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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 research 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 knowing 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.
MATT 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.
And suddenly he didn’t want to witness Savannah being led away in chains, not if it meant the girl had to witness it, as well.
“I don’t think it was high-schoolers,” Savannah said, staring daggers at the two cops with poor eating habits. “They’ve never tried to break into the house before.”
“Well,” one of the cops said, brushing his hands together and readjusting his girth in the small chair. “It was only a matter of time before some kid got bold enough to try it.”
“I’m sure it’s another prank,” the thin cop said.
“A prank!” Savannah nearly yelled. “You guys have looked the other way for years, and we’ve accepted that as part of the price of living here and being an O’Neill. But someone tried to break into my daughter’s room. It’s the hardest room to get to from the outside and it’s not even accessible from the back courtyard.”
The rage and fear in Savannah’s eyes were real and hot enough to bend steel.
“We’ve dusted for prints and we’ll see what it turns up,” Thin Cop said.
“And then?” Savannah asked, practically spitting fire. Matt could understand her ire. These men were not taking her seriously; their disdain was practically written on the walls. Suddenly, Margot’s comment about the O’Neills being a target around here took on painful ramifications.
“And then, if possible, we’ll make some arrests,” Thin Cop said.
“And what will you be doing in the meantime? To help protect us as citizens of Bonne Terre? Which, I can’t believe I need to remind you, is your job.”
“Look, if you want a man out front, you’re going to have to take that up with Chief Tremblant—”
“Which I will,” Savannah said, standing with the little girl clinging to her like a monkey. “Now, I’d—”
“We’d like to thank you gentlemen for your hard work.” Margot stepped in, like a gracious host or a bomb expert.
“You know,” Fat Cop said, his beady eyes glued to Savannah as if she were the one guilty of breaking into her daughter’s room, “word in town is you’ve hired some stranger to do work around here.”
Matt opened his mouth, but Savannah was there before him. “What are you getting at, Officer Jones?”
“If you don’t want trouble, don’t ask for it.” His tone oozed a sexual patronization that made Matt want to put his fist in the big man’s face. “Seems to me you O’Neills have had a hard time learning that lesson. Maybe that’s why we’re not bending over to make sure y’all are safe and sound. You could take better care your damn selves.”
Enough was enough, and Matt stepped out of the shadowed doorway.
“I’m not here to hurt these women,” he said and all eyes swung to him. He met the cops head-on and could feel Savannah staring at him with his whole body.
What he said, of course, wasn’t totally true, but Matt was living in the dark edges between truth and perception. But he wasn’t here to hurt them like this—scaring children and mothers in the middle of the night.
“Then you’ll have no problem telling me your whereabouts last night,” Fat Cop said.
“Room 3 at the Bonne Terre Inn. All night.”
“Any witnesses to that fact?”
“I ordered a pizza at midnight.”
“Break-in was at two.”
“I took my box out to the garbage around that time. I waved to Mrs. Adams at the front desk.” He put his fists on his hips to keep them from going to work on the guy’s nose and smug grin. “I’m not here to hurt anyone,” he reiterated, glancing sideways at Savannah to see if she got the message.
She stared at him, her eyes thick blue wells of anger and worry. For a moment, a millisecond, he saw the girlfriend of the man—boy, really—who’d died, whose blood was all over Matt’s hands.
The room dipped around him. Time collapsed and that point-seven seconds nearly got him.
“Come on, Jim,” Thin Cop said, putting a hand on his partner’s beefy shoulder. Matt focused on them as hard as he could, shoving away his memories of the girlfriend and her pain. “We’re going to find out it was Owen and his friends, we both know it. Let’s leave these people alone.”
Officer Jones gave Matt a long look then turned to Savannah. “You. Both of you—” he glanced at Margot, raking the two women with his eyes “—you’re just like Vanessa.”
Savannah went white and Matt didn’t think, he simply acted, stepping in between Savannah and the policeman.
“It’s time for you to go,” Matt said.
It took a moment of hard stare-down between Matt and Officer Jones but finally the cop nodded, slicked back his thinning hair and slid his hat on. “We’ll be in touch,” he said, barely looking at the women standing around the couch. Instead he took a careful step toward Matt, who tensed, every muscle suddenly eager for a fight.
“I’ll be watching you,” the man murmured.
“That’ll be fun,” Matt said with a smirk, guaranteed to piss off the cop. And it did. Luckily, his partner got a hand around the guy’s arm and led him out of the house before violence erupted.
“Oh, my,” Margot said, once the cops were gone. She collapsed onto the blue velveteen couch, a puddle of white linen and silk. “That was more than I needed this morning.”
“I didn’t like those police officers,” the little girl said, lifting her head from her mother’s neck.
