The Temptation of Savannah O'Neill (13 page)

“No,” he said, something dark and heavy sitting on his chest. Regret? Grief? Probably both. “Don’t worry about it. I’ve still got a lot of work to do. It’s probably best.”

Matt grabbed the empty salad bowl and took it into the kitchen. There was no dishwasher, and Savannah was filling the sink with bubbles.

“I’ll wash, you dry?” she asked.

He met her gaze; so blue and careful. Cautious, as if she expected rejection.

Suddenly the kitchen was too small and he wanted badly to escape to the courtyard. To be alone. The temptation of her was nearly too much, but in the end he merely nodded and stepped aside so she could stand at the sink.

Because he was a glutton for punishment, and because a few hours in the company of these women made him feel lighter. Cleaner. The ghosts and their dirty hands were leaving him alone.

They worked silently, each of them careful not to touch one another in handing off dishes. Not that it particularly mattered. Touching or not, he wanted her so bad he could taste it. Like lime sherbet on his tongue.

“Tell me something,” she said, handing him a dinner plate. “Did you lie about your mother?”

He knew exactly what she meant—that night in the library when she’d laid herself so bare.

I should lie now,
he thought. Tell her that everything he said that night had been a lie, that it had all been designed to get her to talk to him.

He opened his mouth to do it, to drive her away for good.

But he glanced down at her exposed neck. The pale skin stretched over fine muscles. The wisps of blond hair there, too short to be pulled into a ponytail. He wanted to touch that hair, see if it was as soft as it looked. He wanted to press his lips to the dip at the top of her spine. He wanted to curl his arms around her taut body, cup her breasts in his hands, press himself along her back.

He wanted to wrap himself around her and never let go.

“Nothing I said that night was a lie,” he answered. “My mom, Dad—” he stumbled slightly “—Jack. All of it was the truth.”

She blinked at him, her eyes warm, her lips so full and pink he wanted to chew on them.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

He leaned toward her, ready to take her up on the invitation in her trembling lips and liquid eyes. He remembered how she’d felt in his arms, how she had the power to banish his ghosts, and he suddenly wanted that again. Craved it with every aching and sore muscle in his body.

Solace, she offered solace.

“Matt!” Margot called from the other room and Savannah jerked away, scrubbing with renewed vigor.

“Don’t keep the queen waiting,” Savannah said, overly bright.

Unsure of what to say or do, he finally set down the towel and left the kitchen, his body getting cooler the farther he was from temptation.

S
AVANNAH BRACED HER HANDS
on the bottom of the sink, hot suds up to her elbows, and hung her head. Matt was potent medicine and he went right to her head, erasing every sane thought she had.

Researching him had to stop. As did the temptation to make out with him in the kitchen.

Even if he had told her the truth, even if he was so wounded she could see the scars in his eyes, even if he was charming and handsome and fun, he would still hurt her.

Because at some point, Matt would leave.

Eventually, everyone left her.

She finished the dishes and even managed to persuade Katie to help put away the dry ones before she rushed off to finish her puzzle with Margot.

Savannah poured herself a cold glass of water and was about to go upstairs when the music started.

Matt was playing the piano. “Ode to Joy,” which seemed sad and ironic considering the grief he carried. The music filled the hallways, brushed the ceilings, twisted and turned and curved around her heart until she was in knots.

She sat on the steps, powerless against Matt and his sad music.

M
ATT WOKE UP, BLINKING
into hot sunshine, stunned to realize he’d actually slept.

And from the angle of the sun shining directly into his eyes, he’d say he overslept. He pulled on clean clothes and filled his thermos. At the last minute, he grabbed a notebook and pencil so he could sketch out the final pattern for the maze.

He’d been thinking in terms of right angles. Squares in squares. But last night he’d dreamt in circles.

Harder to pull off, but infinitely more interesting.

