“Don’t be snide, Tyler. I am going to tell you everything in my own way.”
Tyler felt a knot form in his stomach. “Everything?” he repeated. He didn’t like the sound of that. It implied there were terrible secrets that had been kept from him.
His mother clung to his hand. Her own was icy. “Years ago,” she began slowly, then faltered and reached for a glass of water on her bedside table. Only after she had taken a sip did she go on.
“Years ago your father and I were having problems, as many young couples do,” she said, her expression sad. “Marriage requires a lot of adjustments, and ours was no different. He was building up the company. I was feeling neglected, as if I were less important to him than some hole in the ground.”
Tyler grinned at her dismissal of the exploration for oil as little more than digging in the dirt, but he managed to keep silent.
“It’s not so unusual, really,” she said. “In fact, it probably happens more than any of us would like to admit.”
Knowing his father’s all-consuming obsession with Delacourt Oil even now, Tyler could easily imagine what it must have been like back then.
“What happened, Mother?”
She closed her eyes for a moment, as if gathering strength, then faced him squarely. “I turned to another man.”
Tyler rocked back on his heels and stared. His mother? An affair? He might have believed it of his father, but her? She was the most devoted wife he knew. Besides, what business was it of his? Why was she telling him such a thing? And why now?
She reached out and brushed his hair away from his face. A half smile touched her lips as she said gently, “That man was your father.”
Tyler heard the words, but he couldn’t seem to make sense of them. Bryce Delacourt wasn’t his father? How could that be? His whole life he had been treated as a Delacourt. He thought of Dylan, Jeb and Michael as his brothers, of Trish as his sister. How could that be a lie?
And yet it explained so much. Why he looked different. Why he had always felt a little like an outsider. Why he instinctively tried harder to be like Bryce Delacourt. Why his mother did treat him differently. She had been protective, as if she needed to shield him in some way. Now he understood why. She had been trying to ensure that he felt like the others, that he never felt excluded or different, but of course her behavior had had the opposite effect.
“Does Dad…?” He nearly choked on the word. “Bryce?”
His mother reacted angrily to his faltering inability to decide what to call the man he’d grown up thinking of as his father. “He is your father in every way that counts,” she said fiercely. “I won’t have you start thinking of him in any other way, Tyler.”
He accepted the rebuke with a nod. “Does he know?”
“He’s known from the beginning and he’s long since forgiven me. In fact, you saw his reaction earlier. It was as if he’d almost forgotten completely that we shared this secret. If anything, our marriage became stronger because he accepted you from the first day he set eyes on you. I loved him so much for that. Please, please, don’t let what I’m telling you ruin the relationship you have. I had to tell you now. I was so afraid Maddie was getting close to the truth.”
“But how is that possible? Why would she even care?”
“I don’t know, but it made me realize I couldn’t risk her being the one to tell you. This had to come from me. I had to be the one to make you understand that Bryce is your father. He’s earned the right to be.”
A million and one questions raced through his brain. He asked the first ones that came to mind. “But my real father? Who is he? Do I know him? Have I ever even seen him? Does he know?”
Tears welled up in her eyes then. “Please, Tyler, don’t do this.”
He hardened his heart against the tears. “Please, Mother, I have to know it all. I can’t settle for half the truth.”
The tears continued to roll down her cheeks unchecked. “Yes,” she said wearily, “I suppose not. It’s only right that it all come out. Then there will be nothing anyone can use against us.”
For an instant he was distracted. “Why would anyone use it against us?”
“Everyone has enemies, Tyler, especially the rich and powerful.”
Could Maddie be such an enemy? he wondered, half-shocked by the thought even as it made a terrible kind of sense. Because it wasn’t a question his mother could possibly answer, he went back to his original point.
“Who, Mother? Who is my real father?”
“Your biological father,” she corrected at once.
He sighed, but nodded. “Of course. Just tell me, please.”
She seemed to be drawing on some inner courage before she spoke, but at last she said in a voice barely above a whisper, “Daniel. Your father is Daniel Corrigan.”
Suddenly everything in his life clicked into place, as if a key piece of a jigsaw puzzle finally made all the rest fit. The bond between him and his boss—his father. The timing of Daniel’s decision years ago to return to the rigs. His father’s—Bryce’s—resentment of Daniel and of Tyler’s obvious affection for him.
“Does he know? Does Daniel know I’m his son?”
His mother nodded. “The moment I realized I was pregnant, I went to Daniel and told him. I also told him that, though I loved him dearly for what he had brought into my life when I desperately needed someone to pay attention to me, I wanted to stay married to Bryce if he would have me, that I needed to keep my family together.”
“And he agreed?”
“He was furious at first, but he knew me well enough to know that I wouldn’t change my mind. And he loved me enough not to fight me. Then I went to your father and told him. Confessing that I had betrayed him and that there was to be a child as a result was the most difficult thing I have ever had to do. Needless to say he was stunned, but being the kind of man he is, he accepted that some of the blame for what had happened belonged to him. And he loved me enough to forgive me, enough to accept you as his own. I’m not saying any of it was easy. It wasn’t, and it didn’t happen overnight, but the three of us sat down and worked it all out.”
