The Sinner (Notorious 1)

“What do you know about this guy?” Juliette asked, brushing her suit jacket off her lean hips, revealing her gun and her whipcord build.

“I checked his references,” I said. “And they were great.”

“References lie,” Juliette said. Lord, she was more suspicious than me. Juliette pulled her notebook from her pocket and hit the end of her ballpoint pen. “Matt Howe?”

“With an e.”

Juliette’s pen scribbling across the lined paper added to the music of my library.

Juliette jabbed the notebook into her pocket. “What do you think of this guy, really?” Her eyes narrowed and I shrugged.

“I don’t like him. I don’t want him in my house. But, I think he’s safe. I think he’s a good man.”

“You’ve thought that before,” Juliette whispered and I jerked at the reminder. “Sorry honey, but it’s true,” she said.

“And I learned my lesson about handsome strangers, Juliette.” I even managed to smile. “The O’Neills don’t do love.”

It was nearly imperceptible, but Juliette’s right eyelid flinched. And it was my turn to apologize. Ten years ago, my brother Tyler had taught her the same lesson. As painfully as possible.

“Juliette, I’m so sorr—”

“You guys have that island thing down pat. No one gets on and no one gets off,” Juliette said. “At least not permanently.”

I shrugged. It was easier being alone. Safer. I wasn’t going to apologize for it; it was a matter of survival.

MATT

I didn’t sleep much anymore. The lure of the soft pillows and thick mattress of Bonne Terre Inn’s room 3 no longer had much appeal for me. Instead I sat in the upright chair, watching the empty highway through the curtains.

And I thought about revenge.

In front of me was my sketch pad. Empty. I rotated it in quarter turns.

A blank page used to be a call to work, a spark to my imagination.

Now?

I was blank.

I remembered the vines. The destruction of the greenhouse. The tool shed in the back nearly obliterated by vines. The endless possibility of the space.

And I felt… nothing. Just that cold breeze blowing through me that was growing increasingly familiar.

Thinking I could force it, the way I used to in college when I was so tired from exams my eyes felt like sandpaper, I framed out the perimeter, sketched in the existing buildings.

It was lunacy that they’d been looking for a handyman. I’d shown up at that door without a plan, with nothing but rage and revenge and guilt and they handed me a god-damn job.

For a guy with no plan, who hadn’t seen luck in years, that was pretty fucking lucky. And that Erica, my assistant had played along. Well… that was a gift I didn’t deserve. And I should call her. I would. But not yet.

Because, while I waited for Vanessa O’Neill to show up, I had to actually work. And the job was huge. More than one man could do in months.

The house, The Manor as the women called it was an aging stunner. It sat alone on the road, about a mile and a half from town, surrounded by a few acres of wilderness. She was a grand dame falling on hard times—the black trim was peeling and a few of the white hurricane shutters were missing slats. But the bones of the house were solid. Elegant. Built to withstand the Southern weather, and to look good doing it. And that courtyard was a diamond in the extreme rough.

In another time working on that house would have been exciting.

Now it was just work that did not distract me. Not from what I was here to do. Find the proof that would exonerate my father. Find the proof that would destroy the O’Neill’s.

But the woman… Savannah O’Neill she was another story.

It was wrong to want her like this. To think of that long fall of white blonde hair wrapped around my hand. Those curves of hers that she’d tried so hard to hide behind that white blouse and grey pencil skirt. The seam in the back of that grey skirt had a tiny bit split, and I’d imagined how easy it would be to tear that skirt. Right up the back.

To see what she wore underneath it. To see how many layers of prim I would have to get through before I found the hot, wet woman beneath.

Wanting her like this had to be criminal like all things were that touched the O’Neill family. I didn’t used to be this way. This rabid. This base. I wanted women, liked women. Fucked women. I had once thought myself in love.

But this, what I was feeling right now? It was new. And maybe it was because I had blood on my hands but I couldn’t shake this lust.

The things I wanted to do to her. My God.

I sat there thinking about sin, and punishment and the crimes that parents passed onto their kids until the sky turned gray, pink at the edges, and a new day came to save me from the night.