The Temptation of Savannah O’Neill Read online

  Oh, God, he thought, struggling for breath. Another life changed. Another life diminished by what I’ve done.

  With a shaking finger, he turned off his phone.

  He rose, bathed in a pool of moonlight, the dark around its edges so black it seemed like the floor might end. Stepping out of the pool would mean a certain fall and he felt as though he’d been held in this spot for too long.

  He was here, at the Manor, with these women day in and day out, waiting, but what the hell was he really doing for his father? Nothing. Being a handyman wasn’t bringing justice to anyone. It was only giving him blisters.

  The floor creaked over his head as they got ready for bed. He could talk to them about Vanessa, right now. Tell them about what people in town said about her, ask if it was true.

  Don’t hurt us.

  He was reluctant down to his feet to hurt them, but he needed to do something, anything. Standing here in the dark, tallying the bloody mistakes he’d made would drive him out of his mind. Maybe he was halfway there—half mad with all of it already. It was the only explanation for what he was doing.

  What he’d come to.

  He forced himself to remember his father in his prison cell, sitting on the thin bunk owning it, holding court, like it was the high stakes room at the Bellagio. Just thinking about it was a gut punch. Seven years for a crime he hadn’t committed alone.

  Other people needed to be punished.

  Unbidden, he remembered the girlfriend’s graveyard eyes. The splotches of blood like ugly rust-colored flowers on her sequined gown.

  The way she screamed and screamed and screamed when the ambulance took her boyfriend’s body away.

  He was here for justice.

  And justice didn’t care who got hurt.

  With a cool head, he decided to look for a safe. Talking about Vanessa had gotten him exactly nowhere and bringing the town gossip into it wouldn’t help.

  The sounds of Katie’s and Savannah’s voices filtered down through the old floors and he knew he had to wait until the house was asleep before starting his hunt.

  He turned on the camping light and picked up his sketchbook. He flipped past his sketches of the repairs and quickly went to work on a sketch of the interior of the house, which was basically two squares built on top of each other around a central courtyard.

  On the first floor, he knew there was a living room and a kitchen and, considering the age of the house, he took a reasonable guess about plumbing and put a bathroom on the second floor above the kitchen.

  An hour and a half later the house was silent, dark and heavy with the dreams of sleeping women. When he was sure he couldn’t be caught, he began his search.

  The old wood floors creaked, soft spots like rotten bruises on a peach under the rugs in the hallways. With every creak he winced and waited for the sound of Savannah’s footsteps thundering down the stairs. They never came. Either she was sound asleep or the creaks weren’t that loud.

  He hadn’t done any sneaking since he’d been a kid, and he felt ridiculously out of practice.

  In the living room, where the cops had been that morning, he checked the walls. Running his hands under the paintings, he found nothing but plaster and spiderwebs.

  He took a step into the center of the room, glancing around for other places a safe might be concealed only to realize that all the paintings were of Margot at various ages and various stages of undress.

  One, illuminated by a shaft of moonlight like a searchlight, was a young Margot, staring over her shoulder. She looked so much like Savannah it was eerie.

  Forcing himself to turn away, to keep his mind on what he was here to do, he left the room.

  Savannah’s office only revealed a landslide of papers and enough computer equipment to launch a spaceship.

  Research, he remembered from his investigator’s reports, Savannah was a well-paid researcher.

  Where does her money go? he wondered. Certainly not into the house. Savannah drove a nothing special car, wore nothing special clothes. No jewels, very little makeup.

  Granted, Margot looked like a woman who demanded a certain amount of money for upkeep.

  And, he thought, taxes on a house like this might be a pretty big chunk of change.

  But still, it didn’t seem to add up.

  He wondered what she looked up on those computers while at the same time trying to convince himself that he truly didn’t care. That knowing her, or wanting to know her any better, was in direct opposition to finding out the truth.

  The drawers to her desk were open and filled with receipts and pens and about a hundred little Halloween packages of M&M’s.