Tyler shot to his feet, thinking of them sitting around some stupid conference table, deciding his fate. “How terribly civilized of you, Mother. Did anybody stop to consider me in all of this?”
“You were the only person we considered. We did what we all thought was for the best. Your father and I took a long, hard look at our problems and our marriage and decided we wanted to be together, that our vows meant something, even though I had broken faith.”
“And Daniel—did you consider his feelings at all? Did it matter that you were denying him his son?”
“He knew what we had was an illusion, a passionate interlude that never should have been, except that it gave you to us,” she said, then added emphatically, “to all of us, Tyler. We’ve shared you through the years, albeit without you being aware of it. It’s been a bitter pill for your father to swallow at times, seeing you go off to spend time with Daniel, but we agreed, just as Daniel agreed to keep his paternity a secret. He’s an honorable man, too, Tyler, and for a time he brought me a joy that I thought had gone from my life.”
Tyler struggled to accept the fact that his entire life had been built on a lie. People he had loved and trusted had lied to him about the most essential aspect of his life, his identity. An outsider had somehow picked up on it before he had.
He met his mother’s gaze. “And Maddie knows all of this?”
“I think so—or at least some of it. She was asking about my marriage, if it had always been strong. She asked whether it could weather an affair.”
Maddie had gone to his mother, not him. He wasn’t sure whether to bless her for that or to strangle her. And why did any of this matter to her? Did she intend to use it in some way?
“Mother, she didn’t threaten you, did she?”
“You mean blackmail?” his mother asked, seemingly shocked by the suggestion. “Good heavens, no. It was just that s
he was so close to hitting on the truth. I knew the secrecy had to end. That’s what I found upsetting. I wasn’t sure how you would take it.”
Tyler wasn’t sure, either. “It’s a lot to absorb.”
“Oh, darling, I know it is. But please don’t hate me. Don’t hate any of us. We did the best we could.”
He walked to the door without responding.
“Tyler, where are you going?”
“I honestly don’t know,” he said.
“Home?”
“I don’t know where that is.” Back to an apartment he had been sharing with a woman he clearly knew no better than he did his own family? Back to Baton Rouge and a job working for a man who just happened to be his biological father?
“Will you speak to your father before you go? Please,” she said anxiously. “It will destroy him if he loses you. Never once, not in all these years, has he treated you any differently than he has Dylan, Michael or Jeb. You’re as important to him as if you were his flesh and blood. Don’t discount that.”
Because even in his confusion he could see that Bryce Delacourt was as much a victim as he was, he nodded. “I’ll talk to him,” he promised.
He was about to open the door when he heard the catch in her throat and turned to see her holding back a sob. He had never been able to bear seeing her in pain. Even now he still couldn’t. He walked back and pressed a kiss to her damp cheek.
“We’ll work it out, Mother. It may take a little time, but we will work it out.”
Then he hurried from the room and went looking for his father. He found Bryce Delacourt in his study, on the phone, making travel arrangements. Bryce barked something into the phone, then hung up the minute he saw Tyler. There was something that might have been a flicker of fear in his eyes.
“She told you, then?”
Tyler nodded.
His father, always glib, seemed to be at a loss for words.
“Thank you,” Tyler said finally, not knowing what else to say.
His father stared at him in surprise. “For what?”
“For accepting me as your son.” Even though he hated that the truth had been kept from him, Tyler knew that what his father had done had been the most unselfish and caring act a man could possibly do. He had given Tyler his name, his home and, most important of all, his unstinting love.
“You are my son,” his father declared fiercely. “Never think that you’re not.” He sank back in his chair. “Though I suppose you’ll want to go to Daniel and tell him that you know. I’ll never get you back to the executive suite now that you know that you come by your love of the rigs naturally.”
“That was a foregone conclusion, anyway,” Tyler agreed with a half smile. “But I won’t be rushing back to see Daniel, not until I’ve grappled with all of the implications.”
“Damn that woman,” his father said heatedly. “If she hadn’t stirred all of this up…”
“Don’t blame Maddie,” he said. Her motives were something he needed to understand, something for which he might never forgive her, but the result of her actions had been that he’d learned a secret that never should have been kept from him for such a long time in the first place. “Whatever she said or did, it only brought out the truth. And the truth was long overdue.”
“Perhaps so,” his father said with a resigned sigh. “What will you do now?”
“I need to think. I need to see Maddie and understand her part in all of this.”
“Will you be okay?” his father asked with obviously sincere concern.
Tyler nodded. “Of course, I’m a Delacourt,” he said at once, then amended, “and a Corrigan. Can’t get much more strong-willed than that.”
His father gave a rueful chuckle. “No, I suppose not.”
“Will you and Mother be okay?”
“We made our peace about this years ago, when I realized that my single-minded focus on work almost cost me her love. But to prove I haven’t forgotten what’s most important in my life, I just got off the phone with my secretary and with the travel agent. I’m taking your mother on a cruise. She’s been clamoring to go around the world for years now.”
