The Temptation of Savannah O'Neill (15 page)

Matt leaned back, looked up at the bright blue sky. “That’s why you told me about Vanessa and Richard.”

“You were so lost, son, after that accident. I couldn’t stand watching you fade away like that. I was losing you, and I knew that if I could get you interested in something again, anything, you’d find your way back.”

Matt squinted at the horizon, feeling emotion bite hard at the back of his eyes. “Thank you, Dad.”

“I can only guess that you’ve figured out that clearing my dirty name isn’t going to change what happened in St. Louis.”

Nothing would bring back Peter. Or fix the lives of all the people affected by the collapse. Nothing would stop the occasional nightmare that woke Matt shaking and screaming in the night.

“I’m working on it,” he finally answered.

“Look, I know I haven’t been an ideal father—” Matt snorted.

“But I care about you, I always have. I’m glad you’re putting it behind you.”

Matt’s heart flexed and stuttered. He couldn’t argue. For all his father’s many faults, not caring about Matt was not one of them. Joel wouldn’t win any father of the year awards, but he’d been there. At least there had been Rachmaninoff and card games and dinners and warm beds.

“I know, Dad,” Matt said, his voice gruff.

“Good. Then tell me, when I’m out, where are you going to be?”

“I think,” he said, feeling the words roll up from his gut like stones, filling his mouth until he had to spit them out. “I think I have to go back to St. Louis to tie up some loose ends.”

There was a commotion on Joel’s side of the line. “Uh-oh,” he said. “Looks like Little Adam got some bad news from his wife. They’re going to clear us out of here, son.”

“Dad,” Matt said. “Is everything okay, though? That Richard visit—was there something wrong? Something I should know?”

Joel took another long drag from his cigarette and Matt waited, nervous for some reason.

“Don’t worry about it, Matt,” Joel said. “It was nothing.”

“You’re sure?”

“Absolutely.”

“Talk to you in a few days,” Matt said and hung up.

He couldn’t fix Savannah and the mess he’d made here, he couldn’t fix his father’s crime—the only thing he could fix was his own life.

And it was time he did it.

Before he could curb the impulse, he dialed his office number. It was late on Sunday so he left a message that Erica would get in the morning.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I owe you.” He paused. “I owe you so much, Erica.” He did some quick math, figured out how many days work he had left.

“I’ll be back next Monday,” he said. “I promise. I know that might not mean much right now, and if you want to leave I don’t blame you, but I will be back in town in a week to clear things up.”

He shut his phone, wondering if he’d done the right
thing. Stepping back into the land of the living was not something he could undo.

Giving himself a deadline to leave the Manor and Savannah was something he could not undo. He’d have to leave on Sunday to be in St. Louis on Monday.

Which gave him seven days.

Carter’s car started and drove away, spitting gravel as it went. Matt turned and there was Savannah, Katie scowling at her side.

Savannah’s eyes searched his face, just as he searched hers, trying to read her emotions on her skin.

“You okay?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “You?”

She shook her head, tears welling in her eyes, and he wished there was something he could do. Something that would help.

Then she stepped up against him, her body flush to his and her arms slid around his back, her fingers lighting fires through his shirt, holding him close. Tight.

Breath left his body in a gust and his hands trailed up her back, to her shoulders, feeling the skin and muscle of her arms and neck. So strong, this woman.

He pressed his cheek to the top of her head, getting drunk on the smell of flowers and dried sweat in her hair.

Electricity fired through his body but he ignored it.

Ignored the snarling desire for more of her.

It was only a hug. Comfort.

Where he least expected it and wanted it most.

Seven days,
he thought. And swore.

M
ONDAY MORNING
, Savannah climbed the stone steps to the Bonne Terre Library and unlocked its heavy wooden doors. Inside, the cool, still air smelled like books, wood
cleaner and damp from the basement that had never dried out from Hurricane Katrina.

“Lucy!” she said with her best Desi impression, “I’m home.”

She got to work, occupying herself with the piles of tasks that had accumulated in her absence. She was grateful for the distraction, but even with the work, Matt was there. Lingering in the corners of her mind, he was never far from any thought she had.

