The car filled with tension

And it was all Juliette could do not to unroll her window, just so she could breathe.

“You’ve changed,” Tyler said.

“You haven’t.”

“You haven’t spent ten minutes with me, Jules. How could you possibly know that?”

“It’s Juliette.”

He laughed and she glared at him hard.

“Okay,” he said, “it’s Juliette. How’d you know I was back?”

“This is Bonne Terre, Tyler. The second you set foot inside the parish about twenty people called me.” As soon as the words were out of her mouth she wished them back. No way did she want Tyler O’Neill to think she’d wasted a single thought on him after he’d walked out on her. No way did he need to think he meant more to her than he did. “I’m the chief here, Tyler. It’s my job to know what potentially corrupting influences are hanging around.”

Dear Reader,

I was working on Tyler O’Neill’s Redemption when Paul Newman passed away. I spent days watching movies, reading articles and looking at pictures of this rare and talented man. I was amazed at his charity, his strength of purpose, his commitment to his wife and family. And that’s not even talking about his acting or legendary blue eyes. Clearly there will never be another Paul Newman.

But I must admit, all those photos and movies seeped into my brain and onto the page and Tyler O’Neill started taking on some of Newman’s real and fictionalized characteristics. Tyler has the eyes and the grin from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. The scorching sideways glances from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. And the devil-may-care attitude and propensity for trouble inspired by Cool Hand Luke. How irresistible is that combination?

It’s been fun getting Tyler O’Neill out of trouble with the help of Juliette Tremblant—a dangerous woman Tyler loved and left behind. For me, the sparks flew off the page. Please drop me a line at molly@molly-okeefe.com and let me know if they did for you, too. I love to hear from readers.

Happy reading!

Molly O’Keefe

Tyler O’Neill’s Redemption
Molly O’Keefe

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Molly O’Keefe is living out her dream of being a writer, mother and wife. Oddly enough, her dream never seemed to include this much laundry. Or dirty diapers. And, not that she’s complaining, but she thought there would be bonbons. Instead there’s lots of cold coffee. Nonetheless, life in Toronto, Canada, married to her college sweetheart is wonderful.

For Adam, who understands and helps and listens and takes the kids away for hours at a time.

I love you more every year we’re together.

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

CHAPTER TWENTY

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

TYLER O’NEILL WAS WELCOMED back to Bonne Terre the same way he’d been kicked out of it.

With a mouthful of dirt from outside St. Pat’s Church.

“I never did like you,” Lou Brandt whispered in Tyler’s ear while Tyler spit out gravel. “Or your family.”

Tyler rolled over and grinned, wincing slightly when his lip split and hot copper blood flooded his mouth. “I’ve always liked you, Lou,” he wheezed. “And your wife.”

Lou reared back, his steel-toed work boot poised for another introduction to Tyler’s rib cage, but Gaetan Bourdage got a thick arm around Lou’s barrel chest. “Come on, now, Lou,” he said. Lou strained against Gaetan’s arm, his big fat head turning red and purple.

“You’re trash,” Lou snarled. “You think winning all that money changes things?”

“No, actually,” Tyler said, checking to make sure he still had his back teeth. “It just makes me rich trash.”

“You’re a cheat!” Lou cried.

“Oh, shut up,” Tyler moaned. “You’re a crappy card player, Lou. You always were and the ten years I’ve been gone, you’ve just gotten worse.”

Lou strained against Gaetan’s arm with renewed fury. “Someone should have shut your mouth for you years ago.”

“They tried,” Tyler muttered.

“Go on inside,” Gaetan said, his Cajun accent thick as the swamp air. “This boy just ain’t worth it.” If Tyler didn’t know Gaetan, he might just be hurt.

Instead he searched for his cap, finding it trampled in the dust behind him.

“You’re right,” Lou said, finally easing off. He spit and the thick glob landed in the dirt near Tyler’s hand, causing his own temper to flare.

He reared up off the ground, but Gaetan’s gaze nailed him to the dirt.

Stay put, his eyes said. I can only save your sorry ass so many times.

Lou wandered back to the church and the Sunday night poker game that had been going on in the basement ever since the church had been built, and Tyler hung his pounding head between his knees.

“Welcome home,” he muttered.

“Whatchu doing back here, Ty?” Gaetan asked. The old man crouched, his thick silver mustache trembling with anger.

“A guy can’t—”

“No,” Gaetan said, “if that guy is you, then no. Boy!” Gaetan pulled Tyler up, and even though Tyler towered over the old swamp rat, he was cowed slightly. Coming home had been a bad idea, but coming to the St. Pat’s poker game was just stupid.

But then Tyler had a thing for stupid.

“Whatever made you come back, I hope it was worth getting your face beat in.” Gaetan pulled a red handkerchief out of his pocket and handed it over. Tyler pressed it to his lip.

Beat in was a stretch, but Tyler wasn’t about to get into it with the Cajun.

“I don’t know, Gates,” Tyler said, instead. “The look on everyone’s face when I walked in there was pretty priceless.”

“Priceless?” Gaetan snorted. “Every man in there thinks you cheated.”

Tyler bit his tongue and jammed his cap back on his head, trying hard to swallow down the urge that he’d spent the past ten years destroying. Of course, one night back in Bonne Terre and the need to defend himself came crawling back, like a kicked dog.

“I didn’t cheat,” Tyler said, ready to go back into that church and fight anyone who said otherwise. “Not tonight, not when I was a kid. I never cheated.”

“I know that,” Gaetan said, scowling, his bushy eyebrows colliding to create a mutant caterpillar. “But you took a lot of their money when you were a boy and they haven’t forgotten that.”

The satisfaction of taking the money off those men who looked down their noses at his family, called his grandmother names behind her back and watched him out of the corner of their eyes, was still so sweet.

He couldn’t help but smile.

Gaetan cuffed him upside the head.

“Hey!”

“You took their money ten years ago and now you come back a rich man to take more?” Gaetan shook his head.

“It’s a poker game,” Tyler said. “The point is to take each other’s money.”

“You—” Gaetan curled a hand in Tyler’s shirt, pulled him down close to the old man’s height until Tyler could smell the whiskey and peppermint on his breath. “You have always taken too much. Always. Even as a boy you could never be happy with what you had. You needed what everyone else had, too. And everyone in this town remembers that about you. You shouldn’t have come back here.”

It was no big secret. No news flash. He’d been telling himself the same damn thing the whole drive from Vegas to Bonne Terre, but hearing it from Gaetan, a man he’d always considered a friend, stung.

