should have meant nothing to someone with the Delacourt wealth.
But Bryce Delacourt was a hard man, and so Frank Kent found himself out of work without a reference. He would never work as an accountant again, at least not for a company of any size or respectability. Delacourt had seen to that.
The humiliation of it had broken the man Maddie had adored. For five years, his self-esteem in tatters, he had moved from one dead-end job to another, never earning more than minimum wage. His family had suffered far more due to his increasing depression than because of the lack of income. The warm, generous man who’d been involved in every aspect of his children’s lives was gone, lost in lonely, self-imposed isolation and bitterness.
When Maddie was fifteen, her father committed suicide. He’d almost botched the attempt and had lain in a coma for two horrendous weeks before finally getting his wish and dying.
That final act of a sad and desperate man had all but destroyed the family, financially and emotionally. Maddie’s mother had retreated into her own private hell, aided by alcohol. Her brothers had turned into street thugs to get what they wanted. Only Maddie had used that defining moment to strengthen her resolve to succeed. She had vowed at her father’s grave that one day she would be in a position to make the Delacourts feel that same kind of pain.
Now, thanks to Griffin Carpenter, she had her chance. She didn’t care why Carpenter hated Bryce Delacourt or any of the others who fell victim to his paper’s venom. It was enough that the publisher’s agenda matched her own. Most newspapers in the state were in awe of the Delacourt wealth and power, but Carpenter had his own resources and a pit bull’s tenacity when it came to digging up dirt on the entrenched power brokers of the state.
Carpenter’s Dallas-based tabloid, Hard Truths, was a wealthy Texan’s worst nightmare. His reporters turned over rocks and crept through back alleys in search of scandal. More often than not, they found it, then took delight in sharing it with the public in the most colorful terms possible.
It was not the sort of journalism Maddie had trained for or respected. She’d attended one of the nation’s best journalism schools, taken her fair share of courses in media ethics and responsibility. And she intended to follow all of those rules with absolute diligence—once she had written this one exposé….
For now, though, she was happy to be Carpenter’s newest recruit, and she intended to be his best. In no time at all the Delacourts would be making headlines, and for once it wouldn’t be on the society or business pages. She planned to make them the talk of Texas, until they understood humiliation as intimately as her father had.
She gazed across the wide mahogany expanse of Griffin Carpenter’s desk, straight into eyes glinting with anticipation.
“I won’t let you down,” she vowed to her boss.
Then she mentally whispered the same words to the father she had lost so long ago.
Chapter One
Tyler couldn’t help noticing the woman sitting at the other end of the bar. She had been there for the past week. Petite, with auburn hair cut boyishly short, she had a sweet face with a very kissable mouth—innocence and the promise of sin combined. Tonight she was wearing a prim little white blouse and a bright red skirt that kept creeping up, revealing a very shapely thigh. More of that intriguing innocence-sin contradiction.
She was a plucky little thing, fending off passes with a few words and an engaging smile, nursing what appeared to be ginger ale. What she was doing here in the first place was beyond him. She wasn’t looking for a man, that was clear enough. Nor did she drink. And yet here she was at O’Reilly’s, night after night, same stool, same bland, disinterested expression, same polite brush-offs.
In times past Tyler would have taken that as a challenge. Harmless flirting with a beautiful woman was second nature to him, as it had been to his brothers. Any one of the Delacourt males would have moved closer and satisfied his curiosity.
At the moment, though, Tyler just wasn’t up to his usual casual banter. He had way too much on his mind. His whole future, for instance.
Until a week ago he’d been out on a rig in the Gulf of Mexico off the Louisiana coast for three straight months, trying to forget the past, trying to lose himself in hard, physical, mind-numbing work. At the end of the day all he cared about was a cold beer, a rare steak and sleep. That was the way he wanted it, the way he needed his life to be—clear and uncomplicated. Women were a definite complication. Family was both a blessing and a curse. He’d intended to steer clear of both for the foreseeable future.
Then the edict had come down that all Delacourts were required to be in Houston for his parents’ fortieth anniversary bash. Even Trish, who never came back to Houston if she could avoid it, had been corralled into attending. Only his brother Michael had escaped, because he and Grace were away on their honeymoon.
There was nothing on earth Tyler hated more than being all dressed up in a fancy tux, unless it was being back in an office. In the past week he’d found himself in both these situations.
And if Bryce Delacourt had his way, Tyler would stay in Houston indefinitely. Judging from his father’s offhand comments, Tyler had a hunch that this time it was going to be a whole lot harder to wrangle his way out of the Delacourt Oil corporate headquarters and back onto a rig. He envied Trish and Dylan their escapes to the peace and tranquility of Los Piños all the way across the state. They were back there now, out of their father’s reach, while Tyler was still here, still very much under his thumb.
He took a sip of his beer and wondered if the time hadn’t finally come to cut the family ties completely—professionally speaking, anyway. He wouldn’t be the only one in the family to do it.
His oldest brother, Dylan, had been the first to shun the family business, infuriating their father by setting up shop as a private eye. Then Trish had managed to slip away to another city, have a baby and open her second bookstore—all before their father had caught up with her just in time to see her wed a rancher. Jeb had one foot in Dylan’s business, which he’d moved to Los Piños after his marriage to a pediatrician there, and another at corporate headquarters, but he managed to stay out from under Bryce Delacourt’s control most of the time.
Only Michael relished being at the helm of a multinational oil company and, ironically, their father couldn’t seem to see that he was the only one really suited for the job. Usually Michael provided adequate cover for Tyler, but his current absence had reminded their father that he had one remaining son he could groom for the executive suite.
More than the others, Tyler hated the thought of disappointing his father, but he hated paperwork even more. He shuddered at the prospect of facing a lifetime of it. There were oil companies around the country—around the world, for that matter—that would be happy to hire someone with his lifelong history in the business, with his expertise and willingness to work endless hours, with his daring and fearless approach to oil exploration. Maybe it was time to check into some of them. Maybe it was time to stop worrying so much about being a dutiful Delacourt and worry more about being himself.
His thoughts dark, he barely glanced up when the woman from the other end of the bar slid onto the stool next to him. For once the prospect of an evening’s flirtation didn’t do a thing to lighten his mood. He just wanted to be left alone to wrestle with the past and with the decision that had to be made about the future.
“Hi,” she said, leveling amber eyes straight at him until he finally met her gaze.
“Hi, yourself.”
