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“Gems?” Tyler asked, shaking his head. “The Notorious O’Neills just don’t know when to quit. How in the world would gems get hidden in The Manor?”
“Stolen gems from a casino seven years ago. Your mother was involved.”
“Of course.”
“But so was your dad.”
“My dad?” Tyler looked blank for a moment as if the word dad had no real connection to him, wasn’t even a word he understood. But then there was the shadow. His face changed, and Tyler became harder. Older. As if what his parents had done to him was a weight he carried, a weight he’d grown used to. Sometimes, though, he got knocked back by how truly heavy it was and how long he’d been carrying it.
Not that I cared. I used to, of course. He’d put on that brooding, grieving, lost-little-boy thing with me ten years ago and my skirts had literally fallen off.
I cleared my throat and stopped at the red light just outside of town. “The house hasn’t been broken into again,” I said. “But there’s been some suspicious activity. Someone’s snooping.”
“It’s still a rite of passage around here to sneak into my grandmother’s back courtyard?”
“Not since Matt came along. And what I’ve found, broken glass, footprints, trampled plants, they’re not in the back courtyard. Most of the activity is focused on the sides of the house, the first floor windows into the library.”
Tyler’s eyes were sharp as knives. “Your father watching my house?” he asked.
I bit back a smile, staring at the white lines on the street. “Dad’s not chief anymore, Tyler. But yes, police are watching your house.”
“Great,” he muttered, his long-standing disdain for local law enforcement, my father in particular, the stuff of legend in Bonne Terre. “So we’ve got my mother, missing gems and someone trying to break into the house. Anything else I should know about?”
“There’s an alarm.” I dug into the pocket of my red fitted blazer.
“At The Manor?” he asked. “When I lived there Margot rarely bothered to lock the doors.”
“That was a long time ago, Tyler,” I said. “Here’s the code.” I set a piece of paper down on the seat between us. “It’s right by the front door and there’s another keypad in the kitchen.”
“Well,” he sighed, picking up the piece of paper and lifting his hips slightly so he could push it into the front pocket of his worn jeans. “Can’t say I expected that.”
I took a deep breath, wondering whether I should tell him about the other stuff, whether it even mattered to him.
Was it even my business to tell him?
If not me, then who? No one else was around, and if it could take some heat off his mother, should he see her, then maybe they could all avoid another incident like what happened last month with Savannah.
“Look, Tyler, I don’t want to—”
Those blue eyes swung toward me and I couldn’t deny that as much as I hated him, I’d never forgotten him.
I thought I knew you, I thought mournfully.
“Spit it out, Juliette.”
“Your grandmother paid your mother to stay away from you kids.” Tyler blinked. “Ten thousand a year.”
“You know that?”
“Savannah told me. Margot confessed last month when Vanessa broke in again. I’m sorry, Tyler—”
“I’ve known for years,” he said.
“You knew?” I breathed.
He nodded. “How did Savannah take it?”
“Not well,” I said. An understatement, but luckily Matt was there to help.
“Carter and I found out and…” He sighed and took off his cap, pushing his fingers through his thick blond hair. “We didn’t tell her. We thought…I don’t know…we thought we were protecting her. It’s all we ever wanted to do.”
I took my eyes off the road and gaped at him.
Don’t care. Don’t show that you’re even interested, because that man will do something awful with the information.
“Well, I guess that catches you up to speed,” I said, pressing on the clutch and shifting into first when the light turned green. I sped up and shifted into second and then as the road opened up I drove it into third.
Tyler’s chuckle stirred the hair on my neck. “Juliette Tremblant,” he murmured. “You still have a thing for speed.” I didn’t say anything. Refused to rise to his bait. The car filled with tension until it was all I could do not to unroll my window, just so I could breathe.
“You’ve changed,” he said, and I could feel his eyes on my hair, my body, the clothes I covered it with, and I knew what he wasn’t saying—I’d changed, and it wasn’t for the better.
“You haven’t,” I said, not sparing him a glance as I braked over the train tracks.
“You haven’t spent ten minutes with me, Jules,” he said. “How could you possibly know that?”
“It’s Juliette.”
He laughed and I glared at him hard.
“Okay,” he said, “it’s Juliette.”
“And you’re still the same Tyler O’Neill. Here you are, punched in the face and kicked out of the St. Pat’s game. Seems awfully familiar.”