“I know,” he said.

“Then why come back?” Gaetan asked. “You’re a rich man. A celebrity. You’ve got that girlfriend—”

Tyler snorted.

“Fine,” Gaetan said. “No girlfriend. But why are you back?”

Tyler shrugged. “I have to have a reason?”

“This isn’t about your mother snooping around these parts, is it?”

Tyler wished he could tell the old man, but he didn’t want to implicate his friend, should it come to that. Instead, he said nothing and Gates sighed.

“You best not drive,” Gaetan said, pointing at Tyler’s head and Tyler gingerly touched the swelling around his eye.

Lou was a crap card player, but the guy could throw a punch.

Tyler glanced back at his beloved 1972 Porsche, its black paint melting into the shadows. “She’ll be okay here?” he asked, and Gaetan snorted.

“Last car stolen in Bonne Terre was the one you stole when you left.”

“I doubt that,” he said, reluctant to leave Suzy alone and vulnerable outside a place as unwelcoming as St. Pat’s.

“Merde, Ty, it’s just a car.”

“Don’t tell that to Suzy.”

“Suzy?”

“Suzette, really.”

“Lord, Ty, you don’t change. I’ll watch her myself.”

“Thank you. In that case, I might as well take in some night air,” he said, remembering the path through town past the police station and Rousseau Square down to The Manor as if it had been yesterday.

He glanced back in the shadows at his dusty Suzy. He’d get her back in the morning.

“Okay then,” Gaetan said. “You come by for dinner or Maude will have your head.”

“Will do,” Tyler agreed with a grin that split his lip. “Hey, Gates?” The old man stopped, his bowed legs turning him around. “You really mayor?” Tyler asked.

Gaetan nodded. “Sure am, boy, so you best watch yourself.”

He winked and walked back into the church, through the lit doorway that led down to the basement. With one last damning look over his shoulder, Gaetan jerked the door shut.

There was a slam and lights out.

Two janitors. The high school wrestling coach. Gaetan and Father Michaels. Suddenly, all too good to play with him.

The reigning World Series of Poker champion.

Which only continued to prove what he’d known down in his gut all along—the world changed but Bonne Terre stayed the same.

Tyler sighed, pushed his A’s cap down farther on his head and made his way back home.

The September night was thick and dark, the suffocating blanket he remembered and hated. Two steps and he had that dirty, clammy sweat that made him ache for the white tile shower in his suite, the cool hum of forced air.

Christ, his eye was beginning to pound.

Coming back here had been a dumb idea. He’d been fine, years had gone by without him caring, the memories fading bit by bit, but one word that his mother might be back in town and here he was, choking on the dirt outside St. Pat’s.

No doubt the kitchen in The Manor would be empty. None of Margot’s sugar pies to welcome him home.

He crossed Jackson and headed for the square, thinking he’d cut through the magnolias in the park and save himself some time, when a dark car slid around the corner, crawling along the curb.

His alley-cat instincts, honed on this very street, woke up and he stepped into the shadows of the trees.

Stupid of him to cross Jackson under the streetlights—anyone looking knew his path home.

The wrought-iron fence was cold against his back. It would be just like Lou to follow him, or call one of his softball buddies to come out here for a little middle-of-the-night batting practice.

The car eased past him, got to the corner and stopped under the streetlamp.

It stopped and waited, exhaust filling the golden pool of light with gray smoke.

Well, crap, Tyler did not like that. At all.

He circled around the other side of the fence, hugging the shadows, between the leaves and the light. If it was Lou’s buddies, they wouldn’t be expecting him to approach from the side. His foot caught on a branch and he grabbed it from the ground and tested its heft.

Pretty weak, but with some surprise on his side he might do some damage before they took care of what was left of his face.

As he cleared the side of the blue car, blood pumping, smile easing nice and slowly across his face, he saw that there weren’t a bunch of men in it. In fact, sitting in the driver’s side, staring him right in the eye with ten hard years of hate, was the most beautiful woman he’d ever known.

“Juliette,” he breathed. For a second his life stopped and all he saw were those hazel eyes and lips so pink and perfect. And sweet. The sweetest.

“What the hell are you doing here, Tyler?”

JULIETTE WAS NOT, REPEAT, not going to touch Tyler O’Neill. Not with her fingers. Not with a ten-foot pole. Perhaps later, when given a chance, she’d touch him good with her fists, but at the moment, there was going to be no touching. Too bad, since it was the only way she was ever going to convince herself the man standing in front of her, as rumpled and bloody and heart-stoppingly handsome as he’d been at seventeen—was real.

And not a figment of all of her furious revenge fantasies.

“Just out for a stroll,” he said, tossing the branch he’d been holding onto the dirt.

“Sure you are. What are you doing back in Bonne Terre?” she asked.

“Savannah said The Manor is sitting empty,” Tyler said and shrugged, as if his arrival out of the blue after ten years was perfectly natural. “Seems like someone should be watching over it.”

“You?” she asked, laughing at the very notion of Tyler being down here for any unselfish reason. “Please.”

He stared at her for a second and then smiled.

Her heart fluttered against her chest, a small mechanical bird powered by that smile.

He glanced out at the buildings lining the square, the hardware store and Jillian’s Jewelry Shop. The café and the bank. He watched those buildings as if they were watching him back. A threat to be monitored.

“You’re right,” he said, but that was all he said.

Juliette bit her lip against the other questions screaming to be heard.

Why did you go?

Why didn’t you write? Call?

What did I do?

But what would be the point? Ten years of silence were all the answer she really needed.

“Who’s been working on your face?” she asked.

“Old friends,” he said, touching his eye with careful fingers and wincing anyway.

Something dark and vicious inside of her really liked that he was in pain.

And she hated that she liked it since she’d sworn off feeling anything about this man years ago. But he was here, standing so close she could shoot him, and these feelings—all the old anger and hurt and rage—resurfaced as though they’d just been waiting for the chance.

She’d call him tomorrow, fill him in on what was happening out at The Manor over the phone. Then she’d hang up and never waste another minute thinking about Tyler O’Neill.

She put the car in gear. “Have a good night, Tyler,” she said, liking all the cool “go screw yourself” she managed to fit into those words.

“Wait.” His hand touched the open window of her car and she pressed her foot back on the brake.

“What?”

“I got an e-mail from Savannah. This guy she’s with—”

“Matt?”

“Right, is he—”

Juliette laughed. “You going to stand there and pretend to care, Tyler?”

“She’s my sister,” he snapped. “Of course I care.”

