The Temptation of Savannah O'Neill (5 page)

“What if I’m looking for something?” he asked, looking her right in the eye, gauging her reaction.

Something electric filled the air between them. Something more dangerous than lies. More trouble than gems. Something hot and deep and compelling.

I want her,
he thought, suddenly hungry for the taste of her pink lips. And he realized, looking at her, that she was out here because she wanted him, too.

S
AVANNAH WAS A FLY IN AMBER
.
She couldn’t move. Couldn’t look away. Matt’s green eyes blazed and her flesh tingled, pulsed.

She jerked, reining herself in. It was stupid to come out here. Total O’Neill stupidity. She should have known better, she should have stayed in her room and kept working.

“Well,” she finally said, jumping down from the rocks on the other side of the pile, away from him. She turned her back, trying to get her bearings. Her breath. “Whatever you’re looking for, you won’t find it here.”

“Tell me something.” His voice was deep and rich, like coffee. She loved coffee. “This thing with the cops? Why aren’t they taking this seriously?”

“It’s an old grudge,” she said, turning around to give him the Cliff’s Notes. “O’Neills have run brothels, bootlegging operations and part of the underground railroad out of this house. Cops don’t like us and we’re not always fond of them.”

“Your grandmother seems pretty law abiding,” he said.

She laughed, lulled into a conversation she usually hated. “She’s the worst of them all. Well, not the worst, I suppose. My brother Tyler might be.”

“What about your mother?”

She supposed it was natural, that he would wonder about her mother, a bunch of women in a house together
with one generation missing. But it didn’t mean she had to answer him.

She picked up a rock and tossed it over the fence, ignoring him.

“And your dad?” he asked. “Or are men not allowed?”

“You’re here.”

He nodded, smiled slightly. “I guess I should be glad.”

The silence buzzed as if carrying the weight of all his unasked questions, and she could actually feel him thinking. Wondering.

“What was it that Tyler did to make things so bad?” he finally asked.

“He dated the police chief’s daughter,” she said. “Broke her heart. For years, anything went wrong in town, anything at all and the first person they’d talk to was an O’Neill.”

“That’s not fair,” he said, stiff and stern as though he knew what was fair in this world.

“Whatever is?” she asked, facing him. After a moment he nodded, as if he understood that nothing was fair. Nothing at all. And once again she had that niggling feeling in her head that this man was not all that he seemed.

Were they fools? she wondered. Trusting this man? This stranger?

What would it cost them, in the end, to trust him now?

“What about you?” he asked, his voice light, as though he was teasing her. “Did you get into trouble?”

Her breath clogged in her throat, turned into a rock she had to try to swallow.

“I’m an O’Neill,” she said, with a stiff shrug. “It’s what we do.”

Savannah tried to step over the rocks and head toward the house and the safety of her room, but distracted and skittish, she tilted off balance.

“Watch it,” Matt murmured, his hand a brand at her waist. She sucked in a quick breath and twisted away, stumbling slightly across the rocks, but she made it to solid ground.

Her waist still burned, the flesh scorched and tingling.

He was close, too close. She could see the black and brown in his eyes, flecks of gold.

“I’m trusting you,” she said. “In my home. The home where my daughter sleeps. My grandmother. And it’s not an easy thing to do.”

“I understand,” he said, as if he really did and wouldn’t that be something.

“My family—” She started but didn’t know how to put it all into words—their past, her fears. She smiled but it felt broken at the corners, as if the weight of happiness, of hope, was simply too much to hold.

The sunlight hit his face, turned his hair to sable and his eyes to polished glass.

She was sucker punched by his beauty and his strength.

“Don’t hurt us,” she finally whispered. “Don’t hurt us more than we’ve been hurt.”

A
FTER DINNER
, Savannah sat on the front porch drinking iced tea and waited for Juliette, who had called to say she was coming over with word about fingerprints.

She was also trying to avoid Matt. A little too late, she knew, after this afternoon. She should never have given in to her curiosity and gone down to talk to him.

Her waist still felt his touch, like a shadow or a burn.

It was so strange having a man around. In this house of estrogen and silk, the deep timbre of a man’s voice hadn’t been heard after dinner for eight years.