He was different. Changed. He might not be able to see it, but she could. She felt it in that hug last night—the way he’d let himself be touched.

She wished, stupidly, that his letting go of his grief and guilt might mean something for her.

Like he’d stick around.

But he wouldn’t. No one ever did.

By noon, the air conditioner was battling the humidity that pressed down from outside and the summer school kids were at the computers.

Including Garrett and Owen.

Looking at them, her blood literally boiled. Two weeks since the first break-in and there they were, as if nothing had ever happened. She had to drink a big glass of cold water to stop herself from incinerating.

She reconsidered her thoughts of revenge—maybe that letter to their parents? But it didn’t seem like enough. Nothing seemed like enough.

“Hot one today, huh?” Janice, her assistant, asked. They stood at the sink, Janice filling up the WeightWatchers water bottle she kept at her desk—along with the Fannie May sampler box she didn’t think anyone knew about.

“Hey,” Savannah said, turning sideways and resting her hip against the counter. “So what’s happening with the love triangle out there?”

“Well.” Janice nearly shook with sudden excitement and the cats on her pink T-shirt struggled to stay on her mountainous breasts. “I caught Garrett and The Cheerleader kissing down by the drinking fountains.”

“Does Owen know?”

“Not at all.” Janice shook her head, her eyes twinkling.

Savannah, as she had since the moment she’d hired Janice, felt like hugging the woman.

“Why?” Janice asked. “You suddenly interested in the love lives of summer school students?”

Savannah shrugged, heading to the front desk and the stacks of mail she needed to go through. “No reason.”

But Matt’s words hummed through her bloodstream.

Guilt deserves to be punished.

While she was convinced the adage no longer applied to Matt, it sure as hell applied to the two kids smirking at her over their computer screens.

She shrugged off the chains she kept around those O’Neill impulses and when she finally saw Owen’s girlfriend head for the bathroom, Garrett not far behind her, she strolled up to Owen.

“I need to do some maintenance on that computer,” she said. “Why don’t you take a bathroom break?”

“Whatever,” he said and took off for the stairs. And, Savannah could only hope, a very ugly surprise.

Savannah smirked.

“Savannah?” Janice said from the front desk, holding the phone. “It’s a man named Matt for you. He says he can’t find Katie.”

“D
ID YOU CHECK
in the tree?” Savannah demanded as she came charging through the door. He’d expected her to come running, but the anger was a surprise.

“Of course,” he said. “When the water balloons didn’t come at noon that was the first place I checked.”

“Where’s Margot?” she snapped and threw her purse down on the kitchen counter. She was back in her prison warden outfit, all straight lines and buttons, but her hair was loose, pulled away from her face with a headband. A variation on her theme.

Her beauty and all those buttons totally wrecked him.

He coughed and stepped behind the counter so she wouldn’t notice his totally inappropriate erection.

“Right here,” Margot said, stepping into the kitchen wearing her robe.

“Good lord, Margot,” Savannah said. “It’s past noon and you’re just getting up?”

“So it would seem.” Margot’s eyes twinkled as she crossed to the coffeepot.

“Where have you been?”

“Anthony took me to New Orleans for the weekend. I got home late last night.” She filled a china teacup with coffee and sipped it black. “What’s got you in an uproar this morning?”

“Katie’s gone,” Matt said.

Margot blinked and turned to Savannah. “Gone?”

“No one’s seen her today. God, I hope she’s just hiding,” Savannah said. “This is what she usually does.” Turning back to Margot, she said, “I heard you come in last night, and I figured you’d keep an eye on her.”

“I’m sorry,” Margot said. “I forgot you went to work today. She just got—”

“Lost in the shuffle.” Savannah’s anger vanished and she looked so guilt-stricken it made Matt’s stomach do a flip. “She’s so mad at me right now. Did you check the rosebush or the kud—” She stopped and swore. “They’re all gone. All her hiding spots.”

She bent her head back so she could stare up at the ceiling and feel terrible about herself.

