Savannah tried not to look

But Matt was a magnet. The gray T-shirt clinging to his back was nearly black with sweat. His dark brown hair was wet and thick against his strong neck. Through her open window it seemed the wind carried his scent to her.

The urge to close her eyes and inhale, to stick out her tongue just a little bit and taste the air that had touched him, was nearly stronger than her. For so long she’d been in control of these sudden cravings. And now they threatened to take over.

Which added a spice to Matt that was infinitely appealing. At least to Savannah.

This was worse than inappropriate. These ridiculous feelings she had for him were flat-out wrong. Wrong because he worked for her and wrong because he was a stranger and wrong because…well, just wrong.

Dear Reader,

I have wished, more times than I can count, that I was Southern. Not just so I could have an heirloom pecan pie recipe, though that would be fantastic. And not just so I could say “bless your heart” and have it mean the many nice and not so nice things it seems to mean when Southern women say it. But so I could have serious skeletons in my closet. And I could walk around in a slip like Elizabeth Taylor in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and not catch pneumonia.

But I am not Southern. I am from the Midwest and I moved to Canada. But my Deep South fantasies are now being played out on the page in this very fun new series—THE NOTORIOUS O’NEILLS—about a Louisiana family plagued by family secrets, stolen gems and broken hearts.

I am often asked what inspires me about a certain idea, and I usually say something lame, such as love is always inspiring. But here is the truth: I love the heroes. I love torturing them, redeeming them; I love taking their shirts off. Heroes are why I adore romance novels. As I started Savannah’s book, I swore this book was going to be about her. And how could it not? A betrayed woman, locked up in a prison of her own making, she was a heroine I could sink my teeth into. But then onto the page walked Matt Woods. And I was totally intrigued by the question, what makes a good guy go bad?

I hope you enjoy the first book in this series. Please drop me a line at www.molly-okeefe.com. I love to hear from readers!

Happy reading,

Molly O’Keefe

The Temptation of Savannah O’Neill
Molly O’Keefe

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

In her fantasy life Molly O’Keefe gets pedicures every week while a team of manly maids cleans her house. Dinner gets made every night by someone else and it never includes a meatball or macaroni. She lives on a beach. Oh! In Hawaii. In real life, she’s married to a great guy with two lovely children and lives in Toronto, Canada. Where she never finds the time to get pedicures.

I met my best friend in kindergarten almost thirty years ago. She inspires me every day with her strength, commitment and capacity for junk food. This book is for Allycia.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

“KATIE,” SAVANNAH O’Neill sang. “Come out, come out wherever you are.”

She snuck up to the mountainous rosebush, searching through the wild abundance of pink tea roses for a glimpse of red curly hair, a freckled cheek or bright blue eyes.

“Gotcha!” she cried, pushing apart the thorny branches only to find C.J., the orange tabby, sleeping beneath its leaves.

No Katie.

This is getting ridiculous, she thought.

A quick Saturday morning game of hide-and-seek with her eight-year-old was beginning to take all day. Savannah pushed through the kudzu vines, ivy and weeping willow branches that dominated the back courtyard, but Katie wasn’t in any of her usual spots.

She’d upped her game.

Savannah tripped over a broken cobblestone, catching herself against a thick blanket of kudzu vines that had eaten up the fountain and obliterated the bird feeder.

It was getting very third world back here. Soon enough, these games with Katie would require a machete.

That would add a whole new dimension to kamikaze hide-and-seek.

“I told you,” she called out. “You can run but you can’t hide.”

The branches of the cypress rustled over her head and Savannah smiled, backtracking to the trunk of the old tree.

It was only a matter of time, Savannah thought, before Katie worked up the courage to climb the tree. The hundred-year-old cypress was a beauty—bigger than the two-story house in front of it, and its roots were pushing through the cobblestones, breaking up the courtyard like some kind of underground monster.

As if it had been yesterday, Savannah’s foot found the small lee in the trunk, her hands found the knobs on the lower branches and within seconds she was halfway up into the leaves. She was careful to look for snakes, and hoped her daughter had done the same.

What, she wondered, would her clients say if they could see their staid researcher now? The kids at the library, who made faces at her behind her back, would fall over their stolen library books if they saw mean old Ms. O’Neill climbing trees.

Savannah found her daughter lying across one of the thick branches directly over the decrepit greenhouse and back stone wall of the property. The girl had only been up two hours and the new red silk pajamas Margot had brought back from her cruise in the Far East were covered in dirt and leaves.

“Found you!” Savannah cried. “You’re doing dishes.”

“Shh!” Katie hissed, not turning away from whatever scene she was spying on.

“What’s up?” Savannah whispered, climbing a parallel branch, shimmying out over the courtyard on her belly.

“Margot,” Katie whispered. Savannah watched her daughter push the red tangle of curls behind her ear, revealing her freckled face, her wide lips and long nose. Not pretty, her little girl—even through her mother’s eyes, Savannah could see that. But Katie was so much more than pretty. She was tough. Independent. Beautiful in her own wild way. Pure at heart.

Everything, Savannah thought, I am not.

“I think she’s crying,” Katie said.

Savannah tore her eyes from her daughter and sought out Margot’s thin and elegant form amongst the weeds and broken buildings beneath them.

“Back wall,” Katie said. “Someone wrote something on the stones.”

Not again, Savannah thought. She saw Margot, wearing her white linen, pumps and no doubt “the” diamonds scrubbing at the back wall. The letters—O’NEILL SLU—

“I can hear you girls up there!” Margot yelled without turning around.

“What are you doing, Margot?” Savannah called.

“Contemplating bear traps,” she said and threw the thick yellow sponge into the bucket of water at her feet. Margot turned and faced Savannah in the heat of the morning. Her long white hair was perfect, her face as stunning as the diamonds at her wrists and ears. You would never guess she was pushing eighty.

But right now Margot was one pissed-off matriarch. And when Margot got mad, things got organized. And cleaned. And worst of all, changed.

Savannah’s heart leaped into her throat.

Change was the devil. Change had to be avoided at all costs.

Savannah went into instant damage-control mode.

“Every year,” Savannah yelled, shimmying back down the tree, shamed by her grandmother’s elegance into at least acting like an adult. “You know this happens every year. As soon as school gets out for summer, we get every teenager trying to prove to their friends how cool they are.”

Why vandalizing their home was considered cool was one of the great mysteries of local teenage life.