“You and me both,” Margot said, holding out her arms and the girl climbed from mother to great-grandmother.
Savannah didn’t say anything, just glared at him as if it were his judgment day.
“It wasn’t me,” he said, even though he knew it didn’t matter. She either believed him or not.
“I know that,” Savannah answered, her voice rough and husky, no doubt from swallowing so much anger, and his shoulders went down, his back got loose with relief.
He noticed her robe, purple silk with Asian style hand-painted flowers gliding over her breasts, tied tight at her trim waist. No wonder Fat Cop was leering—Matt was in danger of doing it himself. The prison warden from yesterday was long gone and in her place was something far more dangerous.
A woman with a lit fuse.
Christ, he wanted to touch her.
Her hair was down. Her face clean and clear of makeup, her skin like the inside of a seashell. And her eyes…well, her big blue forthright eyes were killing him.
“What happened?” he asked.
“Around two this morning, Katie started screaming.” Savannah sighed, rubbing her forehead. “I ran in there and saw someone jumping out her window.”
“Oh, my God,” he whispered, imagining that to be a parent’s worst nightmare. “Was she…is she hurt?”
“No.” The redheaded girl spoke up, pushing back long tangles of hair to reveal freckles and blue eyes. “I’m not. I was just scared.”
“Do you know why anyone would try to get into the house?” he asked, studying Savannah carefully for any indication that there was a safe somewhere filled with jewels.
Savannah shook her head, looking slightly lost.
“Is there anything of value—”
“That’s hardly any of your business,” Margot said, and he tore his eyes away from Savannah to look at her, stunned to see that without the careful application of makeup, her face really showed her age. “Nor is it polite conversation at 7:00 a.m.”
Matt ducked his head. “Sorry,” he murmured. “I apologize.”
“I do, too,” Margot said graciously after Savannah shot her a stern look. “It’s been a rough morning. But it probably was those teenagers.” Margot sighed, resting her head against the back of the settee. “The officers are right, it was only a matter of time—”
“Those officers were idiots,” Savannah snapped. “Someone broke into my daughter’s room and they acted like it was nothing.” Savannah’s voice broke and she turned away from her daughter as if to hide her runaway emotions.
Something dented in Matt’s chest, a foundation trembled and he wanted to reach out and touch the fragile elegant bones of her wrist. Hold her hand.
Ruthlessly, he looked around the room, turning himself off to the emotions, embracing the chill that lived inside of him.
Do not get attached to these women, he told himself.
“Thank you,” Savannah said and he swung around to look at her, made speechless for a moment by her beauty, by the look in her eyes. “For what you said to those officers.”
There was something slightly different in her, a fierceness transformed. It was as if a light had gone on in a dark house. His conscience, quiet for so long, muted and grieving, woke up.
Don’t do this, he thought. Don’t look at me like that. Don’t let me in, I’m only here to hurt you.
“No problem,” he said.
“Who are you?” a small voice asked, and he turned to see the girl giving him the once-over.
Matt’s lip lifted at the quicksilver change in topics. “My name is Matt, I’m going to help fix the back garden.”
Katie’s eyes narrowed and she harrumphed, looking as skeptical as a young girl could, which, actually, was pretty damn skeptical.
“He’s going to be staying here. In the sleeping porch. At night,” Margot said, and she might as well have shot off a cannon into the silent room.
CHAPTER FOUR
SAVANNAH LOOKED DUMBSTRUCK. She blinked. Blinked again. Matt resisted taking a step back, away from her.
“I’m sorry?” she finally said.
“He’s staying,” Margot repeated, showing a whole lot of that steel under her magnolia exterior. “I know, I know.” She waved her hands in Savannah’s face as it grew stormier by the second. “You told him to stay at the Inn, but I told him he could stay on the sleeping porch and frankly, after what’s happened, I think it’s a damn good idea to have a man around here.”
“What?” Savannah cried. “This is not the Wild West, Margot.”
“No, but it’s our home and I’m eighty and Katie’s eight and you’re a damn librarian. We’re about as defenseless as it gets.”
“We could get a gun,” Katie said and both Savannah and Margot spun to stare at her. “I’m just saying,” she added sheepishly.
“We’re not getting a gun,” Margot said. “Matt is sleeping on the porch. End of story.”
“Can I talk to you?” Savannah said through her teeth. “Privately.”
“No, you can’t. You’re too wrapped up in the past and the last man who stayed here.”
Savannah went stiff and pale as ice and Matt had to fight himself not to show a reaction. What last man? And what did he do?
“You can’t see that this is a perfect solution to our problem,” Margot said.
Savannah spun toward Matt, not even pretending to smile or be gracious. “Can you give us a minute?”