He wanted to hug her, ease that stress the way she’d eased his last night. The way she hugged him as if she cared, as if she saw right through to the bone and heart and blood that he was made up of, to the hard kernel that remained from the accident, like scar tissue.

“I’ll look upstairs,” Margot said, putting down her cup.

“I’ll check my office.”

The women were gone, leaving behind their individual scents, lemon and roses and the slightly acrid tang of regret and worry.

Matt didn’t know how he could help, or if his help would be accepted, but he wanted to do something. Wished he could do something. Anything. For her.

Savannah came barreling into the kitchen.

“No sign of her?” he asked.

“She’s not in the office,” Savannah said, grim and stony-faced. “Did you check the sleeping porch?”

“No,” he said. “Why do you think she’d go there?”

“She’s eight and she’s mad, Matt. Who knows why she’s doing anything?”

It was a good point and Matt stepped into her wake, following her to his room.

S
AVANNAH OPENED
the big wood-and-glass doors to the sleeping porch and listened for any signs of her runaway daughter.

“I know you’re in here,” she said, opening a closet in the corner. Nothing but a long forgotten winter coat and a dusty Christmas wreath.

Guilt was a stitch in her side as she scanned the nearly empty room. Only Matt’s neatly made bed and duffel bag.
The terra cotta flowerpots, cracked and covered in dust, sat in the corner.

The smell of him—sunshine and hard work and something clean, something totally Matt—was everywhere.

She’d forgotten her daughter today. Forgotten her. And she wasn’t stupid. She knew, in part, it was because of Matt, because of this growing obsession she had with not only the Elements Building tragedy.

But with him.

Did good mothers forsake their attraction to men for their kids? Was that what was required of her right now?

Because she didn’t want to let go of it. Even though she knew Matt was leaving, she wanted something of the time he was here.

A taste of him.

Clearly, she was the worst mother in the world. But she wasn’t going to apologize. A few months ago, she would have, she would have turned her back on what she wanted, but she was different now.

Matt Woods stepping into her life had changed her.

“I know you’re mad,” she said to her daughter as if she could see her. She got down on her knees and looked under the bed. At first, nothing but dust bunnies the size of her head then, at the foot, her daughter’s defiant blue eyes.

“Katie.” She sighed, holding out her hands, reaching for her daughter’s outstretched palm.

“I’ve been here for like, three hours!” Katie yelled. “I’m stuck.”

Savannah smiled, though she felt like crying, and pulled Katie from where she was wedged on her side under the bed, her legs curled up to her pointy little chin.

“My legs don’t work right,” Katie muttered, sticking her face into Savannah’s neck. Savannah fell back on her butt and cradled her daughter close.

“They’re asleep,” she said. “Give them a few minutes.” She pulled dust bunnies and cobwebs from Katie’s hair and brushed the worst of the mess off the second set of Asian pajamas from Margot’s cruise. Ruined, of course.

“I’m really sorry about today,” she murmured into the pink shell of Katie’s ear.

Katie pulled back, her eyes accusing her of everything short of a third world war. “You just left.”

“I thought Margot was watching you.”

“You left me here with—” Katie’s eyes flickered over Savannah’s shoulder and went cold and hard “—that guy.”

Savannah felt Matt over her shoulder, a warm solid weight like a hand against her skin. She wanted to laugh at the thought of Matt as just
that guy.
Somehow, someway, in the past few weeks, he’d become far more than that.

What he was, however, she couldn’t be sure.

“Matt is not
that guy,
” Savannah said, trying to be patient.

“Then who is he?” Katie asked. She shook, her eyes direct, her hands in fists, and Savannah wondered if this was more than jealousy over the amount of time and attention she’d been giving to Matt.

Savannah darted a quick glance at Matt, who was as baffled as she was and as conflicted about her as she was about him. It was right there, easy to read in the set of his shoulders, the lines in the corner of his mouth. “He’s a friend,” she said, perhaps more to him than Katie.

“Is he my dad?”

S
AVANNAH STARED BLANKLY
at Katie, her head trying to catch up with what just happened.

“Your dad?” she asked. “Why in the world would you think that?”