She swung down from the lowest branch and landed on the broken cobblestone. Looking up she found Katie carefully scrambling down after her.

“Careful,” Savannah said. When Katie got within reach Savannah lifted her daughter down, holding her close for just a second, smelling the sunshine and rose smell of her skin.

The pajamas were toast.

“What does that mean?” Katie asked, pointing to the letters on the stone walls. Savannah shot Margot an arch look—slut was a stretch, but Margot was the closest thing they had.

“Like you have no secrets?” Margot asked, defensive.

“Officially, I’m not an O’Neill.”

“Honey, an O’Neill by any other name is still an O’Neill.”

The truth was, every O’Neill female was born with secrets, and through their own legendarily bad decision-making, each of them had her own sins. Not that the men had it any better—her brothers had their own crimes and mysteries.

Secrets upon secrets, that was the O’Neill legacy.

And, she had to believe, even if her mother had taken Richard Bonavie’s name, the curse would have lingered.

“What does it mean?” Katie asked again.

“It’s just a bad word,” Savannah said. “Kids think it’s funny to write bad words on our back wall.” O’Neill Sluts.

O’Neill Devils.

O’Neill Thieves.

“Was this here while I was gone?” Margot asked, having gotten back a week and half ago from her cruise.

“No!” Savannah denied, though she wasn’t totally sure. She loved her jungle, wild and unmaintained, but it obstructed her view of much of the yard. “It’s new.”

“It’d never been this bad before,” Margot said. “Come look at this.”

Katie and Savannah headed around the tree and through the kudzu to the greenhouse and back wall. Now that Savannah was closer she saw that Margot was actually very upset. Her fine elegant hands were shaking.

“Look,” Margot whispered, pointing to the greenhouse.

Every pane of glass had been shattered and all of Margot’s orchids were destroyed. The unearthed roots like veins, strewn across tabletops and the floor. Dirt like blood, everywhere.

“Oh, my lord, Margot.” She raised astonished eyes to her grandmother. Occasionally the woman went to New Orleans and played poker, or took a cruise with an “admirer” and gambled across the seven seas, and she used to keep her winnings back here buried in pots because she didn’t trust banks. She’d done it for years before Savannah found out and made her stop. “Are you hiding money back here again?”

“No.” Margot pulled a face. “I lost on this last one, I told you that.”

“Then why would anyone do this?”

“Because it was here. I don’t know.” She looked around the wreckage, her face drawn. “I understand you hate the idea. But I think it’s time.”

“No.” God, no. Anything but what Margot was suggesting. “Margot, we can do something.” Savannah leaned down and started cleaning up, picking up shattered pottery, knowing she was too late—the courtyard was out of control. The boldest of the high school students were drinking back here, and Katie was almost always getting cuts and bruises from the roses and broken cobblestones.

These plants, the trees, the bushes—nothing had been touched in years. Nearly twenty. She knew something should be done, but it was hers. The idea of someone else, some stranger back here, was unthinkable.

Because if they were in her courtyard then they’d be in her home. In her life. And no good ever came of that—pain was an excellent teacher.

“I’ll clean it up,” Savannah said, feeling a bubble of frantic energy rising in her throat. “I start vacation on Tuesday. I can work on it then.”

“I’ll help,” Katie chimed in, crouching next to her to help and Savannah winked at her, grateful.

“Honey,” Margot said, shaking her head. “We both know you’re taking the time off to work on that research for the Discovery Channel. There aren’t enough hours in the day.”

“I’ll work at night. Anything, Margot—”

“You’ve been saying that for years, and it’s not just cleaning up the plants anymore. We need the greenhouse rebuilt, the wall needs to be fixed and I think we need an alarm system.”

“In our garden?”

Margot flung out a hand to the shattered remains of her greenhouse, the orchids like dead animals. All the evidence she needed, really, to prove that things were getting dangerous.

“Now the greenhouse, next the house?”

Savannah couldn’t stand the thought. She looked down at Katie, the messy rumpled perfection of her. Strangers in her garden? Bent on helping? Or, worse, strangers in her house? Bent on mischief? Where her daughter slept?

When put that way, it was an easy call.

“Margot,” Savannah sighed. “I’m so sorry.”

“They’re all gone,” Margot said, stepping over glass and flower carnage. “They’ve ruined everything.”

“I’ll call Juliette—”

“I already did,” Margot said. “She’s the one who told me to get someone in here to set up a security system. The police force is too small to have someone watching this house all the time.”

Savannah looked around, chagrined and regretful that she’d let things get this bad. She should have done the basic maintenance that would have at least kept things safe. She had, after all, managed to keep the middle courtyard groomed and lovely. A pastoral paradise.

But the back courtyard was hers—it had been from the moment her mother had dropped Savannah and her brothers off with Margot and left without a word. And the truth was, she liked the wilderness of it, the overgrown vines and crumbling statues. The stone walls covered in hens and chicks, the roses pink and red like hidden gems, small beating hearts in a giant breathing body of green.

The air was different back here, too. Thick and fragrant with mystery and magnolias.

Oh, please, she thought, realizing she was on the verge of getting maudlin and depressing. It’s a garden. You are a grown woman who should have more important things to do than get attached to kudzu and rosebushes.

Or maybe she should have more in her life than kudzu and rosebushes. The thought flickered to life briefly before Savannah extinguished it.

“I know,” Margot said, watching Savannah carefully. “We’ve been alone in this house for so long it seems strange to bring someone else in.”

“We don’t need anyone else!” Katie cried and Savannah tucked an arm around her daughter, realizing that maybe there was such a thing as too much family unity—considering her eight-year-old was showing signs of xenophobia.

“Margot’s right.” Savannah sighed and Margot’s perfect eyebrows arched slightly in surprise. Savannah ignored the slick twist of distaste in her belly as the words got clogged in her throat. What if someone tried to break into the house? She looked at her daughter, fear crawling over her like ants. “It’s time to bring someone else in to take care of this garden.”

MATT WOODS STARED at the two-story plantation-style house then down at the surveillance photos in his hand.

He was hunting for Vanessa O’Neill, last seen in New Orleans.

But it was the picture of Vanessa’s daughter, Savannah, he couldn’t look away from. Glittering and golden, she smiled up at him from her photo.

How much did she know? he wondered. How guilty was she?

He scoffed at his own question. Everyone was guilty. No one’s hands were clean.

