The Delacourt Scandal (15 page)

She regarded him with shock. “How on earth did you know that?”

“In a town like this, word gets around. Trish and Dylan are like family to me. I’ve heard all about the nosy woman who stirred things up for their brother.”

“I never meant to hurt him,” she said for what seemed like the hundredth time. She didn’t expect Harlan Adams to believe her, either, but he nodded.

“So what did you mean to do?”

Choking back a sob at the suggestion that he was willing to listen impartially to what had happened, she shook her head. “There’s no point in talking about it.”

“There’s always a point in getting to the truth,” he said. “Tell me.”

Suddenly she found herself spilling the whole ugly story, from what had happened years ago right on up to what had happened the previous week when she had quit her job with Griffin Carpenter.

“Sounds to me as if you were driven by loyalty to your father.”

“Exactly,” she said.

“Are you certain it wasn’t misplaced?” he asked gently.

“Of course I am.”

“You know for a fact that Bryce Delacourt framed him?”

She realized that she didn’t, not with unassailable certainty. She had a theory and some evidence to support it, but not enough to print, not even enough to condemn the man in her own mind. She had seized on a few facts and twisted them to suit her. Even though she had balked at printing them, what did that say about her skill as a journalist?

“You can’t be faulted for wanting to believe in your father,” he said, clearly guessing that there were doubts she hadn’t admitted aloud or even to herself until now. “But until you talk to Bryce Delacourt and know exactly what happened, you will never be able to put this to rest. It will eat at you.”

“I’ve already decided not to do the story.”

“Because your conscience kicked in, not because you believe Bryce Delacourt might be innocent, am I right?”

She finally nodded slowly.

“Then do what you have to do to get your answers, Maddie. Not for a story, but for yourself. Only when you have them will you be able to put this behind you and face this young man of yours.”

“It’s too late for Tyler and me. As for Bryce, he’s out of the country.”

“It’s never too late for love, young lady, not while you can still draw breath. And if you want to talk to Bryce, I imagine I can wrangle a phone number from somebody. He could be in Timbuktu, but I imagine he’s not out of contact with his office. Probably has a cell phone in his hip pocket.”

She regarded him incredulously. “You would do that?”

“To help a friend, I would.”

Maddie thought about it for no more than an instant. “Thank you, yes. I think I would very much like to talk to him and get to the bottom of this once and for all.”

“Consider it done.” He stood up, started around the counter, then beckoned for Maddie to follow.

“Sharon Lynn, we need to use the phone in the back room,” he announced to the woman behind the counter, though he didn’t wait for permission. He winked at Maddie. “Never could get used to cell phones myself, but who needs one when half the people in this town are related to me?” His gaze shifted to the woman. “Not a one of them will deny me a long-distance call or two, am I right, darlin’ girl?”

“If I didn’t offer it to you, you’d just take it, Grandpa,” Sharon Lynn said, laughing. The look she cast at Maddie seemed a bit friendlier, too, as if her grandfather’s acceptance of Maddie was good enough for her.

In the back room, in no time flat, Harlan Adams had Bryce Delacourt on the line. He was apparently on a cruise ship somewhere in the Mediterranean.

“Oh, stop bellyaching about the interruption,” Harlan Adams said to him. “This is important and it won’t take long. I’ve got someone here who needs to ask you something. And don’t you dare hang up on her, either.”

Though her palms were sweating and her stomach was churning, Maddie had to grin at his imperious
tone. She took the phone he held out, swallowed hard, then said, “Hello, Mr. Delacourt. This is Maddie.”

She heard a sharp gasp on the other end of the line. “Please don’t hang up,” she begged. “I promise you that I won’t take more than a minute of your time.”

“Why should I believe anything you have to say?”

“Because I have nothing left to lose. I just need the answer to one question from you and then I’ll stay out of your life.”

“And out of my son’s?”

“If that’s what he wants,” she said, “and I imagine it is.”

“Okay then, ask your question.”

“Did you frame my father for embezzlement to protect Pamela Davis?”

“Embezzlement? Your father?” he asked blankly. “Who are you, anyway?”

“I’m Frank Kent’s daughter,” she responded.

“Dear God in heaven,” he murmured. “That’s what this is about? You came poking around in our lives because of Frank?”

“Just answer me. Did you frame him?”

“No,” he said, his tone suddenly gentle. “I did not. I’m sorry, Maddie, but that’s the truth. And when I get home I can show you every single piece of evidence to prove it, if that’s what it will take.

