The Pint-Sized Secret

by Sherryl Woods

  “That’s nice of you to say. I’ve always been fond of him, too,” Brianna said. But that could change, she thought. Right now she was seriously considering murdering the man, if he was guilty of what Jordan Adams had suggested.

  When she got to her place, she found Jeb once again waiting on the doorstep. She wasn’t entirely sure how she felt about the man’s persistence. However, there was no earthly reason for him to see her ambivalence.

  “This is getting to be a habit,” she said. “A bad one.”

  Jeb ignored the gibe. “Where have you been? Those errands must have really piled up.”

  She frowned at his sarcasm. “Where I go and what I do are none of your concern.”

  “Now, darlin’, you know that’s not entirely true. Even if I weren’t crazy about you, there’s the little matter of corporate espionage to be considered.”

  “Oh, get off it. I’m not guilty and you know it. That’s just an excuse to hang around here and drive me crazy.”

  He regarded her with evident curiosity. “Do I?”

  “Do you what?”

  “Drive you crazy?”

  “Isn’t it obvious?”

  “I was thinking of crazy in a good way,” he said, regarding her with a crooked grin.

  She bit back a chuckle. “And I wasn’t,” she retorted.

  “I guess I’ll have to work on my technique.”

  “You might want to start by not making unsubstantiated accusations.”

  “I’ve apologized for that.” He held up a bag. “And I’ve brought dinner. Chinese. All your favorites.”

  “You don’t know my favorites.”

  “Sure, I do. Mrs. Hanover told me what she orders for you when you’re staying late at the office. Carly advised me that crow would be better, but I couldn’t find it on the menu.”

  “Mrs. Hanover has a big mouth. She probably ought to be fired.”

  “In order to fire her, you’d have to come back to work.” He regarded her hopefully. “Are you considering that?”

  “Nope. Not until this mess is cleared up, anyway.” Suddenly overwhelmed by how complicated her life had become, she blinked back tears, turned away and focused her attention on finding her key.

  “Brianna?”

  “What?”

  “I really am sorry for my part in all of this.”

  Once again, he sounded genuinely contrite, but that didn’t make the mess go away. It didn’t clear her name. She gazed down at him. “Speaking of which, what did you do today to stir things up?”

  He held up the bag. “Can I come in and share this with you? We can talk about it.”

  Chinese and Jeb’s company? How could she turn either of them down, when her refrigerator was empty and her spirits were low? Otherwise she was likely to spend the long evening indulging in a heavy bout of self-pity that would serve no useful purpose whatsoever. If he spent the evening doing little more than aggravating her, having him around would be worthwhile.

  “You might as well,” she said grudgingly.

  He grinned and followed her inside. “I would have preferred a little more enthusiasm, but I’m grateful for whatever I can get.”

  Brianna dished up the lukewarm sweet-and-sour chicken and the spicier Kung Po chicken, then popped them into the microwave. “What would you like to drink?”

  “Soda, beer, iced tea—whatever you have is fine,” Jeb told her, moving efficiently to set the table.

  Brianna couldn’t help noticing that after only a few visits, he was as familiar with her cupboards as she was. For some reason, she found it annoying that he was so blasted comfortable in her home. She had allowed that. She had invited him into her home, into her life—into her bed, dammit—and he had turned right around and betrayed her.

  She moved directly into his path, blocking his movements. With knives and forks in one hand and napkins in the other, he stared down at her. “What?”

  “How could you do it?” she asked plaintively. “How could you turn on me?”

  “I never turned on you,” he protested.

  “It sure as hell felt that way.”

  “I hardly knew you when this began. I was protecting my family.”

  “Not then,” she said. “Later. After…”

  “After we’d slept together?” he asked, his gaze locked with hers. Heat shimmered in the air as the memories of that night in London came flooding back. “After we’d started to fall in love?”

  “Yes,” she whispered. “After that.”

  “It was still about family.” He shrugged ruefully. “At least, I thought it was. I told myself I had a duty.”

