The Temptation of Savannah O'Neill (3 page)

“For six months?”

Six months, two weeks, and three days. “Who’s counting,” he said.

“I am!” she nearly screamed. “Your clients are. While you’re getting some R and R,” she spat the words as if they were sour, “I’m trying to keep the bills paid and the money coming in. Your clients, you remember them, don’t you? The people who pay you huge amounts of money to build stuff? Well, most of them are getting antsy and Joe Collins is about to sue for breach of—”

Matt hung up.

It was so simple. He hit the red button with his thumb and his life, that kid, his best friend and partner, his job, the buildings he could no longer build, they went away.

Gone.

Instead there was the whirr and snick of cicadas hiding in leaves so dense, so green they looked black. An orange cat curled around his boots and the sun beat down on his head.

Numb. So numb to all that used to be.

Savannah stood behind him. He could feel her like a shadow over his face on a hot day. A mystery. A cool-eyed, blond-haired mystery.

That was it. That was all his world consisted of right now.

Because outside of this, this moment, this place, this
mysterious woman, a point-seven-second nightmare waited for him, pacing the perimeter for the chance to attack.

Point-seven seconds was all it took for a building to come down. For a mistake to be made and a young man to die. Point-seven seconds. It was enough to make a guy go crazy if he thought about it long enough.

And Matt had been thinking about it for six months, two weeks and three days.

“Well,” Savannah said. “It sounds like Margot and I are lucky you were wandering through.”

“Do I have the job?” he asked, his voice rough even to his own ears.

He felt her at his shoulder and he turned, surprised to see her so close. She had a spray of freckles across her nose. And her eyes weren’t totally blue. They were like the Caribbean before a storm—blue and turquoise with gray shadows rolling underneath.

“Yes,” she said and stepped closer. Close enough that he could smell her skin, flowers and sweat, so earthy and feminine it immediately conjured thoughts of her naked on silk sheets. “But you stay out of our house. You stay out of our business. There’s a hotel in town. You can stay there. You arrive at eight and you leave at five. You can use the bathroom on the main floor and that’s it. No exceptions.”

He rocked back, stunned at the vehemence.

She’s hiding something,
he thought, knowing it was the truth because he could taste it on her breath.

“Got it?” she asked.

He nodded. “Got it.”

“Starting tomorrow, I’m taking a vacation week, so I’ll be here.”

Keeping an eye on you
—she didn’t have to say it, and Matt didn’t know whether to laugh or be insulted.

She reached up and gathered that long silky fall of hair into a ponytail then she curled it around itself, tucking it and wrapping it until it was all but gone, vanished into a tight knot at the back of her head.

“And do not—” she actually poked him once in the chest with a blunt, naked nail, hard enough to hurt “—mess up my garden.”

Then, Savannah O’Neill, sexiest prison warden ever, was gone.

He stood there, dumbfounded by the complex reality of that woman in the photograph.

“I’m going to work!” He heard her yell inside the house and he turned, staring out at the jungle and ruins that made up his new job.

He nearly laughed, stunned at how this had all worked out.

He could wait for Vanessa to show up in her very own backyard.

Not sure of what he should do, he decided he’d wait for Margot to fill him in on the rest of the details. He stepped away from the house toward the ruins of the greenhouse, taking in the damage. It was far more extensive than he’d first seen.

He jostled one of the remaining posts of the structure and some stubborn piece of glass shattered onto the broken cobblestone at his feet.

Someone had gone to town on the building—and the plants that had been growing inside. Parts of it had been cleaned up, but the shards of pottery and dead orchids were piled in the corner.

And there were a lot of dead orchids.

“Working already?” Margot’s soft voice snapped him out of his focus and he jerked as if caught doing something he shouldn’t.

“I guess so,” he lied.

