadn’t been what she expected. Worse, she had liked it. She had wanted more. No man had ever demanded so much of her with a mere kiss. The wild racing of her pulse was frightening yet exhilarating.

The fear, of course, stemmed from Tyler’s identity, nothing more. On some level she had known he would never hurt her, never go beyond that dark and dangerous kiss unless she invited him to. The problem was, she couldn’t feel this much with him, couldn’t want so much, not from a Delacourt.

“Maybe we should go, though,” she whispered, and this time her voice was unsteady.

Tyler dragged a hand across his face and muttered a soft curse under his breath. Then his gaze locked with hers.

“Maddie, I truly am sorry. What I did was unforgivable. If you want to go back, we will, but I promised you a seafood feast, and I’d very much like it if you’d stay and let me fix it for you.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure. In fact, I’m starving.”

She offered him a tentative smile. “To tell you the truth, Tyler, so am I.” She took a deep breath and came to a decision. “What can I do to help?”

“Stay out from underfoot,” he suggested. “Great chefs need space. We can’t have a beautiful woman diverting us from the task at hand.”

Even though she knew she shouldn’t be, she was
pleased that he considered her a beautiful distraction. “Then by all means, let me make myself scarce. I want you to be entirely focused, if that means we’ll get to eat sooner.” She gestured toward the chaise. “I’ll be right over there, tucked safely out of your way. Just don’t forget all about me and eat everything yourself.”

“Don’t worry, Maddie. You’re not exactly forgettable.”

His words lingered after he’d gone inside. Despite all the warnings, the alarms, the stern lectures, she couldn’t help replaying them, a smile on her lips.

She moaned softly.
You are in such big trouble, Madison Kent.

When the blackened snapper was ready and the corn was dripping with melted butter, Tyler went outside to call Maddie. She was curled up where he’d left her, sound asleep. For a moment he stood where he was, studying her.

Though she’d admitted to being twenty-six, he couldn’t help thinking that she looked like little more than a girl with her tousled hair and a face devoid of makeup, except for a hint of pink on her lips.

She might look like a sweet innocent, but she kissed like a woman, with all the passion and intensity and hunger that could make a man forget all of his own rules. Though he’d set out to take greedily when he’d kissed her earlier, she had given all he asked and more. The responsiveness had shaken him more than a little. He could have taken her then and there, but it would have been a terrible mistake for both of them.
He couldn’t give her what she needed, couldn’t be as open and honest as she deserved.

Even so, he’d started to feel things he hadn’t felt in a very long time, things that went beyond sex and into the depths of emotions he’d vowed never to risk again. It was good that he was leaving soon for Baton Rouge.

Maddie stirred, drawing his attention back to bare legs and tempting curves.

“Bad idea,” he muttered, tearing his gaze away. He took a few steps back, then said loudly, “Maddie, dinner’s ready.”

She came awake at once, bright-eyed and smiling. “Did you say something about dinner?”

He grinned at her eagerness. “It’s on the table.”

She bounded up and headed inside without sparing him a backward glance.

“I guess I know what your priorities are,” he called after her.

She waited for him, grinning impudently. “It’s important to set goals and stay focused.”

“Is food your only goal?” he taunted.

For an instant a shadow seemed to pass over her face, but then the smile was back. “Hardly. Just the most immediate one.” She looked over the table. “Oh, my, this looks heavenly. How did you learn to cook?”

“Self-taught. The rule in our house when it came to fish was that whoever caught them had to clean and cook them. I didn’t mind the catching or the cooking, but I hated the cleaning. Now I buy mine at the fish market, ready for the skillet.”

“Isn’t that cheating yourself of some male ritual or something?”

“I prefer to think of it as time saving.”

“What about the corn?”

“No mystique to that. It doesn’t take a lot to soak it and cook it on the grill. The grill is man’s best friend, next to his dog, of course.”

“Do you have a dog?”

“No, which is why I’m so fond of my grill.”

The conversation stayed light and general during dinner and cleanup. When the last dish was back in the cabinet, she turned to him.

“Hey, I thought you promised me dessert.”

“I did.”

“Something perfect for a hot, sultry night, as I recall,” she said, her expression bright with anticipation.

Tyler reached into the freezer and retrieved two Popsicles. “Lime or grape?”

