The Delacourt Scandal (2 page)

T
yler couldn’t help noticing the woman sitting at the other end of the bar. She had been there for the past week. Petite, with auburn hair cut boyishly short, she had a sweet face with a very kissable mouth—innocence and the promise of sin combined. Tonight she was wearing a prim little white blouse and a bright red skirt that kept creeping up, revealing a very shapely thigh. More of that intriguing innocence-sin contradiction.

She was a plucky little thing, fending off passes with a few words and an engaging smile, nursing what appeared to be ginger ale. What she was doing here in the first place was beyond him. She wasn’t looking for a man, that was clear enough. Nor did she drink. And yet here she was at O’Reilly’s, night after night, same stool, same bland, disinterested expression, same polite brush-offs.

In times past Tyler would have taken that as a challenge. Harmless flirting with a beautiful woman was second nature to him, as it had been to his brothers. Any one of the Delacourt males would have moved closer and satisfied his curiosity.

At the moment, though, Tyler just wasn’t up to his usual casual banter. He had way too much on his mind. His whole future, for instance.

Until a week ago he’d been out on a rig in the Gulf of Mexico off the Louisiana coast for three straight months, trying to forget the past, trying to lose himself in hard, physical, mind-numbing work. At the end of the day all he cared about was a cold beer, a rare steak and sleep. That was the way he wanted it, the way he
needed
his life to be—clear and uncomplicated. Women were a definite complication. Family was both a blessing and a curse. He’d intended to steer clear of both for the foreseeable future.

Then the edict had come down that all Delacourts were required to be in Houston for his parents’ fortieth anniversary bash. Even Trish, who never came back to Houston if she could avoid it, had been corralled into attending. Only his brother Michael had escaped, because he and Grace were away on their honeymoon.

There was nothing on earth Tyler hated more than being all dressed up in a fancy tux, unless it was being back in an office. In the past week he’d found himself in both these situations.

And if Bryce Delacourt had his way, Tyler would stay in Houston indefinitely. Judging from his father’s offhand comments, Tyler had a hunch that this time it was going to be a whole lot harder to wrangle his
way out of the Delacourt Oil corporate headquarters and back onto a rig. He envied Trish and Dylan their escapes to the peace and tranquility of Los Piños all the way across the state. They were back there now, out of their father’s reach, while Tyler was still here, still very much under his thumb.

He took a sip of his beer and wondered if the time hadn’t finally come to cut the family ties completely—professionally speaking, anyway. He wouldn’t be the only one in the family to do it.

His oldest brother, Dylan, had been the first to shun the family business, infuriating their father by setting up shop as a private eye. Then Trish had managed to slip away to another city, have a baby and open her second bookstore—all before their father had caught up with her just in time to see her wed a rancher. Jeb had one foot in Dylan’s business, which he’d moved to Los Piños after his marriage to a pediatrician there, and another at corporate headquarters, but he managed to stay out from under Bryce Delacourt’s control most of the time.

Only Michael relished being at the helm of a multinational oil company and, ironically, their father couldn’t seem to see that he was the only one really suited for the job. Usually Michael provided adequate cover for Tyler, but his current absence had reminded their father that he had one remaining son he could groom for the executive suite.

More than the others, Tyler hated the thought of disappointing his father, but he hated paperwork even more. He shuddered at the prospect of facing a lifetime of it. There were oil companies around the country—around the world, for that matter—that would be
happy to hire someone with his lifelong history in the business, with his expertise and willingness to work endless hours, with his daring and fearless approach to oil exploration. Maybe it was time to check into some of them. Maybe it was time to stop worrying so much about being a dutiful Delacourt and worry more about being himself.

His thoughts dark, he barely glanced up when the woman from the other end of the bar slid onto the stool next to him. For once the prospect of an evening’s flirtation didn’t do a thing to lighten his mood. He just wanted to be left alone to wrestle with the past and with the decision that had to be made about the future.

“Hi,” she said, leveling amber eyes straight at him until he finally met her gaze.

“Hi, yourself.”

“I’ve seen you here before.”

“Every night this week,” he agreed, turning back to the beer he’d been nursing, hoping she would take the hint and go away.

