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“No, you didn’t. You said, ‘I miss the ocean.’” Tyler held out his arms in exasperation. “What the hell does that even mean?”
“Okay.” Richard nodded, like some kind of grief counselor or something. “I get that you are upset.”
Oh, it was hard not to laugh. Dad got that he was upset. Hilarious.
“But,” Richard continued, “we have things to talk about, son. Things—”
“Gems?” he asked, cutting through the half hour of bullshit his father was ready to shovel out before getting to the point.
Richard gaped, for just a moment, which was akin to anyone else in the world falling down in a dead faint.
“You know about them?” Richard asked, slowly turning the flame off under the eggs.
“I had a little conversation with local law enforcement last night. Apparently Mom was snooping around here last month looking for some stolen gems. The cop said there’d been some suspicious activity around the house lately. Windowsills damaged, bushes trampled.”
Richard pursed his lips. “I’ve lost my touch.”
“Apparently. Why don’t you tell me what you know about these gems?” he asked.
“Seven years ago I was hired to steal the Pacific Diamond, Ruby and Emerald from the Ancient Treasures collection at the Bellagio.”
Tyler whistled through his teeth and Dad smiled, cock of the walk.
“Right, not easy. Luckily, I had a friend who knew the Bellagio like the back of his hand. He’d been sleeping with one of the pit bosses. Joel Woods—”
“Woods? Why do I know that name?”
“Your sister is traveling the world with Joel’s son, Matthew.”
Christ. Tyler put his head in his hands and the fire ants went berserk. Could this get any more complicated?
“Where was I during all of this?” Tyler asked. It seemed hard to believe Dad would have been planning a crime of this magnitude while they’d been living together.
“You were shacked up with that dancer,” Dad said. “With the legs—”
“Jill. Right.” Those had been some heady days. Dad could have joined the monastery and Tyler probably wouldn’t have noticed.
“Who hired you?”
“No idea who the big guy was. I did all my business with a Chinese woman who delivered takeout. They gave me a 60–40 split and bankrolled the supplies.”
“How did Mom get involved?”
“That’s the thing.” Dad spun one of the kitchen chairs around and sat, looking like a wild-eyed sea captain about to tell some tales and Tyler felt that familiar tug-of-war between love and hate.
There was still a part of him that wanted to sit here, listen to every word, applaud every caper and con.
The other part of him was so damn tired of it all.
Ten years ago, Tyler had left Bonne Terre to go find Richard and despite having lived with him off and on for the last ten years, Tyler felt as though he’d never really found him.
Richard Bonavie, nomad, thief, con man extraordinaire, sure. Anybody could follow that guy’s trail of broken hearts and cons gone bad across the country.
But Tyler’s father? Still missing.
“Seven years ago,” Richard said, “when Joel and I got to the drop-off, your mother was there.” He shook his head. “I hadn’t seen the woman in something like fifteen years and she’s sitting in that ratty Henderson bar like she owns the place.”
“That must have been a surprise.”
“You can imagine. Anyway, I left. If Vanessa was there, I figured the whole thing was sour in a big way.”
“What happened to the gems? To Joel?”
“He got pinched, but he only had one gem on him. The emerald. The diamond and ruby are still loose.”
“And you think they’re here?”
“There was a rumor that the diamond had surfaced in Beijing, but nothing came of it. I think Vanessa picked them off Joel and hid them here. It’s why she came back after all these years.”
Twenty, to be exact, and Dad was probably right—she sure as hell didn’t come back for her kids. Just like Dad, it would take something shiny and very, very valuable to get her coming around.
“So,” he said, “you’re here for the gems?”
“Of course!” Richard cried, spreading his arms. “There’s a fortune hidden in this house, Ty. A fortune that could be ours.”
A fortune.
Of course.
“I would think a fortune in gems might warrant some enthusiasm,” Richard said, arching an eyebrow.
Luckily, a pounding at the door saved Tyler from having to answer and he stood.
“I’m not here,” Dad said and Tyler shot him a look.
“You never are,” he muttered and headed to the front door, ready to take off the head of whatever salesperson or Jehovah’s Witness might be unfortunate enough to be standing there.
Not bothering with a shirt he swung open the bright red door only to find Juliette Tremblant standing there, straight and tall, her hazel eyes set into that perfect face.
His stomach dipped, his skin tightened at just the sight of her. Her perfume, something clean and minty, hit him on a breeze and his poor, battered body responded with a growl.
“Chief Tremblant,” he said, propping his arm up on the door frame.
Oh, the fire ants sat up and cheered when she watched his chest, her eyes practically sticking to his arms. His hands.
Well, looky, looky, he thought, glad he hadn’t bothered with a shirt yet.
“Something I can do for you?” he asked, hooking a thumb in the low waist of his jeans.
Juliette sighed, looking up at the sky as if praying for strength.
“Once again, Jules, I say spit it out.”
“Someone tried to steal your car last night.” Fire. Ants.
“Suzy?”
“Who?”
“My car. Where is it?”
“You named your car?”
“Where is my car?”
“It’s fine.” She put out her hands, and even though she was inches from contact he could feel the heat of her fingers against the bare skin of his chest. Like ghosts. Like memories.
For a second his head spun.
“Your car is fine,” she repeated, and he snapped back into clarity. “It’s in impound down at the station.”