It made her miss her brothers. She should contact them, tell them to come home for Christmas. It was time. This distance between them, growing and growing over the years, was too much. Tyler avoiding this town like the plague and Carter being too busy to spend some time with family, it had to end, or this distance would grow into something worse. Something they wouldn’t be able to get over at a Christmas dinner.

They’d be strangers to each other and she couldn’t bear that.

Matt walked past, his arms filled with scrap metal and wood from the back courtyard that he dumped by the side of the road.

So much for avoiding him. He lifted his hand in a wave and she nodded, feeling stiff and foolish like a sixteen-year-old girl with a crush.

Juliette pulled up in her tan sedan and Savannah was glad for the distraction.

“So?” Juliette said, joining her on the porch steps as Matt went around the house to the courtyards. She stretched out her long legs and leaned back against the railing. “That’s Matt Howe?”

“That’s him.”

“Where’s Katie?”

“In the kitchen with Margot. They’re baking away their stress. You should stick around for sugar pie.”

“I will,” Juliette said. “You thinking about shagging away your stress?” Juliette asked, nodding in the direction Matt had disappeared. Savannah laughed. “It’s not funny, Savannah, you’re staring at that man like
he’s
the sugar pie.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Savannah said, blushing and angry because she knew Juliette was right. Worse, she would have to admit about Matt’s sleeping arrangements. And Juliette was never going to believe Savannah didn’t want to have sex with him. “Matt is spending the night here now.”

“Where?”

“Sleeping porch.” Juliette opened her mouth to protest and Savannah held up her hand. “You don’t have the staff to stake out my house and I’ve already hired the man to be around. Might as well have him around the clock.”

“I’ve called in some favors with the boys in Baton Rouge,” Juliette said, “they’re gonna run Matt’s name through the computer up there.”

“That would be fine.” They wouldn’t find anything, Savannah thought.

Juliette smiled. “But not necessary?”

“I trust him, don’t ask me why.”

“You trusted Eric.”

Right. Eric. The mistake by which all other mistakes were measured. “Everyone wants to talk about Eric these days,” Savannah muttered.

“For good reason,” Juliette said. “History might be repeating itself before our very eyes.”

“I was already sleeping with Eric before I invited him to stay here. And I’m not sleeping with Matt. I’m not doing anything with Matt.”

“Except watching him from the porch.”

Savannah sighed. “Nothing wrong with that.”

Matt emerged once more from behind the house, his arms full, muscles flexed and damp. “Not when he looks like that,” Juliette said. “Good lord. Glasses?”

“I know.”
Savannah smiled. “I don’t think ax murderers wear glasses, do they?”

“That’s not at all funny,” Juliette grumbled.

Savannah turned to her friend and slid her hand over Juliette’s elbow. “Thank you for being here last night,” Savannah said, reliving those terrifying moments after Katie’s screams had split the night. She’d called Juliette, frantic and freaked out, and her friend had arrived in no time, stayed until the fingerprints had been dusted, then rushed them to the station and all the fancy equipment she’d purchased last year.

“I’m glad you called,” Juliette said, squeezing Savannah’s fingers. “I’m just sorry I don’t have more information for you.”

Savannah braced herself. “The fingerprints?”

“The only prints in the whole room were yours, Margot’s and Katie’s. The intruder must have been wearing gloves.”

“The high school kids who wreck our property don’t seem the type to wear gloves.”

“You don’t think it was a kid?”

“It was so dark,” Savannah murmured, wishing she’d seen more. Wishing there was more she could do to protect her daughter, her home. She closed her eyes, imagining the windowsill, the bright moon glinting off blond hair as the person climbed back out the window. “All I saw was blond hair.”

“Well, without fingerprints…”

“I know. It probably
was
Owen or Garrett, they’re both blond and I’m sure they’re the ones who destroyed the greenhouse and painted the graffiti on the walls.”

“I’ll go have a word with their parents,” Juliette said. “See if we can’t get them to do a better job with their parenting skills.”

“I don’t think that’s in the police chief job description,” Savannah said, quirking her eyebrow at Juliette.

“It’s a small town,” Juliette said with a shrug. “I can make this stuff up as I go. But look, if it wasn’t a kid and someone is targeting this house, I need you to call me if you see anything suspicious. Anything at all.”

“Absolutely.”

“And keep an eye on that Matt guy.”

“No problem.”

Juliette smirked. “Clearly.”