“It’s a lot of work, isn’t it?” she asked, and something in her tone had him glancing at her and seeing, for a brief moment, past her beauty and the sunshot diamonds to the sadness beneath her glitter. And he didn’t want to see that. At all. He didn’t want to feel anything besides suspicion for these women.

Well, suspicion and lust for Savannah perhaps. But no sympathy. No empathy.

He forced his attention back to the space he was supposed to salvage. All he saw was damage. Broken glass and twisted metal. A year ago he would have seen endless possibilities, now he saw nothing. Nothing but destruction.

He felt, looking at all this ruin, a certain kinship with the courtyard.

“It’s not too bad,” he lied.

“This used to be my favorite place,” Margot said, her fingers touching the edge of an old worktable that had been smashed.

He bit back a groan.
Don’t,
he thought.
Don’t open up to the hired help.

She gestured halfheartedly at the dead plants. “I grew orchids.”

“You will again.” This lame platitude sounded flat on his tongue, like a lie but different. Worse, somehow. Because she brightened, bought into the false hope he hadn’t intended to give.

“I hope so.”

“Why would someone do this?” he asked, watching her carefully, pretending to be casual. “Was there something of value in here?”

“In a greenhouse?” Margot asked, sliding him a sideways look.

He couldn’t read her private grin, but it made him think
there had been something worth smashing a greenhouse for in those pots.

He shrugged. “Seems like someone went to a lot of trouble over some orchids.”

“It’s a tradition around here, I’m afraid.” She turned gem-bright eyes to him. “The O’Neills are a bit of a target. That’s why Savannah can seem a bit—” she shrugged “—cool.”

This insight was totally unwelcome. But it explained a lot about the prickly Savannah.

“You mean this sort of destruction happens a lot?” he asked, stunned at the thought.

“It’s summer break,” Margot said. “High school students get bored in a small town and we’ve managed to provide enough entertainment to become somewhat…legendary.”

“Why don’t you leave?”

Margot blinked at him. “This is my home,” she said as if he’d suggested she cut off her ear. “How could I leave?”

Why would you stay?
he thought. But then, maybe that was his problem. It had been too easy for him to leave everything behind.

“Savannah said I had the job,” he said.

Margot’s eyes went wide for a second, surprise showing clearly on her face before she carefully erased it. Hid it. Those eyes were bottomless, a place where secrets lived.

These women know something.

“Well, if Savannah says so, it must be true.” Margot tipped her head. “Our budget is three thousand dollars, I know it’s not much, but you can stay in the sleeping porch—”

Matt laughed.

“What’s so funny?”

“I’m pretty sure staying in the sleeping porch was not part of Savannah’s plan. She mentioned a hotel in town.”

Margot smiled, her eyes canny, and Matt found himself liking the old lady. “It’s my home, Matt. You are welcome to stay in the porch.”

Right. Like he was going to get caught in the middle of this family squabble. “I’ll stay in the hotel tonight,” he said. “Let you break the news to her.”

“Oh, Matt, I can tell already you are a wise man.” She tilted her head, her sapphire eyes studying him. “Then, I guess the only question is, do
you
want the job?”

Matt tried not to smile too confidently. Too broadly. He tried, actually, not to crow with pleasure and satisfaction. “Absolutely.”

E
VERYONE THOUGHT
libraries were quiet. Savannah never understood that. In all the years she’d spent hiding, studying, teaching and working in libraries, she’d found each and every one of them loud. Filled with sound, actually. Like one of those seashells you pressed to your ear.

There was an endless ocean of sound in the Bonne Terre Public Library.

The click and whir of the big black ceiling fans. The silky brush of paper over the gleaming oak counters. The hum of computers. The scratch of pencils. The whisper of shoes across the old wood floors. On the second floor, a toddler shrieked and a mother quickly shushed him. There was the quiet beat of her heart and, of course, the not-so-quiet whispering of the high school students at the computer bank.

Owen Johns and his gang.

It was always Owen Johns and his gang.