Was she guilty of theft and betrayal like her mother? Or just guilty of bad blood?

Matt rubbed gritty eyes. He’d driven through the night from St. Louis to Bonne Terre, Louisiana, and in the clear light of morning he realized his plan pretty much sucked.

Vanessa had been last seen two weeks ago in New Orleans. Matt knew this because he’d hired an investigator to track down everyone related to the jewel theft that his father had been involved in seven years ago.

His investigator had taken her picture, followed her around to various poker games and bars, and heard her talking about Bonne Terre and the Manor. Then she’d vanished. Just vanished.

Matt connected the dots and decided to come here to find her. Or wait for her. Whatever it took to correct justice’s aim.

It’s not like he had anything else to do.

So, his plan, if you could call it that, was to see if Vanessa was here. And if she wasn’t, he was going to find a reason to wait until she showed up. Or better yet, find out where she was.

“Yeah,” he muttered to Savannah’s photo. “Not my best work.”

Six months ago his life was torn apart, and now he was talking to photos as if they might reply and stalking the O’Neill women to seek retribution for a seven-year-old crime.

“Justice,” he said to the photo, tasting the word, loving how it gave him a purpose. A fire.

But not a plan.

“What am I supposed to do with you?” he asked the photo.

He could knock on the door and…what? He considered Savannah’s smile, the radiance that poured from her eyes. She was like sun off of glass, she just seemed to shimmer.

Was he going to threaten her? Interrogate her? Tie her up while he waited for her mother to arrive? And then hope that the mother just happened to be traveling with a fortune in stolen gems?

Had he come to that? Really?

“Great, Woods,” Matt said, rubbing his hands over his face. “Sherlock Holmes, you are not.”

Suddenly, he had a memory of sitting outside an Indian reservation casino. He must have been about eight or nine, and his father was going in for one quick game. One hand. Just one.

He told Matt that his job was to sit in the car and watch for three men. One man with a patch, another with a scar and the final man with a one of those Russian bearskin hats. When Matt saw those three men he needed to run inside the casino and find Joel.

Clever, Matt realized now, twenty-five years later. Because while men with scars and patches were a possibility in South Carolina, there would be no bearskin hats.

A goose chase. A fool’s errand, his father was brilliant with them. A master. And Matt had taken his job so seriously he’d sat in that beat-up Chevy with a notebook and pen, drawing pictures and taking notes, a young Sherlock Holmes. Always keen. Always on the lookout for a bearskin hat that would never come.

All of which was irrelevant. Every moment of the past, every bad decision and terrible accident that led him to this point, was moot.

The only thing that mattered now was making one thing right, in a life gone horribly wrong. He had to make one damn thing right. Who betrayed Dad? Joel’s partner, Richard Bonavie, or the blonde at the drop-off—Vanessa O’Neill?

The legal system might have gotten it wrong with Matt, whose hands were bloody right down to the bone, but it wasn’t too late to get justice for his father. That’s why he was here, and the women inside that house were the key to it all.

He angled the rearview mirror and checked his reflection—a little closer to potential ax murderer than was entirely necessary, but there wasn’t much he could do. He forgot a razor.

The scruff of his beard rasped under his hands and he thought about all his clients, hiring the cool and slick Matt Woods to design their summer homes, their art galleries and condos.

That guy doesn’t live here anymore, he thought, unable to recognize himself in the green eyes that stared back.

Matt threw open the door of his rented car and slammed it behind him. What he lacked in plans he was going to make up for in bravado. Some righteous “where the hell is your mother?”

Smooth. Oh, so smooth.

The bayou around him seemed to pulse and breathe. It was warmer than St. Louis, denser, the air thick and somehow both sweet and spicy. Like flowers dipped in cayenne.

He liked it. It made him hungry for food and a woman at the same time.

The house, he assessed with an knowledgeable eye, was an aging stunner. It sat alone on the road, about a mile and a half from town, surrounded by a few acres of wilderness. She was a grand dame falling on hard times—the black trim was peeling and a few of the white hurricane shutters were missing slats. But the bones of the house were solid. Elegant. Built to withstand the Southern weather, and to look good doing it.

He imagined the windows lit with candles and the sound of music and ice in crystal tumblers spilling from the open front door.

The front door was freshly, brazenly painted scarlet.

Matt believed doors could be sexy. He believed windows and wood and concrete could be erotic. But nothing he’d ever seen quite matched the sexual statement of that red door.

It looked like the house of an aging mistress, an expensive woman of slightly ill repute, which would be Margot’s influence. But he didn’t know how Savannah the librarian fit in.

He stepped up the river-stone path, the rocks sliding under his old work boots. He’d packed work clothes, denim and rawhide, because the expensive suits, silk ties and Italian leather in his closet were beginning to mock him.

He got one foot onto the wide steps of the sweeping veranda and the scarlet door creaked open.

Margot O’Neill, he knew from the surveillance photo in the car. She stood in the doorway, the black of the hall behind her making her fair beauty more pronounced. More breathtaking, despite her years.

She was medium height and trim, with posture like a steel beam. She wore bright blue and the fabric looked rich and thin—like liquid had been poured over her.

It was no wonder men paid to have her. She was that beautiful. That rare.

And then she smiled, like she knew it.

“You’re coming about the ad?” she asked, her voice rich with years of the South.

Ad? Damn not having a plan. She tilted her head, her blue eyes losing some of their hospitality, and he knew he was moments from being kicked off the property.

“Yes,” he finally said, taking yet another leap into the unknown. “I am. I’m here about the ad.”

Good God, he hoped he wasn’t about to be Margot’s boy toy. Though there could be worse things, he speculated, catching the gleam in her eye.

“Margot, are you—” The door opened farther and a blonde goddess stood in the dark hallway. Matt’s heart stopped dead in his chest.

It was Savannah, from the photograph.

Sort of.

The beauty was there, the perfect skin, bright blue eyes and shiny sweep of hair. But that was where the similarities ended. The real-life Savannah was somehow sharper, her radiance hard and refined to an edge. Her cheekbones alone could cut through tin.

She was razor wire next to Margot’s magnolia.

There was no sunny warmth. No shimmer. This woman was a stranger to him. He knew this was ridiculous—picture or no, she was still a stranger to him. But the loss was there nonetheless. He didn’t realize how much he was looking forward to basking in that warm glow—until that glow was buried under ice.

