The Temptation of Savannah O’Neill Read online

  It was Vanessa as Savannah remembered her, getting into a car. Her eyes hidden behind glasses, her hand lifted in a merry wave that seemed to say, “I’ll only be gone a few minutes.”

  A lie, that gesture.

  “Your grandmother,” Margot said, when Savannah couldn’t seem to find the words.

  “How come she’s not here?” Katie asked in the simple way of kids. “And why don’t Uncle Tyler and Uncle Carter come visit?” Katie pulled up pictures of Carter and Tyler.

  All of the reasons seemed lame. Stupid. Years seemed to go by so fast.

  “I’m going to make sure Carter and Tyler come home for Christmas,” Savannah said. “It’s time.”

  “That would be lovely,” Margot said. “But we’d have more luck if we accepted Carter’s invitation to spend the holiday in Baton Rouge. You know he doesn’t like his past getting mixed up with his present.”

  “I don’t think coming home for one Christmas is going to kill his professional career,” Savannah snapped.

  Margot eyed her. “It also wouldn’t kill you to leave Bonne Terre.”

  “I’d like to go to Baton Rouge,” Katie said, her eyes bright with the prospect. Katie hadn’t been out of the parish since she was a year and a half and Tyler had paid for tickets for the two of them to go to Vegas. Baton Rouge was like going to Mars.

  “They can come here,” Savannah said, closed up tight against the idea of going to them, the deserters. “This is their home.”

  Margot shook her head. “Not to them, it isn’t.” Savannah didn’t say anything. She knew what Margot was trying to do, but this was their home, Savannah, Tyler and Carter’s. The home they made after Mom left them here. The home that kept them safe, protected. Together.

  Until they left it.

  “I don’t understand why you take it as a personal betrayal that they left.” Margot sighed. “Or why you think this house will fall down if you go. I asked you to come to Las Vegas last year. And last month, in the Far East, Anthony would have been delighted to have you—”

  “Right, I’m going on a trip with you and your boyfriend.”

  “Just friend, honey.” Margot smoothed back white hair from her forehead. “Boyfriends are for children.”

  This conversation was slipping from uncomfortable to ridiculous.

  “I have to get some work done,” Savannah said and stood, freeing herself. Margot had been obsessed lately with Savannah’s lack of travel. Like she should take off every few months for foreign lands the way Margot did.

  She wasn’t that kind of person. Foreign lands were not for her.

  “Honey?” Margot asked. “You don’t suppose Matt was right, do you?”

  “About what?”

  “About Vanessa hiding the gems here?”

  Savannah swung incredulous eyes to her grandmother. “Do you?”

  Margot pursed her lips. “I guess not.”

  “There are no gems in this house.” Savannah laughed. “Please. We would know. I would know. How would she get in and out without me knowing it?”

  “But the break-ins?”

  “High schoolers,” Savannah said. “Just like it’s always been.”

  MATT HEAVED down another square of sod, lining up the edges.

  Don’t. Think.

  Don’t. Think.

  Bugs swarmed. Sun burned.

  Don’t. Think.

  Not about his father.

  Not about Jack.

  The accident.

  Savannah in the moonlight.

  Don’t. Think.

  His world was reduced to the stretch and pull of his muscles, the river of sweat down his back.

  He didn’t look up. Didn’t stop.

  The files were gone, his obsession over his father’s setup deflated with one sharp, wounded look from Savannah.

  I can fix it.

  What a joke. He couldn’t fix anything. Shouldn’t even try.

  Something orange was flung into his eyes and he looked up to see Katie scowling at him from a low tree branch. She lifted her hand and hurled the peeled orange at his chest.

  The fruit was right on target and the juice and pulp exploded against his body, up into his eyes.

  “We don’t want you here!” she cried, then vanished in the leaves, leaving nothing but silence and the smell of orange in the air.

  Suddenly, there was a roar in his head. The girlfriend, Savannah, his father and Jack, all screaming for attention, all wanting to divide him into parcels of pain. Of regret.