“Then you should show up once in a while.”

Tyler’s grin was gone and he was looking at her with cold blue eyes that, without a word, damned her straight to hell. Silent, he turned and walked away.

Juliette watched him go, the same long legs, the wide shoulders and narrow hips that looked so damn good in faded and torn blue jeans it made her want to bite something.

Ten years. Ten damn years and he comes back here as if nothing ever happened.

She rested her head against the steering wheel. Maybe nothing had happened. Maybe in the grand scheme of things, a broken heart didn’t mean anything. She’d been nineteen, after all, a couple of years of college under her belt, law school at Oklahoma State glimmering in the future—she should have known better than to get tangled with Tyler O’Neill. A high school drop-out who made his living winning Sunday-night poker games and playing piano out at Remy’s. He was so opposite from her, he was like a different animal, a force of nature she couldn’t ignore. At eighteen he’d been the only thing that could have distracted her from her plan. And he had. He totally derailed her plan.

And now he was back and Savannah was her best friend and things were strange around The Manor these days.

And it was her freaking job to deal with it.

She took her foot off the brake and rolled up next to him.

“Do you want a ride?” she asked, not looking at him. “You’ve still got another mile to go.”

“I know how far it is.”

“Then climb in and I’ll drive you.”

He stopped, sighed, and looked up at the stars as though he might feel a little of the garbage she felt. After a moment he circled the front of the car, stepping through her headlights, the low beams catching the bright red of his blood on his pale face. Gold-blond hair under his cap and those eyes. Oh, man, those eyes.

And then he was in the car with her and she could smell him, toothpaste and cigars and him. Tyler.

A million memories of hot days and cool nights flooded her. His hands under her skirt, those eyes memorizing every detail of her face, those lips telling her a hundred lies—it all exploded in her head, nearly blinding her.

“Thanks,” Tyler said as subdued as she’d heard him. “How have you—”

She cut him off. There would be no “how have you been’s?” She knew how he’d been, rich and dating a hot French model whose popularity had them all over every magazine in the grocery store. All month long she couldn’t buy a carrot without looking at Tyler holding hands with some stick-thin blonde.

“You should know a few things about what’s happening at The Manor,” she said, turning left around the square, past the Bonne Terre Inn and toward the road out of town.

“Savannah and Margot are both gone,” Tyler said. “And Mom was around a month ago. Savannah told me.”

“Not just around,” Juliette said, sparing him a glance only to find him watching her. Awareness like icy hot prickles ran down her spine. “She broke into the place twice, maybe three times. She scared the bejesus out of everyone, especially Kate.”

“Everyone okay?”

Again she squelched the urge to tell him that if he cared, he should have been there, but she knew it all boiled down in the O’Neill family dynamic with their mother. She’d left scars on her children that could be seen from space.

“Fine,” Juliette said. “But Savannah didn’t press charges, so Vanessa is out there somewhere.”

“Why did she come back?” he asked. “It’s been twenty years since she left us here. Why now?”

“She thinks there are gems hidden in the house,” she said.

“Gems?” Tyler asked, shaking his head. “The Notorious O’Neills just don’t know when to quit. How in the world would gems get hidden in The Manor?”

“Stolen gems from a casino seven years ago. Your mother was involved.”

“Of course.”

“But so was your dad.”

“My dad?” Tyler looked blank for a moment as if the word dad had no real connection to him, wasn’t even a word he understood. But then there was the shadow. His face changed, and Tyler became harder. Older. As if what his parents had done to him and his brother and sister was a weight he carried, a weight he’d grown used to. Sometimes, though, he got knocked back by how truly heavy it was and how long he’d been carrying it.

Not that she cared. She used to, of course. He’d put on that brooding, grieving, lost-little-boy thing with her ten years ago and her skirts had literally fallen off.

She cleared her throat and stopped at the red light just outside of town. “The house hasn’t been broken into again,” she said. “But there’s been some suspicious activity. Someone’s snooping.”

“It’s still a rite of passage around here to sneak into my grandmother’s back courtyard?”

“Not so much,” Juliette said. “Not since Matt came along. And what I’ve found, broken glass, footprints, trampled plants, they’re not in the back courtyard. Most of the activity is focused on the sides of the house, the first floor windows into the library.”

Tyler’s eyes were sharp as knives. “Your father watching my house?” he asked.

She bit back a smile, staring at the white lines on the street. “Dad’s not chief anymore, Tyler. But yes, police are watching your house.”

“Great,” he muttered, his long-standing disdain for local law enforcement, her father in particular, the stuff of legend in Bonne Terre. “So we’ve got my mother, missing gems and someone trying to break into the house. Anything else I should know about?”

“There’s an alarm.” She dug into the pocket of her red fitted blazer.

“At The Manor?” he asked. “When I lived there Margot rarely bothered to lock the doors.”

“That was a long time ago, Tyler,” she said. “Here’s the code.” She set a piece of paper down on the seat between them. “It’s right by the front door and there’s another keypad in the kitchen.”

“Well,” he sighed, picking up the piece of paper and lifting his hips slightly so he could push it into the front pocket of his worn jeans. “Can’t say I expected that.”

Juliette took a deep breath, wondering whether she should tell him about the other stuff, whether it even mattered to him. She glanced at him, his jaw clenched as he stared out at the darkness around her car.

Was it even her business to tell him?

If not her, then who? No one else was around, and if it could take some heat off his mother, should he see her, then maybe they could all avoid another incident like what happened last month with Savannah.

“Look, Tyler, I don’t want to—”

Those blue eyes swung toward her, and she couldn’t deny that as much as she disliked him, she’d never forgotten him.

I thought I knew you, she thought mournfully. I thought we were friends.

“Spit it out, Juliette.”

“Your grandmother paid your mother to stay away from you kids.” Tyler blinked. “Ten thousand a year.”

“You know that?”

“Savannah told me. Margot confessed last month when Vanessa broke in again. I’m sorry, Tyler—”

“I’ve known for years,” he said.

“You knew?” she breathed.

He nodded. “How did Savannah take it?”

“Not well,” Juliette said. An understatement, but luckily Matt was there to help.

“Carter and I found out and…” He sighed and took off his cap, pushing his fingers through his thick blond hair. “We didn’t tell her. We thought…I don’t know…we thought we were protecting her. It’s all we ever wanted to do.”

Juliette took her eyes off the road and gaped at him.

Don’t care, she warned herself. Don’t show that you’re even interested, because that man will do something awful with the information.