  She has a sweet tooth, he thought, finding the idea utterly intimate as he stared down at the drawer as though it was stuffed with lingerie rather than months-old chocolates.

  More than a little disgusted with himself, he left the office, shutting the door quietly behind him. At the end of the hallway were two closed doors, Margot’s room and what he thought was the library. Both rooms had slices of light shining out under the doors.

  The floor creaked behind him and he turned only to come face-to-face with a steely-eyed Savannah.

  His stomach fell into his shoes.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “I thought I heard something,” he lied. The lie he’d planned and rehearsed. Some of the steel leached from her eyes and she licked her lips. He forced himself to be cold, to be numb to her. It was much harder than he expected.

  “What?” she asked. “What did you hear?”

  “Just some creaking. Old houses,” he said with a shrug, trying hard not to look lower than her eyes—she was wearing that purple robe and its gleam in the moonlight was magnetic.

  “Okay,” she whispered, clearly torn, hesitant to leave him where he stood.

  “You wanted me here,” he reminded her. “To check things out at night, right?”

  “Right,” she agreed, and then repeated it. Stronger. “Of course. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome,” he said and left first, feeling her eyes on his back as he walked away. She was suspicious, and he had to hope he found what he was looking for before she discovered the truth about him.

  THE NEXT MORNING, Doug from the hardware store delivered the tiller and chain saw.

  Matt met him by the curb and helped him unload.

  “I’ll take them around back for you,” Doug said, his bland face alight with morbid curiosity.

  “I got it,” Matt said. His righteousness from last night had faded into a general unease, and bringing this guy into the Manor would only make him feel worse. “Thanks, though.”

  Doug peered over Matt’s shoulder. “God, look at her,” he said and Matt spun to see all the O’Neill women standing on the porch, glaring at him.

  The only thing missing was a shotgun in Katie’s hands.

  “How did someone so beautiful get to be so mean?” Doug asked.

  Something inside of him leaped, snarled, wanted to tear this guy apart for even looking at Savannah with that hate and ownership in his eyes, as though he knew everything there was to know about the woman.

  Not your business, Matt. Stay out of it.

  But the urge to protect the women behind him wouldn’t go away.

  “I swear she’s the biggest bitch I’ve ever met.”

  “Well, women tend to get mean when people call them names,” he said through clenched teeth.

  Doug blinked at him, as if he didn’t get it, and Matt waited for the words to sink in.

  “Give it time, man, her true colors will come through.”

  That was the thing—Matt feared they already had. In those soft moments. The quiet ones. As she smoothed her daughter’s hair away from her face. As she jumped over rocks. He thought of the M&M’s, of her defiant eyes last night that didn’t quite hide the worry she felt around him.

  “You know, in my experience, men hate a beautiful woman for only one reason,” Matt said. “What’s tha
t?”

  “The woman is too good for them and they know it.”

  Doug’s eyes narrowed. “They’re trash. Whores. Every one of them, from the grandma on down. Why don’t you ask Savannah who Katie’s father is, huh?”

  Matt reached out to curl his hand in the neck of Doug’s shirt.

  “There a problem here?” Margot’s voice rang out like steel on steel behind him and he dropped his hand.

  “Nope,” Matt said, looking Doug square in the eye. “Doug was just leaving. Don’t worry about delivering that sod,” he said. “Give me a call and I’ll come get it.”

  Doug grumbled, cast one more dark look over Matt’s shoulder, and finally got back in his truck and drove away, a plume of dust behind him.

  Matt released the brake on the tiller and picked up the chain saw before turning. Margot stood there, staring daggers at him as Savannah was stepping off the porch behind her.

  “Don’t say a word about Katie’s father,” Margot said, her face stony. “It’s not something that gets talked about around here. Ever.”

  “Yeah,” he said, wiping his neck with his shoulder, getting sick of the secrets. “There’s a lot of that here.”

