Tyler O’Neill’s Redemption (11 page)

But it was a trick. She would never come here. Never again, he’d made sure of that.

And ninety-nine percent of the time there wasn’t a question in his mind that he’d done the right thing. That walking away from Juliette had been the best thing for her, of course with the added bonus of getting her father off his ass.

But tonight, he wished things were different. That he’d had a choice ten years ago that could have included her.

His shirt, soaked from neck to waist, stuck to him. He took it off, flinging the linen over his shoulder, and un-tucked his undershirt from the damp waistband of his old blue jeans. He’d forgotten what a workout Dixieland Jazz was.

The pier where Remy kept a few flat bottom fishing boats dipped under his weight, the water lapping quietly against aluminum and wood and whatever reptile was waiting for him to misstep and be dinner.

His lower back and wrists screamed from the abuse they were taking. Tomorrow he’d pay a fortune in aspirin for this good time, but he was just too damn content to care right now.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt this good. Maybe when he first got to Vegas. When he first found his dad and started winning some money. But then those good days just started to blend and the good became okay. And then they became bad.

And then it was just his life.

But this—friends, music, this wired and thrilling sense of joy—this wasn’t anything he was used to. It was like remembering who he was—or who he had been.

Behind him, a shoe scuffed the worn wood and the pier dropped slightly under his feet.

A chill ran over his skin, a prickly awareness that told him he wasn’t alone. But then the scent of lemons cut through the mud-scented swamp air and he knew who was out here with him.

His eyes closed on a sigh.

“Go away,” he said. He couldn’t handle this. He was too raw tonight, too much himself to keep up all the bullshit, the lies he needed to tell her to keep the peace. “Please, just go.”

“What have answers ever gotten you, Juliette?” he asked, his back still to her. His white undershirt stuck to him, hugging the muscles that her fingers and hands and lips remembered all too well.

She clenched her hands into fists. She was out here for a reason—she had purpose, and distraction would get her nowhere.

“Is what they’re saying in there true?”

“Well,” Tyler laughed and finally faced her. His blond hair was plastered to his forehead, but those blue eyes pulsed and glowed in the dark. He took a swig from the beer bottle in his hand. “If they’re saying I’m the best piano player this side of Mississippi, then yes, I would have to admit—”

“Cut the bullshit, Tyler!” she cried, surprised and infuriated at the gaping cracks in her composure. “For once. Please. For me. Cut the crap.”

He blinked and after a moment shrugged. “What do you want to know?” he asked before taking another drink, his eyes never leaving hers. She felt raw, naked under his gaze.

“Did you donate money to Remy after Katrina?”

Tyler licked his lips and nodded.

“And again, recently?”

“After I won the World Series thing,” he said. “I know a lot of the folks around here, especially the musicians, don’t have any savings.”

“And you just happened to have a ton of cash.”

“As a matter of fact—” His grin split the darkness like a knife and her breath hitched.

Unbelievably, tears scorched her eyes. She did not need this reminder of the man Tyler could be.

“Hey, hey,” Tyler said, stepping up the pier toward her. “Don’t get all worked up here. I’m still an asshole at heart.”

His expression was that potent mix of boy and man and her composure cracked further. She winced under the power of her old love. Her old longings.

It wasn’t enough that he’d left her, but he’d taken a huge part of her with him. For any man but this one—this blue-eyed devil in worn jeans and cowboy boots—she was stone-cold.

“I met your father tonight,” she said, her voice a knife she jabbed at his chest. He winced and swore. “I went to your house to talk to you about Miguel, and you can imagine my surprise when your father answers the door.”

Tyler winced. “He’s harmless.”

“Then why didn’t you tell me? Why did you lie?”

“Because he’s my dad!” he cried, as if it were that simple. And maybe for Tyler it was, and that was the problem. Tyler’s loyalties were those of a ten-year-old boy. “Look, full disclosure. His roommates in Los Angeles were arrested for credit-card fraud—”

“You are kidding me!”

“Dad was questioned and released. He had nothing to do with it.”

“So why is he here?”

“He just needs a place to stay.”

“And you’re suddenly the soul of generosity? Taking care of the homeless and your father and a beat-up kid?” She was spinning closer and closer to the edge of a question, a cliff she swore she’d never approach—but she couldn’t stop herself. Her every defense was in ruins. Every lie she’d told herself about Tyler O’Neill had been ripped from her, leaving her empty and cold.

