doesn’t it?” He touched his lip with his finger, probed it with his tongue, and she tried to convince herself it was disgusting. But it wasn’t. It was hot.
The air in the car was humid, thick. She cranked the fan a notch higher, hoping it would help.
It didn’t.
“Did you know I was back?”
“It’s Bonne Terre, Tyler. The second you stepped foot back inside the parish about twenty people called me.”
“Good old Bonne Terre,” he said, looking around the dimly lit town as though vampires lurked in doorways. Considering she loved this town, and her job was to take care of its citizens, his attitude rubbed her wrong all over. “But what I’m wondering is what you’re doing? Keeping up on what’s happening at The Manor, giving me a ride.” He tilted his head, his Paul Newman eyes practically glowing in the darkness of the car.
Sex oozed off him. And he was breathing all her damn air.
“Your sister is my best friend.”
“Right,” Tyler said, his voice ripe, his eyes way too warm. “My sister.”
She stomped on the brakes. “What are you saying?”
His eyes raked her, that lopsided grin that used to put her whole world on edge was back. “Nothing,” he drawled.
His arm stole across the top of the seats, not touching her, but too close anyway.
She leaned over him, ignoring the warmth of his body, the smell of him, all of it. Every memory, every old impulse come back to haunt her—she ignored it all and opened his door.
She’d done what she needed to do. He’d been warned. She could kick him out of her car and, if God was kind, never ever lay eyes on Tyler O’Neill again.
“Get out,” she said.
He watched her for a second and suddenly the charm vanished from his smile. All that smug sexuality was banked, put on ice for the moment. “Come on, Juliette—”
“Get the hell out of my car, Tyler.”
She met his eyes, unflinching, unblinking, nothing but anger and disgust over his betrayal, his absence, all those years spent ignoring not just her, but Savannah and Margot, too.
“You left without a word,” she said, the words burning her mouth, scorching the air. “You are no better than your parents.”
Perhaps it was the lights, the shadows, but his face changed. Melted. Just for a moment, as if he couldn’t quite keep the mask in place.
But then he eased out of her car into the dark night, taking his scent and his heat and those eyes with him.
“Why did they call you, Juliette?” he asked, slamming the door and leaning in the window. “All the good citizens of Bonne Terre—what made them think of you when I came into town?”
She knew what he thought, that it was their past that had made people call her. That people saw him and thought of her, that they were linked, forever, in everyone’s heads. In her head.
She smiled, so damn happy, thrilled actually, to prove him wrong. “Because it’s my job, Tyler.”
Slowly, she pushed back her light blazer, revealing her gun.
And her badge.
His jaw dropped and it was beautiful. Really, really a beautiful thing.
“What have you done, Jules?” he breathed.
“It’s Chief Tremblant now, Tyler,” she said.
Grinning, she popped the clutch and peeled out, emblazoning in her brain this moment—leaving Tyler O’Neill, in a delicious twist, in her dust.
CHAPTER TWO
THE MANOR LOOKED THE SAME.
Shabby but somehow noble. Elegant. A lot like the old lady who lived there, he thought, and suddenly it seemed too long since he’d seen his grandmother.
But just looking at the house, the dark windows, that bright red door, his feet got itchy. His collar tight.
It wasn’t home, not for him, and it proved another thing he’d known to be true about himself. If this place, with these women who had loved him with all their hearts, wasn’t home—no place was.
He sighed and scrubbed at the back of his neck.
Tired, sore and melancholy, he hoped that if there wasn’t sugar pie waiting for him, at least there’d be some of Margot’s fine bourbon.
A drink or twelve and some ice on this eye were in order.
But instead of going in the front door, he walked around the side of the house, past the low windows into the library. Trampled grass, broken glass. The window sill had been messed with, but he glanced inside the window and saw small red infrared dots around the room.
Not your average alarm system.
He wondered how a librarian and a retired mistress paying out ten grand in stay-away money a year managed to afford this kind of system.
Must be that Matt guy, he thought. Big shot architect.
A good guy, Juliette had said, but he doubted he could trust her opinion. She used to think Tyler was good, after all.
You’re the best, she’d said, her long strong legs wrapped around his, her warm body, sticky with sweat and salt water, wedged between him and the backseat of his old Chevy.
He smiled, remembering how he’d have to peel her off the vinyl while she yelped. He’d felt, that whole summer, as though he was in the middle of a dream. Juliette Tremblant, the sexiest, most untouchable girl he’d ever met, had come home from college a woman. A woman ready to spit in the eye of her police-chief dad. A woman who was tired of the good-girl routine and was ready to see how the other half lived. He’d been more than happy to show her.
Now she was the police chief, just like dear old dad. Man, he did not see that coming. The Juliette he’d known, that feminine creature with the skirts and the lip gloss and the adoring eyes, was so far from the woman sitting in that car with a gun on her hip and a look on her face like she knew how to use it.
What the hell happened? he wondered, walking toward the stone fence that surrounded the back courtyard. He’d thought Jules could become a model, she’d been that beautiful. Her piercing eyes set against that mocha skin she’d inherited from her father had been a lethal combination.
But her heart had been set on law school since she’d been a kid, and he’d assumed she’d become the most beautiful lawyer the state of Louisiana had ever seen.
Not a pseudomasculine police chief.
He sighed and eyed the fence. It was taller, stronger than it used to be, but Tyler had no problem chinning himself up to the top.
Whoa. The back courtyard,