  Savannah came to stand next to Margot and lifted her hand to shield her eyes from the sun. “What’s going on?” she asked.

  Looking for the safe had gotten him nowhere. It was time to throw some cards on the table and see what these two had.

  “According to Doug and his mother, the gossip around town is that some kid named Garrett is behind the break-in.”

  Savannah and Margot shared a loaded look. “That’s what we thought,” Savannah said. “Juliette is on it.”

  “He also said that Garrett is looking for a wall safe. Rumor has it you guys are hiding gems.”

  There was a long silent moment and Matt held his breath. Come on, he thought, just give me something. One thing.

  Savannah laughed.

  “Yes, termite damage and loads of gems. Makes perfect sense. Did Doug have anything else to say?”

  Disheartened, frustrated, he shook his head and pushed the tiller toward the side of the house. He took a few steps before stopping.

  He didn’t want to be involved, but he couldn’t help it. Doug’s malice turned Matt’s stomach, and he had to wonder how far such anger had gone.

  He turned, looked Savannah in the eye. “Did Doug ever hurt you?”

  Savannah’s mouth fell open slightly before she pressed her lips into a white line. She shook her head, her eyes bleeding blue. “He’s harmless.”

  Matt swallowed, clamped his teeth together and left before he did anything else.

  THE NEXT MORNING, it was barely past dawn and he was sweaty and swarmed with bugs. Frustration ate at him, driving him to swing the scythe harder, faster.

  No luck.

  Four days. Four. Days.

  Most of the kudzu was gone. The wall was totally repaired, a work of art, actually. He’d unearthed the bench and the broken fountain, and the rosebushes were trimmed to within an inch of their lives—he was an architect after all, not a damn gardener.

  But that was it.

  He’d searched every room except for Savannah’s, Margot’s and the library, which were all locked. This was so highly suspicious, he couldn’t sleep at night thinking about all they might be hiding in those rooms.

  But in the rest of the house, no safes.

  Or, frankly, any sign of Vanessa.

  Savannah was avoiding him like the plague and none of this brought him any closer to knowing where Vanessa or the gems were or why his father had been set up to rot in a jail cell alone.

  As he attacked the vines, he became all too aware he had a pair of eyes on him from the cypress tree over his shoulder.

  Not Savannah’s—she watched him from the window of her office. And Margot stood sentinel at the kitchen window.

  Katie watched him from the tree.

  “Hi, Katie,” he said, breaking the silence, his rhythm against the kudzu never slowing. “Whatcha doing?”

  There was a long, slightly stunned silence and he grinned.

  “I know you’re there,” he said. “No use pretending you’re not.”

  An orange peel fell on his shoulder. He smiled and shrugged it off. It landed, a brilliant orange curl, in the pile of deep green weeds.

  “I’m watching you,” she finally said.

  “Seems you should have better things to do.”

  Leaves rustled and there was a thunk as the girl dropped onto the cobblestones behind him.

  “I don’t.”

  “You bored?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You want to help?” he asked, stopping long enough to glance over his shoulder.

  She wore the top of her Asian red silk pajamas with cutoff shorts, tennis shoes and sweat socks pulled up to her knees.

  “No,” she said and wrestled around in her back pocket only to pull out a deck of cards. “Want to play cards?”

  He paused for a second then shook his head with a chuckle. Man, these O’Neills were never what he expected. “I’m working.”

  “Come on,” she begged, her smile a glittery replica of her mother’s in the surveillance picture he’d stared at far too long. It changed Katie’s awkward features—the prominent nose, the messy hair and freckles—and he got a good solid glimpse of the beauty Katie O’Neill would be. “A card trick. Just one.”

  He couldn’t say no to that smile, or to a bored kid. He remembered all too well what that was like, waiting in the car for hours on end while his father “worked” in some backroom card game. He set down the scythe and turned around, wiping off his hands.