“Well, I guess that catches you up to speed,” she said, pressing on the clutch and shifting into first when the light turned green. She sped up and shifted into second and then as the road opened up she drove it into third.

Tyler’s chuckle stirred the hair on her neck. “Juliette Tremblant,” he murmured. “You still have a thing for speed.” She didn’t say anything. Refused to rise to his bait. The car filled with tension until it was all she could do not to unroll her window, just so she could breathe.

“You’ve changed,” he said, and she could feel his eyes on her hair, her body, the clothes she covered it with, and she knew what he wasn’t saying—she’d changed, and it wasn’t for the better.

“You haven’t,” she said, not sparing him a glance as she braked over the train tracks.

“You haven’t spent ten minutes with me, Jules,” he said. “How could you possibly know that?”

“It’s Juliette.”

He laughed and she glared at him hard.

“Okay,” he said, “it’s Juliette.”

“And you’re still the same Tyler O’Neill. Here you are, punched in the face and kicked out of the St. Pat’s game. Seems awfully familiar.”

“It does ring a bell, doesn’t it?” He touched his lip with his finger, probed it with his tongue, and she tried to convince herself it was disgusting. But it wasn’t. It was hot.

The air in the car was humid, thick. She cranked the fan a notch higher, hoping it would help.

It didn’t.

“Did you know I was back?”

“It’s Bonne Terre, Tyler. The second you stepped foot back inside the parish about twenty people called me.”

“Good old Bonne Terre,” he said, looking around the dimly lit town as though vampires lurked in doorways. Considering she loved this town, and her job was to take care of its citizens, his attitude rubbed her wrong all over. “But what I’m wondering is what you’re doing? Keeping up on what’s happening at The Manor, giving me a ride.” He tilted his head, his Paul Newman eyes practically glowing in the darkness of the car.

Sex oozed off him. And he was breathing all her damn air.

“Your sister is my best friend.”

“Right,” Tyler said, his voice ripe, his eyes way too warm. “My sister.”

She stomped on the brakes. “What are you saying?”

His eyes raked her, that lopsided grin that used to put her whole world on edge was back. “Nothing,” he drawled.

His arm stole across the top of the seats, not touching her, but too close anyway.

She leaned over him, ignoring the warmth of his body, the smell of him, all of it. Every memory, every old impulse come back to haunt her—she ignored it all and opened his door.

She’d done what she needed to do. He’d been warned. She could kick him out of her car and, if God was kind, never ever lay eyes on Tyler O’Neill again.

“Get out,” she said.

He watched her for a second and suddenly the charm vanished from his smile. All that smug sexuality was banked, put on ice for the moment. “Come on, Juliette—”

“Get the hell out of my car, Tyler.”

She met his eyes, unflinching, unblinking, nothing but anger and disgust over his betrayal, his absence, all those years spent ignoring not just her, but Savannah and Margot, too.

“You left without a word,” she said, the words burning her mouth, scorching the air. “You are no better than your parents.”

Perhaps it was the lights, the shadows, but his face changed. Melted. Just for a moment, as if he couldn’t quite keep the mask in place.

But then he eased out of her car into the dark night, taking his scent and his heat and those eyes with him.

“Why did they call you, Juliette?” he asked, slamming the door and leaning in the window. “All the good citizens of Bonne Terre—what made them think of you when I came into town?”

She knew what he thought, that it was their past that had made people call her. That people saw him and thought of her, that they were linked, forever, in everyone’s heads. In her head.

She smiled, so damn happy, thrilled actually, to prove him wrong. “Because it’s my job, Tyler.”

Slowly, she pushed back her light blazer, revealing her gun.

And her badge.

His jaw dropped and it was beautiful. Really, really a beautiful thing.

“What have you done, Jules?” he breathed.

“It’s Chief Tremblant now, Tyler,” she said.

Grinning, she popped the clutch and peeled out, emblazoning in her brain this moment—leaving Tyler O’Neill, in a delicious twist, in her dust.

CHAPTER TWO

THE MANOR LOOKED THE SAME.

Shabby but somehow noble. Elegant. A lot like the old lady who lived there, he thought, and suddenly it seemed too long since he’d seen his grandmother.

But just looking at the house, the dark windows, that bright red door, his feet got itchy. His collar tight.

It wasn’t home, not for him, and it proved another thing he’d known to be true about himself. If this place, with these women who had loved him with all their hearts, wasn’t home—no place was.

He sighed and scrubbed at the back of his neck.

Tired, sore and melancholy, he hoped that if there wasn’t sugar pie waiting for him, at least there’d be some of Margot’s fine bourbon.

A drink or twelve and some ice on this eye were in order.

But instead of going in the front door, he walked around the side of the house, past the low windows into the library. Trampled grass, broken glass. The window sill had been messed with, but he glanced inside the window and saw small red infrared dots around the room.

Not your average alarm system.

He wondered how a librarian and a retired mistress paying out ten grand in stay-away money a year managed to afford this kind of system.

Must be that Matt guy, he thought. Big shot architect.

A good guy, Juliette had said, but he doubted he could trust her opinion. She used to think Tyler was good, after all.

You’re the best, she’d said, her long strong legs wrapped around his, her warm body, sticky with sweat and salt water, wedged between him and the backseat of his old Chevy.

He smiled, remembering how he’d have to peel her off the vinyl while she yelped. He’d felt, that whole summer, as though he was in the middle of a dream. Juliette Tremblant, the sexiest, most untouchable girl he’d ever met, had come home from college a woman. A woman ready to spit in the eye of her police-chief dad. A woman who was tired of the good-girl routine and was ready to see how the other half lived. He’d been more than happy to show her.

Now she was the police chief, just like dear old dad. Man, he did not see that coming. The Juliette he’d known, that feminine creature with the skirts and the lip gloss and the adoring eyes, was so far from the woman sitting in that car with a gun on her hip and a look on her face like she knew how to use it.

What the hell happened? he wondered, walking toward the stone fence that surrounded the back courtyard. He’d thought Jules could become a model, she’d been that beautiful. Her piercing eyes set against that mocha skin she’d inherited from her father had been a lethal combination.

But her heart had been set on law school since she’d been a kid, and he’d assumed she’d become the most beautiful lawyer the state of Louisiana had ever seen.

Not a pseudomasculine police chief.

He sighed and eyed the fence. It was taller, stronger than it used to be, but Tyler had no problem chinning himself up to the top.

Whoa. The back courtyard, which had been a mess when he’d left, was amazing. Manicured, with a fountain and the trees in the middle and was that a maze?

