The Delacourt Scandal

by Sherryl Woods

  “I haven’t spoken to her since yesterday morning,” Tyler said.

  “What do you mean you haven’t spoken to her? I thought she was living there.”

  “She is, but she got in after I’d gone to bed. What is it you think she’s done?”

  “I’m telling you I don’t know, but she’s got your mother over here sobbing her eyes out. She’s been up half the night. If she keeps it up much longer, she’s going to make herself sick. I don’t know what the hell is going on, but I don’t like it, son. I don’t like it one bit. Nobody messes with your mother and gets away with it.”

  “If she was this upset after she saw Maddie, why didn’t you call me sooner?”

  “Because your mother told me not to. She insisted she needed time to think. Think about what, I ask you?”

  Tyler didn’t like the sound of this. It was one thing for his mother to work herself into a state. It was quite another for his father—the king of calm—to panic like this. More was going on here than his father had said.

  “I’ll be right there,” Tyler said. “Don’t worry, Dad. I’ll get to the bottom of this. I’ll see what I can find out from Maddie before I leave here.”

  He pulled on his clothes and headed for the door. To his surprise Maddie met him in the hall, looking groggy and more desirable than he wanted her to.

  “Come with me,” he said tersely, hauling her toward the kitchen. He put on a pot of coffee as she sat at the table and watched him warily.

  “Is something wrong?” she asked finally.

  “What was your first clue? The phone call at the crack of dawn or my mood?”

  “Tyler, if there’s a problem, just spit it out. Who called?”

  “My father.”

  Was it his imagination or did her complexion turn pale?

  “Oh? Is everything okay over there?”

  “Apparently not. It seems my mother has been upset ever since she saw you yesterday afternoon. You wouldn’t have any idea why, would you?”

  He poured them both a cup of steaming, strong coffee, then sat across from her. “Well?”

  Her gazed clashed with his. “I don’t think I like your implication or your tone.”

  “Well, there’s a whole lot right now that I don’t like, but let’s stick to this for the moment. What went on between you and my mother?”

  She stared at him silently, and for the longest time he wasn’t sure she was going to respond. Finally she said defensively, “I met her at the country club. We had lunch. She said she wasn’t feeling well and she left. End of story.”

  “Did you happen to chat about anything that might have disturbed her?”

  “Tyler, what did she say? Did she blame me for upsetting her?”

  “No, but my father seems to have pieced that theory together from the timing of her hysteria and from what she has said.”

  “I’m sorry. I like your mother, and I really am sorry if I did or said something that made her uncomfortable. It wasn’t intentional.”

  Tyler listened for a false note, but he didn’t hear one. She seemed to be sincere. “I want to believe that,” he said.

  Hurt registered in her eyes. “But you don’t,” she replied, her tone flat.

  “How can I? My father doesn’t tend to overreact, and he’s practically bouncing off walls. My mother’s been crying for hours. I’m just looking for answers.”

  “Well, I don’t have any.”

  “Dammit, Maddie, you were the last person she saw. I’ll ask you again, what did you talk about? Be specific.”

  “You and me. Marriage. That sort of thing.”

  “Did you tell her that you and I were just friends, that there was no wedding on the horizon?” he asked, wondering if that would have been enough to set his mother off. She hated to have her plans thwarted.

  “I told her she’d have to discuss anything like that with you.”

  “You did say you talked about marriage, though?”

  “Just in general. What it takes to make a good one, that sort of thing.”

  There was nothing in that to set off hysteria, at least not that Tyler could see. This wasn’t getting him anywhere, and it was evident from Maddie’s tight-lipped expression that she didn’t intend to reveal anything more.

  “I’d better get over there.”

  “Would you like me to come? I’d like to help if I can.”

  Tyler shook his head. “I don’t think that would be such a good idea, not until I get to the bottom of this.”

  “Tyler, I really am sorry,” she said, looking at him with apparent regret.

  He put his empty coffee cup into the sink and automatically filled it with water. Then he slowly turned back to Maddie. “Are you absolutely certain you don’t know what this is about?”

  “Even if I did, it wouldn’t be my place to tell you,” she said.

  He stared, trying to interpret her response. “What the hell does that mean?”

  She returned his gaze, defiance mixed in with obvious misery. “Just go.”

  He made it as far as the door before he turned back one last time. “If you and I are going to have any sort of a future, it would be better if you told me everything, rather than make me drag it out of my mother.”

  But Maddie just shook her head. “I can’t. It’s not up to me,” she repeated.

  There it was again, that same vague hint that more had gone on than what she’d admitted to thus far. “What isn’t up to you? Blast it all, Maddie, what did the two of you get into at lunch? Did you fight?”

  “No.”

  “What then?”

  “Please, Tyler, just go. She obviously needs you.”

  Since that was exactly what his father had said, he knew he couldn’t stick around and try to get the truth out of Maddie. Clearly she didn’t intend to say another word.

  “I’ll be back,” he said in a tone that could only be interpreted as a warning. He had the uneasy sense, though, that Maddie might not be there when he returned.

  The quiet click of the front door sent a shudder through Maddie. She pulled her knees up to her chin and stretched her oversize T-shirt over her legs.

  “What have I done?” she murmured. Obviously she had opened up a hornet’s nest in the Delacourt household. What confused her, though, was that Bryce Delacourt didn’t seem to understand why his wife was so distraught. Surely if Maddie had ripped the scab off the wound of his old affair, Helen Delacourt would have lashed out at him about it.

  Was he genuinely at a loss over his wife’s distress? Had Maddie somehow gotten it wrong about the affair? Tyler’s mother hadn’t actually confirmed that there had been an affair, not in those precise words, though Maddie couldn’t see any other way to interpret either what she did say or her reactions.

  “She denied it,” she reminded herself aloud. “In no uncertain terms.”

  Was it possible that Maddie really had gotten it all wrong? If so, then why was Mrs. Delacourt so distraught now?

  Maddie would have given anything to go with Tyler just to see Bryce Delacourt squirming. It would have been the perfect opportunity to get every last piece of evidence she needed to publicly humiliate him. But she hadn’t been able to bring herself to force the issue when Tyler had refused to let her come along. And the truth was that she wasn’t sure she could stomach it if her presence brought Helen Delacourt any more pain.

  When the phone rang a few minutes later, she grabbed it, hoping it was Tyler with an update. Instead, an unfamiliar man’s voice said, “Maddie?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is Dylan. Tyler’s oldest brother.”

  “Oh, hello.”

  “Is my brother there?”

  “No, he had to go out.”

  “At this hour?”

  “Your father called and asked him to come over.”

  “Why? It wasn’t his heart again, was it?”

  “No, I believe your mother was feeling a little under the weather,” she said, proud of the innocuous way she managed
to make the early-morning visit sound. “Shall I have Tyler call you when he gets back?”

  “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?

  Chapter Twelve

  Tyler 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.”