“Is this more of the Tyler O’Neill sleight of hand?” she asked. “The guessing game? Which part is the real you and which part is the bluff? Which part is the guy handing out money to the poor and which part is the man who walked away—” Her voice cracked and she stopped, grasping with everything in her for control.

“Whatever it’s easiest for you to believe, Juliette. Go with that. Don’t break your head trying to figure me out.”

“It’s a little late for that, Tyler! Or did I imagine that summer? Did I make that up? You and me and the Chevy and coming out here every night. Did I make up your kisses and the way you touched me? Those things you told me about moving to New Orleans and how we’d live in the French Quarter and you’d play the piano and I’d get my law degree? Was that real? Did I make that up?”

“No.” He was so still. So quiet. “It was real.”

“Then why did you go?”

The words tumbled out, words she’d wondered a million times, and now, now that he was here and her heart was pumping out fresh hurt, they were unstoppable.

Tyler froze as if the question had a power over him he couldn’t fight.

“Don’t,” he breathed, “do this to yourself.”

She laughed, the sound vicious and hard, and he closed the last distance between them. He was so close she could smell him, taste the spice of him on her tongue. A buzz filled her head, a warning that she was too close. Too close to him and too close to doing something stupid.

“Juliette,” Tyler breathed, his eyes roving over her face like fingers over Braille, “I’m not worth whatever it is you’re doing to yourself.”

“Then tell me why you left!” she snapped, and he flinched. “What did you think would happen when I woke up that morning and realized you’d left me, left me after I’d lied to my father for months, after I’d slept with you and given you every single part of myself, after I’d told you that I loved you? Did you think I wouldn’t notice? Or that I wouldn’t care that you left without a word!” She was screaming. “Not one word, Tyler!”

“I know,” he whispered. “I do, I know.”

She slapped him. Because he
didn’t
know. He had no goddamned idea of the pain she’d lived with.

Her hand burned and the buzz in her head turned to a roar.

Tyler’s jaw clenched and his eyes blazed and for a second she wondered if he might slap her back. She would welcome it. She would welcome the chance to totally kick his ass.

“Feel better?” he asked, his cheek turning red.

“No.”

“Me, neither,” he said.

And then he kissed her. His mouth hard against hers, a slap in kiss form. Craving something violent, she grabbed his shirt and pulled him to her. Her mouth opened and she devoured him, would have swallowed him whole if she could. If she could just get close enough.

He groaned and wrapped his arms around her, low around her hips, and lifted her against him, notching her against his erection.

His flavor exploded in her. His heat and scent pummeled her. She fisted her hands into his hair, raking the skin of his shoulders with her nails and he groaned low in his chest. A growl of desire and want and need that her entire body echoed.

“There’s not been one day I have not thought of you,” he said and it took a moment for his words to register. To slide cool fingers down her spine, extinguishing the fire in her belly.

“What?” she breathed. Her body was slow to follow her brain’s directions, but she let go of him. She pushed away, letting the night in between them.

Tyler’s blue eyes were unreadable and she wanted to smack him again. “You can’t just say that, Tyler. You can’t—”

“Forget it, Juliette,” he said, and it was as if a light went out in him. “Forget about me. I was never worth what you gave me.”

He stepped past her, back up the pier and the party going on inside. The door opened and someone yelled his name and Tyler laughed, the sound like being blasted by glass and she gasped for breath.

“On my way!” he yelled, Tyler the piano man reborn, and then he was gone.

He ignored the discomfort for as long as he could, trying to find a comfortable place on the hard bench while his head pounded and his back muscles burned.

It didn’t take a genius to figure out what had happened to his night. Even though the last thing he remembered was walking away from Juliette, his head told him he’d drowned the taste of that kiss in some bourbon and his back told him he’d pounded out his frustration on the piano.

Not that it had worked—he was still frustrated and the taste of that kiss remained on his tongue.

But there was something delicious happening in the air, and his stomach growled. Coffee. Bacon. Unfiltered Marlboros.

There were worse places to wake up hungover and sore than Remy’s.

“Wake up, Tyler.” Someone poked at his leg and he nearly lost his precarious bed.

Gingerly, he sat up, and peanut shells popped off his back like hard bog leeches.