She was, however, painfully sexy in a long straight gray skirt and a white shirt that couldn’t quite diminish the curves she clearly was trying to hide. The whole look gave her the appearance of a prison warden on lockdown.

In a porno.

And, he realized, aside from sexy she was also a dead ringer for the surveillance picture he had of Vanessa in New Orleans. Right down to the eyes, which were guarded. Wary. Hiding something.

He lost his companion, that fantasy woman, but he gained something else. Something better. Something righteous.

In a stunning moment of clarity, he knew that coming here, believing these women somehow had the answers he needed, had not been wrong.

It occurred to him that the missing gems, the Pacific Diamond and Ruby—the million-dollar reasons his father sat alone in a jail cell while his accomplices and turncoats lived in freedom—could be right here.

Hidden and guarded by Savannah O’Neill.

Out of the corner of his eye he took in the crumbling house, the faded paint, the sagging porch. That the gems were here now, or ever had been, seemed like a long shot.

“Oh, sorry,” she said, looking at Matt with plain distaste. “Who are you?”

“He’s here about the ad,” Margot said, standing aside and smiling at Matt. “Please come in.”

His lip curled, satisfaction rippling through him. Savannah must have sensed it, because her own lips tightened, her eyes narrowed.

He hitched the loose waist of his worn khakis and climbed the steps, feeling the heat of the South mesh with the sudden warmth in his flesh. His eyes stayed glued to Savannah’s as something primal swept through him.

You, he thought, have a secret. And I will find out what it is.

CHAPTER TWO

“MARGOT,” SAVANNAH MUTTERED as the strange man climbed the stairs, like some kind of predatory cat, all muscle and intention. His shaggy brown hair gleamed like polished wood and his green eyes radiated something hot and awful that she felt in the core of her body—a trembling where there hadn’t been one in years. Hot sweat ran between her breasts under her white cotton shirt. “This is not a good idea.”

“Please, Savannah,” Margot all but purred, her eyes hovering over the man like a honeybee. “Look at him. It’s a fabulous idea.”

Savannah’s hand tightened on the door as if her muscles were about to override her system and slam the door in his handsome, chiseled face.

But then he was there, big and masculine on the tattered welcome mat. C.J., the little tart, stepped out of the sleeping porch to curl around his dusty boots.

Seriously, that cat gave all of them a bad name.

“My name is Matt Howe,” he said, holding out his hand.

Margot shook it, clasping Matt’s big paw in her lily-white one. “I’m Margot O’Neill,” she said. “Welcome to my home.”

Then it was Savannah’s turn.

Her turn to touch his flesh to hers. Her turn to stand under his neon gaze.

Just a man, she told herself. Tell yourself he’s a client. He wants research on minor battles in the Pacific during World War Two or about the migratory patterns of long-tailed swallows.

Her hand slid into his and receptors, long buried, long ignored, shook themselves awake, sighing with a sudden pleasure.

“Savannah O’Neill,” she said, her voice a brusque rattle.

“A pleasure, Savannah,” Matt said, bowing slightly over her hand.

Pretend, she told herself, yanking her hand free from his callused, strong grip, that he’s gay.

But the way his eyes climbed quickly over her body belied that particular fantasy.

Pretend you are gay, she told herself. But the heat in her belly ruined her pretense.

“Your ad was a little vague,” he said, stammering slightly on the words. “I was hoping for some more information about what you’re looking for?”

Savannah cast a quick, dubious look at Margot. What about Handyman/gardener needed was vague? Despite the sharpness in his eyes, the guy clearly wasn’t all that bright.

“Margot,” she said, grabbing her grandmother’s elbow. “Perhaps we—”

“Should show him the courtyard,” Margot said, smiling at Matt and shaking off Savannah’s hand. “So he can see the scope of the work.”

Margot was determined—more determined now that a man was here, handsome and virile, stepping into the Manor—than she’d been in front of the greenhouse two days ago, cradling her dead orchids.

Savannah began to sense that this was wrong in more ways than they could possibly fathom.

Men in general were a danger to the O’Neill women; it had been proven time and time again men brought out the worst in them. The most notorious aspects of their already inappropriate characters.

Even her.

Especially her.

But handsome strangers? They were catnip to a certain kind of woman—and Margot was one of those women.

Right, she nearly laughed aloud at her own blindness, and you’re so immune.

It had been years since her heart had thundered in her chest like this—and that had not ended all that well.

“I’ve lived in this house my whole life,” Margot was saying, her hand cradled in Matt’s elbow as she led them through the shabby manor as if it was still the best property in the area. “And my mother did the same before me.”

“It’s a beautiful house,” Matt said, glancing up at the high ceilings, all of which needed spackle and paint. The mahogany floors beneath their feet were beginning to buckle and sag in places and she watched as Margot led him around the worst patches, as though they were avoiding puddles in the rain. “Did your family build it?” He asked.

Savannah laughed and Margot tossed her a wicked look over her shoulder. “Yes,” Margot said. “My great-great-grandfather built this house.”

As a saloon and whorehouse.

She noticed Margot wasn’t advertising that fact.

The devil in Savannah wanted to point out the origins of the house, just to watch Margot’s skin get splotchy and Matt get flustered, but Savannah spent so much time pretending not to be born from a long line of gamblers and whores that she couldn’t bring herself to say it.

No matter its comedic value.

They stepped from the dark hall, with its offshoots of parlor, dining room and library, through the glass doors into the middle courtyard.

“Beautiful,” Matt said, and Savannah wondered if he really meant it. He seemed to. All that predatory intensity was dialed down for a moment as his eyes swept over the hedges and lilies she kept in order.

“Yes,” Margot agreed, with a sideways look at Savannah. “The middle courtyard is not the problem.”

The phone rang inside the house and Margot cast Savannah a pleading look, which Savannah scowled at.

Right. She was going to leave this strange man alone with her aging grandmother. Particularly when said aging grandmother insisted on wearing the only real jewelry they had left that was worth anything. The diamonds that were, according to Margot, a thank-you gift from a certain president of Irish heritage. Please.

“I’ll be right back,” Margot said, giving Matt’s arm a squeeze. “My granddaughter will show you the rest of the way.”

Margot left, blue silk fluttering behind her.

“Grandmother?” he said. “She looks like she could be your mother.”

“She’s not,” Savannah said. The subject of daughters and mothers was not discussed at the Manor. And fathers? Well, it simply never came up.

