The Delacourt Scandal (14 page)

His father, always glib, seemed to be at a loss for words.

“Thank you,” Tyler said finally, not knowing what else to say.

His father stared at him in surprise. “For what?”

“For accepting me as your son.” Even though he hated that the truth had been kept from him, Tyler knew that what his father had done had been the most unselfish and caring act a man could possibly do. He had given Tyler his name, his home and, most important of all, his unstinting love.

“You are my son,” his father declared fiercely. “Never think that you’re not.” He sank back in his chair. “Though I suppose you’ll want to go to Daniel and tell him that you know. I’ll never get you back to the executive suite now that you know that you come by your love of the rigs naturally.”

“That was a foregone conclusion, anyway,” Tyler agreed with a half smile. “But I won’t be rushing back to see Daniel, not until I’ve grappled with all of the implications.”

“Damn that woman,” his father said heatedly. “If she hadn’t stirred all of this up…”

“Don’t blame Maddie,” he said. Her motives were something he needed to understand, something for which he might never forgive her, but the result of her actions had been that he’d learned a secret that never should have been kept from him for such a long time in the first place. “Whatever she said or did, it only brought out the truth. And the truth was long overdue.”

“Perhaps so,” his father said with a resigned sigh. “What will you do now?”

“I need to think. I need to see Maddie and understand her part in all of this.”

“Will you be okay?” his father asked with obviously sincere concern.

Tyler nodded. “Of course, I’m a Delacourt,” he said at once, then amended, “and a Corrigan. Can’t get much more strong-willed than that.”

His father gave a rueful chuckle. “No, I suppose not.”

“Will you and Mother be okay?”

“We made our peace about this years ago, when I realized that my single-minded focus on work almost cost me her love. But to prove I haven’t forgotten what’s most important in my life, I just got off the phone with my secretary and with the travel agent. I’m taking your mother on a cruise. She’s been clamoring to go around the world for years now.”

If he’d announced a decision to forsake his worldly possessions and become a monk, Tyler couldn’t have been any more shocked. “You’re taking off on an around-the-world cruise? You do know how long they last, don’t you? You can’t have changed that much in the past half hour.”

“Hardly,” his father agreed with a rueful expression. “I figure two weeks in the Greek Isles will get our feet wet. Best to find out if either of us gets seasick before I plan anything longer.” He regarded Tyler worriedly. “We could delay the trip if you’d like us to stay. I know you must have more questions that need answering.”

“Whatever questions I have can wait. I think a cruise will be perfect for the two of you. I need time to myself, anyway.”

“Will you tell your brothers and Trish? It’s up to you. I can guarantee it won’t change the way they feel about you. Through the years, seeing the bond among you proved to me that your mother, Daniel and I had made the right decision.”

Tyler hadn’t even thought of sharing the news, but of course he would have to eventually. Like his father, he didn’t believe it would change his relationship with the others, but what if it did? Would he be able to bear it?

“I’ll wait to tell them,” he said finally. “Not for long, though. I promise.”

“Your decision,” his father said again. His expression turned sly. “Does the fact that you intend to hang around Houston for a bit mean I can leave you in charge of Delacourt Oil for the time being?”

Tyler laughed for the first time in what seemed like an eternity. “Now I know we’ll be all right. Nothing stops you from trying to get me behind a desk.”

“Not while there’s breath in my body,” his father agreed.

“I’ll try to keep things afloat,” Tyler agreed. “Two weeks, though, not a day more.”

“Agreed.” His father’s expression softened. “I love you, son.”

Tyler blinked back tears. In all these years he had never had the slightest cause to doubt that. Even now, he didn’t. “I love you, too, Dad.”

He knew that as well as he knew anything. What he didn’t know, anymore, was who the hell he was.

M
addie left Delacourt Oil and headed to the family’s estate, determined to have it out with Bryce Delacourt before he left town.

“Please don’t let Tyler be there,” she repeated over and over as she drove.