Summer school had been moved from the high school to the library so they could finally fix the roof of the gymnasium. This meant Savannah had been looking at the smirking faces of Owen Johns, Garrett Watson and their various hangers-on for a week.

And in the days since the Manor had been violated, their smirks were smirkier, their eyes as they watched her a little too smug.

They did it.

She saw it in their eyes, the sour glee in their smiles, the dark triumph that wafted off them like stink from garbage. They’d torn apart her courtyard, her grandmother’s orchids. Those boys had taken black spray paint to their stone walls, forcing her hand, and now there was a man at the Manor.

Matt Howe was in her home, in her courtyard, and Matt Howe made her heart pound and her stomach tremble and it was nearly intolerable.

And it was all Owen’s and Garrett’s fault.

She knew it with an instinct she didn’t question. The O’Neill instinct—never wrong. The O’Neill impulses, on the other hand, too often lured by pounding hearts and trembling stomachs, were always disastrously wrong.

She stood at the counter and checked in the books from the overnight drop box. She traced the gilt beak of Mother Goose before shelving the faded red book on the trolley.

Her hands didn’t shake. Her face didn’t change, but she stood there, listening to their whispers, catching words like “she had a kid” and “he was married.” She threw them, like logs, onto the fire of her anger.

She stood there as she had for years, calm and cool, pretending she didn’t hear the whispers, and contemplated her revenge.

Not that she would take it. She’d learned her lesson about vengeance and acting on these O’Neill impulses. She’d learned it too well.

Ten years ago, maybe, she’d have enacted revenge. But now it was just an imaginary exercise. A highly satisfying one.

A letter to their parents, perhaps? Regarding some obscenely overdue books of a high monetary value? Good, but not quite enough.

“You watching the love triangle?” whispered Janice,
her assistant and Keeper of All Things Even Slightly Gossip-y.

“Love triangle?” Savannah whispered, keeping her eyes on Owen, Garrett and Owen’s girlfriend.

“Owen’s girlfriend,” Janice whispered in the juicy tones of a soap addict, “I don’t know her name, but I’ve been calling her The Cheerleader.”

Savannah laughed; it was true, the redhead seemed incomplete without pom-poms.

“But The Cheerleader has been watching Garrett when Owen isn’t looking.”

“Really?” Savannah asked.

“And Garrett is not looking away.”

Now
that
had the makings of revenge.

The phone rang and Janice waddled away to answer it while Savannah contemplated warm thoughts of love triangles blowing up.

“Hey!” Fingers snapped in front of Savannah’s face and she jerked out of her fantasy to find her good friend Juliette Tremblant, looking stormy and all too police-chiefy across the counter.

“Hey, Juliette.” Savannah smiled in the face of Juliette’s stern expression. She was always, always happy to see her friend—even when Juliette was coming around to chastise her. “What’s up?”

“What’s up?” Juliette repeated, incredulously. Her black eyebrows practically hit her hairline. “You just hired some stranger to work at the Manor?”

“Word travels fast,” Savannah said, amazed anew at the Bonne Terre interest in all things O’Neill. After twenty years she’d stopped being furious. Now she was merely irritated.

“One of my guys heard it from Wayne Smith who heard it from his wife who was taking her morning walk down
your road and saw Margot and some stranger on the front porch shaking hands.”

“Shh!” Owen and Garrett said, over-loud, over-annoying in mockery of Savannah’s librarian battle cry.

“Excuse me?” Juliette turned to the boys, the badge clipped to the belt of her pants gleaming in the milky morning sunlight.

The boys went white and Savannah tried hard not to smile.

“Sorry, Chief Tremblant,” they chorused and quickly returned to their work and summer school teacher.

“I need a badge,” Savannah whispered.

“What you need is to have your head checked,” Juliette said, her voice lower. “I called Margot this morning, to see if it was true and she said you’d hired a drifter. I guess living alone in that mausoleum has finally gotten to your heads, because that’s not just notorious, it’s dangerous.”

