The Delacourt Scandal by Sherryl Woods Page B

followed Tyler out into the oppressive night air. Rather than feeling exhilarated that she was about to learn whatever secrets had been tormenting him, all she could think about was the bleak expression on his face when he’d promised to tell her everything.
    How could she do this to him? What kind of person was she turning into? Was her revenge worth the kind of pain she was inflicting on a man who had been nothing but kind to her?
    He needs to get it out, she told herself staunchly. It would be good for him to talk about it—whatever “it” was. Just because she was the sounding board didn’t mean she had to use whatever he told her to hurt him. That decision was down the road. Maybe it was one she would never have to make. It was BryceDelacourt’s secrets she was really after, not Tyler’s, which made her presence in Baton Rouge all the more difficult to explain. Maybe she had been driven to come here precisely for the reason she had given him, because she’d grown to care for him and wanted to understand him in a way that his having a secret hadn’t allowed. It was a troubling possibility.
    Tyler ushered her into his car, then headed through downtown to a neighborhood of small, cookie-cutter houses. When he pulled into a driveway, she stared around at the unkempt yard, the bedraggled garden that had suffered from neglect. For once in her life she had no idea what to say, what question to ask. She simply stared at him and waited for an explanation.
    He hadn’t moved since he cut the engine. His hands rested on the steering wheel—clutched it, really—and sweat broke out on his brow.
    Maddie regarded him miserably as the depth of his anguish finally sank in. Stirring up things to get Bryce Delacourt had been one thing when it had been nothing more than an abstract concept of getting even. Now, face-to-face with his son’s heartache, she was awash with regrets. She knew this kind of pain. She had lived it. Right now she was no longer a journalist after a story. She was a woman, aching for a man whose pain she had caused.
    She reached over and touched his arm. “Tyler, we can forget this. I’m sorry. I had no right.”
    He shook his head. “No, we’re here now.” He shuddered. “It’s the first time I’ve been back.”
    “You lived here?”
    “For a time.”
    “Alone?”
    “No.” His voice was barely more than a shattered whisper. “This was her house, Jen’s.”
    Maddie felt something cold settle into the region of her heart. “Was she your wife?”
    “No, though not for lack of asking on my part. She was everything else, though—lover, friend…” He drew in a deep breath. “The mother of my little girl.”
    “The baby in the picture,” Maddie said with sudden, horrified certainty. “Oh, Tyler, what happened?”
    For a minute, then two, he didn’t say a word. He just sat there staring ahead, dazed, lost in the past.
    “Tyler,” she prodded gently.
    “They were killed in an accident,” he began slowly. “I’d finally convinced Jen to come to Houston to meet my family, but they never got there.”
    “Oh, Tyler,” she whispered, her eyes stinging with unshed tears. “I’m so sorry.”
    “If only I hadn’t insisted,” he said in a voice laced with guilt and sorrow. “I should never have forced the issue. She didn’t want to come. She was so sure they would disapprove of her and us. Nothing I said could convince her otherwise. I think she decided to come as much to prove me wrong as anything.”
    “When did it happen?”
    “Six months ago.” His gaze shifted back to the house. “Let’s go inside.”
    Maddie didn’t want to go inside. She didn’t want to see the home where he’d been happy. She didn’t want to be there when he dealt with the memories of a woman he’d obviously loved very deeply. This was an intensely private moment.
    And she was jealous, wildly, bitterly jealous of a woman who was dead. Wasn’t this exactly what she deserved for poking her nose in