But as she was parking her car along the edge of the curving driveway, she saw Tyler leave the house, shoulders hunched dejectedly, his expression bleak. His father, hers, the revenge she’d plotted for years, now all of it flew out of her head as she fought the need to go to him. She was forced to face the past versus the here-and-now.

She knew exactly what he must be feeling, because she had been there. Tyler, a man she cared for deeply, was hurting, and it was because she had deliberately stirred up a hornet’s nest in his family. He had to be
devastated by the discovery that his father had been having an affair. Once she linked that to the conspiracy to frame her father for embezzlement, his anguish would be even worse. She had set out to prove that his father had feet of clay and, in so doing, she had caused nothing but pain for an innocent man.

Just as Bryce Delacourt’s insensitive actions had caused pain for her and her family, she reminded herself, but she couldn’t take any comfort in that. Not any longer. The old adage about two wrongs never making a right had never seemed more true.

She stepped from her car, and the movement was enough to catch Tyler’s attention. He stared at her as if he’d never seen her before or, worse, as if she didn’t matter at all. That hard, flat look rocked her as nothing else could have. It was hard to believe that only a few days ago she had lain in his arms, and he had looked at her as if she were the most precious thing in his life.

“Tyler…”

He waved her off. “Not now, Maddie. I can’t deal with you now.”

“I need to explain.”

He shook his head. “There is nothing you could say right now that I want to hear.
Nothing.
”

He turned his back on her, climbed into his car, gunned the engine and sped down the driveway at a rate of speed that sent gravel spewing in every direction.

She leaned against her car and watched him go. “Dear God, what have I done?”

She glanced at the house and knew with sudden and absolute clarity that she couldn’t go inside,
couldn’t even knock on the door and demand to see Bryce Delacourt, much less accuse him of destroying her father with his lies. She had spent years looking forward to this moment, and now that it was here, she found no satisfaction in it. In fact, she felt sick at heart.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, even though there was no one to hear, even though the man it was meant for was who-knew-where, suffering all alone.

She doubted that Tyler would ever want to see her again. As powerful as their passion was, she doubted it was strong enough to weather what he had to consider a betrayal. If he didn’t know already that she was a reporter, it wouldn’t be long before Dylan told him. It wouldn’t matter to him that she had done what she had because of loyalty to her own father. All she could do for Tyler at this point was to leave him in peace.

Back at his apartment, she checked to make sure his car wasn’t in his assigned parking space, then went upstairs. She hurriedly threw a few of her things into a suitcase. She planned to leave before he returned, knowing that her actions were cowardly but excusing them by telling herself that she was making things easier for Tyler.

In the living room she paused by the collection of framed snapshots and picked up one of all four of the Delacourt brothers wearing ragged jeans and faded T-shirts. Tyler had told her it had been taken after a tag football game on the beach. They were wet and breathless and covered in sand, but their laughter was contagious. Even now she smiled just looking at
them. Tyler’s grin was widest of all as he triumphantly held a football aloft.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered once again as she gently placed the photo back in its place amongst so many happy Delacourt memories.

And then she left, wondering if she would ever see Tyler again.

Back in her car she reached for the key to start the engine, but her hand faltered. She suddenly realized she had no idea where to go, no real destination, no one—with the possible exception of Griffin Carpenter—who cared where she was.

In the end it was the awareness that she owed Griffin an explanation that turned her toward Dallas. She drove for hours, the image of Tyler, devastated and angry, never far from mind.

Once she reached Dallas, she checked into a hotel that she could afford on what truly were paltry savings. Her expense account days were over. She had no appetite. She barely slept.

And for a solid week she did more soul-searching than she’d ever done in her life. She didn’t like the picture that emerged. Her determination to cling to the past had come very close to costing her the one man she thought might be able to make her truly happy. It had stripped her of her journalistic ethics.

