know that,” Gaetan said, scowling, his bushy eyebrows colliding to create a mutant caterpillar. “But you took a lot of their money when you were a boy and they haven’t forgotten that.”
The satisfaction of taking the money off those men who looked down their noses at his family, called his grandmother names behind her back and watched him out of the corner of their eyes, was still so sweet.
He couldn’t help but smile.
Gaetan cuffed him upside the head.
“Hey!”
“You took their money ten years ago and now you come back a rich man to take more?” Gaetan shook his head.
“It’s a poker game,” Tyler said. “The point is to take each other’s money.”
“You—” Gaetan curled a hand in Tyler’s shirt, pulled him down close to the old man’s height until Tyler could smell the whiskey and peppermint on his breath. “You have always taken too much. Always. Even as a boy you could never be happy with what you had. You needed what everyone else had, too. And everyone in this town remembers that about you. You shouldn’t have come back here.”
It was no big secret. No news flash. He’d been telling himself the same damn thing the whole drive from Vegas to Bonne Terre, but hearing it from Gaetan, a man he’d always considered a friend, stung.
“I know,” he said.
“Then why come back?” Gaetan asked. “You’re a rich man. A celebrity. You’ve got that girlfriend—”
Tyler snorted.
“Fine,” Gaetan said. “No girlfriend. But why are you back?”
Tyler shrugged. “I have to have a reason?”
“This isn’t about your mother snooping around these parts, is it?”
Tyler wished he could tell the old man, but he didn’t want to implicate his friend, should it come to that. Instead, he said nothing and Gates sighed.
“You best not drive,” Gaetan said, pointing at Tyler’s head and Tyler gingerly touched the swelling around his eye.
Lou was a crap card player, but the guy could throw a punch.
Tyler glanced back at his beloved 1972 Porsche, its black paint melting into the shadows. “She’ll be okay here?” he asked, and Gaetan snorted.
“Last car stolen in Bonne Terre was the one you stole when you left.”
“I doubt that,” he said, reluctant to leave Suzy alone and vulnerable outside a place as unwelcoming as St. Pat’s.
“Merde, Ty, it’s just a car.”
“Don’t tell that to Suzy.”
“Suzy?”
“Suzette, really.”
“Lord, Ty, you don’t change. I’ll watch her myself.”
“Thank you. In that case, I might as well take in some night air,” he said, remembering the path through town past the police station and Rousseau Square down to The Manor as if it had been yesterday.
He glanced back in the shadows at his dusty Suzy. He’d get her back in the morning.
“Okay then,” Gaetan said. “You come by for dinner or Maude will have your head.”
“Will do,” Tyler agreed with a grin that split his lip. “Hey, Gates?” The old man stopped, his bowed legs turning him around. “You really mayor?” Tyler asked.
Gaetan nodded. “Sure am, boy, so you best watch yourself.”
He winked and walked back into the church, through the lit doorway that led down to the basement. With one last damning look over his shoulder, Gaetan jerked the door shut.
There was a slam and lights out.
Two janitors. The high school wrestling coach. Gaetan and Father Michaels. Suddenly, all too good to play with him.
The reigning World Series of Poker champion.
Which only continued to prove what he’d known down in his gut all along—the world changed but Bonne Terre stayed the same.
Tyler sighed, pushed his A’s cap down farther on his head and made his way back home.
The September night was thick and dark, the suffocating blanket he remembered and hated. Two steps and he had that dirty, clammy sweat that made him ache for the white tile shower in his suite, the cool hum of forced air.
Christ, his eye was beginning to pound.
Coming back here had been a dumb idea. He’d been fine, years had gone by without him caring, the memories fading bit by bit, but one word that his mother might be back in town and here he was, choking on the dirt outside St. Pat’s.
No doubt the kitchen in The Manor would be empty. None of Margot’s sugar pies to welcome him home.
He crossed Jackson and headed for the square, thinking he’d cut through the magnolias in the park and save himself some time, when a dark car slid around the corner, crawling along the curb.
His alley-cat instincts, honed on this very street, woke up and he stepped into the shadows of the trees.
Stupid of him to cross Jackson under the streetlights—anyone looking knew his path home.
The wrought-iron fence was cold against his back. It would be just like Lou to follow him, or call one of his softball buddies to come out here for a little middle-of-the-night batting practice.
The car eased past him, got to the corner and stopped under the streetlamp.
It stopped and waited, exhaust filling the golden pool of light with gray smoke.
Well, crap, Tyler did not like that. At all.
He circled around the other side of the fence, hugging the shadows, between the leaves and the light. If it was Lou’s buddies, they wouldn’t be expecting him to approach from the side. His foot caught on a branch and he grabbed it from the ground and tested its heft.
Pretty weak, but with some surprise on his side he might do some damage before they took care of what was left of his face.
As he cleared the side of the blue car, blood pumping, smile easing nice and slowly across his face, he saw that there weren’t a bunch of men in it. In fact, sitting in the driver’s side, staring him right in the eye with ten hard years of hate, was the most beautiful woman he’d ever known.
“Juliette,” he breathed. For a second his life stopped and all he saw were those hazel eyes and lips so pink and perfect. And sweet. The sweetest.
“What the hell are you doing here, Tyler?”
JULIETTE WAS NOT, REPEAT, not going to touch Tyler O’Neill. Not with her fingers. Not with a ten-foot pole. Perhaps later, when given a chance, she’d touch him good with her fists, but at the moment, there was going to be no touching. Too bad, since it was the only way she was ever going to convince herself the man standing in front of her, as rumpled and bloody and heart-stoppingly handsome as he’d been at seventeen—was real.
And not a figment of all of her furious revenge fantasies.
“Just out for a stroll,” he said, tossing the branch he’d been holding onto the dirt.
“Sure you are. What are you doing back in Bonne Terre?” she asked.
“Savannah said The Manor is sitting empty,” Tyler said and shrugged, as if his arrival out of the blue after ten years was perfectly natural. “Seems like someone should be watching over it.”
“You?” she asked, laughing at the very notion of Tyler being down here for any unselfish reason. “Please.”
He stared at her for