“If only I’d known that’s what you were after,” he said with a sigh.

She heard the compassion in his voice and the absolute sincerity. He was telling the truth. She felt it in her gut. That didn’t mean she didn’t want to see it in black-and-white. “It’s not that I don’t believe
you,” she said finally. “But I would like to see whatever you have.”

“Of course,” he said at once. “Maddie, I truly am sorry. I liked your father. I tried more than once to get him to stop gambling. I did all I could to protect him. You know I didn’t file charges. But I had no choice, I had to let him go. I couldn’t keep him on if I couldn’t trust him.”

“Yes, I can see that,” she said with quiet resignation, shaken by the fact that for all these years she had believed a lie, that rather than being a victim, her father had gambled away thousands of dollars, then stolen to cover the debt.

“I’ll be in touch as soon as I get back. I wish you had just come to me in the first place.”

“So do I,” she murmured, then handed the phone to Harlan Adams and turned away, fighting tears. A moment later she felt his hand on her shoulder.

“Not the answer you were hoping for, I gather.”

She shook her head.

“It’s never easy growing up and discovering that your parents have faults. It’s even harder when they’ve died while you were at an impressionable age and there’s an easy target to blame.” He tucked a finger under her chin. “I never knew your father, Maddie, but I do know Bryce. He’s an honorable man. A bit of a control freak when it comes to his kids, but as honest as the day is long.”

“I think I knew that from the moment I met him,” she said. “I just didn’t want to believe it. It makes it so much worse. I did all this, hurt so many people for nothing.”

“Then you’ll make amends,” he said confidently. “Starting with that young man of yours.”

“I can’t make amends if I can’t find him.”

“Mind if a nosy old man asks one more question?”

“Of course not.”

“Do you love him?”

For all the good it did her, she thought disconsolately. “Yes,” she said in a voice barely above a whisper.

Harlan Adams gave a little nod of satisfaction. “I didn’t think my instincts had failed me. Now here’s what you’re going to do.”

She stared at him incredulously. “You’re going to help me? Won’t Dylan and Trish be furious?”

He waved off the possibility. “They’re used to me meddling and matchmaking. They’ll get over it. You willing to listen to an old man?”

She thought of the stakes and nodded readily. “Absolutely.”

“You get yourself back over to Houston. March yourself into Delacourt Oil and demand to see that young man of yours.”

“He’s there?” she asked, shocked.

“Well, of course, he is. Michael’s on his honeymoon and his father’s traipsing around the Greek Isles with his wife. Who do you think’s running things? Don’t you read the papers?”

“Apparently not the right ones,” she said dryly.

“Well, you can bet that if Bryce and Michael are away, Tyler’s running the ship. No matter what else has gone on, he wouldn’t take off. The man’s responsible. All of the Delacourts are.”

“But I called there,” she protested.

“Talked to some secretary, I imagine.”

“Yes.”

“Who owes her paycheck to a Delacourt.”

“I think I’m beginning to see what you mean. I guess I’d better get to Houston.”

“Good girl,” he said with an approving smile. “One last thing.”

“What’s that?”

“No matter what the outcome there, I want you to consider coming back here and working for the paper right here in town. It’s not a big-city daily, but you won’t be bored. And it seems to me we can always use someone with a conscience keeping an eye on things.”

Maddie was flabbergasted by the suggestion, especially when she had all but admitted that she was a very flawed journalist. “Do you really mean that, even after everything I’ve told you?”

“It’s because of what you’ve told me,” he said. “Good luck, Maddie Kent. I hope to see you again soon.”

“Thank you, Mr. Adams.”

“Call me Grandpa Harlan. Practically everybody around here does.”

Impulsively she pressed a kiss to his weathered cheek. “I’ll be in touch, no matter what.”

She spent the night in a motel on the outskirts of Los Pin˜os, then drove back to Houston in the morning. It was late in the day by the time she marched past a startled security guard and an even more indignant secretary to throw open the door to Tyler’s office. When she actually made it across the thresh-
old, she suspected the two employees’ hearts must not have been in the chase.

Tyler’s head snapped up when she entered, and a frown settled on his face, but she noticed he waved off the guard and the secretary.

“Not going to throw me out?” she said lightly, trying not to show her relief.

“Not yet,” he said quietly.

“Good, because I have a lot to say.”

“Why should I listen to it? Why should any of it matter, when it’s coming from a woman who has done nothing but lie to me from the day we met?”

“Because there was a time when I meant something to you,” she suggested, praying it was true, praying that the feelings hadn’t been one-sided.