“Shouldn’t a gourmet meal end with sorbet at the very least?” she said, seizing the grape Popsicle, anyway.

“Same thing in more convenient form,” he retorted, then watched as her mouth surrounded the icy treat. His body promptly hardened in response to the slow, provocative swirl of her tongue across the tip. What the hell had he been thinking? This was sheer torture. His own Popsicle melted in his hand. Only when he felt lime turning his hand sticky did he snap back to the present, abandoning the wicked direction of his thoughts.

“Something wrong?” Maddie inquired, eyes full of mischief.

“Damn thing melted on me,” he retorted, heading for the sink to wash his hand.

Maybe while he was there he ought to take a little soap to his thoughts as well. Maddie Kent was getting under his skin in ways he hadn’t anticipated.

M
addie was playing with fire and she knew it. Even now, two days later, her face flamed when she thought of the way she’d taunted Tyler with that provocative little game with the grape Popsicle. What had she been thinking? Hadn’t she warned herself only an hour or so before, that she was taking a huge risk with this man who was so critical to her investigation of his father?

Because she recognized the dangers, she had vowed on the ride back to Houston to limit her contact with Tyler to very public places and very innocuous situations. No more flirting with disaster.

No more flirting, period.

Fortunately he had mentioned that he’d be heading back to Louisiana in a few days. If she could stay out of his path, it would be for the best. She would find some other way to get the information she needed.

She had actually stuck to her guns for two whole days now. She’d spent them at the library, culling clip after clip about Bryce Delacourt from old newspapers. To her increasing annoyance, all of the stories were glowing testaments to his generosity and business acumen. If there were bodies buried in his past, the media offered no hints of it.

She made a list of every merger and acquisition mentioned, then resolved to contact the owners of the businesses to see if any of the deals had been shady or hostile. Perhaps the previous owners had been persuaded by Delacourt’s wealth and power—or even threats—to remain silent at the time of the takeover. Perhaps the intervening months or years would have loosened their tongues.

Eventually she worked her way back to the year her father had committed suicide. As she scanned the issue in which his death was reported, her gaze was inevitably drawn time and again to the small headline buried among the other death notices, an insignificant mention of something that had been of life-altering importance to four people, and especially to one fifteen-year-old girl.

“Frank Kent died suddenly at his home…”

Tears stung Maddie’s eyes as she read it again and again. She had forgotten the way it had been phrased. There had been no mention of suicide, no hint of the years of depression and anguish that had preceded it.

On the very same day in another part of the paper, there was a banner headline extolling Bryce Delacourt’s donation to a local children’s charity. The inequity of the coverage brought more tears welling up
and stiffened her resolve. Maybe she could handle one more meeting with Tyler, after all.

It was late afternoon by the time Maddie finally left the library. For the first time in days she deliberately headed for O’Reilly’s, convinced she had managed to harden her heart toward any Delacourt. She sat at the bar and ordered a ginger ale, then scanned the happy-hour crowd.

“Looking for someone?”

The seductively uttered words made her shiver. She glanced up into familiar, twinkling blue eyes. Her resolve took a hard hit to the solar plexus, but she managed a bright smile even as she reminded herself that this was exactly what she’d hoped for, another supposedly chance encounter.

“Fancy meeting you here,” she said.

“Are you sure you didn’t plan it?” Tyler teased.

Of course she had, but she wasn’t about to admit it. “You’re not the only man in here.”

“Just the only one you’ve ever spoken to,” he reminded her, sliding onto the stool next to hers and ordering a beer. “Where have you been?”

“Why? Did you miss me?” The flirtatious remark slipped out before she could control it.

“Desperately,” he said lightly. “So what’s the deal? Have you started a new job?”

Actually she’d been concentrating on the old one, but she could hardly share that little tidbit with him. “No. I’ve just been busy.”

“Doing?”

“This and that.”

“Are you being deliberately mysterious, Maddie Kent?”

“It’s a woman’s best weapon,” she informed him.

“I didn’t know we were at war.”

“We’re not. I was speaking generally.” She grinned at him and ignored the alarm bells blaring in her head. Unfortunately, she was getting used to the sound. It didn’t have the power to shake a little sense and restraint into her as it once had.

“So, did you really miss me?” she asked again. “Tell the truth.”

He matched her grin. “Nope. Too busy.”

She tried not to feel deflated. “Doing what?”