  Something in his tone alerted her that something had changed. “And now? Has something happened to change that?”

  His gaze locked with hers. “You know it has.”

  “Has it really, Jeb? When it comes right down to making a choice, who will you choose?”

  “Not who,” he told her. “What. I’ll choose the truth, whatever it is.”

  “No matter who gets hurt?” she asked, thinking of his father and his apparent involvement.

  “Brianna—”

  She cut him off. “Someone is going to get hurt, Jeb. It’s too late to stop it now. This whole ridiculous thing has spun out of control, and all because you wanted to prove something to your father.” Or because his father had some crazy scheme up his sleeve, she amended to herself.

  Jeb winced at the accusation. He dropped the silverware and napkins onto the table, started to say something and then stopped. Instead, he reached out and touched her cheek with a tenderness that made her heart ache.

  “Not you,” he said softly. “You’re not going to get hurt, Brianna. I’ll see to it.”

  “I’ve already been hurt,” she reminded him. “And there’s more to come. You, your family. It really is spiraling out of our control.”

  He regarded her with obvious confusion. “I don’t understand. Do you know something?”

  She thought of what Jordan Adams had revealed earlier about Bryce’s involvement. Should she share that with Jeb now? Warn him? No. She wouldn’t do to him what he had done to her. She wouldn’t act on unsubstantiated rumors or pass along half-truths. Not that she believed for a second that Jordan Adams had lied to her. She just didn’t know all of the facts. She wouldn’t until she had talked to Bryce. It was a courtesy she wished someone had extended to her at the outset.

  “Not yet,” she said finally. “But I’m getting close, Jeb.”

  To her surprise, he said, “So am I.”

  “Will you tell me?”

  He hesitated, then shook his head. Brianna sighed. Once again, they were at a stalemate. The lack of trust hovered in the air, an unwanted guest standing squarely between two people who’d had such high hopes for the future only a few short days ago. Given time, love could be the most powerful emotion on earth. In its earliest moments, however, it was as fragile as a spring blossom in a late blizzard.

  In the end, she thought that was what she might never forgive Jeb for. He had restored her faith in men, only to snatch it away within days. He had proved once and for all that the only person she could really count on was herself. It was a desperately lonely way to live. She already knew that. But it was safe, and sometimes safe was the best a woman could do.

  Jeb hated what was happening to him and Brianna. For every step closer they took, there were a dozen more to separate them. The distance was growing by the minute.

  He had seen the hurt and anguish shimmering in her eyes the night before, along with the tears she had determinedly blinked back. It might have been easier if she had raged at him and let the tears flow. But that quiet resignation, that unshakable acceptance that the future was over for the two of them, was impossible to battle.

  Wherever the chips fell, he had to bring an end to this. He wasn’t looking forward to confronting his father with his suspicions, but it had to be done. If he was wrong, he had no doubt that his relationship with his father would suffer irreparably just
as his with Brianna had.

  “What the hell am I supposed to do?” he asked Michael, who had the reputation of being the calm, rational one in the family.

  “Do you really think Dad was involved in all of this in some way, that he set it up?”

  “Dylan suspects it and, frankly, I think the whole thing stinks to high heaven. There is not one shred of evidence that Brianna—or anyone else, for that matter—was involved in leaking this information. I just wish I’d done the legwork before I started casting blame on Brianna, instead of after. I should have listened to Dad when he warned me to leave it all alone. Obviously he knew more than he was saying.”

  “At least you’ve learned a valuable lesson, even if it was the hard way.”

  “I don’t suppose you’d like to come along when I talk to Dad?” he asked halfheartedly, already knowing the likely response.

  Michael held up his hands. “No way. I’ve got enough problems keeping Grace Foster in check. I’ll just wait nearby to pick up the pieces after the explosion.”

  “Coward.”

  “Sensible,” Michael corrected. “Somebody has to be in one piece to run this place when the dust settles.”

