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“It does ring a bell, doesn’t it?” He touched his lip with his finger, probed it with his tongue, and I tried to convince myself it was disgusting. But it wasn’t. It was hot.
The air in the car was humid, thick. I cranked the fan a notch higher, hoping it would help.
It didn’t.
“How 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 I loved this town, and my job was to take care of its citizens, his attitude rubbed me 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 Chris Evans eyes practically glowing in the darkness of the car.
Sex oozed off him. And he was breathing all my damn air.
“Your sister is my best friend.”
“Right,” Tyler said, his voice ripe, his eyes way too warm. “My sister.”
I stomped on the brakes. “What are you saying?”
His eyes raked me, that lopsided grin that used to put my whole world on edge was back. “Nothing,” he drawled.
His arm stole across the top of the seats, not touching me, but too close anyway.
I 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 me—I ignored it all and opened his door.
I’d done what I needed to do. He’d been warned. I could kick him out of my car and, if God was kind, never ever lay eyes on Tyler O’Neill again.
“Get out,” I said.
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.”
I met his eyes, unflinching, unblinking, nothing but anger and disgust over his betrayal, his absence, all those years spent ignoring not just me, but Savannah and Margot, too.
“You left without a word,” I said, the words burning my 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 my 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?”
I knew what he thought, that it was our past that had made people call me. That people saw him and thought of me, that we were linked, forever, in everyone’s heads. In my head.
I smiled, so damn happy, thrilled actually, to prove him wrong. “Because it’s my job, Tyler.”
Slowly, I pushed back my light blazer, revealing my gun.
And my 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,” I said.
Grinning, I popped the clutch and peeled out, leaving Tyler O’Neill, in a delicious twist, in my dust.
3
TYLER
The Manor looked the same.
Shabby but somehow noble. Elegant. A lot like the old lady who lived there.
But just looking at the house, the dark windows, that bright red door, my feet got itchy. My collar tight.
It wasn’t home, not for me, and it proved another thing I’d known to be true about myself. If this place, with these women who had loved me with all their hearts, wasn’t home—no place was.
I sighed and scrubbed at the back of my neck.
Tired, sore and melancholy, I hoped that if there wasn’t sugar pie waiting for me, 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, I 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 I glanced inside the window and saw small red infrared dots around the room.
Not your average alarm system.
I 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, I thought. Big shot architect.
A good guy, Juliette had said, but I doubted I could trust her opinion. She used to think I was good, after all.
You’re the best, she’d said, her long strong legs wrapped around mine, her warm body, sticky with sweat and salt water, wedged between me and the backseat of my old Chevy.
I smiled, remembering how I’d have to peel her off the vinyl while she yelped. I’d felt, that whole summer, as though I was in the middle of a dream. Juliette Tremblant, the sexiest, most untouchable girl I’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. I’d been more than happy to show her.