Once outside, he saw his kingdom had been overrun. The shed doors were open, the tools haphazardly laid out and Savannah, in cutoffs and a black tank top that hugged every curve and muscle in her body like a shadow, was in jeopardy of cutting off her own hand with the bush trimmers.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

She whirled, slicing the air with razor-sharp blades. “Hey, Matt. Since someone decided to sleep in, I thought I’d do a little work—”

He yanked the trimmers from her hands and put them on the ground, arranging things so they lay between the hoe and the ax.

It was stupid, this irrational proprietary urge he had. It wasn’t even his courtyard. It was hers. She could pave the damn thing if she wanted.

“I only trimmed the cypress,” she said, annoyed. “I’ve managed the middle courtyard for twenty years, it’s not like I’m going to ruin anything.”

You’re ruining everything,
he thought.

“I’m used to working alone,” he said, trying to sound as unfriendly as possible.

“I understand,” she said, putting her hands on her impossibly thin waist. She really was like a willow. So beautiful, but strong. “That’s how I work, too.” She grabbed a thermos of coffee that had been resting in the grass and held it out to him. “Here. Peace.”

Part of him resisted, knowing that if he wanted her to keep her distance, this wasn’t exactly the way to go about it.

“It’s just coffee,” she said, again as if she could read his mind, and it was so oddly intimate, he couldn’t resist.

A great ache yawned inside of him, a loneliness.

I miss Jack,
he realized. He missed having friends and people in his life. His father, the prince of thieves, sitting in the visiting room at Martinsville Prison so eager for company. Erica, bringing him coffee and office gossip while doing the job of twenty people. And Jack—

“You all right?” Savannah asked.

He blinked, coming back to earth. “Fine.” He took the coffee. “Thank you.”

“So,” Savannah said, looking around at the cleared-out courtyard. “What’s the plan, Mr. Architect of the Year?”

“How did you find that out?” He laughed. Wow, winning that award seemed like a million years ago. Almost as though it had happened to a different guy. It had been so important, coming as it had right before the opening. Publicity, he’d thought, for the project of a lifetime.

“It’s on your Web site,” she said, shaking her head.
“Boy, you’ve really dropped right out of your life, haven’t you?”

He took a deep drink of the hot black coffee and didn’t answer. The answer was all too obvious.

I wonder how many voice mails I have from Erica, now?

He was stunned to realize he wanted to check. He wanted to look at his old life for the first time in months.

Something was happening here, at this house. He was growing back into his old skin.

“I finished my research work two days ago and I’m not scheduled to be back in the library until tomorrow, so I thought I’d lend a hand. And—” she smiled “—I’m guessing you probably don’t want or need my help and are trying to figure out how to get rid of me. But sadly, my daughter gets her stubbornness from me.”

And I’m not going anywhere.
The words rang in his head as if she’d yelled them rather than implied them.

He wondered if she was here with the foolish idea that she could save him, and he wanted to tell her not to bother.

“I’m building a maze,” he said. He set down the thermos and pulled the pencil and notebook out of his back pocket. “I was thinking something…” He began sketching. Beginning with the cypress in the center, he worked his way out, creating blind alleys and hidey-holes that went nowhere. All in a circular pattern. “I was thinking box hedges, but that won’t really work with the form. I’ll need to—”

“Lilacs,” she said. “Here.” She pointed to his sketch, the dark outer perimeter of his circles. “And honeysuckle, for the inside.”

It clicked. “That would be—”

“Smelly?” she asked, with a laugh.

“Perfect,” he said, getting lost for a moment in her eyes. “Totally perfect.”

He didn’t know how long they stood that way. A second, ten minutes. But time collapsed, disappeared, and all there was were her eyes, blue as the sky and bottomless.

“Matt,” she breathed. “Tell me about the accident.”

He went cold. Numb. In a heartbeat.

He stepped away, throwing the sketch on the ground and reaching for the tools. She got in his way, her hands, so delicate and clean on his, and he recoiled from the contact.

“You didn’t know about the floors,” she whispered.

