The Temptation of Savannah O'Neill (7 page)

He paused for a second then shook his head with a chuckle. Man, these O’Neills were never what he expected. “I’m working.”

“Come on,” she begged, her smile a glittery replica of her mother’s in the surveillance picture he’d stared at far too long. It changed Katie’s awkward features—the prominent nose, the messy hair and freckles—and he got a good solid glimpse of the beauty Katie O’Neill would be. “A card trick. Just one.”

He couldn’t say no to that smile, or to a bored kid. He remembered all too well what that was like, waiting in the car for hours on end while his father “worked” in some backroom card game. He set down the scythe and turned around, wiping off his hands.

“Let’s see what you got,” he said with a smile, expecting something along the lines of Go Fish.

With a flourish that would have made the old man proud, Katie shuffled and bridged, the cards a blur in her hands.

“You’ve done this before?” he asked, lifting his eyebrows.

“Watch the queen of hearts,” she said, flashing him the old lady then breaking into a flimflam routine that would have worked on any corner in the city fifty years ago. “You watching?”

“Oh, I’m watching.” But he was watching the nine of clubs, which had been next to the queen.

Katie gave him another glimpse of the queen then tucked her seamlessly behind the nine. “You see her?”

“I know exactly where she is.”

Katie scoffed, her eyes bright, and fanned the cards, facing him with a flourish. “Pick her.”

And he did, right away, tucked behind the nine. Katie’s face fell. “You’ve got to work harder than that to fool me at cards. Don’t hide the mark under the closest card. Pick a different card a few spots away.” He took out the queen and moved her behind the three of spades, which was halfway across the deck.

“You play cards?” Katie asked.

“Some.”

“Poker?”

He laughed, amazed at this little girl’s capacity to surprise him. “I’ve played before.”

Her ice-blue eyes narrowed. “You a shark?” she asked.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Another voice yelled and Matt and Katie turned to find Savannah bearing down on them from the doorway like a hurricane.

Katie pushed the cards into Matt’s hands and he fumbled, dropping most of them.

“He was showing me card tricks, Mom,” Katie said, blinking her blue eyes in an innocent act so bad Matt nearly groaned. But Savannah bought it. She grabbed her daughter and glared at Matt as if he were showing her how to play with matches.

“We don’t play cards in this house,” she said, her eyes ripping the skin off his body. She pushed her long blond hair off her face, away from her eyes and Matt realized she looked like a Valkyrie. A woman warrior out for blood. His.

What did I do?
he wondered.

“Cards?” he muttered, like an idiot. According to his private investigator’s reports hidden away in the sleeping
porch, her brother, the middle one, had won the World Series of Poker last year. Her family not only played cards, they excelled at them.

“Not in this house,” Savannah nearly hissed.

“I…ah…” Matt was struck dumb and Katie buried her face in her mother’s neck, offering him no help at all. “I’m sorry?”

“Damn right you’re sorry,” Savannah snapped. “No cards. No tricks. No games.”

He considered clearing his name and opening Savannah’s eyes to the flimflam artist she was currently cradling against her chest like the last innocent on the planet.

But Katie lifted her head momentarily and shook it, fear in her eyes, and Matt didn’t know if he was being conned or if she was truly scared. Either way, it wasn’t much skin off his nose. One more lie added to his growing pile.

But he couldn’t help wonder what scared Savannah so much about cards or gambling that she could lie to herself so completely, see the world so differently from how it really was.

He nodded, solemnly. “Got it. I am sorry. I was just passing the time.”

“We hired you to work.”

He arched his eyebrows in stunned silence. He’d been working his tail off and no one, not even an angry Savannah, could deny that. “Is there something wrong with the amount of work I’ve done?” he asked, his pride leaping. “Am I not doing enough?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m sorry. I’m…you’re doing a great job.”

Damn right he was. His hands were a bloody mess, his back felt broken at the end of the day and he had the sneaking suspicion he’d lost about five pounds.