“That time has come and gone.”

She tried not to let the finality of his tone hurt, but it did.

“Then how about because you still mean something to me?”

A flicker of emotion darkened his eyes, but then his expression hardened. “Heaven protect me from the sort of havoc you could wreak if you hated me.”

“Will you listen?” she asked. “I mean really listen, not just sit there to pacify me?”

“Maddie, you’re here. Talk. I’m not promising anything.”

Unfortunately she couldn’t think where to begin, not with him looking at her as if she were lower than dirt, not with the shadows under his eyes a constant reminder of her betrayal. Overwhelmed by guilt, she lost her nerve. She closed her eyes and sighed, then stood.

“Never mind. I’m wasting my time and yours.”

Her words hung in the air, along with the same thick tension that had been present since the moment she entered. She got as far as the door, had her hand on the knob, when he finally spoke.

“Don’t go.”

She turned at the command, drawn by the ragged sound of his voice. She saw the regret in his eyes that suggested he already wished he hadn’t spoken.

“I can’t do it, Tyler. I can’t put my heart out there and let you trample on it.”

“Then you are a coward,” he said. “I thought so when you ran out without explaining anything, when you hid the fact that you were a reporter from me.”

“There were reasons,” she said defensively.

“Then tell me. I need to know, Maddie. I need to know where my judgment fouled up. I need to know why what we had was so unimportant that you could throw it away by trying to destroy my family.”

Once again she sat down across from him, knowing that whatever she said might not be enough, knowing that this was her last chance to make things right.

And knowing that her heart would break if she couldn’t.

F
rom the moment she had set foot in his office, barreling past both a security guard and his secretary with a determined jut to her chin, Tyler had known he couldn’t let Maddie walk out, not without answers. He didn’t understand any of it, not his mother’s revelations, nor Maddie’s role in her deciding to make them. All he knew was that it was going to be a long struggle to make sense of it…and to forgive either of them.

Yet looking at the woman seated across from him, bright patches of color on her cheeks, turmoil in her eyes, he also knew that he wanted to find answers he could live with, answers that might justify his desperate yearning to have her back in his life.

“Tell me,” he said again. “I need to know why you stirred everything up. What were you trying to
do? Dylan said you work for Griffin Carpenter. I know what a snake he is. I also thought I knew the kind of woman you are. It doesn’t make sense that you would work for him.”

“I thought he was my only option,” she said simply.

Her only option? What was that supposed to mean? “Why? Dylan says you’ve worked for a number of papers, that all of your employers speak very highly of you. You left them. You were never fired. Why would you have to turn to a man like Carpenter for work?”

“Your brother is very thorough,” she said wryly. “No wonder you turned to him, instead of asking me.”

“I already knew you were lying to me,” he said matter-of-factly. “I thought I had no choice.”

“But you think I’ll tell you the truth now?”

His gaze locked with hers. “I’m hoping you will. I need to know why my whole world is turned inside out.”

She regarded him with a puzzled expression that didn’t appear to be feigned. “Trish said the same thing. She said you didn’t even know who you are anymore and that it’s because of me. I don’t understand.”

“How can you not understand? You were about to print it all in Carpenter’s rag, weren’t you?”

“I considered writing what I thought was the truth about something that had happened a long time ago, but even before I learned that things weren’t what they seemed to be, I changed my mind. I told Griffin I hadn’t found anything worth printing.”

“Why?”

“Because of you, because I couldn’t bear to hurt the people you care about the way I was once hurt.”

Now it was his turn to be confused. “Who hurt you?”

“I blamed your father, but it seems I was wrong. It was my own father who was responsible for everything that happened.”

Completely at a loss, Tyler shook his head. “Maddie, maybe you’d better start at the beginning. None of this is making any sense.”

“No, I suppose not,” she said, then sighed. “Okay, from the beginning, and believe me, this is the short version. I told you that my father died when I was in my teens.”

“Yes.”

“He didn’t just die. He committed suicide.” Her gaze met his, then darted away. “I blamed your father.”

Tyler was incredulous. “Why?”

“Because he had fired my father. My father was never the same after that. I suppose a doctor would say he became clinically depressed, but I only knew that day by day I was losing the father I had adored because of a ruthless man.”

“My father?”

She nodded. “I came here to get even for that.”

“Then you did set out to use me to get close to my father,” he said flatly. Even understanding why she had done that didn’t make him feel any better about it. Had there been one, single, honest moment between them? Was there anything about those weeks that he could believe, that he could trust?