Katie’s little chin came up. “That day outside the library you and Margot were talking about my dad and then Matt said you guys were talking about him. And then he made you cry and you wouldn’t answer me when I asked if you had sex with him.”

All of that was true, Savannah thought, but it was like adding apples and oranges and getting elephants.

“Honey,” she breathed. “I had no idea you were thinking this.”

“You never tell me anything,” Katie said.

“I thought I was protecting you,” she said. The same way Carter always tried to protect her from the uglier aspects of Tyler or their mother.

She felt awful that she’d never seen the pain not talking about Eric was causing Katie. Other single mothers probably didn’t have this problem. They probably told their kids the truth from the beginning and—rubbing salt in her guilt—she imagined they were able to do it without calling the absent father a bastard.

“Marybeth, at school,” Katie said, “she doesn’t have a dad but her mom told her he lives in New Orleans with a hooker.”

Savannah swallowed her laughter—clearly there was a spectrum of bad single parenting.

“But she gets to go visit him,” Katie continued, getting worked up. “They eat beignets for dinner and I don’t even know where my dad is. And then when you came—” she looked at Matt then shrugged “—everybody got so weird.”

Matt stepped past Savannah and collapsed on the bed as though his knees had just been broken. “I’m not your father, Katie,” he whispered, his green eyes sincere and earnest in a million different ways.

“You’re not?” she asked, and he shook his head. “You’re sure?”

“Very sure. If I was your father, I would have been here your whole life,” he said. Katie’s chin dropped a notch, and Savannah’s whole body started to shake. “I never would have left you.”

Savannah could not look Matt in the eyes. Actually, she really could barely stand to be in the same room as him, the embodiment of everything she refused to want but wanted anyway.

Katie’s blue eyes pierced her, lanced her right through the throat, and every decision she’d made over the years to run from this conversation came home to roost.

Savannah took a deep breath and stepped right over the dark, bottomless, treacherous cavern that was the who is your father conversation. The conversation that she’d feared and dreaded and run away from. The conversation that she’d put off time and time again, thinking she’d get to it when Katie was older or when she asked.

That time was now. Actually the time was probably years ago.

“I’m going to let you guys talk,” Matt said. His gaze brushed Savannah’s then clung as time froze to a halt.

Funny how she’d thought she could fall in love with Matt Howe, but it was nothing compared to what she was capable of feeling for Matt Woods.

Matt cleared his throat and broke eye contact, crouching in front of Katie, his gaze serious. “Wherever your dad is,” he said, “he’s missing out on a great girl.”

He stood, his fingers brushing Savannah’s shoulder, sending flashes of heat and pulses of light through her entire body, as he left.

Savannah took a second to pull in all the ragged edges and loose ends and compose herself.

Here we go.

“Your father,” Savannah finally said, hugging her daughter close, “is a man named Eric Carlyse.”

T
HE TREES WERE PLANTED
, the saplings’ tender branches and bright new green leaves swayed in the late afternoon breeze. Without much growth the pattern of the maze was pretty clear, but in a few years when the trees were mature…Matt smiled. Well, then it would perfect. Nooks and crannies. Dead ends. Hidey-holes. The maze, though small, had it all.

Matt couldn’t even begin to imagine all the trouble a girl like Katie could get into with this in her backyard.

It would be something to see. Something he’d like to see.

Lifting his arm, he scratched at the worst of the grit and dirt that clung to his neck and face. He needed a shower and a change of clothes, but as far as he knew, Katie and Savannah were still planted in his room.

Man, what a weird day. He didn’t like seeing those girls so hurt, wished he knew a better way to help than to step aside and build a maze.

Katie needed a father. In fact, thinking about the falling apart O’Neill house of estrogen, and that hot and hungry look Savannah had in her eyes when she watched him working—to be totally caveman about it—a man was needed by all of them.

The door opened and shut and he turned to find Katie standing in the sparkly bright light that signaled the end of the day. Her eyes were red-rimmed and her cheeks flushed, but she wasn’t bristling with anger.

“Hi,” he said, cautiously.

