The Delacourt Scandal

Where had that come from? she wondered, not one bit pleased by the reaction.

“You need another drink?” the bartender asked.

Maddie nodded. When the ginger ale came, she drank it down in one long gulp, but it didn’t seem to do much for her parched throat. This wasn’t good, not good at all.

Repeat after me, she instructed herself. Tyler Delacourt is the son of the man who destroyed your father. Therefore, Tyler Delacourt is a despicable toad. Tyler Delacourt is pond scum.

Tyler Delacourt is the sexiest man I’ve ever met.

Maddie moaned at the traitorous thought. This assignment had just gotten a whole lot more complicated. Maybe she would be better off trying to slide her credentials past personnel and accepting some bland, innocuous job taking dictation at Delacourt Oil.

With a shudder she dismissed the idea. Tyler Delacourt was vulnerable. She had seen it in his bleak expression. Her hormones had never been a problem before. She could certainly keep them in check now. She was too close to her goal to let anything—least of all a handsome Delacourt—get in her way.

Chapter Two

Tyler avoided O’Reilly’s—and the very disconcerting Maddie—for the next few nights. In fact, he pretty much stayed in his apartment for a solid week, sorting through the options he had for the rest of his life. He ignored the phone, letting his answering machine take messages, most of which were from his increasingly impatient father. There was no getting away from the fact that the time had come to make a decision, and no matter which one he made, there was going to be hell to pay.

When he got a call from Daniel Corrigan, supervisor of operations on the rig and Tyler’s boss, Tyler thought about ignoring it, too, but something in Daniel’s voice as he left a curt message told him that he shouldn’t. He snatched up the phone just as the older man was about to hang up.

“Daniel, what’s up?”

“Good. You’re there. Now the question is, when are you coming back here?”

“Why? Is there a problem?”

“That’s what I want to know. I had a call from your father this morning telling me not to expect you back. I wanted to hear it from you before I filled the position. I told him that, too. I figured if you’d decided to quit, you owed it to me to call yourself.” He hesitated then added wryly, “It also occurred to me that you might not know about it.”

It looked as if the matter was about to be snatched out of Tyler’s hands, unless he took some decisive action. He muttered a harsh expletive under his breath, then assured Daniel, “I’ll take care of it.”

“That’s not really answering my question now, is it, Tyler?”

“Look, I’m sorry you’re caught in the middle on this. I’m trying to work it out. For now, though, don’t fill that job, not until you hear from me.”

“Anything I can do to help, like reminding you that you’re the best man I’ve got on the job over here?”

Tyler couldn’t help being pleased by the compliment. Daniel Corrigan was an incredibly demanding man, one of the best the company had, Tyler’s father conceded, even though there was some bad blood between the two men.

Daniel had been with Delacourt Oil for most of his life. He was loyal to the company, but even more fiercely loyal to the men who risked their lives working the rigs. He’d tried a desk job briefly nearly thirty years earlier, but by grudging mutual agreement with Bryce Delacourt, he’d gone back to working the rigs. Bryce had never entirely forgiven Daniel for abandoning the corporate role he’d been offered. Tyler assumed that was the main source of the friction between them.

In addition, it was evident that his father didn’t much like the bond that had formed years earlier between Daniel and Tyler. The older man had taken Tyler under his wing when he’d first expressed an interest in learning the business literally from the ground up. Even though Bryce was no longer in any position to spend time in the oil fields with a curious young boy, he’d been resentful of turning the task over to another man. Stubborn, even as a kid, and sure of his own interests, Tyler had had to badger him into it.

Now, when Tyler didn’t respond, Daniel sighed heavily. “I suppose this is none of my business, but is this mood you’re obviously in really about work?”

“Of course it is,” Tyler insisted, guessing where his boss might be headed.

“You sure of that? Or is it about Jen? I know that accident tore you up inside. You’ve been brooding about it for months now. Have you even told your family what happened?”

