Tyler O’Neill’s Redemption (5 page)

But the boy’s face stuck in Tyler’s head.

Juliette glanced at him, her hands white-knuckled on the steering wheel. “His father,” she said. “Did that?”

Juliette nodded and he swore. Something dark and slimy twisted in his stomach. Richard was no prize, and frankly neither was his mother—but to do that? To a kid?

“He tried to steal your car to get away. He was going to pick up his ten-year-old sister and leave town.”

“In a 1972 Porsche? The clutch is pretty tricky. I doubt the kid would have been able to get it out of the parking lot.”

“I’m guessing he wasn’t thinking too clearly,” she said, her voice that sweet sad drawl he remembered and it curled through him like smoke. Made him want to touch her, feel her skin.

Lord, this whole situation sucked. His car. This tragic beat-up kid in the back. Juliette. It was enough to bring the fire ants back.

No way he could send that kid off to jail.

“Tyler, I need you—” she said, and that voice and those words were a sledgehammer against his head. His whole body shook. “I need you to not press charges. Just pick up your car. Let this go.”

“Let this go?” he asked, incredulous. He wasn’t going to send the kid off to jail, but he didn’t think the boy should go running off to freedom quite so easily, either. “Juliette, I’m not one for letting things go—”

“Really?” she asked. “Could have fooled me.”

He wasn’t about to get into this right now. Not with this kid’s beat-up face stuck in his head and Suzy having been violated outside a church of all places.

“Tell me,” he said, leaning back against the passenger door, watching her. “What’s going to happen if I let it go?”

“The real question is what will happen if you don’t.” She pushed her sunglasses on top of her head, displacing her long black hair. Shorter than it had been, but still so bright and so dark it reflected blue in places. “DOC,” she said. “I’m just trying to keep him out of jail. You remember how that felt.”

Her level gaze sawed him in half, cut through all that bullshit he carried and laid him to waste. Reminding him, in a fractured heartbeat, of every noble and kind thing she’d ever done for him, and how he’d never done a single thing to deserve it.

“Juliette,” he breathed, regret a suffocating pain in his chest.

She shook her head. “This isn’t about us, Tyler. It’s about the kid. It’s about giving Miguel a chance.”

Suddenly she was struck by a gut-wrenching fear that keeping Miguel out of the system wasn’t the right thing to do. Too many people knew what she was doing now—Dr. Roberts, who was putting himself and his career on the line for a kid he didn’t know and a woman who held him at arm’s length, and Tyler, who’d proven to be about as trustworthy as a toddler on a sugar high.

Maybe she needed to reassess this situation, but how? What other alternatives were there, for her or for Miguel? Juliette pulled in front of the gates at the impound yard behind the station and faced Tyler.

“So much for defending Suzy’s honor,” Tyler said and Juliette nearly collapsed with relief. “I won’t press charges, but what happens now?”

“Well, you get your car and go about your business.”

“What happens to the kid?” Tyler asked. “Some kind of public service? A community thing? Picking up trash on the highway?”

Juliette shook her head. “I…I don’t know yet.”

“Don’t know yet?” Tyler asked. “Aren’t you chief?”

“We don’t have any kind of program—”

“So he steals my car and you just let him go?” Tyler asked.

“Of course not, Tyler. I’m not saying he won’t be punished in some way, I just haven’t figured it out. But I will.”

“You could always ask your father,” Tyler said, something in his voice ugly and mean. “He had some creative ways for dealing with kids who broke the law.”

He was right. And frankly, he was right to be mad. But ten years after Tyler had left her without word or warning, she wasn’t about to apologize for her father’s mistakes.

“That wasn’t about the law,” Juliette said through her teeth.

“I know,” Tyler said. “Your father made it real clear why he and his goon were kicking the crap out of me.”

She felt him watching her, but she didn’t turn, didn’t engage in this fight with him. The past—their past—was dead and buried.

“You’ve gotten cold, Jules,” he said. “A few years ago you’d have torn my head off.”

She wanted to snap at him, to turn her head and scream every foul and hateful thing she’d ever thought about him. She wanted to punch him and scratch his face—hurt him like he hurt her.

But what would be the point?