“And who tried to steal it?” he asked, ready, seriously ready to take out every ounce of anger he had about his father and Juliette and being back in this backwater town on the car thief.
Juliette turned and pointed to the sedan in front of the house. A person’s head was pressed against the glass of the backseat window, where he’d clearly passed out.
“He did,” she said.
“A drunk?” he asked. Just the thought of what could have happened to Suzy at the hands of a drunk made him nauseous.
“A kid,” she said. “He’s just a kid.”
“A drunk kid?”
His stomach was never going to be the same.
“No,” she said. “You’ve got it wrong. Come on, Tyler, get dressed and I’ll explain it on the way to the station.”
Tyler watched her, sensing something else at work. Her aggression was banked, and she wasn’t just being civil. No, she was apprehensive. And mad about it. And the longer he stared at her, the worse it got, until finally her hazel eyes were shooting out sparks.
“Please,” she said through clenched teeth and Tyler smiled.
A supplicant Juliette. The fire ants went home and his day just got a whole lot better.
“Well.” He grinned and he could hear her grinding her teeth. “Since you asked so nice, Chief Tremblant, I would be delighted to head on down to the station to get my car and press charges against the juvenile delinquent who had the balls to try and steal Suzy.”
“Fine,” she snapped. “Get dressed.”
Tyler ducked back inside to grab a shirt.
“Who’s the girl?” Dad asked, standing at the living room window, lifting the curtains an inch so he could stare at the porch.
“No one,” Tyler said, grabbing his shirt from the counter where he’d thrown it last night. It stank of blood and dirt and smoke and there was no way he was putting it back on and getting in a car with Juliette Tremblant. Bad enough his face looked like hamburger.
But all of his clothes were in Suzy.
“Give me a shirt,” he said, stepping into the living room.
Dad pointed to his open duffel on the couch, still looking through the window. “She looks like police.”
“She is,” Tyler said, slinging through Dad’s shirts. There were a bunch of them, which made Tyler nervous about his father’s travel plans. Or lack thereof. “Do you even play golf?” he asked, finally picking a gray shirt from the golf-themed collection.
“What are police doing here?” Dad asked, tight-faced and still.
“Calm down,” Tyler said. “It’s got nothing to do with you.”
Dad cocked his head and pursed his lips, his eyes getting a little too speculative. “I’d almost say too bad. Shame for a woman like that to be wasted on a badge.”
Something red and boiling bubbled through him, making his hands twitch. His eye pound.
“Well, don’t worry about it. I’ll handle her.”
Dad whistled low through his teeth and Tyler wanted to put his fist through something.
“Later,” Tyler said, shoving his feet into his worn down boots. “Try and stay out of trouble.”
“No guarantees, son,” Dad said, a big grin across his face. “No guarantees.”
“So,” Tyler said as they approached the sedan and the passed-out would-be car thief in the backseat. “How much trouble will this kid be in?”
Juliette stopped at the curb. “You didn’t have any luggage last night. Where’d you get that shirt?”
Crap. Didn’t think that through. Chief Tremblant was no dummy, clearly.
Tyler shrugged. “It was in The Manor,” he said, pushing at the too-big gray golf shirt. “That Matt guy must have left it.”
Juliette nodded, her jaw tight under the aviator sunglasses she wore. “You see anything strange around the house?”
“Strange?” Tyler asked, painfully aware that he was lying to police already, much less Juliette.
I’m back in town less than a day, he thought, bitter and tired. And I’m already down this road with her.
Thanks, Dad.
“Broken windows?” Juliette asked. “Any sign of entry at all?”
Nothing except a sixty-year-old thief looking for a fortune in gems.
He shook his head. “Nothing as far as I could see,” he lied, the words uncommonly thick in his mouth. Part of being a Notorious O’Neill was the ability to lie like it was poetry, and he’d forgotten Juliette’s effect on that particular family trait. She made him sound as practiced as a choir boy lying to the Holy Father.
Something about her eyes, the way she looked at him as if she expected the worst but hoped for better—it was like static electricity. It made him want, so badly, to be a different man. And so the lies—they just curled up and quivered in his mouth.
Complicated. Complicated. Complicated.
“So,” he said, easing into the passenger seat, turning to look in the backseat. “About the kid—”
Bright sunlight splashed across the mess that was the boy’s face. Burns. Bruises. Stitches at his lip and eye. Somebody had gone to town on the boy, with fury. Hate, even.
Made his stomach turn just looking at it.
Juliette started the car, the sound of the engine ripping through his head.
“What happened to him?” Tyler asked through a dry throat. He turned back around to stare out the windshield at the trees and sunlight, birds and foxes at the side of the road, everything normal and right in the world.
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.”
CHAPTER FOUR
JULIETTE HELD HER BREATH, waiting, praying that the guy she hoped existed, buried deep under Tyler’s selfish, childish nature, would speak up and tell her he wasn’t going to press charges.
It seemed like such a long shot.
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.
TYLER SIGNED THE LAST of the papers and followed Juliette out into the impound yard. It broke his heart to see poor Suzy surrounded by junkers with wreaths of parking tickets under their wipers.
She deserved so much better.
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.
JULIETTE SHOOK. FROM the inside, through her blood and muscles, from her hair to her fingers, she shook with anger.
Oh, and don’t forget the lust. The lust that churned through her and over her and under her.
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.