“I thought you’d make a pass by now.”

The offhand observation caught his attention. He regarded her with a wry look. “Did you now?”

“You’re the only male in this place who hasn’t.” She made the claim with a surprising lack of conceit and just a hint of puzzlement.

Tyler regarded her with amusement. “Since you turned down every one of them, I figured I’d cut my losses and save myself the trouble.”

“Then you were interested?”

“Any male with blood still pumping through his veins is interested in an attractive female.”

Suddenly her expression brightened. “You think I’m attractive?”

He shook his head. “Don’t be coy. Of course you are.”

“
I
know that,” she said with a touch of impatience. “I just wasn’t sure if
you
did. I wasn’t certain you’d even noticed me. You looked kind of lost, as if you were off in another world and not too happy about it. That’s why I decided to break my rule.”

“What rule is that?”

“I never, ever, talk to men I don’t know, not without a proper introduction. I’m Maddie, by the way. Maddie Kent. It’s Madison, technically, but whoever heard of a woman named that? I think it was a family name on my mother’s side. She was convinced it could be traced back to James Madison, but I never saw any proof of it.” She beamed at him. “Who are you?”

“Tyler,” he said, deliberately leaving off his last name. Mention of “Delacourt” in this part of Texas tended to stir up all sorts of reactions that had more to do with his father or the family wealth than him. He’d learned to hedge his bets when he first met a woman, see if her reactions were genuine before he laid his full identity on her.

“Why are you here, Maddie?” he asked. He gestured toward the ginger ale. “It’s obvious you’re not a big drinker.”

“I just got to town a couple of weeks ago and moved into this neighborhood. This seems like a nice place. It’s definitely better than going back to an empty apartment.”

Something about the comment stirred Tyler’s sus
picions. If she was here to stave off loneliness, then why not accept the attentions of one of the men who’d approached her? Why come here if she had such a hard-and-fast rule about not talking to strangers? And why zero in on the one man who hadn’t made a pass at her? Just because she liked a challenge? Or because she knew precisely who he was, after all?

“You’ve had quite a few admirers the last couple of days. Why have you rejected all of them?” he asked.

“I told you. I have a rule. Besides, they were looking for more than a little friendly conversation. You can tell, you know, at least if you’re a woman.”

Tyler definitely knew. On any other night of any other week, he might have been one of them, and chitchat would have been the last thing on his mind. He enjoyed flirting, but the prospect of making the occasional conquest made it more interesting. It kept his mind off another woman—one who’d slipped out of his life when he’d least expected it and now was lost to him forever.

“So you came over here because I looked safe enough?” he asked.

“Exactly.”

“Darlin’, I wouldn’t count on it. The only difference between those men and me is that I’ve got a lot more than sex on my mind these days.”

She didn’t bat an eye at that. “Tell me. I’m a good listener. Maybe I can help.”

He studied her eager expression and wondered if an impartial outsider could offer a perspective on his life that he hadn’t yet considered. The trouble was, he’d made it a rule not to share any of his deepest
longings and ambitions with anyone—and especially not a woman. Not since Jen.

From the moment they’d met, he’d told Jennifer Grayson everything. She’d led a tough life but had come through it with a surprisingly sweet and gentle nature. He’d given her his heart. Hell, he’d even gotten her pregnant and given her a baby, but she’d steadfastly refused his offer of marriage, wouldn’t take a penny of support money for their daughter, wouldn’t accept the gifts he’d sent. She’d insisted she could make it on her own, without any charity from some rich Texan whose family would only look down on her because she’d come from the wrong side of the tracks.

Talk about reverse snobbery. Jen had had it in spades. Nothing he’d said could persuade her that his offers were motivated by love not pity. He had admired her pride, even as it had exasperated him. He’d accepted her terms, because she’d given him no choice.

Jen and his baby girl, his precious Rachel, had lived in Baton Rouge, conveniently nearby whenever he had time off from his work on the Delacourt rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. Despite her refusal to marry him, Jen had been the best thing in his life.