Savannah seemed to chew her tongue for a moment, on the verge of saying something and he found himself hoping, even for a scolding. Four days of silence and now—with this fire in her eyes, her hands curling in the red hair of her rascal daughter—he found himself wanting her to stay. Wanting her around.

She was like a bright spark against a black sky.

Her eyes flickered over his face, he could almost feel them touch his lips and eyes. Breathing became difficult and his fingers twitched with a sudden wild impulse to touch her hair, a long straight piece of it that had fallen over her shoulder and glowed in the sunlight.

“Just don’t teach my daughter any card games,” she said.

Then the moment passed and she was gone.

Katie grinned and waved at him over her shoulder and his jaw nearly dropped.

Suckered. They’d all been suckered by Katie. He turned to pick up his tools, only to find Margot standing in the broken sunlight. A ghost in white linen and diamonds, holding a steaming mug of coffee. She carried a folded newspaper under her arm like she was a stockbroker off to the office.

“You’re a shark,” she said, her eyes sharper than a knife. “Aren’t you?”

Matt shook his head, but Margot grinned anyway, a Mona Lisa curl to her lip that he couldn’t read. He didn’t know what any of this meant; he felt like he’d slipped down the rabbit hole.

“Come to my room,” she said, making it sound like an imperial order. “Midnight tonight. We’ll see whether you’re a shark or not.” She looked him up and down and turned, heading inside.

“I
T’S LATE
, K
ATIE
,” Savannah murmured into her daughter’s hair, stroking it away from her young, damp face pressed into the bed pillow. “Do you want to go to sleep in my room again?”

Savannah half hoped her girl would say yes. Since the break-in, Katie had been bunking with her and it had been nice. More than nice, actually.

Katie’s little body curled against hers in the darkness, her tiny feet pressed tight against Savannah’s shins, had reminded her of when Katie had been a baby and they’d shared the same bed until her daughter had started to snore.

She still did, which was why Savannah only half hoped her daughter would want to go to Savannah’s room.

“I want to sleep in my room,” Katie murmured, reaching up to hold Savannah’s hand. “Just stay until I fall asleep.”

Savannah sighed and rolled over onto her back, staring at the ceiling, thinking of the burning of widows in India and the other extreme religious rituals she was getting paid to think about these days.

These thoughts only lasted a millisecond, superceded, as had been the case for far too long, by thoughts of Matt.

Matt in the hallway, his dark hair silvered by moonlight, checking out suspicious sounds. Which frankly seemed suspicious.

But then this morning, that thing with Doug.

She waffled between wondering how he was going to hurt them and how he was going to help them. Part of her resisted the notion that he was simply a good guy doing something decent for the O’Neill women.

She’d been taught not to trust by the best of them, so it was hard trusting Matt, who seemed so entirely trustworthy. Lord knows he was working hard enough.

The man worked through three shirts a day.

To her utter and total chagrin, she was counting. From her office window she was watching it all—the sweat that dripped down his neck, the way the sun hit his green eyes and turned them the color of bottle glass. How he used the bottom edge of his shirt to wipe his forehead, revealing a white slice of muscled abdomen.

She knew she’d overreacted to the card situation, but it had been such a shock after all these years to see cards being played at the Manor. They used to play all the time. But after Tyler left, he’d taken all the fun out of the place, and there’d been no cards. Then Katie had been born and Savannah had done everything she could to make sure the Notorious O’Neill garbage stayed in the past, or at least outside the walls of the house.

And Matt had brought it back in.

Like a draft through a cracked door, all sorts of things had come in with Matt Howe.

Desire was curling around her like a hot breeze, tighter and tighter until she couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe without wondering what that bead of sweat against his neck might taste like, what his hair would feel like between her fingers. His body, strong and—

“Mom?” Katie asked and Savannah turned to look at the little girl, startled and embarrassed by her thoughts. “Do you like Matt?”

“Do you?” she asked, hot with discomfort.

Katie shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“That’s how I feel, too,” she said and pressed her lips to Katie’s forehead.

T
HE HOURS UNTIL MIDNIGHT
crawled and Matt wondered, watching the clouds over the moon, what exactly Margot had in store for him.