Whatever his father was, Tyler Delacourt was a kind, decent man. She couldn’t destroy one without destroying the other. Praying that her father would understand her decision, she concluded that the price was too high. Even if Tyler never spoke to her again, she couldn’t be responsible for putting his family’s
private secrets on the front page of Griffin Carpenter’s vicious tabloid.

Finally on Monday morning she picked up the phone and called her boss.

“I need to see you.”

“Where are you? What have you got for me?” he asked at once.

“I’m in Dallas. I’ll be at your office in twenty minutes.”

“You ready to go to press?”

“We’ll discuss it when I see you,” she said, though there was nothing to discuss. Her decision was made and it was final. If an exposé of the Delacourts was to be written, someone else would have to do it.

The moment she arrived at the
Hard Truths’
offices, she was ushered in to see Carpenter. He regarded her eagerly.

“Tell me everything.”

She looked him straight in the eye and said, “There’s nothing to tell.”

He stared at her incredulously. “You must be kidding. You’ve been working this story for weeks. Are you telling me there is not one shred of dirt to be had on Bryce Delacourt?”

“None that I could find,” she said evenly.

He slammed his fist on his desk so hard that a coffee cup bounced in its saucer. “Dammit, I don’t believe it.”

“I guess I’m just not as good a reporter as I wanted to believe,” she said. “I’ll save you the trouble of firing me, Griffin. I quit. Here’s a check for my expenses so far.”

She placed the check on his desk, then stood up and headed for the door.

“Hold it right there, missy.”

She paused, sucked in a deep breath, then turned to face him. “What?”

“I don’t buy this, not for one single second. I know there has to be something. No one goes through life without making a few enemies, without cutting a few corners.”

“I didn’t find anything,” she said again. “You can’t print what isn’t there.”

“Oh, it’s there. Maybe you just didn’t have the stomach for finding it.”

“Maybe not.”

“Because of that man, am I right? He got to you. What did he do? Pay you off? Sleep with you?”

Ignoring the accusations with their ugly implications, she looked him straight in the eye. “Tell me something. Why do you hate Bryce Delacourt? Or is it even him? Do you simply hate anyone in the state who has wealth and power? That’s what it looks like, you know. There’s nothing honest or objective about this paper of yours. It’s simply a tool for getting even.”

“You were glad enough to use it when it suited your purposes,” he accused.

“Yes,” she said softly. “I suppose I was. But I learned something. Revenge isn’t nearly as sweet as people say it is. You might want to remember that. Whatever satisfaction you take from your muckraking, it will never be enough to make up for whatever it was that happened in your past.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes,” she said quietly. “I do. What was it, Griffin? What made you hate so many people you don’t even know?”

“Oh, I know the bastards,” he said heatedly. “I’ve made it my business to get to know all of them. I’ve made it my life’s work to prove that they’re no better than the rest of us mere mortals, despite what they’d have you think.”

“Is that what happened? Did someone tell you once you weren’t good enough?”

“They tried,” he conceded grudgingly. “Told me I’d never be good enough for their daughter.” A faraway expression crossed his face. “She was the best thing that ever happened to me, but all her folks could see was that I wasn’t in their social class, that I was a little rough around the edges. It didn’t matter that I would have given her the world or that she loved me. I just wasn’t their kind. They sent her off to Europe, where she had my baby. When she came back, she was engaged to someone else, someone more suitable.”

So that was it, she thought, the defining moment that had changed his life and made him go after not just those people, whoever they were, but all others like them. At heart, she and Griffin were all too much alike, but she wanted to believe she had changed…or at least that she could.

“They were snobs,” she pointed out.

“They were ruthless, power-hungry fools,” he retorted. “Which I was all too happy to point out in my first edition.”

“And Bryce Delacourt was just one more target
for you. You had nothing personal against him, did you?”

“No, but you did, and that suited me just fine.”

“Has all this hate and anger, have all these exposés, given you what you need?”

“Of course,” he said, but his expression seemed less certain than it had earlier.

