The Temptation of Savannah O'Neill (9 page)

And for too long she’d thought fun was bad, because when it was over—and it was always over—it left her alone.
Her brother had left. Eric had left. Though he hadn’t quite left her alone.

Enough,
she thought, sick of being her own killjoy.

She’d kissed a man in the moonlight. Nothing bad was going to happen. No sky was going to fall down around her.

Maybe, she thought with a small smile, she could sneak into the sleeping porch and—

“You’re an idiot.”

Jumping at Juliette’s voice, she whirled, pushing blond hair out of her way to find her best friend standing in the kitchen doorway.

“Juliette? What—”

“Tyler gave me a key a million years ago,” she said, striding into the kitchen looking way too police chiefy for such an early-morning visit.

“It’s not even 8:00 a.m.,” Savannah said. “What are you doing here.”

“Trying to prevent you from doing something stupid, but I think I’m too late.”

Something cold, something awful slid into Savannah’s joy.

She resisted it as hard as she could, threw up all kinds of walls and doors and locks.
Please,
she thought, trying to hug the memory of the night to herself.
Just let me have this.

“Look at you,” Juliette said, flinging a hand out at her. “Singing Van Morrison, looking like a cat that’s found the cream and…Christ, that’s sugar pie, isn’t it?”

Savannah dropped the dish on the counter. “What’s your point?” she asked, tugging the neckline of her robe higher.

“You slept with him, didn’t you?”

“No, I did not.” Savannah blinked, though somehow
what had happened last night felt more intimate than sex. “And even if I did, I’m a grown woman, Juliette. I appreciate your concern, but I don’t need it. It’s okay.” She smiled, trying hard to hold on to her morning-after glow. It had been eight years—couldn’t a woman kiss a handsome man without causing an uproar?

“It’s
okay?
” Juliette asked, her hazel eyes wide. She shook her head. “Savannah, I hate to tell you this, but I got an e-mail from the FBI office in Baton Rouge, and that man—the man you clearly did something with, the man living here—is lying to you.”

An icy shower of dread ran over her and the joy couldn’t hold out. This was all too familiar. Why, she wondered distantly, the sugar pie turning sour in her stomach, did she have to make the same mistake twice?

“What are you saying?” she asked, as the cold seeped past her muscles and into her bones.

“Whoever that man is, he isn’t Matt Howe. There is no Matt Howe.”

“W
HAT
?”
SHE ASKED
,
pushing herself down onto her feet, stumbling slightly because everything was suddenly numb. Cold.

Juliette reached out to grab her elbow but Savannah jerked away. She didn’t want to be touched. Not now.

“What are you saying?”

“There are no Matt Howes who look like him who live in St. Louis. No birth certificates. No driver’s licenses. No school records, hospital records. Nothing. That man is not Matt Howe.”

But he was. She’d kissed him last night. She’d laughed with him. She put her head in her hands, reaching deep for a little strength. She’d told him her secrets.

“You’re sure?” she asked.

“As sure as the FBI can be, and that’s pretty damn sure.”

Right. Okay. She licked her lips, struggling to figure out what to do right now. Offer Juliette coffee? Pretend like nothing happened? Pretend like her stomach hadn’t been ripped right out of her?

Such. An. Idiot.

“You okay?” Juliette asked, more friend now than police chief. Savannah shook her head, not wanting pity or friendship or, frankly, anyone to witness this moment. This second brush with the bottom. “Did he hurt you?”

“Hurt me?” She laughed. No. The man had laughed
with her. He’d touched her, woken her up after the ice age she’d been sleeping in. “I told you, we didn’t sleep together. We—” She couldn’t admit they’d just kissed. Not when she couldn’t explain how it had seemed like more…like an understanding, a beginning.

“Still, you’re freaking me out a little,” Juliette said, ducking her face to try and see into Savannah’s eyes.

“Well, join the club.” She took a deep breath and tried to think through the cloud that surrounded her. “Maybe this isn’t a big deal,” she said, hopefully, but Juliette’s face was pitying. “Why does it have to be a big deal?”

“Men don’t lie for no reason. He gave you a false name.” She shrugged. “He’s hiding something.”

Which, of course, had been her suspicion from the very beginning. Then the bastard went and put on glasses and played the piano and put his hands on her weak and willing flesh and she forgot all those suspicions.

Finally, anger swept down like a flash flood and flushed away her numbness, the last lingering traces of her joy. A righteous rage that she would be taken for a fool—again—put steel in her legs and back and she stood straight, flinging her hair over her shoulder.

“What are you going to do?” Juliette asked, leaning against the counter. “You want me to take him to the station? Hold him for a few days?” She poured herself a cup of coffee.

“I don’t need you breaking the law for me,” Savannah said.

“All right. So? What are you going to do?”

Her body remembered the way he’d touched her. Her skin was permanently etched by his fingers. Her breasts and lips still tingled and ached. And it had all been a lie.