Luckily, he wasn’t conflicted about going. He was going—no doubt about it. This was his chance to get a look at the room, and better yet, to spend some time with Margot, see what he might be able to pry out of her.

And, the truth was, he was bored.

The dark hallways didn’t so much as creak as he walked through them, avoiding the rotten spots he’d discovered. The dim light from under Margot’s door guided him through the dark house.

At the door, unsure if he was about to be the object of a twisted Mrs. Robinson situation, he took a deep breath and knocked, the door creaking open slightly under his fist.

“Come in, my dear boy,” Margot said, and he stepped the rest of the way in the room to find her sitting at a table, shuffling through a deck of cards. A cigar was smoking in a crystal ashtray at her elbow.

Behind her was nothing but shadows, the walls black blurs.

“Drink?” she asked, pointing to the tray of bottles on her dresser.

He shook his head. “What…ah—”

It didn’t look like seduction, but he wasn’t entirely sure of what it did look like.

“Poker,” she said, the cards roaring as she shuffled them. “You’re here to play poker.” She quirked an eyebrow at him. “Perhaps you were thinking I brought you here for something else?”

He grinned, feeling a blush climb his cheeks. “Honestly, I didn’t know what to expect.”

“Five card,” she said. “You can expect five card and as soon as—”

The door opened behind him and he nearly groaned, thinking he was about to be scolded by Savannah again, but it was Katie who came creeping in the door.

“She’s asleep,” Katie told her grandmother. “She snores.”

“So do you,” Margot said. Katie climbed up on a chair, setting three cookies on the corner of the table like thousand-dollar chips.

“Five card stud,” Margot said, beginning to deal.

“Threes and nines wild,” Katie added.

Margot stopped shuffling. “Aren’t we past the training wheels?”

“One game with wild cards. Just one.”

Margot sighed. “Fine. Threes and nines wild.”

A long-standing, backroom poker game, he realized, taking in the slightly ridiculous sight of the eight-year-old girl and eighty-year-old woman, eyeing each other over their hands.

A small pile of cards grew in front of the empty seat and Margot paused, both of them turning to stare at him.

“You in?” Katie asked.

“Does your mother know you do this?” he asked Katie.

Katie and Margot laughed. “No way,” Katie said.

“Savannah has strong feelings about gambling,” Margot added.

“And drinking,” Katie supplied.

“All things O’Neill,” Margot said, lifting the cigar, the smoke curling across her face, obscuring her expression.

The hair lifted on the back of his neck. “Are there things about the O’Neills that warrant strong feelings?”

Like gem theft?

“Mom says we have to rise above our roots,” Katie said.

“What are your roots?” he asked, his hands tapping a nervous tattoo against his pants leg.

“Sit down, boy,” Margot said a smile as old as Eve on her face. “Maybe you’ll find out.”

Matt glanced between them, the aging mistress to musicians and politicians and the eight-year-old daughter of a woman he was growing increasingly fascinated by.

“What the hell,” he muttered and sat down, picking up his cards.

“Y
OU
ARE
A SHARK
,” Margot cried an hour later, after he’d cleaned them out. Again.

“Yeah,” Katie agreed, throwing the last of her chips at Matt, who ducked, laughing.

“I never said I didn’t play cards,” he said, raking the chips across the table. He’d played a lot of cards. More, probably, than any one man should, thanks to his father.

“Who taught you?” Margot asked, squinting at him through the smoke of her small cigar.

“My father,” he answered honestly, stacking the chips without looking at the girls. The smell of cigar, the slick feel of the cards under his fingers, the stacks of blue chips in front of him, even the camaraderie of sitting with other players around a table, taking stock of each other all while
pretending not to—it all coalesced into a bittersweet nostalgia. “He taught me how to play poker, tie a perfect Windsor and play Rachmaninoff.”

“Sounds like an interesting childhood,” Margot said, her voice quiet. He glanced at her and immediately regretted it. Card players and their all-too-knowing eyes.

