The Delacourt Scandal (13 page)

“No, I’ll catch up with him over at our parents’ place.”

“Okay, then.”

“Wait, Maddie. I’m glad I have you on the line.”

Her heart began to thud dully. Dylan didn’t sound nearly as jovial as Jeb. In fact, she thought she heard something almost dire in his voice. Wasn’t he the hard-core investigator? Was he suspicious of her for some reason?

“Why?” she asked bluntly.

“I have a question for you.”

“Sure.”

“Why haven’t you told my brother that you’re a reporter?”

Oh, God, she thought miserably. Not this. The truth couldn’t come out like this. Dylan couldn’t be the one to tell Tyler.

“Why would you think that?”

He gave a dry chuckle. “Give it up, sweet cakes. I’m on to you. I know that you’ve worked for half a dozen small papers all around the state. I know that
you quit the last one about six weeks ago. Wasn’t that when you showed up in Houston?”

“I came here looking for work,” she conceded.

“Really? My information suggests that you already have a job, a very lucrative job working for the sleaze of Texas journalism, Griffin Carpenter.”

“Who told you that?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

Maddie swallowed hard against the wave of panic crawling up the back of her throat. She should have known her ties to the tabloid couldn’t be kept quiet forever, not the way gossip spread among journalists. “Have you been investigating me, Mr. Delacourt? Is that the Delacourt way of welcoming someone new into the family?”

“I think you’re missing the point,” he said mildly.

“Which is?”

“What do you want with my family? My gut tells me it’s not marriage you’re looking for at all. So, a word of warning. If you hurt Tyler, if you hurt any member of my family, you will answer to me. Believe me, Ms. Kent, your career in journalism will be short-lived, at least in Texas. You’ll never work for a legitimate newspaper again.”

“An interesting threat,” she said before she could stop herself. “So typical of a Delacourt. I see the bullying trait is alive and well in the next generation.”

Breathing hard, she slammed the phone down before he could reply. Then she burst into tears. It seemed she was to share the same fate as her father, thanks to a Delacourt. Out of work in her field, doomed to a life of working for second-best weeklies
in nowhere towns. Dylan Delacourt
could
see that it happened, too. She had heard it in his voice.

“Stop it,” she ordered herself, brushing impatiently at her tears. “You knew this could happen when you made the decision to work for Griffin Carpenter, when you set out to bring Bryce Delacourt down.”

She had told herself it would be worth it, if she could just get even with Delacourt for his deliberate destruction of her father. She had enough facts and theories now to do it, or at least to make his life damned uncomfortable. All she needed was an hour of his time, maybe less, to watch his reactions when she laid it all out for him, every stinking rotten thing he had done when he’d destroyed her father to save his girlfriend’s neck. And she had to arrange it now, because once Tyler knew the truth, her access was going to blow up in her face.

She didn’t want to confront Bryce Delacourt at the house, not with his wife already upset and with Tyler on the scene. She would have to go to his office, bluff her way in.

It wouldn’t be easy, not with him already furious with her for her part in his wife’s emotional crisis, but she could do it. She had slipped past tougher security than anything Delacourt Oil had. She had her ties to Tyler on her side, at least for the next couple of hours.

She hurried through a shower, pulled on her best, most daunting power suit, tucked a tape recorder into her purse and headed for her car. She would pick up the rest of her things later, if Tyler hadn’t had her banned from the premises by then. She would find
some way to try to apologize to him, some way to explain that she had had to do what she’d done for her father’s sake. Surely he would understand her need for justice, even if he could never forgive her.

When she reached Delacourt Oil, she had no difficulty reaching the executive suite, but the secretary there shook her head when she asked to see Bryce.

“I realize I don’t have an appointment,” Maddie said, trying to cajole her into making an exception. “I wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t extremely important that I speak to him. Couldn’t you at least see if he’s got five minutes to spare?”

“It’s not that I won’t help you,” the woman said. “I can’t. Mr. Delacourt isn’t in.”

“I’ll wait, then.”

“I’m not expecting him today.”

That was a wrinkle Maddie hadn’t anticipated. The man was a well-known workaholic. She hadn’t expected that even his wife’s distress would keep him at home for long. She’d envisioned him bolting the second Tyler arrived to relieve him.

