The Delacourt Scandal Read online

He sighed heavily. Why was it that the first woman to get to him since Jen had to be up to something? Why couldn’t she have been exactly what she appeared to be—friendly, sweet and innocent?

  Maybe she was. Maybe this was all some huge misunderstanding. Maybe she’d asked perfectly innocuous questions and the highly protective Daniel had overreacted. Which, of course, didn’t explain what the heck she was doing in Baton Rouge in the first place or why she had flat-out lied about her identity.

  Whatever the truth, Tyler was in a rotten mood by the time he finally stormed into the Delacourt Oil suite of offices long past closing hour.

  “Where is she?” he demanded, cutting off the receptionist in midgreeting. “And what are you doing here so late?”

  “Daniel asked me to stay. And your friend is in Daniel’s office.”

  “He’s with her?”

  She nodded. “You know Daniel. Where you’re concerned, he gets his back up if he thinks for a second that someone’s out to hurt you. He hasn’t let her out of his sight. Except when she went to the ladies’ room, of course. He sent me with her then. I imagine that was why he wanted me around, in case something of a delicate nature came up.”

  She regarded him worriedly. “Should I call the cops or something? I’d hate to do it, because I kind of liked her. I don’t know what she’s really after, of course, but she seems like a nice person.”

  “No need to call the cops just yet. Not until I’ve had time to strangle her,” he said, only partly in jest.

  He drew in a deep breath, then opened the door to Daniel’s office. His boss was sitting behind his desk, chair tilted back, feet propped up. The casualness of his pose was belied by the glint in his eyes. His gaze was pinned on the woman seated on the edge of a chair across from him. At the sound of the door, two pairs of eyes shot to Tyler. There was relief in Daniel’s, but Maddie’s filled with something he interpreted as resignation.

  “Thanks, Daniel. You can take off now. I’ll handle Ms. Kent.”

  His boss regarded him uneasily. “Maybe I should stick around until we know what she’s up to.”

  Tyler shook his head. “Not necessary.” He allowed himself a slight smile. “I assume you frisked her to see if she was armed.”

  Daniel stared. “Armed? Are you serious?”

  “No. It was a bad joke. I think Ms. Kent’s weapons are of the less deadly variety,” he said, his gaze locked with hers. She turned pale at the taunt.

  As Daniel left, Tyler pulled a chair away from the conference table at the far end of the room, turned it around and straddled it, facing Maddie. She jerked slightly when the door clicked closed behind Daniel. Under Tyler’s relentless scrutiny she swallowed hard, but she didn’t look away. He had to admire her for that. She was a gutsy little thing.

  “So, Maddie, what’s up?”

  “I can explain,” she began.

  “I certainly hope so, because from where I’m sitting this doesn’t look good. In fact, if I were a suspicious man, I would think you were up to no good.”

  Color flamed in her cheeks, but her gaze remained steady. “I like you, Tyler. I really do.”

  “You have a funny way of treating someone you supposedly like.”

  “I know it must seem that way, but I can tell that something’s happened to you in the past, something to make you extremely cautious when it comes to women. I thought if I could figure out what that was, I could help you get past it.”

  She spoke with utter sincerity, but he almost laughed at the pathetic explanation. “You’re a psychologist, then?”

  “No, but I—”

  He shook his head. “Try again.”

  “It’s the truth. I just wanted to know about your past.”

  “You could have asked me.”

  Her gaze clashed with his then. “Would you have told me? I don’t think so. Every time I came close to asking about something that hit on a raw nerve, you clammed up.”

  “That should have been enough to convince you to leave it alone, then.”

  “Maybe so, but I couldn’t.”

  “Why?”

  “I told you—because I like you.”

  Again he listened for a false note, but he didn’t hear it. At the same time he couldn’t bring himself to trust a word she was saying. There was more to this than she’d confessed. Women didn’t take off to dig around in a man’s past just because he wasn’t forthcoming about it. They nagged until they got at the truth or they gave up in frustration and moved on to someone easier to get along with.

