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Something about the comment stirred Tyler’s suspicions. 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 everything, 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 conversation 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.
In fact, he’d looked so down, so totally alone, that she’d almost felt sorry for him. If he had been anyone other than a Delacourt, she wouldn’t have let him get away without convincing him to spill his guts. Since he was a Delacourt, she had known she had to proceed with caution, not scare him off with her limitless curiosity.
She flipped open her cell phone and called Griffin Carpenter, as promised.
“I made contact tonight,” she told him.
“With Delacourt?”
“No, with his son, Tyler. There’s something going on with him.”
“We’re looking for something on Bryce, not his son.”
“But if I can get Tyler to open up, to trust me enough to confide in me, I’m in. He’ll pave the way with the rest of the family.”
“That’s your angle?” Griffin asked worriedly. “Maddie, watch yourself. Tyler’s got a reputation with women. At least, he did before he started spending so much time out of town, working on that rig over in Louisiana. Forget about Tyler. Why not get a job at the company, something that’ll give you access to their files?”
She wasn’t about to explain that any, even the most superficial, background check by Delacourt Oil’s personnel office would reveal her link to a man who’d once been fired. They’d never hire her.
“I like my way better. I can handle Tyler,” she assured her boss. “I’ll be in touch.”
She put the cell phone back in her purse and thought about the man who’d just left. Thank heaven he wasn’t her type. With his blond hair, dimpled smile and muscled build, he was too good-looking by far, too used to having women swoon at the sight of him, no doubt.
When she’d first seen him a few nights ago, she had been surprised by his preference for jeans and chambray shirts, rather than fancy suits; for sturdy work boots, rather than expensive cowboy boots. He’d told her he worked on an oil rig, and he certainly looked as if he could handle hard work. In fact, she could imagine him out on a rig in the blazing sun, his chest bare, muscles rippling. The unexpected image left her mouth surprisingly dry.
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.”