“Hi.” She scratched at her knee, then her elbow. “I’m supposed to apologize for being mean to you.” Ah.

“Understandable,” he said, “considering who you thought I was.”

“I’m sorry about the water balloons.”

“Forgiven,” he said with a quick nod. “You okay?”

Katie pursed her lips as if she were weighing her answer. “Sure.” But she sighed and plunked her hands on her hips. “My dad is a jerk. He has a bunch of other kids in Chicago.”

“Wow.”

“He never told Mom and she never told me because she didn’t want me to get hurt.”

“Makes sense, I guess,” he said.

Matt sat on the step and pulled off his gloves. Katie jumped from the landing with both feet and sat beside him. “It’s his loss, you know,” Matt said and Katie looked at him out of the corner of her eye. “I mean, I’m sure those other kids are fine, but they’re not you.”

Katie blinked down at her fingers, twisting them into knots as if playing some kind of game. Sadness dripped off her like bitter honey.

“I bet,” he said, “they don’t know card tricks. Or how to play poker. They probably can’t climb trees like you can. I’m sure they can’t hide as well as you can.”

She smiled, sadly, but didn’t look up.

“They don’t make your mom happy like you do,” he said.

“You make my mom happy,” she said. “Now, I mean—not before. Before you made her cry, but now you make her happy. I can tell.”

Only an idiot would misread the hope in that little girl’s face. And he was no idiot.

“I’m leaving on Sunday, when I’m done with the courtyard,” he said, softly, carefully, not wanting to cause this little girl any more pain. “I can’t stay here.”

“Where do you have to go?” Katie asked.

“Back to St. Louis,” he said, wondering why the words stuck and filled his mouth. Wondering why the future looked so damn bleak. “I have a lot of things I need to fix up there.”

Katie twisted her lips. “Well, when you’re done with that you should come back,” she said and jumped to her feet. As if it was that simple.

Man, you gotta love kids,
he thought,
they rebounded so fast.
All that sadness was gone, at least for the time being.

On the other hand, he knew he would never rebound from his time spent here. Not in a million years. He didn’t even want to try.

“Remember what you said the other day about teaching me how you beat me at poker?” she asked.

He smiled. “I do.”

“How about tonight?”

“You’re on.”

M
IDNIGHT FOUND
M
ATT
back in the good graces of Margot and Katie. He sat, a scotch at his elbow, one of Margot’s fine cigars between his lips.

Like a stranger brought in out of the cold and propped in front of a fire, Matt stretched out his legs and luxuriated in the moment.

He totally understood, right now, why his father had loved the tables so much. Why he’d sat again and again with the last of his money, with his kid waiting outside in the car—because it was warm.

Friendly, when the world was upside down.

“Katie,” he said, getting on with his lesson. “I hate to break it to you, but you’ve got a tell.”

Katie gasped as if he’d offended her honor. “I do not!”

“You do.” He leaned forward and caught Margot’s smile out of the corner of his eye. “When you’ve got a good hand you sit really, really still.” Katie’s eyes went wide as understanding dawned. “The rest of the time you’re like a jumping bean.”

“Oh, my gosh!” she breathed, then looked to Margot for confirmation.

“The man is right,” Margot said. “The more still and quiet you get, the better your hand.”

“So,” she asked wide-eyed, “what do I do?”

“Sit still!” Margot cried. “All the time. It’s what your mother and I have been telling you for years.”

The door behind Matt slid open, letting in a draft and the distinctive fragrance of lemon and vanilla. Katie’s eyes went wide, the cards fluttered out of her hands onto the table.

Margot swore.

Busted. Very, very busted.

“So,” Savannah said. “Here’s where you all are.”

“Hello, Savannah,” Matt said, turning to see her in the doorway, her arms crossed over the robe that was quickly becoming his favorite piece of clothing on the planet.

“What’s happening here?” she asked, ignoring him. He thought it was fairly obvious—Margot practically looked like a Vegas dealer with the deck of cards in her hand.

But when his companions stayed silent, Matt took the bull by the horns.

“Just a friendly game of poker,” Matt said.

“Matt!” Katie snapped. “What are you doing?”