  “Thanks for your support,” Jeb said, though without real rancor. Michael was just being sensible, as always. “Where’s Tyler?”

  “If he’s smart, nowhere near Houston. Forget it, Jeb. You’re on your own.”

  Jeb glanced toward his father’s office next door, then sighed. “Wish me luck.”

  “Always, bro. Something tells me you’re going to need it. I can’t wait for a full report.”

  Jeb drew in a deep breath, then marched out of Michael’s office, through the reception area, past an indignant, protesting Mrs. Fletcher and straight into his father’s office.

  Stunned by the sight that greeted him, he halted halfway in. Brianna was facing his father, her hands braced on his desk, the color high in her cheeks. At the sight of Jeb, the flush deepened. His father heaved a sigh of apparent resignation.

  “Okay, sit down, son. You might as well hear this, too. Brianna, take a seat.” For the first time in Jeb’s memory, his father looked less than totally sure of himself. His gaze met Jeb’s, then Brianna’s, then fell.

  “Much as it pains me to admit it, I’ve made a damned mess of things,” he muttered.

  Jeb wasn’t about to argue with that, even without knowing the whole story. “Maybe you should start at the beginning, Dad.”

  “I’m not sure I know precisely when that was. I suppose it goes back to losing Trish and Dylan.”

  “Dad, you didn’t ‘lose’ them,” Jeb protested. “They made different choices for their lives, but they still love you. And what does that have to do with this?”

  “Maybe they do still love me, but it seemed as if nothing was working out the way I’d planned. I built this company from nothing, and I did it for the five of you. I dreamed of all of us working together. I wanted an oil dynasty.”

  Jeb glanced at Brianna and saw that she was listening intently, if somewhat skeptically. He couldn’t blame her. All of this Delacourt family history must seem like the weakest of excuses for what had apparently happened. Not that he fully understood what that was just yet. His father’s cryptic remarks were hardly illuminating.

  “Go on,” Jeb encouraged.

  His father’s gaze met his. “This all started as a way to keep you interested in the company,” he murmured so low that Jeb had difficulty hearing him.

  When he grasped what his father was trying to say, he stared incredulously. “Me? This was about me?”

  “Yes.”

  “I think you’d better explain that one.”

  “I didn’t want you defecting, too. I knew you wanted to join up with your brother as an investigator. I thought maybe if you had that kind of work to do around here, you wouldn’t be so anxious to leave. I began planting the idea that we had problems.” He smiled. “I certainly didn’t have to say much. You leaped right on it, but I knew as soon as you started looking very deep, you’d see that there was nothing, so I…” His voice trailed off.

  Jeb got the picture just the same. Even though it was what he’d begun to suspect, he was still incredulous. “So you sabotaged your own deals?”

  “More or less,” his father admitted. He regarded Brianna apologetically. “I never meant to get you involved, but I have to admit I was grateful when my son began showing an interest in you. That was the icing on the cake. I’d hope you would be one more reason for him to stick around. I thought maybe you could do what I couldn’t, spark his interest in staying right here at Delacourt Oil.”

  “So Jordan Adams was right,” Brianna said, clearly every bit as stunned as Jeb. “You manipulated this, from beginning to end.”

  “Guilty,” his father admitted.

  “You wanted to turn it into some sort of bizarre matchmaking scheme?” she asked, clearly dumbstruck by the absurdity of the lengths to which he’d gone.

  “At first, it was just a way to hold on to Jeb. In the end, yes, I was matchmaking. I saw the two of you getting closer and I wanted something to happen. I knew if you spent enough time together, it would. I know my son, Brianna, better than he thinks I do. I knew he would leap to defend the company and, given time, he would leap to defend you.” He surveyed the two of them. “In a way, that’s exactly what’s happened, isn’t it?”

  Jeb didn’t even try to deny that part. “Dad, why the hell would you cook up a crazy scheme like that?” he asked. “It’s not your style. You’ve done a lot of things to keep us tied to the company, but you’ve always left our personal lives alone.”