  What if he simply told her? What would happen then? Would she be satisfied? Or would she use the information in some way that hadn’t occurred to him? And why did her dishonesty seem to matter to him so much? Why not write her off and move on to some less complicated relationship himself?

  One glance into her beautiful, vulnerable eyes gave him the answer to that. He wanted her. Maybe even needed her, if he was ever going to get Jen out of his head.

  Reaching an impulsive decision, he stood up abruptly. “Let’s go.”

  She didn’t budge. “Go where?”

  “You want answers. I’m going to give them to you, but we’re doing it my way. I just hope to hell we can both live with the truth once it’s out in the open.”

  Maddie reluctantly followed Tyler out into the oppressive night air. Rather than feeling exhilarated that she was about to learn whatever secrets had been tormenting him, all she could think about was the bleak expression on his face when he’d promised to tell her everything.

  How could she do this to him? What kind of person was she turning into? Was her revenge worth the kind of pain she was inflicting on a man who had been nothing but kind to her?

  He needs to get it out, she told herself staunchly. It would be good for him to talk about it—whatever “it” was. Just because she was the sounding board didn’t mean she had to use whatever he told her to hurt him. That decision was down the road. Maybe it was one she would never have to make. It was Bryce Delacourt’s secrets she was really after, not Tyler’s, which made her presence in Baton Rouge all the more difficult to explain. Maybe she had been driven to come here precisely for the reason she had given him, because she’d grown to care for him and wanted to understand him in a way that his having a secret hadn’t allowed. It was a troubling possibility.

  Tyler ushered her into his car, then headed through downtown to a neighborhood of small, cookie-cutter houses. When he pulled into a driveway, she stared around at the unkempt yard, the bedraggled garden that had suffered from neglect. For once in her life she had no idea what to say, what question to ask. She simply stared at him and waited for an explanation.

  He hadn’t moved since he cut the engine. His hands rested on the steering wheel—clutched it, really—and sweat broke out on his brow.

  Maddie regarded him miserably as the depth of his anguish finally sank in. Stirring up things to get Bryce Delacourt had been one thing when it had been nothing more than an abstract concept of getting even. Now, face-to-face with his son’s heartache, she was awash with regrets. She knew this kind of pain. She had lived it. Right now she was no longer a journalist after a story. She was a woman, aching for a man whose pain she had caused.

  She reached over and touched his arm. “Tyler, we can forget this. I’m sorry. I had no right.”

  He shook his head. “No, we’re here now.” He shuddered. “It’s the first time I’ve been back.”

  “You lived here?”

  “For a time.”

  “Alone?”

  “No.” His voice was barely more than a shattered whisper. “This was her house, Jen’s.”

  Maddie felt something cold settle into the region of her heart. “Was she your wife?”

  “No, though not for lack of asking on my part. She was everything else, though—lover, friend…” He drew in a deep breath. “The mother of my little girl.”

  “The baby in the picture,” Maddie said with sudden, horrified certainty. “Oh, Tyler, what happened?�
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  For a minute, then two, he didn’t say a word. He just sat there staring ahead, dazed, lost in the past.

  “Tyler,” she prodded gently.

  “They were killed in an accident,” he began slowly. “I’d finally convinced Jen to come to Houston to meet my family, but they never got there.”

  “Oh, Tyler,” she whispered, her eyes stinging with unshed tears. “I’m so sorry.”

  “If only I hadn’t insisted,” he said in a voice laced with guilt and sorrow. “I should never have forced the issue. She didn’t want to come. She was so sure they would disapprove of her and us. Nothing I said could convince her otherwise. I think she decided to come as much to prove me wrong as anything.”

  “When did it happen?”

  “Six months ago.” His gaze shifted back to the house. “Let’s go inside.”

  Maddie didn’t want to go inside. She didn’t want to see the home where he’d been happy. She didn’t want to be there when he dealt with the memories of a woman he’d obviously loved very deeply. This was an intensely private moment.