“Morning, Priscilla,” he groaned. Blindly he held out his hand and a warm ceramic mug was pressed into it. The sweet smell of Remy’s chicory coffee made divine with about eight tablespoons of sugar was almost enough to coax his eyes open. Almost.

“You were a man on fire last night,” Priscilla said. “That last set.” She whistled long and low.

Priscilla’s whistles were a language of their own. This whistle was loaded and he knew she didn’t want to talk about music. This whistle had “let’s talk about your sad life” all over it.

He grunted.

“Sure brings back memories,” Priscilla went on, about as subtle as a water buffalo in a tutu. “’Course, you spending the night here reminds me of a few years ago, too.”

“If you have a point,” he muttered, “go ahead and get to it.”

“Not worth it if you’re gonna sit there half-dead.”

He blinked open his eyes, his retinas screaming at sunshine’s kamikaze assault.

“I didn’t know this place had windows,” he muttered.

It took a while, but he glanced around surprised at how clean the place was. Spotless except for the little island of peanut shells and beer bottles around him.

Priscilla sat on a chair in front of the stage, wrapped in a subdued pale yellow robe. In the bright sunlight she almost looked her age—not that he could tell what that was.

“What are you doing back here?” she asked.

“A boy can’t visit his family?”

“The whole parish knows The Manor is sitting empty these days. There’s no family of yours to visit right now.”

“I can’t come visit you and Remy?”

“’Course you can. But you’re not here for us.” She narrowed her eyes. “I got a bad feeling it has something to do with the rumor your momma was in town not long ago, looking for some gems.”

Tyler smiled and stared into his mug, seeing his reflection in the black.

“There are no gems,” he said. “There probably never were. I’ve searched that house inside and out.”

“What about your momma? You telling me her being around wasn’t a draw?”

“That was part of it,” he said, sitting in a pool of sunshine, thoughts of his mother just floated through him instead of weighing him down.

He sucked down the coffee and shuddered as it jackknifed into his system.

“What you planning, boy?”

“The Spanish Inquisition?” he joked, but just barely. Somewhere in the back of his mind he had a bunch of things he wanted to say to his mother. He wanted answers to questions that kept him up nights. But he knew in his heart of hearts that it was fruitless. The questions about why she’d left him, Savannah and Carter and how she’d left them would go unanswered, and frankly, it was about time he moved on. Stopped being a kid left on a doorstep by a mother who didn’t care about him.

“Truth is,” he said, unsure of why he was even talking about this. But that’s what booze and music and kissing the best woman he’d ever known got him—confused, weak. “I was lonely.”

“You?” Priscilla asked with a snort. “What about that girlfriend of yours? That French woman.”

“It didn’t work out.” He left it at that, the whole story too depressing to get into with the feel of Juliette branded back into the skin of his arms like a graft from the past.

“Well, I’m not sure what you expect,” Priscilla said, taking a sip of coffee. “You live in Las Vegas. In a hotel. I’ve never heard of anything so lonely in my life.”

“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” he said, as though the past ten years of his life could be considered “a time.”

“Well, you’re here now,” she said, as if him being here meant something. And because he was weak and the feel of Juliette’s skin was burned into his flesh, he wanted it to mean something.

He wanted to be here because this was his home.

Priscilla sat there, a hundred pounds of speculation and anticipation, and Tyler just didn’t have the strength to wait her out.

“Okay, just say it,” he said.

“She was here,” Priscilla said, and Tyler stared down at his cup instead of answering. She. Despite the women in his family, there was only one
she
in his life around here.

“You got a death wish over that woman?” Priscilla asked.

Tyler sighed. “I think so, yes.”

“It’s not funny. She’s police chief over in Bonne Terre.”

“That’s what I’m told,” he drawled.

“I would have thought that ten years ago you might have learned your lesson. A woman like that, she’s just—”

Tyler held up his hand. After tasting Juliette’s anger and rage—her never-ending hurt—things were unclear in his head. He thought she’d get over him in time. That after a few months away from him, a couple of handsome men to take her mind off her broken heart, she’d move on.

The anger wasn’t surprising. She deserved to be angry.

But the pain…the pain was still so real. So fresh. Like seeing him ripped a bandage off a wound that wasn’t healed.

That he felt the same way made it all so much worse. Looking at her, seeing her, kissing her again last night—dumb move. Very dumb move. He’d blame the night and the music, hell, he’d blame it on swamp gas.

But even if it killed him, he had to try to make it right with her. Come clean about his father. About the past.