He took tiny sips of air because there was suddenly a shortage. “Did you?”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Not to Pete Borjat. Not to his girlfriend.”

“But there was nothing you could have done, Matt.”

“I could have opened my eyes and seen the problems Jack was having instead of stupidly, blindly following my own vision.”

He stepped into the shed, grabbing equipment, needing to do something, anything, because the pressure in his head and body was about to burst.

“Did he tell you he didn’t reinforce the floors there?”

“No, but the building was in much worse shape than anyone thought. I knew he’d downgraded some of the supplies.” Matt threw more and more tools onto the ground, pitching them in anger, hurling things he didn’t need to feed his impulse for violence. “He told me over and over again that he could not take another loss. That he could not afford my visions. My obsessions.”

“But if he didn’t tell you, it’s not your fault—” Suddenly she stopped, blinked, her mouth gaping.

He pulled out more tools and her silence continued. She stood there, a deer in headlights, her face white with shock.

“Savannah,” he asked. “You all right?”

She shook her head and he stepped to her side, slid his hand over her shoulder for support.

She put her hands over her face and remained still for a long time, so long Matt got worried and looked over her shoulder for any sign of Margot.

“My grandmother has been telling me the same thing for years,” she said. “It’s not my fault because I didn’t know. Years of her saying that and then you come here, with your guilt and your lies, and it all makes sense.”

She lifted her pale face to his, her eyes burning and wet with unshed tears, her lips a white line.

“What’s not your fault?” he asked.

“You asked me about Katie’s father.” Her voice was a whisper, thick and ragged.

He nodded, speechless.

“Years ago, he hired me to do some research. He was working on a documentary about Creole music and culture. I did the work and as a side note told him he should come to Bonne Terre, to see Remy’s. It’s a club out in the bayou about ten miles south of here.” She took a deep breath and it shuddered at the top. “He came. Fell in love with the place and decided to change the focus of the documentary to Remy, fourth-generation Remy, who still runs the place.”

Matt squeezed her shoulder, seeing how this might pan out.

“We started…dating.” Her smile was sharp, bitter. Loaded with all the things she didn’t need to say about those dates. “And in time, I told him he should stay at the Manor. He stayed on and off for three months and I—” She
shook her head and looked at her hands, unfurling them to reveal moon-shaped divots made by her nails. He wanted to kiss those divots. Kiss every pain she ever felt. “I was stupid in love. Stupid. And I thought he was, too. So, when I got pregnant, I thought it would all work out.”

“It didn’t.”

“He was married. He had two children in Chicago.”

He closed his eyes and swore.

She laughed, a brittle, slightly hysterical sound. “I’ve blamed myself for nine years. Every whisper behind my back. Every slur painted on our walls, I’ve accepted them as payment for my sins.”

“But you didn’t know,” Matt said.

“I’m a researcher, Matt. Finding out is what I do. I let myself get taken. Not like you.”

She reached up and touched his fingers, lacing hers between his, strong and fragile at the same time. Their palms touched, her heartbeat pulsed against his skin. The urge to pull her close, bend that strong body against his was like a riptide, pulling him places he had no business going.

“If he didn’t tell you, you couldn’t know, Matt. It wasn’t your job. You can stop blaming yourself for something you had no control over.”

“It’s not the same thing,” he said, shaking his hands free.

“It’s not?”

“Lives are ruined!” he yelled. “Peter is dead. His girlfriend is alone. Jack is bankrupt.”

“Not your fault,” she said. “It’s a tragedy, no doubt about it, but you didn’t cause it. This guilt you’re carrying—” she shook her head “—it’s not yours.”

“Someone should be punished.”

“The world doesn’t work that way, Matt.”

“Well, the world doesn’t always get it right.” Matt ducked into the shed, pulling out two pairs of gloves. He tugged on the ones with the hole and gave her the new pair. “You can work,” he said, “but I’m done talking.”