“This and that.”

She laughed. “Okay, touché.”

“Have dinner with me. We can catch up.”

“You make it sound as if we’re long-lost friends who have years of separate lives to share.”

“Sometimes even a couple of days can seem like a lifetime,” he said, his tone serious while his eyes sparkled with amusement. “Besides, we just met. We have been apart for years. There’s a lot to catch up on.”

“You are an outrageous flirt, Tyler Delacourt. Any woman who takes you seriously needs to have her head examined.”

“Then don’t take me seriously,” he advised. “Just dinner, a little conversation. Nothing dangerous in that, is there?”

If only he knew, she thought, even as she nodded an acceptance.

“Not here,” he said, tossing some bills on the bar to pay for their drinks. “It’s too noisy. There’s a little
Italian place around the corner that makes a lasagna that will bring tears to your eyes.”

She laughed at that. “I almost never cry over my food. It ruins the flavor.”

“Nothing could ruin this. Anna Maria deserves to be canonized for her lasagna.”

As it turned out, he wasn’t exaggerating. The huge square of lasagna was by far the best pasta Maddie had ever put in her mouth. She didn’t have room for even half of it. Not that it went to waste—Tyler happily nabbed the remainder.

“Do you have a bottomless pit for a stomach or something?” she asked, moaning. Her own stomach felt stuffed.

“I’m not the one who filled up on garlic bread before the meal came,” he retorted.

“It was too good to pass up.” She’d also had some crazy idea that the garlic might ward off any amorous advances, something similar to its effect on vampires, perhaps.

She propped her chin on her hand and met his gaze. “How come you haven’t gone back to work? Didn’t you tell me you were planning to head back to Baton Rouge anyday?”

“I was, but something came up at the office, and Dad coaxed me into pitching in here until my brother Michael gets back from his honeymoon.”

“When will that be?”

“It seems to change from day to day. I spoke to my brother just yesterday. He’d talked to Dad, who’d told him that I had everything under control. Michael was considering extending their trip for another week or ten days. Dad had already assured him that their
kids are having a blast staying on the ranch with Trish.”

“My, my, he is good, isn’t he?”

“Who?”

“Your father. Sounds like he found a very clever tactic to get you to stick around indefinitely. Stir up a little crisis here, a little emergency there. Keep your brother conveniently out of town. Are you so sure you won that particular battle, after all?”

He appeared to take the suggestion in stride. “Dad’s certainly devious enough to try something like that, but this was a real crisis. Believe me, I checked it out thoroughly just to be sure. As for Michael, he said he’d be on the next plane home if I gave him the word.”

“Why didn’t you, then?”

“How could I do it? Michael works too hard. We’ve badgered him for years about not taking any vacation time. In fact, we’ve pulled some very sneaky tricks to get him to take a little time off. So I’m willing to pitch in for a week or two if it gives him a much-deserved break. Who knows when he’ll get around to taking another one, though Grace seems to be a good influence on him. She’s fiercely determined to put some balance into his life.”

Maddie looked at him in silence.

He shrugged. “Bottom line? I’m stuck here for a few days, and for once it wasn’t something my father did deliberately to sabotage my plans to leave.”

Maddie was surprised that he took her comment so seriously. “I was actually kidding. But you really don’t trust your own father, do you?”

“No farther than I could throw him,” he admitted candidly.

“Why not?” she asked, trying not to sound too eager. She could get a lot of mileage out of a rift in the family.

“Because when it comes to getting his way, he is a very sneaky man, especially where family’s concerned. His heart’s always in the right place, but you wouldn’t believe some of the stunts he’s pulled.”

“Tell me.”

Tyler shook his head. “Family secrets. You’ll have to ask Jeb and Trish and the others when you meet them. They love telling tales on Dad.”

The thought of meeting other members of the Delacourt family filled her with more trepidation than she’d expected. If the rest of them were as kind and decent as Tyler, how would she ever bring herself to write a story that might wreck their lives?

“I doubt we’ll meet,” she said eventually.

Tyler’s gaze locked on hers. He looked as if he were waging some sort of an internal struggle. Finally he said in a tone she couldn’t quite interpret, “Oh, something tells me you will, Maddie Kent.”

Tyler finally came to accept that Maddie was going to pop up whenever and wherever he least expected her. In fact, he was beginning to enjoy her unexpected appearances.