I’m going to have to apologize,
he realized, not much liking the idea.

“Trust me, I learned my lesson,” he said, trying to end the conversation.

“So what was last night?”

He sighed, tipping his head back, wishing there was some kind of answer to that question that made sense, that wasn’t locked up in the past and those old feelings for Juliette.

I love her,
he thought but could never say.
I always have.

“I have no idea.”

Priscilla’s eyes snapped and she uncrossed her legs, leaning forward, all but breathing fire.

“Then stay away, Tyler. Women like her…” She trailed off, and maybe it was the hangover or the peanut shell, but whatever it was, he was pissed.

“Women like her what?”

“She’s not for you.”

Tyler nodded, his temper a bear coming out of hibernation.
The likes of us.
He’d been hearing that crap his whole damn life.

“What does that mean, exactly?” he asked, his voice cutting through the haze of Priscilla’s cigarette. “Because I’m rich now, Priscilla. I mean, I’ve got way more money than the Tremblants ever did.”

“It’s not about money. It’s about blood. It’s about what people think.”

“Well, it’s not like Jasper Tremblant has been a model citizen his whole life,” he said, thinking about the night he left and Jasper’s role in the whole thing. “I don’t see him pumping huge amounts of money back into his community.”

He felt slimy tooting his own horn like that, but sometimes being the unsung hero got a little old, particularly when everyone around here still thought he was white trash.

“You’re right, that man’s got some wires crossed, that’s for sure. But I’m just saying—out in the world, you can be whoever you want. But here—” she arched her thin eyebrows “—you’re a Notorious O’Neill. The worst of them. And that’s all that woman is ever gonna see.”

Tyler swallowed his anger. He was too tired to hold on to a fight.

But Priscilla is wrong,
a voice in his head said.
You can be different. And Juliette always knew that about you.

“Well, since you’re here, we could use you,” she said.

“I can come out on weekends,” he said. “Play with the band.”

“That ain’t what I’m talking about. We need your help building them houses.”

“Oh, come on now, Priscilla, we both know that’s not me.”

“Why? ’Cause it’s honest work?” she asked.

“No,” he said. “Because I don’t know the first thing about building anything.” And frankly, the idea was ridiculous. His hands were baby soft, not a callous on them. And he liked it that way.

He cocked his head, turning those words over in his head. Words that could have come right out of his father’s mouth.

You don’t want to be like him,
he thought.
Now is your chance. Prove you’re more than a Notorious O’Neill. Prove you’re better.

“We don’t know much, either,” Priscilla said, and then dropped her voice to a whisper. “Remy’s about useless with a hammer. Swear, he’s gonna put himself in the hospital before something actually gets to standin’.”

“So?” Tyler asked. “Who’s really doing the build?”

“People in town. Derek at the hardware store has a crew. You could go and talk to him.”

Priscilla stood and her palm, soft and frail, the skin like silk and paper, landed against his cheek. “You need to find a woman who sees the real you,” she said. “Sees past that Notorious O’Neill stuff.”

Maybe it was the girls he chose or maybe it was just him—but no one ever saw past what he showed them. Except Juliette.

“Hey, now.” She stepped back, affronted. “You like being alone, Ty?”

He thought about saying yes, that he was happy this way. But that nightmare with Theresa, the way he let his father hang around like bad fish, the way he felt when he saw Juliette—like seeing the world in color after years of black-and-white—he couldn’t actually get the lie out of his mouth.

And suddenly, he felt more alone than he could bear.

“Oh, honey,” she sighed, his silence answer enough for both of them. “You deserve better. You’re not your father.”

“You know, one minute she’s not for me and the next minute I’m too good for her. Which is it, Priscilla?” he asked. “Am I a good man or am I a Notorious O’Neill?”

Priscilla lit up another smoke. “That,” she said with a cagey smile, “is a very good question.”

It took a moment, but then he shook his head—she’d gotten him again. But he was too far gone to psychoanalyze himself right now.

“I need to go,” he said, the specter of what his father—no doubt bored and feeling neglected—might be up to haunting him.

But then Remy walked in from the kitchen with three plates piled high with eggs and bacon.

“Sit yourselves down,” Remy said, sliding the heavy plates on the table. “I got pecan bread coming out of the oven.”

“On second thought,” he said, his stomach growling. “I can stick around for a little while.”