  Until there was nothing left of him.

  He would finish this, then the ghosts could have him.

  CHAPTER TEN

  “WOW, LOOK AT THAT new greenhouse. It’s gorgeous. Seriously, your courtyard looks like a magazine spread,” Juliette said, sitting on Savannah’s printer table so she could stare out the window at Matt. “That guy doesn’t stop, does he?”

  “Who?” Savannah asked, pretending to be distracted as she saved files and sent e-mails. Done. Her work for Discovery was done.

  “Like you don’t know,” Juliette said, grinning. She leaned over and reached into Savannah’s bottom drawer for the Halloween candy she kept there.

  “I don’t,” she said, knowing she sounded like some kind of spinster librarian. Which she was. And she was back to being okay with it. After the initial shock and anger of finding out about Matt, she’d actually started to grieve a little. Not that she was in love, but, for the first time in a long time, it felt possible.

  And that didn’t happen in Bonne Terre very often. Not for her.

  But she was over it. A week after Matt had been revealed as a fraud, she was her old self again.

  “I still don’t understand why you let him stay. I thought you were going to run him out of town for sure.”

  “Not my call, sadly,” Savannah said.

  Juliette snorted, speaking volumes in the language between friends.

  “What is your point?” Savannah asked.

  “If you really wanted him gone, he’d be gone.”

  “Margot may be old, but she’s no pushover, and she wanted him to stay.” Juliette was silent, and again, the silence said plenty. “I’m serious.”

  “Fine. Play that way.” Juliette shrugged and tossed a handful of candy into her mouth. She twisted on the printer table to better watch whatever Matt was doing. “He doesn’t look healthy.”

  Savannah thought the same thing, but she stayed mute. No way was she admitting she’d been watching him.

  Not at first, of course—she’d stayed strong for two days. But then she’d noticed that the sounds of work coming from the courtyard didn’t stop. Ever. They started at dawn and ended at dusk without break.

  It had turned into some kind of contest. If he was working, she was working. The sounds of saws and hammers became an odd soundtrack to religious rituals around the world, and watching him from the corner of her eye became her new hobby.

  Thanks to his insane work schedule, the Discovery work was done three days before she had to go back to the library. And she had a headache from glancing at him sideways.

  “Jeez,” Juliette whispered through her teeth. “He looks like he’s lost about five pounds.”

  “He doesn’t eat,” Savannah said. “Margot leaves out sandwiches for lunch, but he eats them for dinner and I don’t know what he’s doing in the morning.”

  Juliette smirked at her. “I knew you cared.”

  “I don’t,” Savannah insisted. “But the Notorious O’Neills don’t need him dying on our property.”

  “Good point,” Juliette said, looking out the window again. “At least he’s drinking water.”

  “Oh, he’s plenty hydrated. Around noon, Katie sits up in the cypress and throws water balloons at him. It used to be orange peels, but yesterday she upped her game.”

  “You don’t feel like stopping that?”

  “I feel like filling up the balloons for her.”

  Juliette watched him out the window for a long moment. “He
is one good-looking guy. You sure you don’t want to give me a few details of whatever you two did in the library—”

  “Did you have a point in coming here?” Savannah knew Juliette was trying to get her to snap, but she refused to take the bait.

  “A friend can’t stop by and lust after the help?”

  Savannah rolled her eyes. “Just a second,” she murmured and attached the last file. Satisfaction brewed in her as she clicked the Send button and rolled away from her desk, grabbing a bag of candy as she went.

  Nothing said celebration like stale candy.

  “I did come for a reason,” Juliette said, swinging around to face Savannah. Juliette was in police-chief mode and it made Savannah’s heart sink.

  “I talked to Garrett’s and Owen’s folks. The boys insist they didn’t have anything to do with either break-in.”

  “Of course they didn’t.” Savannah scowled, splitting a red chocolate between her teeth.