The greenhouse was different and the porch had been extended. Two chairs sat side by side on fresh wooden planks.

A bottle of Jack between them.

The dark bearded man sitting in one of the chairs raised his glass toward Tyler.

“You’re late,” he said.

Tyler sighed, hanging his aching head for just a moment to wonder why he wasn’t surprised before leaping down onto the lush green grass inside the fence.

“Hi, Dad.”

JULIETTE PUSHED HER SUNGLASSES up onto her head as she stepped into the station Monday morning.

“Hey, Lisa,” she said, walking by the reception and dispatch desk.

“Morning, Jules…ah…Chief.”

She and Lisa had gone to school together, and while the Bonne Terre police force didn’t operate on formalities, not calling the police chief by her old nickname was one thing Juliette insisted on.

Six months as chief and Lisa was just catching on.

She stepped through the glass doors that led to the squad room and her office. Just like every morning, as soon as she stepped into the common room, all the chatter stopped as if it had been cut off by a knife.

The squeak of her shoes across the linoleum was the only sound in the room until she came to a stop at the night-shift desk, where the men were changing shifts and shooting the shit.

“Morning, guys,” she said, taking a sip from her coffee.

“Chief,” they chorused. Of the four men sitting there, only two of them managed to say it without the word clogging in their throats. The two she hired from out of town. The other two—Officers Jones and Owens, who had worked with her father and grown up in Bonne Terre—found the word a little sticky.

But she wasn’t here to be their friends. She was focused on busting their asses, pushing and shoving them into the twenty-first century, getting them new equipment, and forcing them to change the way things were done in this office.

And she was damn good at her job.

They didn’t have to like her, but they sure as hell had to listen to her.

“You’ve got reports on my desk?” she asked Weber and Kavanaugh, her two new hires who’d pulled the night shift. They nodded and chorused, “Yes, sir.”

“Great,” she said. “Go on home.”

They stood and she stepped into her office, shutting the door behind her. Conversations resumed as she set down her mug and dropped into her chair like a rock.

For some ridiculous reason, she still hadn’t redecorated this office. She’d modernized every other part of this force, but not these four walls. And so, it remained exactly the same as when her father had been chief. Dark walls, dress-blues portraits of every police chief Bonne Terre had ever seen, and a big desk upon which she could safely float down the Mississippi.

I should redecorate, she thought. When she’d taken the job she’d been so focused on getting updated computers and fresh blood in the squad room that she hadn’t given her office a second thought.

But now, sitting under her father’s stern visage reminded her—especially on the heels of a night haunted by thoughts of Tyler O’Neill—of how much Dad had hated Tyler.

There was a word stronger than hated, though. Despised.

Loathed.

Dad had loathed Tyler.

All the O’Neills, to be honest. He’d hated anything, anyone, who rebelled, who embraced disobedience the way the O’Neills did.

Which, of course, had been part of Tyler’s appeal. That forbidden fruit thing was no joke.

Dad’s attitude toward Tyler had been the same attitude he’d brought to the job, the same attitude he’d rubbed in the face of every juvenile delinquent and small-time crook in Bonne Terre.

His job had been to punish. To control. Dad was a hammer, a blunt instrument wielded without thought to circumstances.

Juliette didn’t share his attitude. She thought being police chief was about something else, something kinder.

She wanted to help, not control.

This job isn’t for you, he’d told her when she’d applied for the position. You’re too soft. Too willing to forgive when you need to punish.

She aimed a giant raspberry at her dad’s portrait and rolled her chair up to the desk and the small set of reports sitting on her blotter.

A domestic over at the Marones’. Again.

Shirley Stewart escaped from the retirement home. Again. She’d been found on the steps of the Methodist church, unharmed.

Attempted grand theft over at the—

“What?”

She snapped the report open, scanned the perp sheet.

“No, no, no, no,” she moaned. She leaped up from her chair and busted into the squad room. “Where is he?” she asked.

“Holding four,” Owens said, leaning back in his chair. He jerked his thumb back toward the holding cells as if she didn’t know where they were.

“I was supposed to be called if anything happened with this kid,” she said.

“What were we supposed to do?” Owens asked, his eyes wide in false and infuriating innocence. “The mayor caught him breaking into the car.”

“Where’s the car?”

“Impound.”

“Do we know whose it is?”

“It’s not in the report?” Officer Owens asked. “Your night-shift boys caught it. I can go check it—”

“Do that,” she said, so fed up with Owens’s laziness and Jones’s excuses.

The metal door opened up with a bang under both her hands and she stalked down the small hallway between cells. It was hot and still, the high windows letting in bright bars of sunlight across the gray concrete walls.

Four was back in the corner, and as she got closer she saw him on the floor. His wrists were propped up on his bent knees, the hood of his ragged gray sweatshirt pulled up over his head.

“Miguel?” she said and his head snapped up.

“Chief!” He jerked upright, his legs hitting the cement floor, but his face was still buried in the shadows under his hood. “Chief, I’m so—”

“Sorry?” She asked. “Let me guess, you didn’t mean to attempt to steal a—” She glanced down at the report.

“A Porsche,” he muttered.

“A Porsche!” She flung her hands up. “I’m trying to help you, Miguel. And you steal a Porsche?”

“I didn’t get nowhere. Barely got the door open.”

Juliette unlocked the lockbox with the cell keys in it and opened Miguel’s cell, the bars slamming back. The sound echoed in the big empty room. “I suppose you were just gonna sit in it?”

“Hell, no,” Miguel said. “I was gonna steal it, but Mayor Bourdage found me.”

She sat down on the bench next to where Miguel sat on the floor. She was running out of options with this kid, already skirting the line between leniency and not doing her job.

And now he goes and tries to steal a Porsche. It’s like he doesn’t want my help.

“Miguel, tell me what you think I should do.”

His knees came back up and he shrugged. “I don’t care.”

Maybe her father was right, maybe she was too soft. Maybe this kid, whom she liked, whom she bent every damn rule for, didn’t just need a break.

Maybe this kid needed to be punished.

“Look at me, Miguel,” she said, biting out the words.

He shook his head and her temper flared. “Stop being so damn predictable.” Furious, she reached out and jerked his hood back, revealing his face. The bruises and swelling. The blood.

“My God—” she breathed.

“You think I care what you do to me?” he asked, jerking away, the left side of his face immobile, his eye shut tight from the swelling. He was black and purple from his lips to his hairline, the skin along his cheek seemed to have been burned. She knew things with Miguel’s father, Ramon, were bad, but she never dreamed it was this bad. “You think you can do something worse than this?”