If he’d announced a decision to forsake his worldly possessions and become a monk, Tyler couldn’t have been any more shocked. “You’re taking off on an around-the-world cruise? You do know how long they last, don’t you? You can’t have changed that much in the past half hour.”
“Hardly,” his father agreed with a rueful expression. “I figure two weeks in the Greek Isles will get our feet wet. Best to find out if either of us gets seasick before I plan anything longer.” He regarded Tyler worriedly. “We could delay the trip if you’d like us to stay. I know you must have more questions that need answering.”
“Whatever questions I have can wait. I think a cruise will be perfect for the two of you. I need time to myself, anyway.”
“Will you tell your brothers and Trish? It’s up to you. I can guarantee it won’t change the way they feel about you. Through the years, seeing the bond among you proved to me that your mother, Daniel and I had made the right decision.”
Tyler hadn’t even thought of sharing the news, but of course he would have to eventually. Like his father, he didn’t believe it would change his relationship with the others, but what if it did? Would he be able to bear it?
“I’ll wait to tell them,” he said finally. “Not for long, though. I promise.”
“Your decision,” his father said again. His expression turned sly. “Does the fact that you intend to hang around Houston for a bit mean I can leave you in charge of Delacourt Oil for the time being?”
Tyler laughed for the first time in what seemed like an eternity. “Now I know we’ll be all right. Nothing stops you from trying to get me behind a desk.”
“Not while there’s breath in my body,” his father agreed.
“I’ll try to keep things afloat,” Tyler agreed. “Two weeks, though, not a day more.”
“Agreed.” His father’s expression softened. “I love you, son.”
Tyler blinked back tears. In all these years he had never had the slightest cause to doubt that. Even now, he didn’t. “I love you, too, Dad.”
He knew that as well as he knew anything. What he didn’t know, anymore, was who the hell he was.
Chapter Thirteen
Maddie left Delacourt Oil and headed to the family’s estate, determined to have it out with Bryce Delacourt before he left town.
“Please don’t let Tyler be there,” she repeated over and over as she drove.
But as she was parking her car along the edge of the curving driveway, she saw Tyler leave the house, shoulders hunched dejectedly, his expression bleak. His father, hers, the revenge she’d plotted for years, now all of it flew out of her head as she fought the need to go to him. She was forced to face the past versus the here-and-now.
She knew exactly what he must be feeling, because she had been there. Tyler, a man she cared for deeply, was hurting, and it was because she had deliberately stirred up a hornet’s nest in his family. He had to be devastated by the discovery that his father had been having an affair. Once she linked that to the conspiracy to frame her father for embezzlement, his anguish would be even worse. She had set out to prove that his father had feet of clay and, in so doing, she had caused nothing but pain for an innocent man.
Just as Bryce Delacourt’s insensitive actions had caused pain for her and her family, she reminded herself, but she couldn’t take any comfort in that. Not any longer. The old adage about two wrongs never making a right had never seemed more true.
She stepped from her car, and the movement was enough to catch Tyler’s attention. He stared at her as if he’d never seen her before or, worse, as if she didn’t matter at all. That hard, flat look rocked her as nothing else could have. It was hard to believe that only a few days ago she had lain in his arms, and he had looked at her as if she were the most precious thing in his life.
“Tyler…”
He waved her off. “Not now, Maddie. I can’t deal with you now.”
“I need to explain.”
He shook his head. “There is nothing you could say right now that I want to hear. Nothing.”
He turned his back on her, climbed into his car, gunned the engine and sped down the driveway at a rate of speed that sent gravel spewing in every direction.
She leaned against her car and watched him go. “Dear God, what have I done?”
She glanced at the house and knew with sudden and absolute clarity that she couldn’t go inside, couldn’t even knock on the door and demand to see Bryce Delacourt, much less accuse him of destroying her father with his lies. She had spent years looking forward to this moment, and now that it was here, she found no satisfaction in it. In fact, she felt sick at heart.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, even though there was no one to hear, even though the man it was meant for was who-knew-where, suffering all alone.
She doubted that Tyler would ever want to see her again. As powerful as their passion was, she doubted it was strong enough to weather what he had to consider a betrayal. If he didn’t know already that she was a reporter, it wouldn’t be long before Dylan told him. It wouldn’t matter to him that she had done what she had because of loyalty to her own father. All she could do for Tyler at this point was to leave him in peace.
Back at his apartment, she checked to make sure his car wasn’t in his assigned parking space, then went upstairs. She hurriedly threw a few of her things into a suitcase. She planned to leave before he returned, knowing that her actions were cowardly but excusing them by telling herself that she was making things easier for Tyler.
In the living room she paused by the collection of framed snapshots and picked up one of all four of the Delacourt brothers wearing ragged jeans and faded T-shirts. Tyler had told her it had been taken after a tag football game on the beach. They were wet and breathless and covered in sand, but their laughter was contagious. Even now she smiled just looking at them. Tyler’s grin was widest of all as he triumphantly held a football aloft.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered once again as she gently placed the photo back in its place amongst so many happy Delacourt memories.
The Delacourt Scandal Page 15