He’d slept in her house. In the same house as her daughter.

Good God. She’d caught him in the hallway a few nights ago. He’d said he was checking out a sound and she’d convinced herself not to be suspicious. Not to be dubious.

“I’m going to make him very sorry he came to my door.”

“Atta girl,” Juliette said as she picked up her ringing phone. “I’ll wait around to see if we need to bury a body.”

Savannah walked through the house, sure of her destination. Her course of action.

The old glass doors to the sleeping porch hadn’t shut in years and she just slipped between them. A ghost. A wraith.

It was dark on the porch, the overgrown vines outside acting like shades against the sun. The white sheets on the bed glowed in the half-light, drawing her eye despite her intention not to look at Matt. His back rose like a mountain from the snowy sheets, beautiful, all that caramel skin over muscle and bone. His feet were bare and sticking out over the edge of the bed and it made him seem oddly vulnerable.

Good,
she thought, hoping she’d find something that she could use to make him hurt. Hurt like she hurt.

The oddball lessons learned at Margot’s feet resurfaced and her nimble fingers, always so much more silent and careful than her brothers’ at such things, went through Matt’s clothing, searching out clues, evidence, secrets.

Our little pickpocket,
Tyler had called her a million years ago.

The remembered nickname brought back a gush of emotion she didn’t want to feel. Not right now. Now, she wanted to be righteous and angry.

She’d put these strange skills behind her along with the gambling and card playing that her whole family loved.
That Matt had reduced her to this was one more thing to hate about him.

In the corner of his duffel bag she found his BlackBerry.

She scrolled through his e-mails, his phone contacts.

His name was Matt Woods. And he sure as hell wasn’t a handyman.

She threw the phone back in the bag.

Matt’s pockets were empty so she went around the room, a ghost on bare feet, finding hiding spots and hidden nooks.

She tipped over a broken dusty pot in the corner and found a black leather wallet.

And under that, a set of manila folders.

M
ATT DREAMED OF BOX HEDGES
. And a pattern, a maze. Detailed and difficult, something a wild eight-year-old would get a kick out of. And at the center of that maze a secret heart. Lush bougainvillaea bushes, perhaps. Definitely some birds of paradise. A bench. A fountain, something old-fashioned and courtly that Margot would adore.

Someplace quiet for the sun to filter through Savannah’s hair.

His eyes blinked open and in a heartbeat he knew what to do with the courtyard.

A maze. It was perfect.

Inspiration, gone for months, flooded back as if his taste buds were exploding at the mere scent of delicious food, only instead of food, it was Savannah who had inspired him.

Savannah in the moonlight. Savannah pressed against him, her lush curves lighting him on fire.

It was a new day, a fresh start.

The truth will set me free,
he thought.
No more lies.

There was something in him that glowed at the prospect.

A sound in the corner, something between a laugh and a sob, made him turn.

Savannah, pale as a ghost.

Holding his wallet.

Looking through his files.

His stomach bottomed out and he cursed.

“What…what is all of this?” she whispered.

He cleared his throat. The truth, he reminded himself, the pristine truth. He stood, not wanting to have this conversation naked, and yanked on some pants.

“Information I had gathered on you and your family.”

“Information?” she whispered, paging through the pictures with shaking fingers until she came to the one of her and all that baffled hurt froze into anger.

“This is a nice one,” she said bending back the folders. “It was Katie’s last day of school. Where’s her file?”

“I don’t have one. My investigator didn’t tell me about her.”

“You just can’t get good surveillance these days, can you?” Savannah snapped, her mouth trembling, but then she bit her lips. Her whole body was rigid, concrete and rebar.

He said nothing.

“Why?” she demanded. “Why would you pay a stranger to follow my family?” She flung out the picture of Tyler at a card table in Vegas, and another one of Margot in her car and the third one of her eldest brother, Carter, leaving his office.

Thank God she didn’t get to the one of her mother.

She threw the rest of the files on the bed and took his wallet from the pocket of her robe.

“And why would you lie to us?” She quirked an eyebrow at him. “Matt Woods, is it?”

“I’ll answer all your questions,” he said, holding up his hands as if talking down a jumper. “But I need a few answers of my own.”

“You!”
she breathed, fury igniting her face. “You are in no position to ask any questions!” She hurled the wallet into the corner. “Get dressed. And get the hell out of here.”

She whirled to leave but he got ahold of the sleeve of her robe. “Savannah, we need to talk.”

“Talk?” she cried. She smacked at his hand and then, her mouth tight with fury and her eyes bright with tears, she slapped his face. So hard his head snapped sideways and his ears rang.

“You lied to me. To my family,” she whispered. “Get. Out.”

He shook off the sting of her blow and stared her down.

“I deserve that,” he said and her eyes narrowed. “I deserve that and more and I’m truly sorry for lying to you. But you never would have talked to me if I didn’t do it this way. My name is Matt Woods. Howe was my mother’s maiden name. I need—”

“You need to leave, Matt.” She spat his name like it was rotten meat.