“You’re not expecting him today? When is he due back?” she asked.

“I’m not sure. When he called, he said that he was planning to take his wife on an extended vacation and that he would be in touch later with the details.”

“He’s left town?”

“I doubt they’re on their way just yet. You might try to catch him at home if you have the number there.”

“I do,” Maddie said.

There was just one problem. With Tyler likely to be smack in the middle of whatever was going on over there, did she dare use it?

T
yler found his mother—usually the calmest, coolest woman on the planet—every bit as distraught as his father had described. She was curled up in bed hugging a pillow and sobbing as if her life were over.

“According to the housekeeper, she’s been like this ever since she came home from having lunch with Maddie yesterday,” his father said, drawing him back into the hallway. “She won’t talk to me. She’ll barely even look at me. Did you ask Maddie what happened at lunch?”

“I asked, but it was like talking to a wall. She all but confessed that something had gone on between them, but she refused to give me a clue. She said it wasn’t up to her, whatever that means.”

“What do you know about that woman?”

“Apparently not nearly enough,” Tyler said with a resigned sigh.

He knew that she made his pulse race. He knew that she fascinated him. He knew that his gut told him she was a decent woman, but his gut had been wrong before. He decided not to mention that even before his father’s call he had already asked Dylan to check into her background. In a few hours at most, he should know more.

“Tyler?” His mother’s voice was weak and hoarse from crying. “Is that you?”

“Go on,” his father said. “See if you can get her calmed down. I’m certainly not having any luck.”

As Tyler approached the bed, his mother reached for his hand, then gazed up at her husband who had followed him into the room. “Bryce, leave us alone for a moment, please. Tyler and I need to talk. There’s something I have to tell him.”

Sudden understanding flared in his father’s eyes, followed quickly by obvious alarm. “No, you can’t mean…”

“Bryce, please,” she begged, her face haggard. “I have to.”

“Sweet heaven, is that what this is all about? That woman knows…?”

“Perhaps she knows everything,” Helen said dully. “Or at least enough.”

“But how?”

“I have no idea, but Tyler has to be told.”

Mystified, Tyler looked from his mother’s pale, tear-streaked face to his father’s shaken expression. “Will somebody please tell me what’s going on? What is it that Maddie knows that I don’t?”

“I’ll explain,” his mother promised him, then looked at her husband. “I have to do it, Bryce.”

“Yes,” he said wearily. “I suppose you do.”

He leaned down and gave his wife a kiss. “Everything will be okay, Helen. We’ll make it okay.”

She caught his hand in hers. “I love you.”

A sad smile crossed his father’s face. “And I you, my dear. I always have.”

As his father left the room, Tyler thought he detected the sheen of unshed tears in his eyes, but of course, that couldn’t be. Bryce Delacourt was the strongest man he knew.

“Mom, what’s going on?” Tyler asked when they were alone. “Is Dad right? Is Maddie responsible for upsetting you like this?”

“Come,” she said. “Sit here beside me. And yes, in a way, Maddie is the reason that we’re having this talk.”

“What does that mean?”

“Darling, please don’t rush me. I have to explain this in my own way.”

Tyler bit back an impatient curse and resigned himself to a wait. His mother had always been able to embroider the simplest tale into a complex plot. It had made for wonderful bedtime stories when he’d been young, but now he could only regret the tendency.

“You already know that Maddie asked me to join her for lunch yesterday.”

“Yes.”

“I thought she merely wanted to get to know me better since I’m your mother, but it was clear from the outset that it was more than that. She was asking questions, a lot of questions.”

“About?”

“Tyler,” she scolded. “No interruptions.”

“Sorry.”

“Now that I think back on it, I’m not sure how much she actually knew or how much she was guessing, but I knew it was time. I suppose I always knew this day would come, but as the years passed, I thought maybe there would be no need.”

“No need to do what? Mother, you’re not making any sense. You’re talking in circles.”

“Patience, darling. I know it’s not a trait the Delacourt men embrace easily, but it’s one you should learn.”

“So you’ve mentioned on more than one occasion,” Tyler said wryly.

“Where was I?”