“My father was an interesting man,” he said, then realized he was beginning to dip into areas he had no business dipping into with these women. “But I haven’t played since college. I worked for a civil engineer in the summer and the crew played almost every night. I made enough to pay for next year’s tuition.”

“You’re not really a handyman, are you?” Margot asked, apparently determined to stray into those dangerous areas of conversation.

“I’ve been a lot of things. Right now I’m a handyman. You know,” he said, changing the subject, glancing at Margot from under his lashes, “you’re not so bad yourself.”

An understatement—the woman was a player down to her toes.

“Thank you,” she murmured graciously.

“You could head out to any casino and make enough to fix this place up.”

She glared at him, all graciousness gone.

Oops,
he thought.

“What’s Rachmaninoff?” Katie asked, tucking her chin into her hand. “Is that another game?”

“He’s a music composer,” Matt answered quickly, thinking of those thunderous notes and the huge Russian drama of those concertos. “I used to play the piano.”

“Piano!” Katie cried, perking up. “We—”

“Have you been in the library?” Margot asked, still watching like a wary old cat.

“I don’t think so,” he lied, knowing full well he hadn’t been in the library. It was the other room with the light on under the door. Besides Savannah’s bedroom, it was the last blank space on his drawing of the house.

“Next door,” she said, easing away from the table.

“We’re done?” Katie asked, stifling a yawn. Margot smiled, pushing back some of the girl’s red hair.

“We are for tonight.”

“Tomorrow?” Katie asked and Margot nodded her head toward Matt.

“Ask him.”

He blinked, stunned.

“You gonna play with us again tomorrow night?”

This was the most comfortable he’d felt in six months, the most relaxed his mind had been. The ghosts were sleeping and he actually felt his bones, his muscles, everything was sinking back into him. His skin was his again.

Before he got too cozy with the aging and pint-size O’Neills, he reminded himself that it was about access. Margot was granting him more access.

“Sure,” he said and stood. “The library?”

Margot tilted her head toward the room next door, but said nothing and stayed behind in her bedroom.

The hallway was silver with moonlight and as he opened the door to the library, the soft scent of dust and books and a hundred years of cigar smoking wafted out around him. A smell somehow as comforting as freshly cut wood.

Quickly he scanned the walls, running his hands along the shadows and under paintings, but he didn’t find anything.

It took him a second to see what Margot wanted him to see. It was tucked back in the corner, hidden in darkness, but the corner of it caught moonlight and gleamed.

A Steinway baby grand. Black as night, slick as oil, and in his mood, totally irresistible.

He smiled, cracking his fingers as he walked over to it. He lifted the lid and pressed the slightly yellowed middle C, expecting the worst.

It rang out clear and in tune, echoing around the books and paintings.

He sat and closed his eyes for a second, remembering those lessons next to his father, and laid his fingers across the keys, Rachmaninoff coming back to him like a storm.

The music filled the room with lightning and he lost all sense of time until the door creaked open and Savannah stood there, staring at him as if he were a ghost.

“Oh—” he said and stopped, the music coming to a halt. “I’m so sorry. I—”

“Keep playing,” she whispered. She stepped into the room, and through a shaft of moonlight he saw tears in her eyes. “Please.”

Surprised, he nodded and finished the movement, trying hard not to stare at her as she stood there crying.

T
HE NOTES LINGERED
, trailing across her skin like gossamer spiderwebs, and it was as if she’d been dipped backward in time. A pain, thick and clogging filled her throat and she was mortified to realize she was crying. Crying in front of Matt.

She stepped into the shadows and wiped her eyes, somehow full and drained at the same time.

He’d made this happen. Matt had called her from sleep and filled her with this sudden loneliness, this bittersweet pain, and she’d walked down here to feel more of it.

The long years she’d spent alone were suddenly too
heavy to carry and she sank into a wingback chair across the room from the piano.

“I’m rusty,” he said after a long moment of silence. “But I’ve never made anyone cry before.”

She laughed. At him. At herself.

“It’s been a long time since anyone played the piano here.” She sighed.