“Have you been to the doctor?” she asked.

He sneered and yanked the hood back up.

She leaned back against the brick wall and sighed heavily. Punish him? How? How could she look at what he’d been through and put him in the system? The system would only make him harder. He’d go in there an angry victim and come out a criminal.

It had happened with the last two teenagers she’d sent to the Department of Corrections.

“Where’s your father?” she asked.

“Don’t know,” he said. “Don’t care.”

“How about you tell me what happened?”

Miguel shook his head. “He was drinking and he went after Louisa.” He shrugged, his thin shoulders so small. So young to have to carry so much. “I said something and he picked up this frying pan off the stove.”

She winced. That explained the bruises and burns.

“I’ve got to call community services—”

“I’ll tell them I fell down the stairs.” Miguel shook his head, emphatic.

“Miguel, you can’t be serious. You want to stay with your dad?”

“No, I just don’t want to go to no foster home. Louisa and me will get split up and I ain’t having that.”

“You were going to leave last night, Miguel,” she reminded him. “You would have been split up anyway.”

“I was going to take her,” he said. “I wouldn’t ever leave her behind.”

Great. Kidnapping on top of grand theft. “I can arrest him, bring him—”

“Yeah, right,” he scoffed. “How long this time? Overnight? A week? Last time you did that he came out more pissed off than ever, and me and Louisa had to stay with Patricia.”

“But, Miguel, he hit you.”

“You think this is the first time?”

“Why haven’t your teachers reported this?” she asked.

“I skip if it’s bad. But it’s not usually bad.”

“It’s my job to report this, Miguel.”

“You do what you gotta do, but no social worker is taking me nowhere.”

Rock. Hard place. The kid didn’t trust the system and frankly, she didn’t blame him. Bonne Terre, much less the parish, had no place for a kid like Miguel. It was the streets, holding cell four, or DOC over in Calcasieu Parish. Bonne Terre didn’t have a whole lot of crime, but what they did have was largely juvenile-perpetrated and they just weren’t equipped to help.

Punish, yes. Help, no.

And this was one of those situations that defined the differences between her and her father. These circumstances dictated that she help this kid.

“We need to get you to the doctor,” she said, deciding to put off the question of community services until she had a better answer.

“Am I going to jail?” he asked, and for the first time, something scared colored his voice.

Not if I can help it, she thought.

“Well, it’s not up to me. It’s up to the guy whose car you tried to steal.” He sniffed, the big man, as if it didn’t matter, as if jail would be no problem. And maybe, when push came to shove, it was better than home.

But, man, she wanted to give him another option. He was bright. Smart. Compassionate. He loved his sister, laid down his body for her.

The boy deserved a choice. A chance.

A safe home.

You’re soft, her father’s voice whispered. You’re way too soft.

The door to the holding cells opened and Owens walked in, his tall frame casting a long shadow down the hallway. “Got a name on that Porsche,” he said, coming to stop in the open door of cell four.

“Yeah?” she asked, her stomach tight. If she could just convince the owner not to press charges, to give the kid a pass, then she’d think of something. A way to give the kid a real opportunity, maybe get him out of that house.

But it all depended on the owner of that Porsche.

“You’re not going to believe it.”

“Who does the Porsche belong to, Owens?”

“Tyler O’Neill.”

CHAPTER THREE

JULIETTE TOOK MIGUEL to the clinic before heading out to Tyler’s. She bypassed urgent care altogether and headed straight to the new family doctor who had an office in the clinic.

Dr. Greg Roberts was a good guy. He’d keep his mouth shut, unlike the nurses in the urgent care who lived for cases like this. Bonne Terre was a small town and the most exciting thing the clinic had seen in the past month was when Mrs. Paterson had gotten a little overzealous with her weed whacker and had taken a chunk out of her husband’s ankle.

The gossips had turned it into a domestic abuse case before Mr. Paterson’s bandages were on.

“Boy said he fell down the stairs,” Dr. Roberts said, his voice indicating he didn’t believe it for a moment.

“That’s what he told me, too.” Juliette looked him right in the face and lied, knowing that if she told Dr. Roberts, he’d have no choice but to call in the social workers. Hell, she was supposed to be calling them in herself.

“Chief Tremblant,” he whispered, and she knew he was on to her. “What are you doing with this kid?”

His brown eyes were soft and sympathetic and for a moment she was tempted to tell him the jam she was in. They were friends. Sort of. And Greg was smart. Maybe he had an idea, something. Because right now, she had zip.

But Miguel, nearly passed out in the chair outside Greg’s office, shifted and moaned slightly in his doze and Juliette shook her head.

“My job,” she told Greg. “I’m doing my job.”

“He’s what, sixteen? The boy should be in foster care.”

“You want to call Office of Community Services? Do it.”

“I don’t want to fight with you,” he said. He stepped closer, the warmth from his body making her slightly claustrophobic. He was a young guy, and occasionally she got the vibe that he was interested. Why she couldn’t relax and just go with it was a mystery. “If this kid needs help, I’m on your side.”

The man was handsome, and sincere, she had to give him that. But she still wasn’t about to let him in.

“I appreciate that, Greg. I do. But I know what I’m doing. There are…circumstances,” she whispered.

Greg watched her for a long moment and then held up his hands, indicating he’d back off.

He took a small handful of packaged pills out of his lab coat. “I’ve given him two. He’ll need another two in six hours.”

He dumped the samples in her hands, his fingers brushing hers.

Feel something, she willed her nerve endings, come on, just a little zing.

But there was nothing.

Of course, because she was an idiot, Tyler O’Neill and his broken-down face and heartless grin popped into her mind, and just the thought of him electrified her, put the hair on her arms on end.

That’s what you want? she asked herself ruthlessly. The answer, of course, was no, the by-product of all that fire had been third-degree burns, a life-altering pain.

“Come on, Miguel,” she murmured, giving the boy’s shoulder a shake. Miguel flinched, then came to, clearly disoriented and drowsy, and she helped him to his feet.

Fifteen minutes later, Juliette stopped in front of The Manor, stared through her window at the red door and took a few deep breaths.

“Hey, Ty,” she whispered, practicing her cheerful approach. “You’ll never guess, it’s funny really, but your car almost got stolen last night.”

She pressed her fist to her forehead. “Okay—” she tried straightforward “—look, Ty, we’ve got a situation. Your car is fine and I need you to work with me. I need you—”

I need you.

Her stomach rolled and her skull pounded. Ten years later and she needed him. Frankly, she’d rather take out her gun and blow off her left toe than face Tyler, but Miguel needed her.