“Is your mother here?” he asked, and Savannah stared hard at Matt, as if to see past his green eyes and strong arms to the heart beating under that lean chest.

He stared right back at her, his eyes wide open as if he had nothing to hide.

Of course, that had to be a lie. Everyone had something to hide. Everyone.

“No,” she said. “She isn’t. I’ll show you the back courtyard.”

She led him through a second set of glass doors into a brighter hall leading left to the kitchens and cellars and right to the upstairs bedrooms.

“So why don’t you call her grandmother?” Matt asked and Savannah rolled her eyes.

“Does she look like a grandmother?”

Matt smiled. “Good point. Does anyone else live here?”

Her eyes bored right through him. “That doesn’t have anything to do with our garden,” she said. “Yes, but—”

She pushed open the old oak doors to the bright sunlight and overgrown majesty of her secret garden.

“Holy—” he breathed, stepping up beside her.

“The greenhouse needs to be repaired, and the trees, bushes, flowers and weeds all need to be dealt with.” She pointed to the worst of them, along the west wall. “There—” she indicated the center cluster of kudzu under the cypress “—is a bird feeder and bench under that mess that we’d like to see again. The back wall—” she swept her arm over to where the graffiti had been cleaned “—needs to be fixed and we think we need some security cameras—”

“Security? Why?”

“High school students like to break in, cause some trouble.” She shrugged, trying to be nonchalant. But she could tell he was reading the words they couldn’t quite get off the back wall.

Her whole body burned with embarrassment.

“High school students did that?” he asked, pointing to the wrecked greenhouse, and she nodded. “Seems like a matter for the police.”

“We’ve tried that,” she said. And that was all she said. She wasn’t giving this man more than what he absolutely needed.

His eyes scanned the property as if he were putting price tags on everything.

And she didn’t like that one bit.

He was probably wondering what could be stolen, despite the tour he’d had through the shabby manor, stripped of its antique furniture and silver. Those diamonds Margot sported and Savannah’s own small fortune in computer equipment were the only things of value left. But Matt didn’t know that.

“Looks like a reasonable job,” Matt said, staring at the mess. “I’ll take it.”

Incredulous, she swiveled on her heel to gape at him. “Really?” she asked, crossing her arms over her chest. “Don’t you want to know more about the money? The living situation?”

His cheeks turned red and he nodded. “Of course.”

“First,” she said. “I have a few questions of my own.”

“Fire away.” He held his arms out the sides, his gray T-shirt hugging the lean muscles in his stomach.

“Where are you from?”

“St. Louis. I’ve been…working with an architecture firm there for the last few years.”

“What are you doing here?” she asked, trying to ignore a bead of sweat trickling down the side of Matt’s strong, bronzed neck.

“I heard there was a lot of work in Louisiana.”

She couldn’t argue with that—it seemed the state needed to be rebuilt top to bottom.

“You’re, what? Thirtysomething?”

“Thirty-four.”

“And you can just up and leave St. Louis? You have no responsibilities?”

“None that won’t keep for a while.”

“Are you on the run?”

“From the law?” His lip curled as if he was laughing at her and her head snapped back at the insult. The man had no reason to laugh. Not here, not now. He quickly shook his head, his smile gone. “I’m not running from the law.”

“My best friend is police chief in town, she can find out if you’re lying.”

“She’s welcome to,” he said, his dark eyes guileless. “I haven’t broken any laws.”

“A woman? A family? Have you left behind some kids?” She nearly spat the words.

“No,” he said quickly, sounding horrified. “No, of course not. I know you don’t know me, but I wouldn’t do that.”

She had no reason to trust him, but in this area she did. For some reason the earnest horror in his eyes seemed sincere.

He wouldn’t leave behind kids.

She had to give him some points for that.

“Do you have some references?”

“References?”

“Yes,” she said. “I believe it’s standard to offer some proof of your reliability before I give you carte blanche with my garden.”

He laughed. “It’s hardly a garden—”

“References,” she said, not about to listen to him disparage her refuge. She pulled her cell phone free from her shirt pocket. “Let’s start with that architecture firm in St. Louis.”

Perhaps it was a trick of the sun, but Matt seemed to go white.

A PLAN WOULD HAVE BEEN good. Something concrete. Something that wasn’t going to get him arrested, because Savannah was staring at him as though she would like nothing better than to send his sorry butt right to the nearest jail cell.

Prison warden wasn’t even the half of it. Savannah O’Neill was judge, jury and executioner.

“Steel and Wood Architecture,” he managed to say and then, because all she did was arch an eyebrow, he gave her the number. The direct number to his office.

This is never, ever going to work.

Erica, his assistant, was a wizard, but this might prove to be too much. What were the odds that she would remember Howe was his mother’s maiden name?

He watched Savannah from the corner of his eye while pretending to assess the broken cobblestones of the steps they stood on.

“Hi. Erica, is it?” she said into her cell phone and Matt stooped to inspect the ivy overtaking the stones. He touched a gray-green leaf with shaking fingers. “My name is Savannah O’Neill. I’m considering hiring a Matt Howe to do some gardening and repair work around my home and he gave me Steel and Wood Architecture as a reference…Matt Howe. Howe.” She tilted the phone away from her mouth and Matt felt like his head might pop off from the blood pressure building in his neck. “Is that with an e at the end?” she asked.

He nodded, stupidly.

Seriously, Woods. You’re a self-made millionaire, you were on the cover of—

“He did?” Savannah asked, sounding skeptical. “He was?” That didn’t sound much better. Matt wondered what kind of explanation was going to be needed when she called the cops. A cash explanation? “Best employee the firm ever had?”

He swiveled to face Savannah who stared at him, revealing nothing. He shrugged, as if being the model employee was something that came naturally.

She smiled slightly, almost bashfully, the sunshine cutting through her hair and illuminating her skin, making it shimmer.

Matt felt like he’d been sucker punched. This was the woman from the surveillance photo, the woman he’d been talking to. She did live somewhere inside that cold shell.

Something pulled and tightened in his chest. A recognition where there hadn’t been one before.

Her sharp edges seemed softened, blurred somehow as she stood there, sunshine glittering around her. She was Ingrid Bergman, vulnerable and stoic and so beautiful it hurt to look at her.

The fact that he wanted to drown himself in her, the way he had in scotch immediately after the accident, was a bad omen.