“You were about to tell me whatever it is that Maddie either knows or has guessed, but that I am completely in the dark about.”

“Don’t be snide, Tyler. I am going to tell you everything in my own way.”

Tyler felt a knot form in his stomach. “Everything?” he repeated. He didn’t like the sound of that. It implied there were terrible secrets that had been kept from him.

His mother clung to his hand. Her own was icy. “Years ago,” she began slowly, then faltered and reached for a glass of water on her bedside table. Only after she had taken a sip did she go on.

“Years ago your father and I were having problems, as many young couples do,” she said, her expression sad. “Marriage requires a lot of adjustments, and ours was no different. He was building up the company. I was feeling neglected, as if I were less important to him than some hole in the ground.”

Tyler grinned at her dismissal of the exploration for oil as little more than digging in the dirt, but he managed to keep silent.

“It’s not so unusual, really,” she said. “In fact, it probably happens more than any of us would like to admit.”

Knowing his father’s all-consuming obsession with Delacourt Oil even now, Tyler could easily imagine what it must have been like back then.

“What happened, Mother?”

She closed her eyes for a moment, as if gathering strength, then faced him squarely. “I turned to another man.”

Tyler rocked back on his heels and stared. His mother? An affair? He might have believed it of his father, but
her?
She was the most devoted wife he knew. Besides, what business was it of his? Why was she telling him such a thing? And why now?

She reached out and brushed his hair away from his face. A half smile touched her lips as she said gently, “That man was your father.”

Tyler heard the words, but he couldn’t seem to make sense of them. Bryce Delacourt wasn’t his father? How could that be? His whole life he had been treated as a Delacourt. He thought of Dylan, Jeb and Michael as his brothers, of Trish as his sister. How could that be a lie?

And yet it explained so much. Why he looked different. Why he had always felt a little like an outsider. Why he instinctively tried harder to be like Bryce Delacourt. Why his mother did treat him differently. She had been protective, as if she needed to shield him in some way. Now he understood why. She had
been trying to ensure that he felt like the others, that he never felt excluded or different, but of course her behavior had had the opposite effect.

“Does Dad…?” He nearly choked on the word. “Bryce?”

His mother reacted angrily to his faltering inability to decide what to call the man he’d grown up thinking of as his father. “He is your father in every way that counts,” she said fiercely. “I won’t have you start thinking of him in any other way, Tyler.”

He accepted the rebuke with a nod. “Does he know?”

“He’s known from the beginning and he’s long since forgiven me. In fact, you saw his reaction earlier. It was as if he’d almost forgotten completely that we shared this secret. If anything, our marriage became stronger because he accepted you from the first day he set eyes on you. I loved him so much for that. Please, please, don’t let what I’m telling you ruin the relationship you have. I had to tell you now. I was so afraid Maddie was getting close to the truth.”

“But how is that possible? Why would she even care?”

“I don’t know, but it made me realize I couldn’t risk her being the one to tell you. This had to come from me. I had to be the one to make you understand that Bryce is your father. He’s earned the right to be.”

A million and one questions raced through his brain. He asked the first ones that came to mind. “But my real father? Who is he? Do I know him? Have I ever even seen him? Does he know?”

Tears welled up in her eyes then. “Please, Tyler, don’t do this.”

He hardened his heart against the tears. “Please, Mother, I have to know it all. I can’t settle for half the truth.”

The tears continued to roll down her cheeks unchecked. “Yes,” she said wearily, “I suppose not. It’s only right that it all come out. Then there will be nothing anyone can use against us.”

For an instant he was distracted. “Why would anyone use it against us?”

“Everyone has enemies, Tyler, especially the rich and powerful.”

Could Maddie be such an enemy? he wondered, half-shocked by the thought even as it made a terrible kind of sense. Because it wasn’t a question his mother could possibly answer, he went back to his original point.

“Who, Mother? Who is my real father?”

“Your biological father,” she corrected at once.

He sighed, but nodded. “Of course. Just tell me, please.”

She seemed to be drawing on some inner courage before she spoke, but at last she said in a voice barely above a whisper, “Daniel. Your father is Daniel Corrigan.”