Even so, he had never shared her existence with his family. She’d accused him of being ashamed of her, but the truth was that at first he’d just wanted something that was his alone, not part of the Delacourt dynasty, not subjected to media scrutiny. Jen had been his secret and his joy.

The time had come, though, after the baby was born, when he’d wanted his family to know every
thing, wanted them to get to know Jen, even if their relationship was unconventional. Six months ago, after endless arguments, he had finally persuaded her to come to Houston and meet his parents. He had held such high hopes for that trip. He’d been so sure that once she got over that hurdle, Jen would see that she could fit in, that she would be accepted just because he loved her.

In one last surge of stubborn pride, she had insisted on driving, rather than accompanying him in the company jet. He had agreed, to his everlasting regret. En route there had been an accident. The crash had occurred after midnight, and the police suspected Jen had fallen asleep at the wheel, though they would never know for sure. There were no other cars involved, and there had been no witnesses. Jen and Rachel had both died at the scene.

From that moment on Tyler had descended into his own personal hell of guilt and loneliness, made worse because he’d refused to share his torment with anyone. He’d considered the silent suffering to be his penance for pressing her to do something she hadn’t really wanted to do.

That was another reason he didn’t want to leave Louisiana. All of his memories of Jen and the baby were in Baton Rouge. And when they got to be too much for him, he needed the demanding work on the rig to exhaust him. The waking memories were difficult enough, but the nightmares about that crash were a thousand times worse. At home this last week he’d awakened every single night in a cold, drenching sweat, heart pounding, tears running unchecked down his cheeks.

His family knew something was terribly wrong, but he refused to talk about it. Michael had even made the trip to Baton Rouge to see him before his wedding to Grace. His brother had poked and prodded for two straight days, but Tyler hadn’t been ready to reveal a whole part of his life he had kept secret for years. He still wasn’t. Someday he would be able to talk about Jen, but not yet, not even to the brother who knew him better than anyone on earth.

He sighed heavily.

“Hey, where’d you go?” Maddie asked, snapping him back to the present.

“Just thinking about someone I used to know,” he admitted without meaning to.

Her eyes brightened with curiosity. “Were you in love with her?”

“I was.”

“And she loved you?”

“She said she did.”

“What happened?”

“Stuff,” he said, because talking about the tragedy wouldn’t change anything, and he’d already said more than he should have.

“You don’t want to talk about it,” she concluded.

“Brilliant deduction.”

“Then tell me about yourself. What do you do, Tyler with no last name?”

So, he thought, she had caught the deliberate omission. “I work on an oil rig, or at least that’s what I did last week. This week it’s hard to say.”

“Did you lose your job?” she asked, regarding him sympathetically.

“Not the way you mean.” This was not a conver
sation he intended to have, not with a stranger, not tonight. “Look, Maddie Kent, it’s been nice talking to you, but I’ve got to run.” He tossed some bills on the bar. “That ought to take care of your drink. Welcome to Houston. Maybe I’ll see you again sometime.”

“Maybe so,” she said cheerfully, showing neither surprise nor hurt that he was walking out on her.

Only after he was outside, sitting in his car and wondering what the heck he was going to do with himself for the rest of the evening, did he regret his impulsive decision. If nothing else, Maddie with the kissable lips might have provided a much-needed distraction from his dark thoughts. He thought of that blend of innocence and sex appeal and sighed. Then again, she might be nothing but trouble.

Maddie watched Tyler Delacourt walk out of the bar and barely concealed a little smile of satisfaction. She’d made progress tonight. She’d actually held a conversation of sorts with a Delacourt. A civil conversation, at that.

Based on all of her research, she had a feeling that of all of Bryce Delacourt’s sons Tyler might be the one person who could get her into the bosom of the tight-knit family.

Finding him hadn’t been all that difficult. His name and picture had popped up in old society-page items with great regularity. That had stopped a couple of years back, but in the meantime it had given her a starting point. Many of those items mentioned O’Reilly’s as his favorite watering hole. They also mentioned his reputation as an outrageous flirt. At one
point one columnist had kept a running count of the number of women with whom he’d been spotted. Whatever his past habits, Maddie had seen no evidence that he was womanizing these days.