  His father shrugged, his expression sheepish. “I kept hearing from Trish and Dylan and from Jordan Adams before them about what a wonder Harlan Adams was, how he meddled in everyone’s lives and they loved him for it. I suppose I figured I could pull it off, too. That I could keep what was left of my family together and watch it grow.”

  Jeb would have laughed if the situation weren’t so pathetic. “You were jealous of Harlan Adams?”

  “Not of his money or his power,” his father said. “Of his family. His keeps growing, and mine is getting smaller and smaller. I’m sorry. I can’t say it enough. I just pray I haven’t messed up everything for the two of you. That would be my biggest regret.”

  He walked out from behind his desk and gave Brianna’s shoulder a squeeze. “I truly am sorry. I sincerely regret any pain I’ve caused you. I hope you’ll forgive me and I hope you’ll stay on here.”

  Jeb waited for her reply almost as eagerly as his father, but she seemed dazed. “I need some time. I have to think about all of this,” she said eventually.

  “That’s all I’m asking,” his father said. “Think about what you’d be giving up if you left, too. Whatever you decide, though, I will see to it that Emma continues to get the care she needs. She’s a remarkable little girl and you’re a remarkable woman. I would have been blessed to have you become a part of this family. And if this stubborn son of mine has a grain of sense left, he’ll make it happen, despite what I’ve done.”

  “Dad,” Jeb warned. He didn’t want his father making his proposal for him. Jeb had a hunch Bryce wouldn’t have any better luck than Jeb himself was likely to have. They were both lucky that Brianna wasn’t the type to go for the jugular, even if she had hired an attorney who would. They had both made terrible mistakes and deserved whatever she felt like dishing out in the way of punishment.

  His father moved to stand in front of him. “I owe you an apology, too, son. I wouldn’t blame you if you never spoke to me again.”

  Jeb heard the genuine regret and real fear in his father’s voice and let some of his anger slip away. “Oh, I think you can count on hearing quite a lot from me once Brianna and I have settled a few things.”

  His father nodded, accepting that things between the two of them were far from over. “Then I’ll leave you to it.”

  Brianna watched Bryce Delacourt walk out of his office with
a sense of dismay. She thought she understood what had driven him to make such a mistaken attempt to control his family. She could almost forgive the depth of desperation that must have been driving him. She knew that she, too, would do anything to keep Emma in her life and, when the time came, to assure her happiness with the right man at her side. Hopefully, though, she wouldn’t resort to such a risky brand of matchmaking.

  But if Bryce’s motives were clear, Jeb’s were anything but. She didn’t understand how a man who purported to love her could have so thoroughly misread her. She wasn’t even sure anymore that it mattered. Bottom line: when the chips were down, he’d distrusted her. She simply couldn’t get past that. She doubted that she ever would.

  When she met his gaze, she saw that he was waiting, watching her warily.

  “I can’t believe my father did something like that,” he said finally.

  “It was all about family,” she said. “The same way it was with you. Perhaps the two of you are more alike than you realize.”

  Jeb didn’t seem at all comfortable with the comparison. “I imagine you’re not crazy about any of us at the moment.”

  “Not especially,” she agreed candidly.

  “This may not be the right time to get into this, but I’d like another chance with you,” he said. “I want you to know that up front. I’d like to prove that I’m not quite the jerk I must seem right now, that none of the Delacourts are. Give us a chance, Brianna. Let me make things right.”

  “I don’t think that’s possible,” she said coolly, even though her heart ached.

  “Just say you’ll try.”

  She shook her head, ignoring the pangs of regret. “No, Jeb. I need someone in my life I can count on, not someone who’ll think the worst of me so easily.” She might not have a lot of answers right now, but she knew that much. She stood and turned to go.

  To her surprise, he didn’t argue. “Will you accept my father’s offer and stay at Delacourt Oil?” he asked instead.

  She turned back, met his gaze. “I honestly don’t know.”