She glanced in the rearview mirror to where Miguel slept, his head pressed to the backseat window, his black hair flat against the glass.

“Please, you son of a bitch,” she whispered, “please be reasonable.”

FIRE ANTS WERE EATING Tyler’s brain and it was making him acutely, painfully unreasonable.

Or maybe it was just his father.

“I’m telling you,” Dad said, scrambling eggs without his shirt on. Sunlight coming in through the kitchen window hit his chest hair and put a halo around him.

Ironic. So. Ironic.

“I was staying in Malibu and I grew this beard and everyone thought I was George Clooney. I didn’t pay for a meal for three whole weeks.”

Tyler listened with half an ear, distracted by the fire ants.

“You listening to me, Tyler?”

“Can’t you put on a shirt?” Tyler asked, more concerned about those eggs and his father’s copious chest hair.

Richard dropped the spatula. “What is with you? Ty? You didn’t say two words to me last night.”

“I let you in, didn’t I?”

“Yes, and then you slammed the door to your room like a teenager. What happened to your face?”

“It got punched.”

“Don’t be cute.”

“Fine, then you don’t pretend that arriving here, of all places, is just business as usual.”

Richard crossed his arms over his big chest. Pushing sixty and he still looked good. He could pass for Clooney.

One more scam to add to his repertoire.

“That’s what’s bothering you?”

“I haven’t seen you in eight months! One minute you’re living on my couch the next you’re gone without a word. I didn’t know if you were alive or dead, Dad.”

“I told you I was going to L.A.—”

“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.

“Okay,” she said. “But we’ve got to keep you away from your dad. Where is he now?”

“It’s Monday, so he’s sleeping it off and then he’s back out at the refinery until Saturday.” The refinery was over the state line, and employed many of the men and women of Bonne Terre. Due to the commute, many of them, like Miguel’s father, spent part of the week in a cheap hotel closer to the refinery.

“Your sister?”

“She’s at Patricia’s. I’m gonna pick her up for school tomorrow.” Patricia was an old friend of Miguel’s mother, who did what she could for the kids, but the woman was eighty, on welfare and barely spoke English.

She nodded. What to do? What to do?

“All right.” She ducked her head, looking hard into his good eye. “Tomorrow after school you come right here. In fact, after school you come here every day.”

“To the police station?” he asked, horrified as any good delinquent would be.

“It’s your only choice, Miguel. And considering what I’ve done for you, if you don’t show up I’ll be—” He looked away. “Miguel,” she snapped and he looked back up, sighing. “I will be very, very insulted.”

Miguel nodded, his lip lifting slightly. Nearly made her cry to see it. Here he was, face beat in, future up in the air, and the kid could still smile. Sort of.

Maybe she could make this work—as long as Dr. Roberts didn’t tell anyone and Tyler kept his mouth shut. And if no one in the station cared about an attempted grand theft she made disappear, or wondered why Miguel was cleaning squad cars every day after school.

And particularly if no one else saw Miguel’s file.

Panic nearly swamped her. Who was she kidding?

Thinking about what she was doing made things worse. She needed to move, act, do something. Give Ramon Pastor a warning that even he would understand.

“Get in the car,” she said, following Miguel toward her sedan.

“Chief!” Lisa came running out into the impound yard, her blond ponytail a little flag out behind her.

“What’s up?” Juliette asked, a little surprised to see Lisa away from her FreeCell game.

“Mayor wants to see you,” Lisa said.

It had been approved? She’d just turned in that paperwork last week. The squad car requisition? Man, the mayor was totally on her side—

Lisa’s eyes flipped over to Miguel. “About the boy.”

“DAD!” TYLER CALLED, slamming the front door shut behind him.

“Yeah?” Richard stepped in from the kitchen into the hallway, a sauce-splattered apron tied around his trim waist. Good God, the man was playing house.

“Let’s go,” Tyler said to Richard’s blank face. “Let’s go back to Vegas. Play some cards, get a steak as big as our heads.”

“I’m making lasagna.”

“Screw the lasagna!” Tyler cried. “It’s time to go.”

“But we just got here. We haven’t found the gems.”

“Dad, if it’s about money, I’ve got more than—”

Richard shook his head. “I’m not taking your money.”

Tyler blew out a long breath and stared up at the ceiling. This totally misplaced sense of honor his father had could be such a pain in the butt. “You will live in my suite, charge meals to my room and wear my damn clothes, but you can’t take money from me?”

“Hey—” Richard wiped his hands off on the apron “—that’s taking care of one another. You’ll remember I did the same thing for you for years after you found me in Vegas.”

I was a kid! Tyler wanted to yell. I was your kid! It’s part of a father’s job description.

But the truth was, Richard often got the job description for father and sperm donor confused.

I should just leave. Leave him here to find these nonexistent gems. Tyler’s feet twitched with the urge to turn around and walk away, leave Richard behind like he’d done to his family. Shuck them all like so many dirty socks.

If he could leave the best of them behind, why the hell couldn’t he walk away from the worst of them?

“I need you, son,” Richard said, his voice getting earnest, his eyes slightly damp. The old caring father routine—I may have been absent, but you were never absent from my thoughts. Tyler fell for that story hook, line and sinker more times than he’d like to admit.

“You need me to help you look for gems,” Tyler said, crossing his arms over his chest. “You could hire someone for that. Hell, we could get a cleaning crew in here and they’d—”

There was something off on Dad’s face, something raw. Something not manufactured and it looked like worry.

“What?” Tyler asked, feeling his stomach fall into his shoes.

“It’s not a big deal—”

“What aren’t you telling me?”

“I was in a…thing…back in Los Angeles.”

“Oh, my God,” Tyler breathed, turning away from his father, fisting his hands in his hair. “Oh. My. God.”

“I didn’t do anything,” Richard said. Tyler heard him step forward and Tyler put up his hand. If the old man got closer there was a good chance Tyler would knock him out. “I swear to you, son, I didn’t do anything. But the friend I was staying with was arrested for credit-card fraud. I didn’t know what he was doing, but because—”

“But because you were staying with him, the police think you do.” Tyler sighed and looked his father hard in the eye, willing his father to tell the truth.

“I was questioned and released. I swear, son,” he said. “I had nothing to do with it. Credit-card fraud is for lowlifes.”

Tyler’s laughter was a hard bark that hurt his throat. “Good to know you have standards.”

“I just need…a change of scene, until things cool down. Just for a little while.”