Anything on which to build a future?

She twisted her hands in her lap, her expression filled with sorrow. “I hated what I was doing. The better I got to know you, the more difficult it became to go on deceiving you. I kept trying to keep some distance between us…” she said, leaving the rest unspoken.

Tyler filled in for her. “But I wouldn’t let you.”

“And I wanted that closeness,” she insisted. “Not for the story, for me. No one had ever treated me the way you did, as if I really mattered.”

“You did matter,” he admitted reluctantly. He hadn’t wanted her to, but she had. There was no point in denying it to her or himself.

“Not enough to keep my father alive,” she said bleakly. “My mother, my brothers and I weren’t enough reason for him to want to live. Can you imagine what that did to all of us?”

Tyler had told himself that he could never feel anything for Maddie again, but he did. He felt an unbearable sense of pity for that lost young girl whose father had chosen death, even when he had so much to live for.

“It must have hurt terribly,” he said. “And it must have made you hate my father.”

“I was devastated. And getting even with him, finding some way to bring him down, became the single most important goal in my life. That’s what I came here to do, but I kept losing sight of my goal.”

“Why?”

“Because I was falling in love with you,” she admitted.

Tyler didn’t want to believe her, because in some
ways that would make what she had ultimately done even more difficult to bear. She had loved him, yet she had betrayed him in an unimaginable way. She had lied to him, not just once, but over and over. How could he ever trust a woman like that again?

“You came here digging for dirt,” he summed up. “And you found it, not in my father’s past, but in my mother’s.”

The disbelief that registered in her eyes appeared genuine. “Your mother? What does she have to do with it?”

“The affair,” he said, hating the tawdry word. But the truth was, he was alive because his mother had slept with another man.

“But it was your father…” she began slowly, then stared at him with dawning horror. “It wasn’t, was it? He was never the one who cheated.”

“No.”

“Oh, my God, why didn’t I see that?”

“Because you weren’t looking for it, I imagine. Who would? I sure as hell didn’t. My mother has made it her life’s work to appear to be the devoted wife. And, as I understand it, ever since that one time, she has been exactly that. She and my father would probably have forgotten all about her lapse, if it weren’t for one constant reminder.”

“Reminder?”

“Me.” Even as the word left his mouth, he saw her eyes widen in shock, much as his must have done as he’d listened to his mother destroy everything he’d believed to be true about his identity.

“You are not Bryce Delacourt’s son?” Maddie asked incredulously.

He watched her closely and knew that not even this woman who had been deceiving him for weeks now could feign such a stunned reaction.

“You honestly didn’t know, did you?”

“No.”

“Then what the hell was this all about? Why were you questioning my mother, if you didn’t know the truth, if you weren’t planning to use this juicy Delacourt scandal to get your revenge?”

“I thought…” She waved off whatever she’d been about to say. “Never mind. Obviously I had it all wrong.”

“Had what all wrong? Maddie, what did you think you knew? I think I have a right to know.”

“I was convinced your father was having an affair with Pamela Davis in accounting, that he accused my father of embezzlement because he was covering for the woman who was really responsible.”

Tyler had thought things couldn’t get any more complicated, but
embezzlement?
Where had that come from?

“You’re going to have to help me here. I’m lost again.”

“While I was doing my research, I found a clipping in which my father was accused of embezzling money from Delacourt Oil. That was the reason your father fired him, not some simple accounting error, which is what I’d always believed. There was a woman in the accounting department, Pamela Davis, the only other person who would have had access to the missing funds. I asked some questions, then leaped to an apparently faulty conclusion that she and your father were involved. That’s what I was trying to confirm
when I had lunch with your mother. That’s why I forced the issue with her, asked a lot of vague questions about betrayal and infidelity. I thought once I had all of the facts to humiliate your father, I could do what I’d come here to do and walk away. Because of my feelings for you, everything had gotten far too complicated.”

“So even though you claim to have loved me, it wasn’t enough to stop your vendetta?”

“Can’t you see? I thought I owed it to my father. I know it was wrong and I’m sorry for the pain I caused you,” she whispered. “This wasn’t personal. If it had been, I could have used what you told me about Jen and your daughter. This wasn’t about you. It was never about you.”

“Well, pardon me if I think that discovering I’ve been living a lie my entire life is damned personal.”

“I didn’t know where this would lead, not when I started. Not even when I went to your mother. I just wanted your father to pay.”

“Well, you certainly got what you wanted, didn’t you? This will make tabloid fodder for weeks to come.”