There was something about her that got to him. The woman had a million and one questions, but she listened attentively to each response in a way that was extremely flattering. No one except Jen had ever listened quite so closely to anything Tyler had to say.

Heaven knew his father didn’t pay any attention. Even after they’d reached their agreement about Tyler’s return to Baton Rouge, his father was still taking every opportunity to keep him in town. Maddie had been right about that. The crises did exist, but even with Michael away, his father could have handled most of them on his own. Tyler had given in and stayed, at least in part because doing so gave him a little more time to get to know the mysterious Maddie.

There was no doubt the woman fascinated him as no one had since Jen. Despite her resilient, ever-cheerful, ever-perky demeanor, there was an unmistakable sorrow lurking in the depths of her eyes. That hint of vulnerability brought out all of his protective instincts.

Then, too, there was the disturbing memory of that bone-melting kiss on the deck at the beach. Even though he was ashamed of the way he’d taken advantage of her, he couldn’t seem to forget how her mouth had felt under his, how her body had responded. He spent a lot of time fantasizing about how that night could have ended. One day, when the time was right, he expected to turn that fantasy into reality. Then he would discover once and for all if that moment had been a fluke.

The phone on his desk rang, shattering the tantalizing illusion. Just as well, he thought as he reached for the receiver.

“Yes?”

“Tyler, is that any way to answer the phone? I’m sure I taught you better manners.”

He grinned at the scolding. “Hello, Mother. How are you?”

“I’d be considerably better if you would come to see me. You’ve been in town for weeks, and other than our anniversary party I’ve hardly seen you. Your father assured me you were going to stop by.”

“I intended to, but you know how it is.”

“I know exactly how it is. You’re just like your brothers and your sister. You never come home unless I badger you into it, which is precisely why I’m calling.”

“To badger me?”

“Yes. I want you here for Sunday dinner. Louise Talbert’s daughter, Mary Claire, is home for a visit. I’m going to invite her as well.”

Tyler had a vivid memory of a child with thick glasses, limp brown braids, buckteeth and a disconcerting tendency to bite when she didn’t get her way. “How old is she now?” he asked suspiciously.

“Twenty-two. She’s in graduate school in finance. A brilliant woman. Your father and I are quite fond of her. I think the two of you would make a perfect match.”

Tyler shuddered. A woman with a calculator for a brain? No way. “Not in this lifetime,” he muttered.

“What was that?”

“I said that I’d rather pick out my own women, Mother.”

“I haven’t seen any evidence that you’re doing that. Besides, if you met a nice woman here in Houston, you might be happier staying here.”

He thought of Maddie. “Actually, I have met a nice woman here. I’ll bring her to Sunday dinner.”

“But what about Mary Claire?”

“That’s up to you, but I’m bringing my own date.”

His mother sighed heavily. “You were always a difficult child.”

“Then I’m acting right in character, aren’t I? I’ll see you on Sunday,” he promised, then added hopefully, “Unless you’d prefer I not come, after all.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Be here at noon. We’ll eat at one.”

“As always,” he murmured.

“I heard that. Routine is important, you know. Not that it was easy to manage, given your father’s work habits, but I prided myself on trying to adhere to one for the sake of you children. Perhaps you should consider developing a routine.”

“I have one that suits me just fine,” he responded.

“Whatever. I just hope you’ll find a way to include your family in it a little more frequently. I don’t like you being so far away, and I truly don’t approve of you doing such dangerous work. It’s bad enough…” Her voice trailed off.

“What, Mother?”

“Nothing. I’ll see you on Sunday,” she said, and hung up abruptly.

Only after he was off the phone did Tyler realize that he’d promised to produce a date for Sunday and he had no earthly idea where to track Maddie down. If he showed up without her, he would never hear the end of it.

That was all the excuse he needed to flee the stifling atmosphere of the office and head for some of the places where he had run into Maddie. It was too late for lunch and not quite early enough for
O’Reilly’s, but that didn’t stop him from checking out both the sidewalk café and the bar.

Once he was at O’Reilly’s, he decided to stick around and hope Maddie would put in an appearance. He also vowed to find out how he could get in touch with her so he wouldn’t have to go through this again. While chance encounters appealed to his take-what-comes nature, they were a damned nuisance at a time like this.