  And she was jealous, wildly, bitterly jealous of a woman who was dead. Wasn’t this exactly what she deserved for poking her nose in where it didn’t belong?

  “Tyler, are you sure? Maybe it’s better to let it be.”

  “It’s taken me six months to come here. I’m going in,” he said with finality.

  Like it or not, she couldn’t let him face it alone. “Then, I’m coming with you.”

  As they neared the front door, Maddie got a closer look at the garden that had obviously once blazed with color. Clearly it had been tended with love.

  Tyler put the key into the lock, then turned the handle. Inside, he flipped a switch, and a light came on in a tiny foyer. The living room was on the right. A hallway straight ahead apparently led to the bedrooms. Tyler stood right where he was, frozen in place. Maddie put a hand on his arm.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “I’ll survive,” he said, sounding surprised. He walked into the living room and turned on a lamp that cast soft light over a worn sofa and scarred tables.

  “She wouldn’t let me replace anything,” he said defensively. “This house was her pride and joy. She’d had nothing as a kid and was so excited to finally have a place of her own. She put her whole heart into this house.”

  Maddie compared it to the home in which Tyler had grown up and had to wonder how he had felt when he had first stepped inside here. Bright paint was a startling contrast to the subdued elegance of the wallpaper in his parents’ mansion. Junk store castoffs, though polished lovingly, were no comparison to the Delacourt antiques.

  Yet this had been a home. There was no mistaking it. Everywhere there were framed snapshots of Tyler, of that same baby who had aroused Maddie’s curiosity and of a lovely young woman with the slender elegance of a dancer and huge brown eyes that shone with love. A glass filled with long-dead wildflowers sat atop a small table in what must have been a dining area. Beyond it, the ancient appliances in the kitchen still sparkled from the loving attention of a woman who took pride in her surroundings.

  Tyler walked from room to room, his expression stoic, his shoulders rigid with tension.

  A knock on the front door startled them both. Before they could move, an elderly woman opened the door and called out.

  “Tyler, is that you?”

  A smile broke across his face as he went to meet her, Maddie trailing behind. “Mrs. Andrews.” He swept her up in a hug that had her laughing.

  “Put me down, young man, before I take a ruler to your knuckles.”

  “You know they don’t let teachers rap their students’ hands anymore for misbehaving.”

  “Which is why it’s just as well that I retired twenty years ago,” she said. She rested a hand against his cheek. “How are you? We’ve missed seeing you.”

  “I’ve missed you, too,” he said. “But I couldn’t come back. Thank you for looking after the place for me.”

  “I haven’t done much. The yard’s a disaster. I can’t tend flowers the way your Jen could. The house needs to be lived in. Are you coming back? Is that why you’re here?”

  “No,” he said at once.

  “Have you left Baton Rouge for good, then?”

  “No. I’ve been working on the rig, staying closer to the job.”

  “You should be here, Tyler. Jen would have wanted that.” Her gaze settled on Maddie then. “Forgive me, my dear. I didn’t see you over there in the shadows. My eyesight’s not what it used to be. I’m Martha Andrews. I live next door.”

  “This is Maddie Kent,” Tyler said.

  “I’m very pleased to meet you,” Maddie told the older woman, who was clearly in her eighties, though she appeared to have the energy of someone much younger.

  “I’m glad to see you’re moving on with your life,” Mrs. Andrews told Tyler. “We’re not meant to go through life alone.”

  “He’s not…” Maddie began.

  “I’m not…” Tyler said at the same time.

  Mrs. Andrews chuckled. “Awfully quick to protest, aren’t you both? Well, whatever the case, it’s nice to see you here again. Tyler, you let me know if there’s anything you need. I made your Jen a promise, you know.”

  He regarded her with surprise. “You did? What sort of promise?”

  “She always asked me to look out for you.”

  “Why would she do that?” he asked.

  “Why, because she loved you, of course.”

  “But why would she think she wouldn’t be around to do it herself?”

