Tyler O’Neill’s Redemption (9 page)

It had been four days, and so far Tyler and Miguel had torn down most of a porch and that was it. Tyler hadn’t taken Miguel to a strip club, or taught him how to gamble. Miguel went to school every day and then showed up at The Manor and did the work he was supposed to and Louisa was staying at a friend’s house after school until Juliette and Miguel picked her up.

Dr. Roberts hadn’t had a change of heart and called in the social workers and neither had Mayor Bourdage. The guys in the station were going about their business.

Even Tyler had kept his mouth shut.

Everything was working, except for the fact that she didn’t know what to do next. Father Michaels ran a drug program from the church on Thursday nights, but Miguel didn’t do drugs.

She’d called the Calcasieu Parish juvenile parole officer, who hadn’t been much help. Not a huge surprise, considering Miguel wasn’t in the system.

Preventing kids from getting into the system was what she was trying to do.

It was times like these when she could use her father’s advice, and she wished there wasn’t a mile deep chasm between their philosophies.

Her phone rang beside her and Tyler’s name popped up on her screen. The same rush of hot and cold that she’d been living with for the past week rolled over her. It was so strange to simultaneously hate someone and remember every single filthy thing he’d ever done to her.

She felt torn in two by Tyler. She’d gone into this whole arrangement waiting for him to disappoint her. Knowing it was only a matter of time before he jerked some rug out from under her.

And every day that he didn’t was both a blessing and a curse.

“Chief Tremblant,” she said, answering her phone and keeping things official.

“Juliette,” Tyler said, his voice scraping across her nerve endings, lighting up dark parts of her body. “We have a problem.”

Social worker. Juliette glanced down at the card in her hand. Nora Sullivan. Child Welfare Investigator/Counselor.

Miguel, I’m so sorry.

So much for this ludicrous plan working. She felt the consequences of her decisions like a two-ton rock rolling downhill right at her. Her career, her life—everything was about to go splat.

The girders were back, her brain being squeezed to mush by the metal bands.

“My car is here, so he’s on foot,” Tyler said. “We should leave now—”

“I think I know where he is. Give me a second,” she said, and pulled out her cell phone. Her first call was to the friend with whom Louisa was staying. Miguel wasn’t going anywhere without Louisa.

“Patricia,” she said, and switched to Spanish when the older woman answered. “Has Miguel picked up Louisa?”

“No, Chief Tremblant. Louisa is here alone.”

“When Miguel comes, please keep him there until I come get him,” she said. “It’s very important that you don’t let him leave.”

“Sí, señorita.”

Juliette hung up and contemplated the card in her hand. Nora Sullivan. Juliette took a deep breath. She didn’t need to be forced to be accountable. She’d gone into this situation with her eyes wide-open. The mistakes were hers—so, then, would be the punishment.

She dialed the number and—thank God—got an answering machine.

“Hi, Ms. Sullivan,” she said, keeping her voice tight, “this is Police Chief Juliette Tremblant over in Bonne Terre. I’d like to make an appointment with you to discuss Miguel Pastor at your earliest convenience. Please give me a call Monday morning at this number. Thank you.”

She hung up and rubbed at her forehead. The pain was killing her. She wished she could just go home, pull down the shades and find a dark corner to lick her wounds.

But that wasn’t her style. Not anymore. Not since Tyler had left.

Tyler.

She turned, all her frustration and anger searching for a vent and a worthy victim.

And there was none so worthy as Tyler O’Neill.

This whole thing had been a bad idea. He had no business getting involved with Miguel and Juliette. It had only been a matter of time before he screwed this up, too.

“Miguel’s going to be fine,” she told him and he was dumbfounded for the moment. Thank God.

“Is there anything else you haven’t told me?” she asked in full-on cop mode, putting his teeth on edge. “Something you might have forgotten?”

“Miguel and I were talking,” he said. “And the social worker just showed up—”

“What were you talking about?”

Tyler blinked, knowing what this was going to do to her temper. “What in the world does that have to do with anything?”