“What if I decide to leave?”

“Then I’d wish you well,” he said, “but I better stay. Empty house and all.”

Empty house full of gems.

“It’s not your house.”

“Not yours, either.”

Son. Of. A. Bitch.

There was no way Tyler could leave now. It would be like walking away from a bomb with a lit fuse. There was simply no telling what kind of trouble Richard would get into unattended. And if he wasn’t here, Juliette would drive by, checking on The Manor. It was only a matter of time before she found Richard.

“I need a drink,” he muttered.

“WHAT WE NEED IS A PLAN,” Richard said an hour later, pouring another finger of whiskey in the old crystal tumblers. Tyler picked his up, loving the paper-thin edge of the glass against his lips and the solid heft and weight in his hands. Made him want to bite it and hurl it against a wall.

Sort of how he felt about his father.

About Juliette. Lord, how was he going to be able to avoid her now? In a town this size? Impossible.

“What we need is to stop drinking, start looking,” Tyler said, drinking anyway.

“I’ve been looking,” Richard said, stretching back in his chair, crossing his legs at the ankles.

They sat on the back porch, the early afternoon sunlight a bright warm blanket across their legs, the whiskey a warm blanket in his stomach. Thoughts of Juliette like a sore tooth he just could not leave alone.

More whiskey would fix that, he thought, taking a half inch from the glass. Which was why he was drinking instead of looking, because first things, after all, were first.

Gotta get Juliette out of my head.

“Yeah? Where have you been looking?”

“I started in the basement,” Richard said, looking out over the maze and the greenhouse. “Boxes of paperwork. I tell you—” he smiled, shaking his head “—that little girl of mine is a packrat—”

Tyler stiffened, his skin suddenly too tight. Bright sparks in his head. Don’t call her that, he wanted to yell. You don’t get to call her that.

But he bit back the words.

“Margot still raising orchids?” he asked, unable to look directly at his father without the help of much more booze.

“I wouldn’t know, son. Margot and I never discussed hobbies.”

Tyler stood and stepped onto the lush green grass, a miracle in the end-of-summer heat, and crossed the yard, his fingers touching the silvery green leaves of the trees. Soft. But not soft like Juliette.

“Hey, why the sudden interest in finding the gems, Ty?” Dad asked, following him across the grass. He stumbled a little, but righted himself with grace. Dad never could hold his liquor, but he was about the most gracious drunk Tyler had ever seen. Whiskey turned the old man into royalty. “This morning you could care less.”

“We’ve got nothing else to do,” Tyler said.

“You don’t believe me about the gems, do you?”

“I don’t believe one way or the other,” Tyler answered. And he didn’t. He didn’t actually care, either. At this point he was babysitter/bomb squad, and if the baby wanted to look for gems—what did it hurt?

“You aren’t excited about the money?” Dad asked.

Tyler shook his head. He had more money than he could spend in five years, and considering the way money rolled out of his hands, that was saying something.

But with this last win, he’d finally taken his brother, Carter’s, advice and talked to a money guy. Tyler got a nice little check every month from his investments.

Carter, he thought, the whiskey making him fond rather than irritated at the thought of his brother. Leave it to the Golden Boy to find a way to run a con on nothing.

Tyler stepped into the greenhouse, which was warm and humid, like breathing underwater. Plants lined a table, and more hung from baskets. No blooms, just the young shoots, green arrows out of dark soil.

Margot was starting over with her orchids and he had to wonder why. He took a sip and touched the soil in one of the baskets. Dry, but not very, considering Margot was on some cruise and Savannah was off falling in love in Paris.

Someone was watering the plants, and it could only be Juliette. Always Juliette.

He found the hose coiled in the corner and turned it on, finding the balance between a trickle and a flood, just like Margot taught him a million years ago.

“Orchids are particular,” she’d said, filling the hanging pan under a pink flower. “Some want water from the bottom, some want it from the top. Some want lots, some barely any.”

“Seems like a lot of work,” he’d said, pissed off at the world because he knew why he was here and that his mother was never coming back. He didn’t want to take care of the damn plants, he wanted to smash them. Break those little pink flowers into pieces.

“That’s why I need your help,” she’d said, looking right at him, right down to that twitchy dark place. She knew he wanted to wreck her flowers. Wreck everything. And still she wanted his help.

“I don’t know what to do,” he said, scowling.

“I’ll show you,” she said, putting the hose in his hand.

“You think the gems are in here?” Richard asked, digging into one of the pots, crushing the green bud with his big, fat, clumsy fingers.

“No, Dad,” he said, and flicked the hose at him as if Richard was a cat digging in a house plant.

“Hey! Watch it!” Richard said, bouncing away, bumping into a worktable.

“I don’t think the gems are here,” he said. Splashing a little water in each of the pots, he didn’t know which was which. Which, if any, needed special care.

He turned off the hose, flinging it back in its corner. The last sip of whiskey burned a familiar trail down his throat. An odd longing bobbed in his chest, an unvoiced wish for something he didn’t even understand.

I miss this place, he thought. I miss Margot and Savannah. I miss Juliette.

He thought of who he’d been, that boy with those bright green dreams pushing out of the rotten soil his mother had planted him in.

The thought, as soon as it was fully formed and poisonous, was plucked out. Destroyed.

Wishing for something different was a waste. These were the cards he’d been dealt, and if he didn’t like them—too bad.

He was Tyler O’Neill, born a card man, from a long line of con men and petty crooks. This was his life.

And the best thing he could do for Juliette Tremblant was to keep himself and Dad far away from her.

He tested the weight of the tumbler in his hand. Tossing it. Catching it. Fine crystal, it was so perfect. Better than a baseball.

The tumbler rocketed through the air—a perfect arc, catching the light at its zenith, splashing rainbows across the courtyard—and then smashed against the stone wall, fracturing into a million glittering pieces.

“Tyler?” Dad asked, his voice careful.

“I’ll start in the upstairs bedrooms,” he said, and headed back to the house.

CHAPTER FIVE

“WHERE’S THE BOY NOW?” Mayor Bourdage asked, sitting behind the giant desk in his office.

“I dropped him off at home,” she said.

The mayor tore open a packet of Alka-Seltzer and dumped it into the glass at his elbow, the water exploding into bubbles. The man looked decidedly gray.

So, she imagined, did Father Michaels, the wrestling coach and Lou Brandt.

The good old boys really tied one on during those Sunday-night poker games.

The mayor drained the glass in three large gulps and then wiped his face. “The kid looked like he’d gotten into it with a freight train.”

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