travels fast,” Savannah said, amazed anew at the Bonne Terre interest in all things O’Neill. After twenty years she’d stopped being furious. Now she was merely irritated.
“One of my guys heard it from Wayne Smith who heard it from his wife who was taking her morning walk down your road and saw Margot and some stranger on the front porch shaking hands.”
“Shh!” Owen and Garrett said, over-loud, over-annoying in mockery of Savannah’s librarian battle cry.
“Excuse me?” Juliette turned to the boys, the badge clipped to the belt of her pants gleaming in the milky morning sunlight.
The boys went white and Savannah tried hard not to smile.
“Sorry, Chief Tremblant,” they chorused and quickly returned to their work and summer school teacher.
“I need a badge,” Savannah whispered.
“What you need is to have your head checked,” Juliette said, her voice lower. “I called Margot this morning, to see if it was true and she said you’d hired a drifter. I guess living alone in that mausoleum has finally gotten to your heads, because that’s not just notorious, it’s dangerous.”
“I don’t know if he’s a drifter,” Savannah said, not entirely convinced he wasn’t. And frankly, not entirely convinced that Juliette wasn’t spot on in her assessment of Margot and Savannah.
“But he’s not staying at the house. He’s going to get a room at the Bonne Terre Inn.”
“He’s still a stranger,” Juliette said.
“Right, and he’s the only person who has answered that ad,” Savannah pointed out. “Everyone in town who could do the work knows we don’t have a big budget and that the job is huge.”
“But a stranger?”
“I have vacation starting tomorrow—”
“And you’re going to spend it babysitting this guy and your courtyard?”
“No, actually, I’m going to spend most of it doing research on extreme religious rituals around the world for the Discovery Channel, but I’ll be home.”
“What do you know about this guy?” Juliette asked, brushing her suit jacket off her lean hips, revealing her gun and her whipcord build.
Juliette looked so masculine, such a change from the girl she’d been. The girl, a few years older than Savannah, who had seemed the epitome of Southern glamour. Like a Creole Liz Taylor or something. Juliette used to never wear pants, and never left the house without a thick coat of hot-pink lip gloss.
Savannah wondered how much her brother Tyler had to do with the change in Juliette. Of course, that was years ago and Juliette would take her head off for asking.
“I checked his references,” Savannah said, feeling confident until Juliette sniffed in disapproval. “And they were great.”
“References lie,” Juliette said.
“Give me some credit, Juliette. I’m a researcher. I searched his name on the Internet,” she said, “and Matt Howe, at least the Matt Howe doing work at my house, hasn’t been in the news for killing cats, or posting porn on the Web. He’s a nonentity.”
“Right, because the Internet is so reliable.” Juliette pulled her notebook from her pocket and hit the end of her ballpoint pen. “Matt Howe?”
“With an e.”
Juliette’s pen scribbling across the lined paper added to the music of her library.
Juliette jabbed the notebook into her pocket. “What do you think of this guy, really?” Her eyes narrowed and Savannah shrugged.
“I don’t like him. I don’t want him in my house. But, I think he’s safe. I think he’s a good man.”
“You’ve thought that before,” Juliette whispered and Savannah flinched at the reminder. The reminder she didn’t need.
“And I learned my lesson about handsome strangers, Juliette.” She even managed to smile. “The O’Neills don’t do love.”
It was nearly imperceptible, but Juliette’s right eyelid flinched.
“Juliette, I’m so sorr—”
“You guys have that island thing down pat. No one gets on and no one gets off,” Juliette said. “At least not permanently.”
Savannah shrugged. It was easier being alone. Safer. She wasn’t going to apologize for it; it was a matter of survival.
“Margot managed to survive and some would say she’s had more than her share of love,” Juliette said.
“Business,” Savannah clarified. People got confused about Margot all the time, thinking she was a romantic. She wasn’t. She was a lusty capitalist with a penchant for the finer things in life. And men. “It was always business with Margot. And it’s business with Matt Howe. You can trust me on that.”
Juliette sniffed. “Okay, but I’m coming by tomorrow morning to check this guy out.”
“You’re welcome to,” Savannah thought of the leonine grace of the man. The sharp predatory focus in his eyes. The way he pulled his khaki pants up over a lean waist, watching her as if he could taste her on his tongue.
Male. So thrillingly masculine among the roses and moss.
She’d spent so long pretending she wasn’t a woman, pretending dark eyes and darker hair and a man with a knowing smile didn’t send her to some place hot and internal. Someplace reckless and totally, entirely, O’Neill.
Stupidly, she found herself eager to get another look at Matt Howe, too.
MATT DIDN’T SLEEP MUCH anymore. The lure of the soft pillows and thick mattress of Bonne Terre Inn’s room 3 no longer had much appeal for him. Instead he sat in the upright chair, watching the empty highway through the curtains.
In front of him was his sketch pad.
While waiting for Vanessa to show up, he was actually supposed to do some work.
He rotated the empty pad in quarter turns.
A blank page used to be a call to work, a spark to his imagination.
Now?
He remembered the kudzu. The destruction of the greenhouse. The tool shed in the back nearly obliterated by vines. The endless possibility of the space.
And he felt nothing. Just that cold breeze blowing through him that was growing increasingly familiar.
Thinking he could force it, the way he used to in college when he was so tired from exams his eyes felt like sandpaper, he framed out the perimeter, sketched in the existing buildings.
Sitting back he stared at his sketch, his work somehow familiar and foreign at the same