“That’s a shame,” he said. “It’s a beautiful instrument.” He ran the backs of his hands across the keys, the sound a musical zipper undoing her, note by note. “Do you play?”

She tilted her head back to smile at him. “Not well.”

“Katie?”

“Sadly, Katie has no interest.” She cleared her throat, all the words sticky. “My brother, Tyler, is the musician.” She remembered those nights, after the shock wore off and the place began to feel like home. Tyler would play and Carter would sing and Savannah, young and happy and so blissfully unaware of the way her family would further splinter apart, would dance and dance and dance. “When Tyler left…” She shrugged and stared at the ceiling, wondering how to put all that pain into words. “Everything got quiet.”

“I know that kind of quiet,” he said, his voice low, and it was as if some lock deep inside Savannah got jimmied open and things she didn’t like to feel came bubbling up—empathy, kinship, a certain understanding.

It was dangerous to feel this way in the moonlight, with this man. The two were a reckless combination.

“What happened?” she asked.

“My mom got cancer when I was eight, she left that kind of quiet when she died.”

“I’m sorry,” Savannah said, and his answering smile was ghostly in the moonlight.

“I’m sorry your brother left you.” His fingers stroked the keys, making phantom sounds that pinged through her. “How long has he been gone?”

“Ten years.” For ten years quiet had crept over this house until it felt like a tomb. And she was buried alive in it.

“Have you seen him?”

“Yes, but it’s been a while. We went to Vegas once when Katie was little, but he hasn’t come home since he left.” She talked about it as if it wasn’t hard. As if her family’s absence wasn’t an open wound on her heart.

“Do you have other family?”

“My oldest brother is in Baton Rouge. He’s in city politics there and is trying to keep this part of his life quiet.”

“This part?” Matt asked hitting a C sharp that reverberated through her body.

“The Notorious O’Neill part,” she answered, keeping it vague. “Our colorful family.”

“Ah, colorful family. I know what that’s like.”

“Your mother?”

He shook his head. “She was…” He paused. Sighed. “Blissfully, perfectly normal. A kindergarten teacher.” He played a slow rendition of “The Wheels On the Bus.” “She made dinner every night and sewed the holes in my clothes and washed my mouth out with soap when I swore. My father was the colorful one.”

“They must have had an interesting relationship,” Savannah said, happy to listen to him talk, to watch him in the shadows and moonlight. Her knight at rest. At ease.

Watching him eased her, too, and the loneliness lifted, the sadness evaporated.

“I think it was an interesting one-night stand.” He grinned. “They weren’t together when I was growing up. But to his credit, he took care of me when Mom died. He
got me to school and taught me the piano—” He played something bright, a few notes of jazz and she wondered what other secrets their handyman kept.

“Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

“No,” he said, the jazz coming to a slow stop. “But I grew up with a kid. Jack. He’s as much a brother as I could ask for.”

There was a whole lot of heartache going on behind those words and she nearly asked him where Jack was, or why thinking about Jack made him sad, but he cleared his throat and asked, “Where is your mother?”

The coziness surrounding them was split and she suddenly felt the evening cool in the room, the very late hour.

She wasn’t going to answer—things had already gotten too far too fast with him. She could blame the music, but she wasn’t going to answer that question.

“Savannah?”

She’d let the silence unfold until he got uncomfortable and stood and left. It’s what she did whenever anyone asked about her mother—not that many people did anymore.

“I should go,” he said and she heard him in the shadows, standing to leave and suddenly, she didn’t want that. She didn’t want to be alone. Not anymore. Not right now.

So, the words just fell out of her for the first time in years.

“My mom left us. Here. When my two brothers and I were just kids.”

“That’s—”

“A terrible story, I know. I lived it. I haven’t seen her or heard from her in twenty years.”

“Not a word?”

“No cards, no letters, no phone calls. Nothing.”

Matt watched her, his eyes bright, focused. “You know she’s alive?”

“As far as I know.” The old bitterness welled up in her, coloring everything in bleak shades of gray and black. She put her hand to her chest, feeling the pounding of her heart.

“You have no idea where she is?” he asked and she shook her head.