It was better that he not recognize her. Better that he not like her. Not care about her. He’d committed himself to this ruse, and liking her would only cloud the waters.

“Yes,” she finally said, still on the phone with Erica, who would be getting a huge raise. “Thank you, Erica. Here he is.” Savannah handed her cell to Matt. “She wants to talk to you.”

I’ll bet she does.

He took the phone as if it were a snake, coiled to strike, and stepped down the broken stone steps for some privacy.

“Thank you, Erica,” he murmured.

“Oh, you’d better thank me, Matt!” Erica cried and he winced at the daggers in her tone. “Where the hell have you been?”

“I—”

“You know, a better question is what the hell are you doing? Applying for some job as a gardener, are you nuts?” Yes. Slightly.

“No, Erica, I’m just…” What? Doing some reconnaissance? A little private investigative work? “Getting some R and R. That’s all.”

“For six months?”

Six months, two weeks, and three days. “Who’s counting,” he said.

“I am!” she nearly screamed. “Your clients are. While you’re getting some R and R,” she spat the words as if they were sour, “I’m trying to keep the bills paid and the money coming in. Your clients, you remember them, don’t you? The people who pay you huge amounts of money to build stuff? Well, most of them are getting antsy and Joe Collins is about to sue for breach of—”

Matt hung up.

It was so simple. He hit the red button with his thumb and his life, that kid, his best friend and partner, his job, the buildings he could no longer build, they went away.

Gone.

Instead there was the whirr and snick of cicadas hiding in leaves so dense, so green they looked black. An orange cat curled around his boots and the sun beat down on his head.

Numb. So numb to all that used to be.

Savannah stood behind him. He could feel her like a shadow over his face on a hot day. A mystery. A cool-eyed, blond-haired mystery.

That was it. That was all his world consisted of right now.

Because outside of this, this moment, this place, this mysterious woman, a point-seven-second nightmare waited for him, pacing the perimeter for the chance to attack.

Point-seven seconds was all it took for a building to come down. For a mistake to be made and a young man to die. Point-seven seconds. It was enough to make a guy go crazy if he thought about it long enough.

And Matt had been thinking about it for six months, two weeks and three days.

“Well,” Savannah said. “It sounds like Margot and I are lucky you were wandering through.”

“Do I have the job?” he asked, his voice rough even to his own ears.

He felt her at his shoulder and he turned, surprised to see her so close. She had a spray of freckles across her nose. And her eyes weren’t totally blue. They were like the Caribbean before a storm—blue and turquoise with gray shadows rolling underneath.

“Yes,” she said and stepped closer. Close enough that he could smell her skin, flowers and sweat, so earthy and feminine it immediately conjured thoughts of her naked on silk sheets. “But you stay out of our house. You stay out of our business. There’s a hotel in town. You can stay there. You arrive at eight and you leave at five. You can use the bathroom on the main floor and that’s it. No exceptions.”

He rocked back, stunned at the vehemence.

She’s hiding something, he thought, knowing it was the truth because he could taste it on her breath.

“Got it?” she asked.

He nodded. “Got it.”

“Starting tomorrow, I’m taking a vacation week, so I’ll be here.”

Keeping an eye on you—she didn’t have to say it, and Matt didn’t know whether to laugh or be insulted.

She reached up and gathered that long silky fall of hair into a ponytail then she curled it around itself, tucking it and wrapping it until it was all but gone, vanished into a tight knot at the back of her head.

“And do not—” she actually poked him once in the chest with a blunt, naked nail, hard enough to hurt “—mess up my garden.”

Then, Savannah O’Neill, sexiest prison warden ever, was gone.

He stood there, dumbfounded by the complex reality of that woman in the photograph.

“I’m going to work!” He heard her yell inside the house and he turned, staring out at the jungle and ruins that made up his new job.

He nearly laughed, stunned at how this had all worked out.

He could wait for Vanessa to show up in her very own backyard.

Not sure of what he should do, he decided he’d wait for Margot to fill him in on the rest of the details. He stepped away from the house toward the ruins of the greenhouse, taking in the damage. It was far more extensive than he’d first seen.

He jostled one of the remaining posts of the structure and some stubborn piece of glass shattered onto the broken cobblestone at his feet.

Someone had gone to town on the building—and the plants that had been growing inside. Parts of it had been cleaned up, but the shards of pottery and dead orchids were piled in the corner.

And there were a lot of dead orchids.

“Working already?” Margot’s soft voice snapped him out of his focus and he jerked as if caught doing something he shouldn’t.

“I guess so,” he lied.

“It’s a lot of work, isn’t it?” she asked, and something in her tone had him glancing at her and seeing, for a brief moment, past her beauty and the sunshot diamonds to the sadness beneath her glitter. And he didn’t want to see that. At all. He didn’t want to feel anything besides suspicion for these women.

Well, suspicion and lust for Savannah perhaps. But no sympathy. No empathy.

He forced his attention back to the space he was supposed to salvage. All he saw was damage. Broken glass and twisted metal. A year ago he would have seen endless possibilities, now he saw nothing. Nothing but destruction.

He felt, looking at all this ruin, a certain kinship with the courtyard.

“It’s not too bad,” he lied.

“This used to be my favorite place,” Margot said, her fingers touching the edge of an old worktable that had been smashed.

He bit back a groan. Don’t, he thought. Don’t open up to the hired help.

She gestured halfheartedly at the dead plants. “I grew orchids.”

“You will again.” This lame platitude sounded flat on his tongue, like a lie but different. Worse, somehow. Because she brightened, bought into the false hope he hadn’t intended to give.

“I hope so.”

“Why would someone do this?” he asked, watching her carefully, pretending to be casual. “Was there something of value in here?”

“In a greenhouse?” Margot asked, sliding him a sideways look.

He couldn’t read her private grin, but it made him think there had been something worth smashing a greenhouse for in those pots.

He shrugged. “Seems like someone went to a lot of trouble over some orchids.”

“It’s a tradition around here, I’m afraid.” She turned gem-bright eyes to him. “The O’Neills are a bit of a target. That’s why Savannah can seem a bit—” she shrugged “—cool.”

This insight was totally unwelcome. But it explained a lot about the prickly Savannah.

“You mean this sort of destruction happens a lot?” he asked, stunned at the thought.

“It’s summer break,” Margot said. “High school students get bored in a small town and we’ve managed to provide enough entertainment to become somewhat…legendary.”