  “The parents weren’t much help, but a certain vibe I got from Garrett’s stepmom makes me believe they weren’t so innocent regarding the first incident with the spray paint.”

  “There’s nothing you can do?” Savannah knew the answer even as she asked it.

  “Not without proof, sorry. But we’ll keep an eye on them.”

  Savannah smiled, grim and weary. “You did the best you could.”

  “The good news is, the whole town knows about Matt living here, so I’d imagine the break-ins will stop.”

  “That’s my silver lining?”

  “Well, that and being able to watch him out your window. Seriously, he’s sexy as hell.”

  Savannah took a deep breath and gave in to her raging curiosity. “So? What did you find out about him?” There was only one question she really needed answered.

  Juliette looked blank. “What do you mean?”

  “Matt Woods—you wrote down all that information.”

  Juliette laughed. “I didn’t do anything with it. The guy was clearly telling the truth. I’ve never seen a more tortured liar in my life. You could tell it doesn’t come easily to him.”

  “He didn’t seem to have any problem the night before,” Savannah murmured. But then, she wondered, maybe all that stuff he’d said in the library was the truth. The mother dying of cancer and his friend, Jack.

  Not that she cared.

  “You’re the researcher,” Juliette said. “I thought for sure you’d have him all vetted by now.” Juliette stared at her wide-eyed. “You haven’t searched his name on the Internet? You? You don’t buy dishwasher detergent without looking it up on the Internet.”

  “I’ve been busy.”

  “Sure you have.”

  Again, that silence that seemed to say so much.

  “You know,” Juliette said, softly, carefully, as if she knew she was tiptoeing onto thin ice, “the chance of him being married—”

  “I know,” Savannah said, but she couldn’t calm the voices screaming what if?

  “Is that why you haven’t checked him out?”

  “I don’t think I could survive that again,” Savannah said, locked up in knots. Ridiculous, as if that particular lightning would strike twice, but she was still scared of typing Matt’s name into a search engine and seeing that picture of the perfect family with Matt’s name in the caption.

  The memory of doing just that eight years ago still had the power to bottom out her stomach. “My conscience is about maxed out.”

  “You can’t still be blaming yourself about Eric. He didn’t tell you,” Juliette cried.

  “It’s my job, Juliette, to find things out. It’s what I do.”

  “But why would you even suspect—”

  “Doesn’t change anything,” Savannah said, guilt like a nice warm blanket she curled up with now and again.

  “It changes everything. You like being a martyr.” Juliette stood, repositioning her gun and badge on her hip. “When you finally get around to finding out who’s living in your house, find out why he got so gung ho about those gems six months ago.”

  “He told us,” Savannah said. “His father had just confessed the truth about the theft.”

  Juliette shook her head. “I checked Joel Woods out. That man did six and a half years of quiet time. He’s out in six months and now he talks? And not to the cops or his lawyer, but to his architect son. Why?”

  “What’s your police brain thinking?”

  “Either, something happened recently that got Matt all fired up and sent him down here like a late vigilante—”

  “Or?”

  Juliette grabbed another bag of candy. “Or he wants the jewels for himself.”

  THE SUN HAD SET a long time ago and shadows chased Savannah through the kitchen that smelled like the gumbo they’d had for dinner.

  There was a plastic container of leftovers in the fridge and she could grab it and take it out to him as easily as not. But she chose not.

  He didn’t deserve gumbo.

  She found him in the dark twilight, working on the last of the greenhouse, carefully sliding glass panes into place. His back rippled, the small muscles of his arms flexed and shifted as he built a house of glass.

  He had lost weight—the side of his face that she could see was thin. His cheekbones looked like they could cut steaks.

  Not that she cared, but seriously, they didn’t need him passing out or worse.

  “You should eat,” she said and he jumped, nearly dropping a pane on his feet.

  “Christ,” he breathed. “You shouldn’t sneak up on people.”

  She crossed her arms over her chest, and tried very hard to convince herself that she didn’t want to touch him. Didn’t want to stroke back the sweaty hunk of hair that fell over his forehead, practically into his eyes.