  “Let’s see what you got,” he said with a smile, expecting something along the lines of Go Fish.

  With a flourish that would have made the old man proud, Katie shuffled and bridged, the cards a blur in her hands.

  “You’ve done this before?” he asked, lifting his eyebrows.

  “Watch the queen of hearts,” she said, flashing him the old lady then breaking into a flimflam routine that would have worked on any corner in the city fifty years ago. “You watching?”

  “Oh, I’m watching.” But he was watching the nine of clubs, which had been next to the queen.

  Katie gave him another glimpse of the queen then tucked her seamlessly behind the nine. “You see her?”

  “I know exactly where she is.”

  Katie scoffed, her eyes bright, and fanned the cards, facing him with a flourish. “Pick her.”

  And he did, right away, tucked behind the nine. Katie’s face fell. “You’ve got to work harder than that to fool me at cards. Don’t hide the mark under the closest card. Pick a different card a few spots away.” He took out the queen and moved her behind the three of spades, which was halfway across the deck.

  “You play cards?” Katie asked.

  “Some.”

  “Poker?”

  He laughed, amazed at this little girl’s capacity to surprise him. “I’ve played before.”

  Her ice-blue eyes narrowed. “You a shark?” she asked.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Another voice yelled and Matt and Katie turned to find Savannah bearing down on them from the doorway like a hurricane.

  Katie pushed the cards into Matt’s hands and he fumbled, dropping most of them.

  “He was showing me card tricks, Mom,” Katie said, blinking her blue eyes in an innocent act so bad Matt nearly groaned. But Savannah bought it. She grabbed her daughter and glared at Matt as if he were showing her how to play with matches.

  “We don’t play cards in this house,” she said, her eyes ripping the skin off his body. She pushed her long blond hair off her face, away from her eyes and Matt realized she looked like a Valkyrie. A woman warrior out for blood. His.

  What did I do? he wondered.

  “Cards?” he muttered, like an idiot. According to his private investigator’s reports hidden away in the sleeping porch, her brother, the mid
dle one, had won the World Series of Poker last year. Her family not only played cards, they excelled at them.

  “Not in this house,” Savannah nearly hissed.

  “I…ah…” Matt was struck dumb and Katie buried her face in her mother’s neck, offering him no help at all. “I’m sorry?”

  “Damn right you’re sorry,” Savannah snapped. “No cards. No tricks. No games.”

  He considered clearing his name and opening Savannah’s eyes to the flimflam artist she was currently cradling against her chest like the last innocent on the planet.

  But Katie lifted her head momentarily and shook it, fear in her eyes, and Matt didn’t know if he was being conned or if she was truly scared. Either way, it wasn’t much skin off his nose. One more lie added to his growing pile.

  But he couldn’t help wonder what scared Savannah so much about cards or gambling that she could lie to herself so completely, see the world so differently from how it really was.

  He nodded, solemnly. “Got it. I am sorry. I was just passing the time.”

  “We hired you to work.”

  He arched his eyebrows in stunned silence. He’d been working his tail off and no one, not even an angry Savannah, could deny that. “Is there something wrong with the amount of work I’ve done?” he asked, his pride leaping. “Am I not doing enough?”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m sorry. I’m…you’re doing a great job.”

  Damn right he was. His hands were a bloody mess, his back felt broken at the end of the day and he had the sneaking suspicion he’d lost about five pounds.

  Savannah seemed to chew her tongue for a moment, on the verge of saying something and he found himself hoping, even for a scolding. Four days of silence and now—with this fire in her eyes, her hands curling in the red hair of her rascal daughter—he found himself wanting her to stay. Wanting her around.

  She was like a bright spark against a black sky.

  Her eyes flickered over his face, he could almost feel them touch his lips and eyes. Breathing became difficult and his fingers twitched with a sudden wild impulse to touch her hair, a long straight piece of it that had fallen over her shoulder and glowed in the sunlight.