“Why don’t you leave?”

Margot blinked at him. “This is my home,” she said as if he’d suggested she cut off her ear. “How could I leave?”

Why would you stay? he thought. But then, maybe that was his problem. It had been too easy for him to leave everything behind.

“Savannah said I had the job,” he said.

Margot’s eyes went wide for a second, surprise showing clearly on her face before she carefully erased it. Hid it. Those eyes were bottomless, a place where secrets lived.

These women know something.

“Well, if Savannah says so, it must be true.” Margot tipped her head. “Our budget is three thousand dollars, I know it’s not much, but you can stay in the sleeping porch—”

Matt laughed.

“What’s so funny?”

“I’m pretty sure staying in the sleeping porch was not part of Savannah’s plan. She mentioned a hotel in town.”

Margot smiled, her eyes canny, and Matt found himself liking the old lady. “It’s my home, Matt. You are welcome to stay in the porch.”

Right. Like he was going to get caught in the middle of this family squabble. “I’ll stay in the hotel tonight,” he said. “Let you break the news to her.”

“Oh, Matt, I can tell already you are a wise man.” She tilted her head, her sapphire eyes studying him. “Then, I guess the only question is, do you want the job?”

Matt tried not to smile too confidently. Too broadly. He tried, actually, not to crow with pleasure and satisfaction. “Absolutely.”

CHAPTER THREE

EVERYONE THOUGHT libraries were quiet. Savannah never understood that. In all the years she’d spent hiding, studying, teaching and working in libraries, she’d found each and every one of them loud. Filled with sound, actually. Like one of those seashells you pressed to your ear.

There was an endless ocean of sound in the Bonne Terre Public Library.

The click and whir of the big black ceiling fans. The silky brush of paper over the gleaming oak counters. The hum of computers. The scratch of pencils. The whisper of shoes across the old wood floors. On the second floor, a toddler shrieked and a mother quickly shushed him. There was the quiet beat of her heart and, of course, the not-so-quiet whispering of the high school students at the computer bank.

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?”

“Sure.”

“Stay right there,” Margot said, pointing a finger to the floor in front of Matt’s feet. He wouldn’t have moved even if the earth opened up and tried to swallow him. “Look, we’re targets around here. The police don’t much care for us for a bunch of different reasons, not the least of which is they’re giant dickheads—sorry, Katie.”

“It’s okay,” Katie said, as though she was taking in the greatest show on earth.

“The police chief is good to us, but she’s got a whole town to take care of. So, we’re pretty much on our own,” Margot said. “Savannah’s got a problem with men staying here—”

“Don’t you dare, Margot,” Savannah snapped.

“Because we’ve been alone a long time.” She held up one elegant finger. “By choice, mind you. Most of the time men are only good for two things, and one of them is buying me drinks.”

Matt choked back a laugh. What in the world had he stumbled into?

“But…I’m scared,” Margot admitted. “We all are.” The air in the room seemed to change, a heavy darkness filling the corners, creeping along the floor, the specter of what might have happened last night. Margot’s eyes, suddenly damp, turned to Savannah. “I think if Matt were to stay, maybe we could all sleep instead of worrying who was going to break into our house, or might come looking for us in the night.”

Savannah and Margot looked at each other for a long time, the kind of silent communication he understood some people had with each other. He turned away, the moment suddenly too intimate to bear witness to, especially when he was lying to them.

“Do you want to stay here?” Savannah asked him.

“I want to help,” he said, keeping his real motivation to himself. His quest for justice was his little secret, the heartbeat that kept him moving, and more access to this house and its secrets would only be a good thing. “It’s why you hired me. And if I spent the night, I could get a lot more work done.”

“We can’t pay you more,” Savannah said. “But with the money you’d be saving—”

“It works out fine. Truth is,” he said with a shrug, unsure of where these words were coming from and why he was saying them, “I don’t sleep much. So, it really doesn’t matter.”

“Fine,” Savannah said, squeezing her hands together, but not before Matt saw them tremble. “It’s settled. Matt, welcome to the Manor.”

KATIE SPENT THE MORNING on Savannah’s lap, which didn’t bother her mother one bit. Savannah was actually dueling with the instinct to somehow chain her daughter to her side.

If something had happened… She squelched the thought, as she had a thousand times already this morning, and pressed a kiss to her daughter’s head. The sun was sliding past high noon and fear and worry were beginning to chase each other in small circles in her stomach.

What nightmare would tonight bring?

She already knew she wouldn’t be sleeping. Probably not for the next few nights. And not only because of the break-in.

There was a man in her house.

Margot played dirty. She always did. Going behind Savannah’s back that way and giving Matt the sleeping porch—classic Margot maneuvering. But Savannah couldn’t argue this time. Because Margot was right. Things were different around the Manor. The pranks, if they were high school pranks, had turned ugly. Suspicious. Having someone keeping watch was smart.

“We can’t even play hide-and-seek,” Katie moaned, looking out the window over Savannah’s printer to the courtyard below. “That man is there.”

Savannah tried not to look, but Matt was a magnet and she had all the willpower of iron shavings.

The gray T-shirt clinging to his back was nearly black with sweat, and his dark brown hair was wet and thick against his strong neck. Through her open window it seemed the wind carried his scent to her, sweat, sunshine and wood.

The urge to close her eyes and inhale, to stick out her tongue just a little bit and taste the air that had touched him nearly overcame her.

She’d been in control of these sudden cravings, this outrageous lust that had taken root in her body, but at some point midmorning, Matt had put on glasses.

Glasses.

Which added a spice to Matt that was infinitely appealing. At least to Savannah. The librarian in her liked bookish men. Bookish men with the shoulders and biceps of men used to doing hard work.

This was worse than inappropriate. These ridiculous feelings she had for him were flat-out wrong. Wrong because he worked for her and wrong because he was a stranger and wrong because…well, just wrong.

He was going to be staying here. Downstairs. A hundred yards from where she slept. It had been years since someone other than Katie and Margot had shared this house with her.

She didn’t know if she was grateful for his presence or sick over it.

“Yes, he is there,” she said. And oddly, the thought was comforting. As well as really unnerving. And a little exciting.

He was a guard dog. A big one. And considering the events of the morning, she’d even say he was a good one.

“I thought he was going to punch Officer Jones in the face,” bloodthirsty Katie said, her eyes sparkling. “Pow.” She illustrated a hard little punch with her closed fist.