“Like she doesn’t know?” he asked. “I’m pretty sure we’re all busted.”

“Let me guess,” Savannah said, addressing her daughter. “Matt’s teaching you poker? Like he taught you those card tricks?”

“No,” Katie admitted, pushing the cards away.

“Don’t be angry, Savannah,” Margot said.

“Angry?”
Savannah asked. Matt winced at the tone of her voice, scooting his chair to the side in case fire shot out of her eyes. “Why would I be
angry?
I’ve only asked that this sort of behavior stop and that Katie, my eight-year-old, not learn how to gamble!”

“We’re not gambling,” Margot replied. “There are no stakes. She wanted to learn, Savannah. She’s been doing those card tricks for years and she’s so bright. She’s really very good.” Savannah’s eyes flared and Margot shut up, looking as contrite as a woman could, drinking a glass of scotch and smoking a cigar.

“It’s only bad if you let it be,” Matt said.

“What do you know about it?” Savannah snapped.

“I know that my dad used to leave me in the car so he could play blackjack. I know that after my mom died we had to move four times in the middle of the night because he’d lost the rent money. I know that when the cards went
his way I got to eat steak and shrimp and drink Cherry Coke out of fancy glasses, and when they didn’t, I ate macaroni and cheese.”

Savannah licked her lips, leaving them damp and pink and he tried hard not to be distracted.

“But he always fed me. There was always a warm place to sleep. He helped me with my homework and was there for me. And I know he tried, Savannah. He really tried. And it took a long time, but I forgave him for those nights out in the car and the macaroni and cheese.”

“What’s wrong with macaroni and cheese?” Katie asked and Matt smiled at her. Really, she was such a cool kid.

“Nothing, but when you eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner for, like, three weeks in a row it gets pretty gross.”

Katie nodded in sage agreement and he looked back at Savannah.

“I spent a long time trying to rise above my roots,” he said, remembering what Margot and Katie had said about Savannah the first time they’d played cards. “But it got easier to just live with them.”

Savannah’s eyes flashed to Margot who shrugged, delicately. “The man is right. You’re an O’Neill, and so is your daughter. No use pretending otherwise.”

“Stay,” Matt pleaded, his eyes on Savannah. Katie beside him lit up like a skyrocket was inside of her.

“Yeah, Mom, stay.”

“Stay and have some fun.”

“Fun?” Savannah asked, as if she were considering eating poison.

Matt, Katie and Margot all nodded and pulled up a chair from the corner, pushing a shopping bag off its seat.

“Stay,” he said.

He could see the weigh scales inside of her head, the
intricate systems she used to balance what she was against what she thought she and her whole family should be. He saw it all and he waited, hoping she could stop torturing herself with the idea of being someone else, and simply be happy with who she was.

She jerked the tie on her robe tighter and stepped to the table, all business.

“What are we playing?” she asked and everyone cheered.

And Matt fell totally in love.

T
WO HOURS LATER
Katie was curled up on Margot’s bed and Matt was getting schooled.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he said, watching as Savannah laid down her flush, killing his two of a kind. For about the third time in a row.

“She always was the best card player,” Margot said, watching her granddaughter with pride. “Even better than Tyler.”

Savannah’s smile was like a kitten with its paw in the cream, and it went right into his bloodstream. The robe’s tie was giving up the fight and shadows lingered between her breasts, the plush white curves of which looked like velvet against the dark satin robe.

She was all contradiction right now. Light and dark. Serious and coy. Flirtatious and crushing all in the same glance. Those breasts, her diamond-bright eyes, her long fingers, the swell and dip of her lips as she tried not to smile.

Her hair, all that magnificent blond hair, like some kind of veil.

And she was a shark. An absolute card-playing shark.

He was in love. No doubt about it. After she’d spanked
him in the second hand he looked up into her laughing blue eyes and realized—this was it.

There would never be another woman for him.

“You’re not too bad yourself,” Savannah said, watching him from the corner of her eye, a smile on her lips.

Christ, his erection pounded under the table. Absolutely all his blood was in his lap. He could barely see straight.