“She probably overheard you—”

“She didn’t,” he insisted. “I’m telling you, as soon as her car rolled up Miguel must have left.”

“What were you talking about?” she demanded in a way that gave him no out.

Tyler sighed, bracing himself for the blowup. “Cards. We were talking about gambling.”

“You are not teaching this boy to gamble.” She practically shook with anger.

“Is that really what’s important here?” he asked, but it was obvious she didn’t care.

“I didn’t bring him here to learn how to play cards.”

“The boy is interested, Juliette. That’s all.”

“The boy,” she snapped, her eyes shooting sparks, “is in need of good influences.”

Tyler blinked, a little stunned at her viciousness. “You brought him here, Jules. I’m just doing what you needed me to do.”

“No, what I need is for you to babysit this kid, not teach him how to gamble.”

“I was just talking—”

“I don’t want you to talk to him! I don’t want you to look at him. If I had my way, he’d never have met you.”

Her words echoed in the silence.

That he was surprised was stupid. That he was a little hurt was even more stupid. He knew what she thought of him, but her words had blown a hole through his chest.

He’d just been trying to help.

He took a step back and then another, the anger rolling off her just a little too painful.

“Tyler,” she sighed, as if she was about to offer an apology she wasn’t even close to meaning.

“No, no, of course. You wouldn’t want me to rub off on your hoodlum. God forbid I teach him—” he shrugged “—what? Car theft?”

“No,” she said. Her eyes narrowed and he knew she wasn’t done. She had something she was dying to get off her chest. She stepped closer and the air sizzled and crackled, as though there was a stick of dynamite between them.

Here it comes,
he thought. He should never have accused her of being cold.

Juliette was fire. She always had been.

“How to not give a shit about anyone but himself,” she spat. “How to hurt people. How to walk away when someone cares about you, when someone has invested themselves in you.”

He held up his hand, stopping her tirade. “I get it. You’re scared I’m going to teach him to be like me.”

She paused before nodding. That little nod, the play of light in her hair, in her eyes—the reflection and refraction, a world upon a world—destroyed him.

Juliette was close enough to smell, close enough to touch if he really wanted to watch her explode. And her standing there, thinking the worst of him, counting the minutes until he left made him want to lose his mind.

It made him want to ease her to the grass, take off those pants of hers. Feel those legs, endless and strong, wrap around his back. He wanted to cover her smart mouth with his. He wanted to lick her and bite her, feel her breath in his ear, her nails in his back. He wanted her under him, to remind her that even with all that smug superiority, bad, bad Tyler O’Neill could make good girl Juliette Tremblant want him so bad she’d scream with it.

Juliette stepped away, a blush on her cheeks, and Tyler guessed he didn’t hide his desire very well.

“I need to go find Miguel,” she said.

“You want help?” he asked, knowing the answer before he asked it.

She shook her head and Tyler nodded, feeling that if he opened his mouth there was no telling what would pour out.

He didn’t watch her drive away. Instead he stepped up to the front door, now two feet above the ground with no porch.

Stupidly, it had never occurred to him that having torn the damn thing down they’d have to rebuild it. And if this situation with Miguel was somehow over, he’d have to do the work himself.

Great. Just freaking great.

Once inside, his father crept out of the shadows, a bizarre housewife with a tumbler full of amber liquid at the ready. Tyler shook his head, waving off the glass.

“What do you say we drive over to Franklin Parish,” Dad said. “Get ourselves some catfish and watch the dancing girls at Sully’s.”

Tyler didn’t answer. He pulled his shirt over his head and draped it across one of the stools in the kitchen. His skin felt too tight, his head too full. The house was getting dark, night bleeding in moment by moment. Hours of time stretched in front of him with just his father for company.

I’m going to lose my mind.

“Son?”

“I’m going out,” he said.

“Where?”

“Remy’s.” The old dance hall out in the bayou was exactly what he needed. Music. Beer. Beautiful women. And Remy. He wondered if Priscilla Ellis still worked the bar and he really, really hoped she did. He could use some kindness, a happy word in his ear.