Savannah caught it and kissed the little knuckles, hard and smooth like diamonds under flesh. “It was a bit intense, wasn’t it?”

Savannah had thought the same. As she’d stood there, watching Matt, a stranger to them, jump to their defense, she’d actually wished he would hit Officer Jones. Officer Jones who apparently still hadn’t gotten over his high school dumping at Vanessa’s hands.

We just can’t get a break, she thought. The O’Neill curse was riding them particularly hard this summer. The vandalism, the break-in.

Again she looked at Matt, wondering somehow if he was here to balance the scales for them. Something sweet for all the bitter they’d been eating.

Honest to God help.

It seemed unimaginable.

They’d been alone, the three of them, for so long.

There had to be a catch. The universe didn’t send blessings to the O’Neills without payment of some kind.

“I’m going to go get something to eat,” Katie said, scrambling off Savannah’s numb knees.

“Good idea,” she said, clearing her screen of the computer games they’d been playing. Work, she thought, it was time to focus on work. To clear away every other distraction and chase information across the World Wide Web.

Knights Templar, she thought. Warriors and protectors. She’d start there.

But her gaze strayed outside. To Matt.

Her blood was beginning to buzz, the O’Neill curse manifesting itself in her the way it always did. Curiosity. God, it killed her every time. She could bury it, channel it into her job. Research every natural disaster in the southern hemisphere before the 1700s. Find every voodoo use for frog blood.

But right now she wanted to go out there and research their new handyman. Why was he here? Why did he want to stay? To help?

She shook her head, gritted her teeth and fought down her urge to go outside and watch him. Talk to him.

Chaining herself to her work, to her desk and the small oasis that was her life, Savannah, as she always did, suppressed what was O’Neill in her.

But she had to wonder, feeling herself pull against the self-imposed bonds, how long could she hold out?

IT WAS LATE AFTERNOON. Matt could tell by the thickness and heft of the sunlight hitting what remained of the greenhouse—a cement pad. That’s it.

He stripped off his gloves and wiped his dripping forehead with the sleeve of his shirt. Useless, considering the saturation of that sleeve. The whole shirt, actually.

Good God, it was hot. So hot the air was thick in his throat and prickles of heat crawled up and down his legs under sweat-soaked jeans.

His socks were wet. It was disgusting.

He hadn’t done this kind of labor since he’d worked for that civil engineer during college. His shoulders and back weren’t really enjoying it, but the effort felt good. Clean, somehow.

There were worse ways to wait for Vanessa to show up, and it sure as hell beat watching the four walls of his condo close in around him.

Scrap still needed to be carried out to the curb, but now he could get to work on making sure the back wall was safe—the farthest corner had slid apart into a loose heap.

There was a kid living here, for crying out loud. And this courtyard was like a death trap.

He felt eyes on the back of his neck and he sighed. Seriously, that little girl was getting to be a pest. Not that she did anything, or said anything. She simply watched him.

It was creeping him out.

“Katie—”

“It’s Savannah.” Oh, man, was it ever. Even the sound of her voice sent blood pounding through his veins. He turned and saw her in the shadows under the cypress. “Has Katie been bothering you?”

He smiled and shook his head. “She’s just curious.”

“Curious.” Savannah actually smiled. “Is that another word for pain in the butt?”

“I was thinking precocious.”

Savannah nodded, calm and cool as if it wasn’t a million degrees outside and suddenly Matt felt every drop of sweat on his body. “Everything okay?” she asked. “You…ah…finding stuff?”

He looked down at the ancient sledgehammer and even older hand tools that he’d found in the shed. An upgrade would be needed if he was going to get this courtyard done with the skin of his hands intact.

“Sure,” he said. “But I think tomorrow I’ll go into town and get some supplies.”

“You’ll need money?”

He shook his head, guilt eating away at him. He was lying, and now he was taking their money. “Margot gave me a deposit.” Not that he would ever cash the check.

She paused, standing there as if there was something more she wanted to say. It made him nervous, the way she simply stood, watching him, as though she saw right through his bad smoke screen. As though she knew why he was here.

And frankly, he was dying to ask about Vanessa. The questions were beating against his teeth, but it was too soon. Savannah was so suspicious already, and there was no way he could bring the subject of her mother up and make it seem natural. He needed to bide his time, wait for his moment.

“What’s your plan out here?” she asked.

“Well, I’m going to start on the stone wall next.” He wiped his forehead and pointed over to the corner where the wall had crumbled.

“You’re bleeding.”

He glanced down at his arms and found a hundred little cuts and slices that he hadn’t even felt until this moment. “It’s fine. Glass.”

Savannah looked as if she were going to argue, but then she nodded.

The silence was thick. Uncomfortable. The tension more dense than the humid air.

“There’s nothing to steal here, you know that, right?” she asked and he nearly dropped the shovel.

“I’m sorry?”

“If you’re thinking about robbing us, I’m just letting you know, in case you missed it, there’s nothing worth stealing. Hasn’t been for years.”

There was something very sad behind her eyes, behind her words and he tried to resist it. “You always this forthright?”

“Saves time,” she said, shrugging, and stepped over to the rock slide that made up the closest corner of the wall. She kicked at a small stone, sending it clattering across its larger brethren.

“I’m not here to rob you,” he assured her. Forthright, sure. And suspicious as all get-out.

“Then why are you here?” she asked, watching him through her thick fall of hair. Straight as glass that hair, like a curtain, and he got the distinct impression that she spent a lot of time watching people from behind it.

“I thought we already covered this,” he asked, not wanting to go back over his lies. Not wanting to talk to her at all, actually. It made him feel slimy, less righteous and more like a liar. He didn’t need that.

“Right.” She nodded and climbed up on another rock and turned to face him. Her daughter had done the exact same thing a few hours ago. This was a new side to Savannah, something he didn’t expect. Something playful. Young. “You’re a good Samaritan here to help Louisiana one crumbling courtyard at a time.”

Her wit matched her sharp beauty and he liked that. Liked that more and more about her, but wondered what softness, what sadness that sharp wit protected. “Something like that. You want to help me move some of those rocks?”

She shook her head, climbed up higher. “It’s what we’re paying you the big bucks for. You know, people leave their homes because they’re running from something.”

Matt’s sweat dried up and went cold. “I assume you’re talking about me?”

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