“I don’t know if he’s a drifter,” Savannah said, not entirely convinced he wasn’t. And frankly, not entirely convinced that Juliette wasn’t spot on in her assessment of Margot and Savannah.

“But he’s not staying at the house. He’s going to get a room at the Bonne Terre Inn.”

“He’s still a stranger,” Juliette said.

“Right, and he’s the only person who has answered that ad,” Savannah pointed out. “Everyone in town who could do the work knows we don’t have a big budget and that the job is huge.”

“But a stranger?”

“I have vacation starting tomorrow—”

“And you’re going to spend it babysitting this guy and your courtyard?”

“No, actually, I’m going to spend most of it doing re
search on extreme religious rituals around the world for the Discovery Channel, but I’ll be home.”

“What do you know about this guy?” Juliette asked, brushing her suit jacket off her lean hips, revealing her gun and her whipcord build.

Juliette looked so masculine, such a change from the girl she’d been. The girl, a few years older than Savannah, who had seemed the epitome of Southern glamour. Like a Creole Liz Taylor or something. Juliette used to never wear pants, and never left the house without a thick coat of hot-pink lip gloss.

Savannah wondered how much her brother Tyler had to do with the change in Juliette. Of course, that was years ago and Juliette would take her head off for asking.

“I checked his references,” Savannah said, feeling confident until Juliette sniffed in disapproval. “And they were great.”

“References lie,” Juliette said.

“Give me some credit, Juliette. I’m a researcher. I searched his name on the Internet,” she said, “and Matt Howe, at least the Matt Howe doing work at my house, hasn’t been in the news for killing cats, or posting porn on the Web. He’s a nonentity.”

“Right, because the Internet is so reliable.” Juliette pulled her notebook from her pocket and hit the end of her ballpoint pen. “Matt Howe?”

“With an
e
.”

Juliette’s pen scribbling across the lined paper added to the music of her library.

Juliette jabbed the notebook into her pocket. “What do you think of this guy, really?” Her eyes narrowed and Savannah shrugged.

“I don’t like him. I don’t want him in my house. But, I think he’s safe. I think he’s a good man.”

“You’ve thought that before,” Juliette whispered and Savannah flinched at the reminder. The reminder she didn’t need.

“And I learned my lesson about handsome strangers, Juliette.” She even managed to smile. “The O’Neills don’t do love.”

It was nearly imperceptible, but Juliette’s right eyelid flinched.

“Juliette, I’m so sorr—”

“You guys have that island thing down pat. No one gets on and no one gets off,” Juliette said. “At least not permanently.”

Savannah shrugged. It was easier being alone. Safer. She wasn’t going to apologize for it; it was a matter of survival.

“Margot managed to survive and some would say she’s had more than her share of love,” Juliette said.

“Business,” Savannah clarified. People got confused about Margot all the time, thinking she was a romantic. She wasn’t. She was a lusty capitalist with a penchant for the finer things in life. And men. “It was always business with Margot. And it’s business with Matt Howe. You can trust me on that.”

Juliette sniffed. “Okay, but I’m coming by tomorrow morning to check this guy out.”

“You’re welcome to,” Savannah thought of the leonine grace of the man. The sharp predatory focus in his eyes. The way he pulled his khaki pants up over a lean waist, watching her as if he could taste her on his tongue.

Male. So thrillingly masculine among the roses and moss.

She’d spent so long pretending she wasn’t a woman, pretending dark eyes and darker hair and a man with a know
ing smile didn’t send her to some place hot and internal. Someplace reckless and totally, entirely, O’Neill.

Stupidly, she found herself eager to get another look at Matt Howe, too.

M
ATT DIDN’T SLEEP MUCH
anymore. The lure of the soft pillows and thick mattress of Bonne Terre Inn’s room 3 no longer had much appeal for him. Instead he sat in the upright chair, watching the empty highway through the curtains.