“You have no idea, Tyler,” she said instead, wrapping herself around her icy-cold hate for Tyler O’Neill and the meager victory she’d won for Miguel.

He watched Juliette, the sun turning her hair to ebony. Her body, so tall and strong. Her grace had become something disciplined. Something controlled. Powerful.

It was making him nuts. It was why he’d tried to provoke her in the car, watching her hands on the wheel, her eyes on the road. Queen of her kingdom.

He wanted to knock her down a few pegs, remind her of that totally different girl he’d left behind.

But not you.
Some awful, righteous, pain-in-the-butt voice inside his head asked,
You’re still the same, aren’t you?

“Here you go,” she said, unlocking the gate, swinging the chain link back. She stood back, her hand on her thin waist, her black pants tight across her thighs. Her hips.

He swallowed, tossing his keys in his palm. Trying to be casual. Pretending that something wasn’t shaken inside of him.

When he’d made the stupid decision to come back to Bonne Terre it had never occurred to him that Juliette would still be here. If he’d have thought he’d run into her, he never would have come. Because it hurt to look at her, it hurt to be reminded of what he’d felt that summer—of who, for three short months, he’d let himself believe he could be.

“Thank you,” Juliette said, brushing off her hands, “for being cool about—”

He put his hand up, shaking his head. The years behind them, the way he’d left, those nights in the bayou, what she’d done for him in the end.

“It’s the least I could do, Juliette.”

For a second her face softened, and she was the girl he’d known. The girl who had made his head spin and his heart thunder with stupid dreams, a million of them put right into her soft hands.

“It’s a good thing you’re trying to do,” he said. “With that boy.”

She opened her mouth as if to say something, but in the end thought better of it and just nodded.

He slid his key into the lock of Suzy’s door, every instinct fighting against the stupid impulse he had to touch her. Just once more. For all the years ahead.

Do not,
he told himself, trying to be firm, trying to be reasonable,
get yourself worked up over this woman again. Don’t do it.

“You know,” he said, turning to face her again, the sun behind her making him squint, his eye pound. “Your dad was right.”

“About what?” she asked on a tired little laugh that nearly broke his heart.

Don’t do it, you idiot.

Her eyes snapped, the air around them crackled. The impulse, the need to touch her was a thousand-pound weight he could not ignore or shake off.

She will take off your head and feed it to a dog, man. Do not be stupid.

But in the end he ignored the voice because she was a magnet to everything in him searching for a direction. He stepped close, close enough to breathe the breath she exhaled. Close enough to smell her skin, warm and spicy in the sunlight.

Her eyes dilated, her lips parted, but she didn’t move, didn’t back away and his body got hot, tight with a furious want.

The air was still between them, as if they were frozen in time. But inside he raged with hunger for her. Always for her.

He lifted his hand, slow, careful, ready for her to snap but she didn’t. He placed his calloused, shaking fingers against the perfection of her cheek. Her breath hitched and for a moment—the most perfect moment in ten miserable years—Juliette let him touch her.

And then, like the good girl she was, she stepped away from the riffraff. Her eyes angry, her skin flushed.

“You’re way too good for the likes of me, Juliette Tremblant,” he murmured.

He got in Suzy and slammed the door. The humidity inside the car was an insulation between him and her, an insulation he needed. He needed metal and barbed wire and pit bulls straining at their leashes between them, because he knew, like he’d always known—underneath her totally justified anger, her reluctance, her disgust—he knew Juliette Tremblant wanted him as much as he wanted her.

I can’t see her again,
he thought, starting the car, Suzy’s rumble a welcome sound. Familiar. This was his world. Suzy, his father waiting at home, the clothes on his back, his money in the bank.

And there was no place in it for Juliette.

And there was no place for him in Bonne Terre.

He was an O’Neill. One of the most notorious of them all, which meant that Juliette and the past and those fledgling dreams he thought he’d forgotten about were wasted on him.

And whatever he thought he was going to find in Bonne Terre, whatever peace or solace he was looking for—it wasn’t here. It wasn’t anywhere. Not for him.

Gaetan was right—he was always wanting what other people had. Coming back to The Manor, looking for the kid he’d been, the family he’d known. That wasn’t for him.