“Do you have the woman you lost?”

“No.”

“Or your child?”

“No,” he said, his eyes filled with sorrow.

“Then it must be a hollow victory,” she said. “I want more. I want to live well. I want to be happy. I want to put the past behind me, where it belongs. Maybe it’s time for you to do that, too.”

Of course, she thought as she left him, he wouldn’t. Publishing
Hard Truths
defined him, gave him his own form of power, and he wouldn’t sacrifice that easily.

If only she had understood all of this before she had turned Tyler’s world upside down, she thought. But then she would never even have met him. She couldn’t regret that.

Now she just had to find him and see if it was too late to make peace.

Tyler wasn’t anywhere to be found, at least not in any of the places that Maddie tried. She staked out his apartment, sitting for endless hours in his living room, listening for the sound of his key in the door. She waited, ignoring Rodney’s sympathetic looks and his insistence that Tyler hadn’t been home for days.
Finally she had to concede that the doorman hadn’t just been putting her off.

She called the Delacourt house, the Delacourt Oil offices, then went to Baton Rouge. No one anywhere admitted to having seen him. She even tried the beach house, but it was deserted.

The possibility of Los Pin˜os, where his sister and oldest brother lived, finally came to her. He had mentioned it often, talked about how content they were there. Perhaps he had taken refuge with one of them.

Rather than call and risk a rebuff, and because she had nothing else to claim her time, she drove across the state. She went to Dylan first.

“He’s not here,” he said tersely. “And even if he were, why should I tell you?”

“I know he must hate me,” she began.

“You lied to him. You never told him you were a reporter. I know, because he was stunned when I told him. You deliberately set out to destroy our family and used him to do it. What else would you expect? That he’d forgive and forget?”

“I just want to explain, that’s all. I have to. He might never want to see me again, but he needs to know I didn’t do any of this to hurt him.”

“So when’s the story going to be in the paper, Maddie? Should we brace ourselves?”

“There won’t be a story, at least not by me. I told Griffin I hadn’t found anything, and then I quit.”

“Well, bravo,” he said sarcastically. “But it’s too little too late. Leave Tyler alone. He doesn’t need someone like you in his life.”

Trish’s response was much the same, though even less temperate.

“Stay the hell away from my brother,” she shouted, following Maddie onto the sidewalk in front of her bookstore, oblivious to the stares she was drawing on the otherwise quiet street. “How can you even bear to look at yourself in the mirror after what you’ve done to him?”

“I didn’t do it to him,” Maddie said, blinking back tears. “I know it must seem that way, but it was never about him.”

“If you hurt one of us, you hurt all of us. Now Tyler has to figure out where he fits in our world.”

Maddie stared at her in confusion. “What are you talking about? Have you all ostracized him or something because he brought me into the family?”

“It’s not
us.
It’s
him.
How do you think it feels to wake up one day and discover that you’re not who you thought you were? Leave him the hell alone. If you don’t, I won’t be responsible for what I do.”

Maddie had no idea at all what Trish was talking about. Why would Tyler be questioning who he was? Finding him suddenly seemed more important than ever. She had to regroup, though. She’d searched every single place she could think of. Obviously his family had no intention of helping. And, truthfully, she could hardly blame them.

She walked into Dolan’s, a drugstore next to Trish’s bookstore. She sat at the counter and ordered a soft drink and a cheeseburger before she realized that everyone around her had fallen silent. Their gazes were avidly fixed on her. She winced as she realized they must have heard every word Trish had shouted. She was about to change her order to a takeout when an elderly man slid onto the stool beside her. He was
a little frail, but his blue eyes snapped with intelligence and humor.

“Don’t mind them,” he said loudly. “They’re just a bunch of old gossips, and nothing this lively has happened around here in ages.” He gave a little nod of satisfaction when the conversations around them picked up again, then smiled sympathetically at Maddie. “I’m Harlan Adams. And you must be the notorious Maddie Kent.”