“That’s too bad about you and your brothers,” he told Maddie. “Did you have a falling out?”
“No. We just drifted apart. We don’t have much in common anymore.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, helpless to think of anything more profound to say.
“You’re very close to your family, aren’t you? I can see it in the picture.”
“We get along well enough—most of the time, anyway. Like all families, we have our ups and downs.” After his illness, a mellower Bryce Delacourt had seemed to accept the decisions his children had made for their lives—all except Tyler, apparently.
Maddie curled up in an oversize chair facing him. “Tell me about them—I love hearing about big families. And yours is pretty much legendary here in Texas.”
Since that particular cat was clearly out of the bag and she didn’t seem overly impressed by it, Tyler gave her a brief rundown of the various Delacourts, right down to the most recently adopted grandchildren, Josh and Jamie, two brothers taken in by Grace and Michael, who were currently staying over on Trish’s ranch in Los Pin˜os while the newlyweds traveled on their honeymoon. Maddie listened raptly to every word he said, prodding him with questions every time he thought her curiosity must surely be satisfied.
“You have to be bored hearing all of this,” he said at last. “It’s like watching home movies of people you don’t know or vacations you didn’t share.”
“No, really, I love it. Tell me more about your father. I’ve read about him, of course. What’s he like?”
“He’s stubborn, ambitious, dynamic and generally a pain in the butt,” Tyler said honestly. “But we all love him just the same.”
Suddenly she glanced at and then picked up a tiny framed picture of his daughter, the only one Tyler had. He froze as she studied it. Cursing the fact that he hadn’t put it away as he usually did when company came over, he waited for the questions he sensed were about to come.
“Is this a niece or nephew?” she asked.
“No,” he said tersely, then forced a smile. He restrained himself from snatching the picture out of her hands. Eventually she put it back in place, though her gaze kept straying back to it.
“Enough about my family,” he said, when it seemed she was about to ask more questions. “Tell me more about yours. Were you very young when you lost your parents?”
“I was fifteen when my dad died,” she said.
Tyler saw the pain behind her stoic expression, heard the sorrow in her voice. As irritating as he often found his father, he couldn’t imagine losing him. Last year’s heart attack, though mild, had scared all of them, reminding them that even the larger-than-life Bryce Delacourt was merely mortal.
“That must have been hard,” he said sympathetically.
“It was.”
Since she didn’t seem inclined to say more, he asked, “And your mom?”
“My mother died just last year, but she was never really the same after my dad died.”
Since both of them seemed to have valid reasons for not wanting to delve any more deeply into family history, Tyler changed the subject. “What do you do for a living, Maddie Kent?”
“I’m…” She turned away, then finally met his gaze. “I’m between jobs right now.”
Tyler couldn’t tell whether pride had put that embarrassed flush in her cheeks or whether it was because she was lying. He had spent enough time around women to sense when one wasn’t being completely honest with him. And something was telling him now that Maddie Kent had been skirting the truth from the moment he’d met her.
“Is that why you came to Houston, to find work?”
She nodded. “I thought it might be easier in a big city, that there would be a lot of opportunities.”
“The classifieds are definitely full of jobs. No nibbles yet?”
“Not yet, but I’m still hopeful,” she said cheerfully.
“What kind of work are you looking for? I could check at Delacourt Oil. Maybe there’s an opening there that would suit you.”
An odd expression crossed her face, but Tyler couldn’t quite interpret it.
“I’m pretty flexible, actually, but I don’t want you to go to any trouble. I’m sure I’ll find something anyday now.” There was a touch of stubborn, if admirable, pride in the lift of her chin.
“There’s nothing wrong with getting a little help, Maddie. A lot of people find their jobs through networking. It’s the way the corporate world works. Why do you think so many women fought to get into clubs that were open only to men? They knew that’s where the men were finding out about job openings.”
“Is that how you found your job?”
Tyler laughed for the first time in days. “No, I’m afraid I got mine through nepotism, pure and simple. The truth is I’d have a hard time not working at Delacourt Oil.”
“Then you work for your father?”
He met her bright gaze, tried to discern if there was something more than curiosity behind her questions. “Yes, unfortunately.”
“On one of the company’s rigs?”
“For the moment,” he said tersely. “Could we talk about something else? The weather, maybe?”
“Your job’s a sore point?”
“Oh, yeah,” he said fervently.
“How come?”
“If you knew my father, you’d understand.”
“Since I don’t, why don’t you explain it to me? I’m a good listener.”
He was surprisingly tempted to do just that, to share all of the hopes and frustrations he’d been keeping bottled up inside since Jen’s death. The mental comparison with Jen was enough to bring him up short.
“So you’ve said, but I’ve taken up enough of your time, Maddie.” He stood up abruptly and looked pointedly toward the door.
Maddie didn’t budge at first, but then her eyes widened. “Oh,” she said softly. “You want me to go. I suppose I did burst in uninvited and disrupt your plans for the evening. I’m sorry.”
Oddly enough, he realized that he didn’t want her to leave, not really. And that made him more determined than ever to get her out the door. She asked too many questions. Sooner or later she would work the conversation back to that baby picture. Or to his father. Or to his job. None were topics he cared to explore just now.
Sooner or later he would have to kiss her just to shut her up. Just thinking about it made him feel disloyal to Jen’s memory.
That was another thing that was worrisome about Ms. Maddie Kent. No other woman had been able to make him forget about Jen, not even for a second, but for a little while tonight he’d been aware only of the woman who’d bullied her way into his apartment simply because she was concerned about him. Somehow she had managed to banish some of his suspicions about her in the process. He’d been counting on that wariness to keep him from getting in too deep.
“Yeah,” he said gruffly. “No offense, but I want you to go. It’s getting late. Do you need a ride home? I can call a cab for you.”
She shook her head. “My car’s over by O’Reilly’s. I can walk.”
Tyler bit back an oath of pure frustration. “Not alone, not at this hour,” he said. “I’ll walk with you.”
Her chin rose stubbornly. “It’s