He got hotel rooms and card games. One-night stands with women so beautiful they could only be fake. Late nights and later mornings, days vanishing under neon signs. That was his life. That’s what he got.

And it was time to get back to it.

She slammed the impound door too hard and the chain link rattled and bounced back at her. So, she slammed it again. And again. Her hair flying, the gate rattling and crashing.

“Damn him!” she screamed, slamming the gate so hard it bounced, rebounded and stuck shut.

Damn him.

Ten years without a word, after what she’d done for him. After what she’d given him in the cramped backseat of that stupid Chevy he used to drive. Ten years. And he waltzes back here and realigns everything.

She put her hands on her hips, feeling the weight of her badge and gun, the solid strength of those things against her hips. She was not the girl she’d been, and Tyler O’Neill was not going to ruin her life again.

“Chief?”

She turned and found Miguel standing beside the back door of her sedan.

Great,
she thought,
just what I need. Miguel with an earful.

“You okay?” Miguel asked, his concern fierce and palpable. She melted a little; her little hoodlum was so gallant.

“I’m fine,” she said, and took a deep breath. “And, actually, so are you. The owner of the Porsche isn’t going to press charges.”

“Tyler O’Neill?” Miguel asked.

“How do you know that?”

“I recognized him in the car. I’ve seen him playing poker on TV. He’s rich, huh?”

“Hard to say,” she said. “Not much ever sticks to Tyler.” She turned back to Miguel, narrowing her eyes. “You were just pretending to sleep in the backseat, weren’t you?”

He nodded, unapologetic. Probably a skill he’d learned to survive.

“I’m not going to jail?” Miguel asked, as if he couldn’t believe it. Juliette put her hands on his shoulders and waited until he looked at her. The impact of his wounds could still take her breath away and she wondered again whether she really was doing the right thing, or if calling in the social workers wasn’t the way to try and save this boy.

“It’s not too late,” she told him. “I can call the Office of Community Services—”

Miguel shook his head. “I’ll run. I swear it.”

He wasn’t lying. And while she didn’t doubt that she’d be able to find him, if he took his sister, who knew what kind of trouble might find them before she did. Two kids, no money—it was a disaster in the making.

“Okay,” she said. “But we’ve got to keep you away from your dad. Where is he now?”

“It’s Monday, so he’s sleeping it off and then he’s back out at the refinery until Saturday.” The refinery was over the state line, and employed many of the men and women of Bonne Terre. Due to the commute, many of them, like Miguel’s father, spent part of the week in a cheap hotel closer to the refinery.

“Your sister?”

“She’s at Patricia’s. I’m gonna pick her up for school tomorrow.” Patricia was an old friend of Miguel’s mother, who did what she could for the kids, but the woman was eighty, on welfare and barely spoke English.

She nodded. What to do? What to do?

“All right.” She ducked her head, looking hard into his good eye. “Tomorrow after school you come right here. In fact, after school you come here every day.”

“To the
police station?
” he asked, horrified as any good delinquent would be.

“It’s your only choice, Miguel. And considering what I’ve done for you, if you don’t show up I’ll be—” He looked away. “Miguel,” she snapped and he looked back up, sighing. “I will be very, very insulted.”

Miguel nodded, his lip lifting slightly. Nearly made her cry to see it. Here he was, face beat in, future up in the air, and the kid could still smile. Sort of.

Maybe she could make this work—as long as Dr. Roberts didn’t tell anyone and Tyler kept his mouth shut. And if no one in the station cared about an attempted grand theft she made disappear, or wondered why Miguel was cleaning squad cars every day after school.

And particularly if no one else saw Miguel’s file.

Panic nearly swamped her. Who was she kidding?

Thinking about what she was doing made things worse. She needed to move, act, do something. Give Ramon Pastor a warning that even he would understand.

“Get in the car,” she said, following Miguel toward her sedan.

“Chief!” Lisa came running out into the impound yard, her blond ponytail a little flag out behind her.

“What’s up?” Juliette asked, a little surprised to see Lisa away from her FreeCell game.

“Mayor wants to see you,” Lisa said.

It had been approved? She’d just turned in that paperwork last week. The squad car requisition? Man, the mayor was totally on her side—

Lisa’s eyes flipped over to Miguel. “About the boy.”