S
AVANNAH HEARD
Katie up in the tree, getting ready with her water balloon arsenal. Funny, Savannah thought, wiping the sweaty hair off her forehead, three days ago she wanted to hurl the water balloons herself.

She glanced over at Matt where he knelt on the ground, measuring trenches like graves.

Now, she didn’t know what she wanted. But it was time to stop Katie’s attacks on the poor guy. Lord knows he suffered enough at his own hands without Katie’s help.

“Katie!” she cried, just in time to halt the yellow balloon lifted in her little hand. “I need to talk to you inside.”

“But, Mom—”

She put down the shovel and stepped over to the tree, peering up into the branches at her daughter’s red round face.

“Inside,” she said. “Now.”

Matt’s attention, his gaze, his presence ten feet behind her was as tangible as a hand at her back. She didn’t turn around, wasn’t ready to meet those green eyes. She was still too raw and vulnerable, her world still unsure without the guilt she’d carried for so long.

She felt slightly newer, somehow. Her skin fragile in the sunlight without the heavy protection of her hair shirt.

Katie scrambled down from the tree, grumbling the whole time, and Savannah followed her into the house.

“This stuff with Matt has to stop,” she said, once they got into the kitchen.

“What stuff?” Katie asked, blinking her eyes at Savannah.

“Don’t be cute,” Savannah snapped. “I’ve let you run wild around here for too long. Now, I want you to stop with the water balloons and the attitude.”

“We thought he was our friend and he lied to us, Mom!”

Oh, how to explain to her daughter the many shades of gray. “I know.” She sighed. “But—”

“He made you cry!” Katie yelled. “And now you’re out there like he’s a friend.”

“Maybe he is—”

“No!”

Savannah realized there was something else at work here, something more than retaliating at Matt for lying to them.

“We don’t need friends, Mom! We just need each other, right? That’s what you’ve always said. All we need is each other.”

Savannah blinked, stunned. “Katie, honey, it’s not always going to be just us.”

“Why not?” Katie asked. “It’s been you, me and Margot for a long time and we’re doing fine. Why do you want him here, anyway?”

Savannah had no answer. She couldn’t even totally explain it to herself. But she liked him here. The past few hours, working silently side by side with him, had been the warmest in her memory.

She wanted to kiss him. She wanted to pull that strong body against hers and feel small. Feel cared for. Womanly and precious.

She wanted Matt, with his lies and guilt, she wanted him still. More, maybe, now that she knew the truth.

“You
like
him,” Katie cried as though it was the crime of the century, the murder of innocents.

“I do,” Savannah said, “but that doesn’t mean I don’t like you. Or—”

“Well, I don’t like
you!
” She ran off down the dark hallway, her feet thundering up the stairs.

“She’s just like you” a deep male voice behind her said. A deep male voice Savannah hadn’t heard in far too long.

“Carter!” she cried, whirling to face her big brother. One look at his handsome face, so strong and fierce, like a profile you’d see on an ancient coin, and she was ten years old again.

Tears suddenly burned at her eyes. The fact that he’d been gone so long, out of their lives, felt like a cut deep through her.

“It’s been so long,” she breathed, hearing the accusation in her voice.

Carter blinked, the charming smile slid off his face. “I’ve asked you to come visit,” he said. “It’s your choice—”

“This is your home,” she said.

You are supposed to be here,
she thought.
You are supposed to stay. We were all supposed to stay.

But no one ever stayed. Ever.

Carter’s smile was sad, but his arms opened and she stepped right into them. “I missed you, Savvy.”

M
ATT COULD FEEL
Katie up in that tree, despite the fact that there were no water balloons falling on his head. He could feel her like a storm coming down from Canada—cold winds and icy rain.

“I know you’re mad at me,” he said, sticking his shovel in the ground and propping his hands on its end.

“You don’t know anything!” Katie screamed, water balloons pelting the ground and exploding at his feet.

“Your mom—”

Katie swung down from the tree like some wild redheaded monkey. “You don’t know anything about my mom!” At her rage Matt stepped back.