  Mrs. Andrews seemed startled by the question. “Now that you mention it, it does seem an odd thing to say at her age. It seems to me, though, that so many things had gone wrong in her young life and she was so happy with you that she never expected it to last. I used to scold her about that. It was clear to anyone who saw the two of you how deeply you loved her. I was so relieved when she finally agreed to meet your family. I thought that might be the beginning of the future you both deserved.”

  “But if she hadn’t—”

  “Don’t you think like that,” she said sternly, cutting him off in midsentence. “The accident was a terrible thing, but the Lord has His reasons for what He does. We just have to accept that.”

  Tyler sighed. “Your faith is stronger than mine. I can’t find any reason for a woman like Jen and a precious baby girl to die.”

  “His reason will come to you in time,” she said gently, then smiled at Maddie. “Perhaps it already has.” She stood on tiptoe to kiss Tyler’s cheek. “Good night, dear. God bless.”

  “Good night, Mrs. Andrews,” he said softly, staring after her.

  When she had gone, he turned slowly to meet Maddie’s gaze. “Could she be right?”

  “About?”

  “You and me. That I had to lose Jen so I would be ready when you came along.”

  “Absolutely not,” she said at once. Her plotting for revenge against Bryce Delacourt could hardly be part of some divine plan. It was merely a very human act, and it was that, not God, that had brought her into Tyler’s life. “I’m with you. I don’t think I understand anything that costs a very young woman and an innocent child their lives.”

  He seemed startled by her vehemence, but he nodded. “Yeah, you’re right.” His expression filled with sorrow, he took one last look around, then flipped off lights. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Only after they were in the car did Maddie ask, “Will you ever live here again?”

  “I honestly don’t know. But I haven’t been able to bring myself to sell it.”

  “Then the house is yours? You paid for it?”

  “Oh, no,” he said with a rueful laugh. “Jen bought it and paid the mortgage while she was alive. She wouldn’t take a dime from me, not ever. But because of the baby, she had made a will leaving everything she had to be held in trust for our daughter. I’m the executor. Since there are no other heirs, it’s up to me to decide what
to do with it. I’ve paid off the mortgage and I take care of the taxes, so there’s no rush. Maybe one day, when it doesn’t hurt so much, I’ll go back there.”

  “It’s not exactly what you’re used to.”

  “You mean compared to my parents’ house or my condo?”

  She nodded. “Or the beach house.”

  “No,” he agreed. “It’s nothing like those places. But I was happier in this house than I’ve ever been in my life.”

  Maddie had to swallow hard around the lump in her throat. How could she—how could any woman—compete with that? And why did she suddenly want to so desperately?

  “Your Jen was a very lucky woman,” she said quietly.

  Clearly taken aback, he stared at her. “How can you say that?”

  “Because she was loved so very much. That’s the greatest gift a man can give a woman, and you gave that to her. It’s the intensity of the passion that matters, not the longevity.”

  “If that’s the standard, then I was the lucky one,” he protested. “Because she brought me nothing but joy.”

  Maddie couldn’t help contrasting that to her own goal. What would he say months from now of the woman who was destined to bring nothing but anguish into his life? And how would she live with herself once she’d done it?

  She glanced over at Tyler. “Thank you for telling me about her and about your little girl.”

  “I should probably be the one thanking you for forcing me to face this,” he said. He reached over and touched a hand to her cheek. His expression registered surprise. “You’re crying. What’s wrong, Maddie?”

  “Nothing,” she insisted. She was just crying for what was…and for what would never be.

  Chapter Eight

  Tyler still wasn’t thoroughly convinced that Maddie had been honest with him about her reason for being in Baton Rouge, but he couldn’t help being grateful to her for more or less forcing him to face the past. Maybe he’d just been waiting for someone to come along who could.

  He felt an amazing sense of relief now that he’d been back to the house he and Jen had shared. Seeing Mrs. Andrews again had given him solace, as well. She had been like a grandmother to Jen. If she could forgive him for his part in that fateful trip, then he knew he had to learn to forgive himself. Though he was far from there yet, he was beginning to believe it was possible.