Tyler regretted ever telling his boss about Jen, but at the time he’d felt he had no choice. He’d had to give Daniel a way to reach him if he was unexpectedly needed on the rig. As a result Daniel had been the one who’d come into Baton Rouge personally to deliver the news when Tyler’s father had suffered a heart attack a year ago. He’d also been the one to break the news about the accident. The police had found Daniel’s office number in Jen’s purse as an emergency means to contact Tyler. Despite all that, it didn’t mean the man had a right to go picking at the scabs on Tyler’s emotional wounds.

“Daniel—”

“You listen to me,” his boss said sharply, ignoring the warning note in Tyler’s voice. “What happened wasn’t your fault.”

“You don’t know—”

“I know all I need to know,” Daniel retorted gruffly. “I saw how much you loved that woman and your daughter. You gave them everything Jen would let you. I’ve watched you suffering ever since they died. Grieving’s normal, but at some point you have to move on.”

Tyler sighed. “Okay, you’re right. It’s just not easy.”

“Of course it’s not. If it were, it wouldn’t say much about the love you two shared, now would it? My best advice? Get your sorry butt over here and get back to work.”

“If it were up to me, that is exactly what I’d do.”

“Who’s it up to, if not you?”

“You know Dad,” Tyler said wryly. “Michael’s away, so he’s staring around the corporate offices looking for a likely substitute. No matter how many times I explain it to him, he just doesn’t get the fact that I hate the whole suit-and-tie routine.”

“Wear blue jeans and an oil-stained T-shirt to the office,” Daniel suggested. “Maybe then he’ll get the picture.”

“Maybe then he’ll have another heart attack,” Tyler countered, not entirely in jest. “You know how he feels about the Delacourt image.”

“You can’t live your life for your father,” Daniel reminded him mildly. “I’m not trying to tell you what to do. I’m just saying it’s your life, and when it’s over, you’re the one who’ll have to live with any regrets. Personally, I figure the fewer I go out of here with, the better.”

That philosophy held a lot of appeal for Tyler, too. “Don’t fill that job just yet,” he said again. “I promise I’ll get back to you.”

“Don’t take too long. I’m getting too blasted old to be doing all the hard labor in your place.”

Tyler laughed. Daniel Corrigan could outlift and outscramble any man working for him, Tyler included. “Let me know when you’re ready to retire, old man. Maybe I’ll apply for that cushy job of yours.”

“Funny, kid. Very funny. I’ll give you till the end of next week. Then I’m hiring somebody who hasn’t got such a smart mouth.”

“Whatever you say.” His grin faded. “Thanks, Daniel. I owe you.”

“You do indeed, and I intend to keep reminding you of it.”

Tyler slowly replaced the receiver, then switched off the answering machine. Based on Daniel’s news, the clock was definitely ticking. He’d better have a decision before morning, and the strength of will to defend it. He needed total quiet and solitude to think this through. That and a pot of industrial-strength coffee to clear the cobwebs out of his brain.

He was on his third cup of coffee and his twelfth final decision when he was startled by a quiet, but insistent knock on his door. He stared at the closed door, trying to imagine who might be on the other side. Nobody got past the doorman downstairs without Tyler’s okay, not even family. And if his father had somehow managed it, there would have been nothing subtle about the knock. Bryce Delacourt would have been pounding on the wood to announce his displeasure with Tyler’s refusal to take his calls.

Since there had been no call upstairs, whoever it was couldn’t possibly know he was inside. Therefore, if he just ignored that incessant tapping, it would eventually stop. Or so he hoped.

Instead, he heard the scrape of a key in the lock, the murmur of voices, then saw the knob slowly twist. He was on his feet in a heartbeat.

“What the hell?” he demanded, jerking the door the rest of the way open and dragging a very startled Maddie Kent with it. “You!”

He stared from her to the apologetic doorman. “Rodney, what is the meaning of this?”

“She said you hadn’t been answering your phone. She said you’d been very upset and she was concerned about you. Since you hadn’t said anything about leaving town again and I hadn’t seen you for a couple of days myself, I figured it was worth checking out.”