In front of him was his sketch pad.

While waiting for Vanessa to show up, he was actually supposed to do some work.

He rotated the empty pad in quarter turns.

A blank page used to be a call to work, a spark to his imagination.

Now?

He remembered the kudzu. The destruction of the greenhouse. The tool shed in the back nearly obliterated by vines. The endless possibility of the space.

And he felt nothing. Just that cold breeze blowing through him that was growing increasingly familiar.

Thinking he could force it, the way he used to in college when he was so tired from exams his eyes felt like sandpaper, he framed out the perimeter, sketched in the existing buildings.

Sitting back he stared at his sketch, his work somehow familiar and foreign at the same time. How many of these had he done in his life? Rough sketches on napkins, on the backs of menus. He’d roughed out the working plan for the downtown warehouse renovations on the back of a pizza box. Then he’d taken that pizza box over to Jack’s house in the middle of the night, so damn fired up about this plan. So damn blind with his own ambition.

He’d convinced his best friend to go in on the project with him, to be the civil engineer and contractor. He’d thought at the time it would be the professional adventure of a lifetime. For both of them.

Matt tried again to remember if Jack had said anything specific about that southwest corner. About choosing not to reinforce the floor, but he could not remember. Matt remembered Jack, dirty and stressed, saying that he couldn’t take another loss, that the money was tight and his wife, Charlotte, was panicking, that the building was in worse shape than any of them had thought.

The lawyers had so easily absolved Matt of guilt, clapping their hands together and washing him clean of the tragedy all because he couldn’t remember.

“But what if I’m lying?” he’d asked.

“Are you?”

He’d shaken his head, sick to his stomach, which was good enough for the lawyers.

But his sickness had stayed.

Disgusted with himself he stood, but felt shaky, as if he might vomit. When had he last eaten? A day ago? He ordered pizza and spent the rest of the night focused on Savannah and her secrets until finally the sky was turned gray, pink at the edges, and a new day had come to save him from the night.

After grabbing a coffee at the bakery next door he drove toward the O’Neill house, but as he turned left onto the country road to the Manor, he slid on his glasses, because, in the distance, it appeared a police cruiser was parked out front.

With its lights on.

Was Vanessa back?

Were Savannah and Margot guilty of crimes like Vanessa?

A wicked anticipation and something painful bit into Matt’s stomach. Was this it? Was he going to arrive only to see Savannah and Margot being led away in chains?

The statute of limitations for the theft of the jewels was past, so they couldn’t be arrested for that.

Were they being arrested for something else?

Was this how Justice corrected her aim?

His foot pressed on the accelerator, dust flying up behind him in his rearview mirror.

The duality of it was perfect, though he had to admit there was something in him that balked at the idea of Savannah’s cool beauty in a hot desperate cell like his father’s.

But if it was what she deserved, then so be it.

Do the crime, do the time,
as his father always said.

He braked to a hard stop just behind the cruiser and threw himself out the door. No press. No throngs of cops. Just one cruiser with its lights going and the old house, looking sadder in the bright morning sunlight.

Matt found everyone in the living room where it was still cool and dark, the windows shadowed by the veranda out front. The cops he expected to see leading the women away sat in spindly Queen Anne chairs, dropping sugar from their beignets onto the faded upholstery.

Margot stood beside a frayed velveteen couch, her hand gripping Savannah’s shoulder.

Savannah sat holding a little girl as if her whole life depended on it, the child’s red head buried in Savannah’s neck.

Matt rocked to a stop in the doorway.

A little girl?

How had he missed that in his investigation? Why hadn’t Savannah told him when he asked?

It shouldn’t change anything, but it did.

Seeing Savannah with a little girl clinging to her neck as if any moment she might be torn away opened up a giant hole in his chest.

He remembered holding on to his father’s neck the same way, as if the cancer might pounce and take his dad from him.