“Good idea. Let me just get—”

“You’re not coming,” Tyler said.

“I didn’t call them,” she said, watching out of the corner of her eye as Patricia disappeared into the kitchen.

“Then who did?” he demanded and she shook her head. She’d been wondering the same thing, torn between Dr. Roberts and Ms. Jenkins at school. His face was still pretty messed up; the burn had faded, but not the worst of the bruises, and Ms. Jenkins might have finally had enough of Miguel’s half truths and cover-ups.

But something in Juliette’s gut said the surprise visit from the social worker had Owens’s dirty fingerprints all over it. It was just a hunch, but it felt right.

“I don’t know,” she said, holding out her arms, wishing she could hug him and convince him that she would keep him safe.

But she couldn’t lie, because the truth was, she might have screwed this up for everyone. Her mistakes might end up sending him into foster care.

Maybe her father was right. She was too soft for this job. Perhaps what she wanted to accomplish couldn’t be accomplished from the Office of Police Chief.

She pulled her arms back to her sides, leaving them empty, the need to help an ache in her muscles. A burn in her fingers.

“But I am going to talk to the social worker and we’ll get this all squared away, I promise.”

“Yeah, you promised me shit before and it ain’t worked out so well, has it?” he spat.

Louisa, his sister, crept out of the dark hallway to come stand by her brother. Her pretty black hair was pulled back in braids framing a round face, so sweet in its youth. In its innocence.

Juliette’s heart cracked.

Louisa tucked her little hand in Miguel’s and he held it, cradled it in his own not much bigger than hers. The two of them, two children, were a united front against a world determined to pull them apart.

“I’m not going to some foster home,” he said. “We’re not getting split up.”

“I don’t want you to get split up,” she said, praying he would listen, that she could convince him, somehow, that after all this, she wanted him safe. “I don’t want you to go to foster care. And right now, I’m telling you that your best shot of staying together is to wait this out. Let’s see what happens with the social worker.”

“I like you, Chief,” he said.

“Me, too,” Louisa piped up, and Juliette’s throat burned with acidic regret.

“But I don’t trust you,” he said. “Not anymore. And I’m not going to sit at school waiting for you to show up with some woman who is going to take me away.”

Hurt and regret, jagged pains right through her chest, made it impossible for her to speak and she wondered if this was how Tyler had felt tonight when she’d sliced him apart. She didn’t think she could hurt him, didn’t think he had feelings she could injure, but it was obvious she had.

She refused to feel guilty about what she’d said. She was just being honest and if Tyler was hurt by that, so be it.

But she had a bad feeling that Tyler was smack-dab in the middle of Miguel’s situation whether Juliette liked it or not.

She swallowed her pride and it was bitter and hard, a rock in her chest. Sour in her heart.

“Do you…do you trust Tyler?” she asked, desperate.

Miguel shrugged and then, finally nodded. “I guess.”

“Then whenever this meeting happens, I’ll tell you and you can stay with him,” she said, and waited for Miguel to agree.

Miguel looked down at Louisa and stroked his little sister’s hair, twined the long braid through his fingers.

“Miguel?” Louisa whispered. “What’s happening?”

“Everything’s going to be okay,” he told his sister, and Juliette looked down through a haze at the worn nap of the red carpet, trying to keep her emotions schooled. Professional.

“Fine,” he said. “We’ll stay with Tyler.”

She nodded, relief filling her with a cold wind.

But she knew she had to head back out to The Manor and make things right with Tyler. It killed her—destroyed her, actually—that after everything he’d done to her, the pain he’d inflicted, the doubt and confusion, she was going to have to apologize to him.

He’d torn her to the ground, ruined her. The person she’d become after he left was not the person she’d been before, and he’d done that to her.

But she needed him. Watching Miguel help his sister into her coat so Juliette could take them back to their crappy home, she needed Tyler more than ever.

And she hated it.