“No, it won’t,” she insisted. “I couldn’t use anything I had…or thought I had. Even when I had enough information to cause your father and everyone in your family the kind of pain I felt years ago, I couldn’t do it. I quit my job yesterday. And I paid back every penny Carpenter gave me. Now I really am looking for work again.”

“Doing what? Destroying lives?” he asked heatedly.

“Never again,” she whispered. “Not when I’ve seen what it can cost.”

Tyler’s gaze locked on hers. “Why the turnaround? I don’t buy this sudden conversion to honest journalism.”

“God help me,” she whispered, “because I love you, because I didn’t like the woman I had become, obsessed with the past and willing to hurt anyone because of it. I want to be the kind of woman you thought I was, the kind who deserves a life with a man like you.”

Tyler wanted to protest that she didn’t know the meaning of love, but she stepped close and touched a silencing finger to his lips. It was an innocent gesture, but it made him want things he’d sworn never to have again. It made him want her. It required every ounce of self-control he possessed to keep from reaching for her.

“I don’t know if it will ever be possible for you to forgive me, but I want you to remember one thing—in the end I couldn’t go through with any of it, because I love you with all my heart. I knew it the day I saw you walking out of your parents’ house looking as if your entire world had collapsed. You were all that mattered to me then.”

“The damage has been done,” Tyler said, his tone deliberately icy. “My life is a shambles. My parents are devastated. What does it matter that none of it will appear in a headline in Carpenter’s rag?”

“I know, and I’m sorry. More sorry than you’ll ever know.” She looked him in the eye. “It probably doesn’t seem that way now, but isn’t it better that you know the truth? If only I had known the truth about
my father years ago, none of this would have happened. Maybe, in the end, that was my father’s worst betrayal.”

Tyler couldn’t deny that a part of him was glad to know about Daniel, even though he had yet to go and see him. It would take some time before he learned how to juggle his emotions when it came to these two very different fathers—the one who had given him life and the one who had raised him.

Maybe it was true what they said, that the truth would set him free—from Bryce Delacourt’s control and from the demands he placed on himself to live up to his father’s expectations. Right now, though, that seemed scant comfort.

“I wish I could let you off the hook that easily, Maddie, but I can’t. There have been too many lies between us.”

“Yes, I suppose there have been,” she said, her expression sad, her eyes bright with unshed tears.

Shoulders squared proudly, she walked to the door of his office, then turned back for one last look. “Goodbye, Tyler.”

This time when she turned to go, he didn’t try to stop her.

Maddie closed the door to Tyler’s office, then leaned back against it and let the tears flow unchecked. She had never felt so alone in all her life, not even on the day she had buried her mother and stood beside that grave with absolutely no one to offer comfort.

There had been a hundred moments in Tyler’s office when she had wanted to throw herself into his
arms, when she had wanted to comfort him and beg for his forgiveness, but his rigid self-control had stopped her. Tyler might not hate her, but he definitely didn’t want her in his life. That much had been clear.

“Are you all right?” his secretary asked, regarding Maddie sympathetically.

“No,” she admitted candidly, then drew herself up. “But I will be.”

After all, survival instincts were second nature to her. Or were they? She had survived her father’s emotional abandonment and his suicide only by focusing on revenge. How would she cope with the loss of Tyler when there was no one to blame but herself?

She walked out of Delacourt Oil, then paused on the steaming pavement and looked up, trying to guess which was the office from which she had just come. In the towering skyscraper, there was no way to tell one window from another, but she wanted to believe—needed to believe—that Tyler was looking down, watching her walk away. That gave her the strength to keep her chin up and her step brisk.

The tactic was effective until she was all the way down the block and out of sight. Then her shoulders slumped and the tears stung her eyes again.

Just when she thought she couldn’t bear it, her cell phone rang. Surprised because very few people had the number, she fumbled in her purse and pulled it out.

“Hello.”

“Maddie? Is that you?”

She recognized Harlan Adams’s voice at once. “Grandpa Harlan,” she whispered brokenly, trying
the name out as he’d instructed, finding comfort in it in a way she hadn’t imagined possible. Even if it was an illusion, she felt as if she had family, after all.

“You’ve seen him, then?” he said, his tone sympathetic.

“Do you have spies everywhere?”

“Just about, but it wasn’t my sources who told me this. I could hear it in your voice. It didn’t go well?”

“No,” she said wearily. “It didn’t go well. I’ve cost him too much.”

“He’ll come around, child. If the feelings were real, he will come around.”