He felt like shit. This was a total nightmare and not at all how he imagined things going. But he’d come here for a reason and he wasn’t going to leave without getting some answers of his own. Savannah might not know where her mother was, but there was still the small matter of the gems to be considered.

“Not until I have a chance to explain and get some answers.”

“You have got to be kidding me,” she said. “Like I’m going to answer any of your questions.” Her anger cracked and sadness leaked into her face, her voice. The way she held herself, as though she was losing more strength with each passing second, made him want to howl. “Just go. I don’t care what you have to say.”

Anger, he could handle, but this sadness gutted him.

He shouldn’t have done this.

Don’t hurt us.

Remembering her words sliced at him, tore him to ribbons.

He was trying to fix things and he’d only made them worse.

“Wait a second.” Margot’s voice cut across the porch like a knife. Right. It wasn’t only Savannah he’d lied to, and Margot didn’t seem sad at all. Her face was utterly composed, her eyes snapping. She was furious. “You might not care, Savannah, but I sure as hell do.”

“What’s going on?” Katie asked from her spot at Margot’s side, and he blew out a hard breath as he smashed, face-first, into rock bottom. He’d lied to a kid. A kid. Tried to use a kid for information.
Christ, what is wrong with me?
“Why doesn’t Matt have any clothes on?”

“An excellent question,” Margot said, her voice tart and Matt saw Savannah stiffen, her lips go white. He stepped in front of her, shielding her from Margot’s chilling stare.

Margot blinked, surprised. Frankly, so was he, but he’d hurt Savannah enough. He wouldn’t let anyone throw around words to hurt her more.

“Interesting,” Margot said, watching all of them. “Why don’t you get dressed, Matt, and meet us all in the library in ten minutes.”

“I have some questions of my own,” he told her, meeting
her flinty blue eyes. “And I’m not leaving without some answers.”

“The library,” Margot said. “And let’s make it five.”

S
AVANNAH STOOD
outside the library doors and forced herself not to twitch. Not to chew on her nails. Her palm still stung from the slap, her face still burned from a sick shame, but she forced herself to be the eye in the middle of the storm.

Utterly and totally still. Composed. Even though she seethed.

He was in there. Sitting at the piano.

Wearing those damn freaking glasses!

Her head hit the wall with a quiet thunk.

“Slightly overdressed, aren’t you?” Margot’s voice accompanied a hand at her shoulder and Savannah shrugged it away.

Just as she tried to shrug away memories of his hands and lips, his kiss.

“I’m cold,” she said, pulling the edges of her cardigan around her waist. A cardigan over a turtleneck was overkill for summer in Bonne Terre, but there was no way she was showing that man an inch of her flesh.

“Your hair—” Margot reached up to touch the tight bun at the back of Savannah’s neck but Savannah stepped away.

“It’s fine. Everything is fine. Let’s get this done with.”

Savannah stepped toward the door, ready to face down the devil if it meant Matt whatever-his-name-was would be leaving, but Margot put a hand on her shoulder.

“You want to tell me what happened?” Margot asked.

“No.” She laughed. “I definitely do not.”

“You slept with him.”

“Who do you think I am?” she asked. “Juliette asked me the same thing and no, I did not sleep with him.”

“You like him.”

Savannah snorted. “Liked, maybe.”

“After Eric— Don’t glare at me, Savannah.”

“I don’t want to talk about this, Margot.”

“You never want to talk about this,” Margot snapped.

“Lower your voice, for crying out loud.”

“You didn’t want to talk about Katie’s father when it was happening, or when he left, or when you got pregnant or—”

“Mom?”

Savannah whirled to find both Katie and Matt standing in the doorway.

“Honey?” The word sounded like a croak. Savannah hoped the expression on her face was a smile, she wanted it to be, but judging by Katie’s confusion and Matt’s horror, she wasn’t quite hitting the mark.

“What are you talking about?” Katie asked, her voice so small, her eyes so worried as they darted between Margot and Savannah.

Savannah glared hard at Margot. This wasn’t something they talked about. Ever. Katie had never even heard the name Eric.

“Mom?”

“Ah—” Her mind was a wilderness, nothing but bears and dark and fear. Lots of fear. She didn’t want to cry, or scream, or slap the glasses off Matt’s handsome face, but she felt dangerously close to all three.

At some point this conversation was inevitable, she understood that. She wasn’t stupid. But in the few times she’d been brave enough to imagine a scenario, Katie was older, Savannah was more prepared and it didn’t take place in front of another man who’d lied to her.

When her world fell apart, it really fell apart.

“Me,” Matt said, quietly, his eyes dark and serious behind his glasses. “They’re talking about me.”

Katie’s gaze darted to him, fury sending out sparks.

Savannah didn’t—couldn’t—say anything. Looking at him, at his sympathetic eyes, she had no words. He had proven he was no knight in shining armor, he no longer needed to act the part.