Suddenly everything in his life clicked into place, as if a key piece of a jigsaw puzzle finally made all the rest fit. The bond between him and his boss—
his
father. The timing of Daniel’s decision years ago to return to the rigs. His father’s—Bryce’s—resentment of Daniel and of Tyler’s obvious affection for him.

“Does he know? Does Daniel know I’m his son?”

His mother nodded. “The moment I realized I was pregnant, I went to Daniel and told him. I also told
him that, though I loved him dearly for what he had brought into my life when I desperately needed someone to pay attention to me, I wanted to stay married to Bryce if he would have me, that I needed to keep my family together.”

“And he agreed?”

“He was furious at first, but he knew me well enough to know that I wouldn’t change my mind. And he loved me enough not to fight me. Then I went to your father and told him. Confessing that I had betrayed him and that there was to be a child as a result was the most difficult thing I have ever had to do. Needless to say he was stunned, but being the kind of man he is, he accepted that some of the blame for what had happened belonged to him. And he loved me enough to forgive me, enough to accept you as his own. I’m not saying any of it was easy. It wasn’t, and it didn’t happen overnight, but the three of us sat down and worked it all out.”

Tyler shot to his feet, thinking of them sitting around some stupid conference table, deciding his fate. “How terribly civilized of you, Mother. Did anybody stop to consider me in all of this?”

“You were the
only
person we considered. We did what we all thought was for the best. Your father and I took a long, hard look at our problems and our marriage and decided we wanted to be together, that our vows meant something, even though I had broken faith.”

“And Daniel—did you consider his feelings at all? Did it matter that you were denying him his son?”

“He knew what we had was an illusion, a passionate interlude that never should have been, except that
it gave you to us,” she said, then added emphatically, “to
all
of us, Tyler. We’ve shared you through the years, albeit without you being aware of it. It’s been a bitter pill for your father to swallow at times, seeing you go off to spend time with Daniel, but we agreed, just as Daniel agreed to keep his paternity a secret. He’s an honorable man, too, Tyler, and for a time he brought me a joy that I thought had gone from my life.”

Tyler struggled to accept the fact that his entire life had been built on a lie. People he had loved and trusted had lied to him about the most essential aspect of his life, his identity. An outsider had somehow picked up on it before he had.

He met his mother’s gaze. “And Maddie knows all of this?”

“I think so—or at least some of it. She was asking about my marriage, if it had always been strong. She asked whether it could weather an affair.”

Maddie had gone to his mother, not him. He wasn’t sure whether to bless her for that or to strangle her. And why did any of this matter to her? Did she intend to use it in some way?

“Mother, she didn’t threaten you, did she?”

“You mean blackmail?” his mother asked, seemingly shocked by the suggestion. “Good heavens, no. It was just that she was so close to hitting on the truth. I knew the secrecy had to end. That’s what I found upsetting. I wasn’t sure how you would take it.”

Tyler wasn’t sure, either. “It’s a lot to absorb.”

“Oh, darling, I know it is. But please don’t hate me. Don’t hate any of us. We did the best we could.”

He walked to the door without responding.

“Tyler, where are you going?”

“I honestly don’t know,” he said.

“Home?”

“I don’t know where that is.” Back to an apartment he had been sharing with a woman he clearly knew no better than he did his own family? Back to Baton Rouge and a job working for a man who just happened to be his biological father?

“Will you speak to your father before you go? Please,” she said anxiously. “It will destroy him if he loses you. Never once, not in all these years, has he treated you any differently than he has Dylan, Michael or Jeb. You’re as important to him as if you were his flesh and blood. Don’t discount that.”

Because even in his confusion he could see that Bryce Delacourt was as much a victim as he was, he nodded. “I’ll talk to him,” he promised.

He was about to open the door when he heard the catch in her throat and turned to see her holding back a sob. He had never been able to bear seeing her in pain. Even now he still couldn’t. He walked back and pressed a kiss to her damp cheek.

“We’ll work it out, Mother. It may take a little time, but we
will
work it out.”

Then he hurried from the room and went looking for his father. He found Bryce Delacourt in his study, on the phone, making travel arrangements. Bryce barked something into the phone, then hung up the minute he saw Tyler. There was something that might have been a flicker of fear in his eyes.

“She told you, then?”

Tyler nodded.