  He needed a haircut.

  Not. That. I. Care.

  “I have a question,” she said.

  He grunted, picking up another glass square, unwrapping it from its protective shell. His hands were raw, and a scrape along his palm was bleeding, probably going to get infected.

  Not. That. I. Care.

  “Are you here because you want the jewels for yourself?”

  That got his attention and he straightened to his full height. He was a big man, over six feet. Strong, his T-shirt clinging to hard, lean muscles. Her nerve endings remembered what her flesh had felt like against those muscles, how all that contact had sent an electrical charge through the dormant parts of her body. Waking her up. Turning her on.

  “No,” he said, wiping his hands on his shirt, leaving smears of dirt and blood. “I don’t care about the gems.”

  “Where are your gloves?” she snapped, angry that he was dumb enough to do this work without protection and angry that she cared.

  “They have a hole.”

  “Get a new pair.”

  His lips twisted slightly. “Yes, boss.”

  He slid the glass home.

  “So if you’re not here for the diamond and ruby, why come seven years after the fact?”

  He bent and picked up a broken pane and cursed under his breath before carefully setting the pieces into what she assumed was the junk pile. Concrete, glass, bits of brick and stacks of ruin, like terrible, shattered buildings.

  His silence stretched and pulled until Savannah snapped. “You lied your way into our home. We have a right to know.”

  He breathed something she didn’t hear as he bent to pick up another pane.

  “What?”

  “Justice!” he yelled, glass shattering at their feet. She jumped at the sound and the sudden fury in his voice.

  “Dad didn’t do the crime alone, his hands weren’t the only ones dirty.”

  “But it’s seven years too late—”

  “Guilt should be punished.”

  The courtyard rang with his voice and she stepped back, stunned. Something else was at work here, she could see it in his face. Feel it in the air around him, smell it like sulfur and blood.

  “I
’m sorry,” he said, his voice suspiciously calm. But she could see, in the moonlight, his heartbeat throbbing in his neck, as if he’d been running for miles.

  “Are you okay?” she asked, and hated herself for asking.

  “Sure,” he answered, but he was lying. An idiot could see he was lying.

  She had questions. Plenty of them. A thin river of concern running through them all but, finally, she decided to listen to herself.

  She didn’t care.

  She walked to the house but stopped at the door. She tore chunks of chipped white paint from the door frame, flicking them away with her thumb.

  “Are you married?” she asked.

  A sound like laughter or a growl rumbled up his throat and she felt it in her spine, her belly.

  “Just answer the question.”

  “No,” he said, his voice thick and solid.

  “I can find out if you’re lying.”

  “Then why ask?”

  She didn’t say anything, the memories and shame and guilt making her nauseous. She rested her head against the screen door, hating that the worst thing she’d ever done had brought her Katie, the best thing that had ever happened to her.

  “I’m not married,” he said, softly.

  “Good.” She pushed the word past the ball of sick in her throat. She stepped through the door and stopped again, sympathy and a dozen other things she didn’t want to examine too closely stopping her feet.

  “There’s gumbo in the fridge,” she said. She listened to the humming silence behind her for a moment and went inside.

  IT WAS EASY, in the end.

  She sat in her dark ridiculous bed, moonlight splashed across her lap and the computer cradled there, her finger poised over the enter key.

  Matt Woods typed into the search engine.

  No matter what he said, Matt was absolutely not okay. She didn’t want to see it, but it was like watching someone self-destruct right in front of your eyes. Something was eating him, from the inside out.

  Guilt deserves to be punished.

  She had the terrible suspicion that Matt was using her courtyard as punishment.

  But for what?

  Without a second thought, Savannah hit the enter key.

  “Matt Woods receives award,” she muttered, reading the files. “Woods Takes On Downtown. Architect Has ‘Elemental’ Vision For The City. Contractor begins work on billion-dollar rejuvenation.”