Savannah laughed, for the first time in what felt like days. Just then, Juliette’s phone buzzed at her hip.

“You want that pie?” Savannah asked.

“Save some for me,” Juliette said, unclipping her phone from her belt. “I gotta go. I’ll call you later.”

Savannah waved and watched Juliette, phone to her ear, rushing off to take care of important business. Pressing issues. Fingerprints and parents and juvenile delinquents.

Savannah’s life seemed at that moment to exist on the head of a pin. She had Katie. Margot. The library. Faceless clients and a secure Internet connection. She’d liked it that way, wanted it that way.

After Eric had come into her life and destroyed so much, she’d done everything in her power to shrink her exposure to the outside world down to practically nothing. Her oasis. But the outside world still forced itself upon her. It broke into her house. Threatened her family.

The clatter of wood and metal snapped her head around. Matt stood at the edge of the lawn, watching her.

“You okay?” he asked, tilting his head. Sunlight glinted off his glasses, obliterating his eyes.

She nodded, unsure of what she would say if she opened her mouth.

I
T TOOK TWO DAYS
to finally get to the hardware store because he got distracted by the cobblestones and breaking up the concrete pad.

He’d also tried his damnedest to get any one of the O’Neill women to talk to him about Vanessa.

But they weren’t talking.

Even Katie, when he’d asked her about her grandmother, had given him a blank look and left.

All this led him to believe that Vanessa hadn’t come here yet. And he had to wonder if she planned on just waltzing in here, because it was obvious she wouldn’t be very welcome.

Bright and early on Wednesday, Matt drove into town and found the hardware store. It was well-stocked for a town this size and what he couldn’t put in his cart—the tiller, chain saw and sod—he was able to have delivered.

“We can get you two more bags of cement,” the old man behind the counter said, his red plaid shirt straining at the buttons over his belly. “In fact, let me check in the warehouse, sometimes we keep overflow there.”

“Great,” Matt said, and the man tucked his pencil behind his ear and left. Matt started piling up the hand tools, gloves and nails on the counter, but jumped when a woman slid into the old man’s spot.

“You that man working out at the Manor?” she asked, her long gray hair pulled into a ponytail, her eyes, behind glasses, bright and focused. Rabid, nearly.

“That would be me,” he said, cautiously.

“I told you, Doug!” she yelled, and another man, a younger version of the man in red plaid, appeared at her elbow.

“So?” she asked. “Is it true what they say?”

Matt blinked. “What exactly do they say?”

“That Margot’s crazy,” the woman said.

“And Savannah’s a slut,” Doug said bitterly, and the woman slapped his arm.

“Watch yourself,” she said. “There’s no need for name calling.”

Doug didn’t for a second seem sheepish and Matt had the urge to teach the boy some manners with his fists, but he realized an opportunity when he saw one.

If the O’Neills wouldn’t talk about the O’Neills, maybe he could get his news from another source. And there was nothing as far-reaching as small-town gossip.

“They seem fine enough,” he answered, leaning against the counter as if settling in for a nice chat. “My name is Matt.”

“Cheryl,” she said, smiling. “This is my boy, Doug.”

“Nice to meet you,” he said, pouring it on a little thick, but Cheryl seemed to eat it up. “Now what’s this about Margot being crazy?”

“Well, people been saying it for years, that Margot buries money in the backyard.”

“No, I heard she stopped doing that,” Doug said. “On account of all those high schoolers who go back there to party.”

“You know that Garrett boy broke into the house, scared those women to pieces.”

Matt took note of the name and watched as the two seemed to forget he was there.

“Can you blame him?” Doug asked. “I wish I had the guts to get close to that house. I heard they’ve got this huge wall safe in the library filled with gems.”

“Well, honey, if you’d been nicer to Savannah, maybe Margot wouldn’t have run you off when you tried,” Cheryl said and Doug rolled his eyes.

But the hair on Matt’s neck stood up and chill washed
over his arms. “Gems?” he asked blankly, steering them back on course.

“Diamonds and such. Big ones. Can you imagine?”

Yes, he thought. He could. He did.

“Where would they get gems?” he asked. “I mean, judging from the house, those two women are barely getting by.”

“Don’t be fooled,” Doug said, starting to ring up the items in front of him. “It’s all a cover.”