Welcome to Temptation/Bet Me

by Jennifer Crusie

  Out in the kitchen, Clea began to tell Zane what she thought of him. She had a nice turn of phrase and the delivery of an auctioneer.

  “Or not,” Sophie said, and the three of them sat on the couch and listened, the dog at their feet with his head cocked, too.

  About ten minutes into Clea’s list of Zane’s offenses, which included theft, adultery, not waiting for Clea to come, preventing her from reestablishing her career, and not providing her with a warm, nurturing environment, Amy said, “This would be better if we had popcorn.”

  Five minutes later, as Zane was explaining that it was Clea’s fault that he’d cheated on her because she was cold and withholding which was not what he expected from his wife because he wanted a warm, nurturing environment, too, Sophie said, “This would be better if we had alcohol.”

  And shortly after that, at the height of the argument, when Zane told Clea that she’d never see her money again if she left him, Amy said, “The hell with the popcorn. Let’s get Sophie’s Mace and take the bastard out.”

  “My mom thinks he’s the coolest,” Rachel said. “Wait’ll I tell her about this.”

  Out in the kitchen, Zane was taking the righteously indignant route. “I can’t believe you thought I’d spend that money. Hell, I’m not that damn Dempsey guy you used to be with, I’m honest.”

  Sophie straightened on the couch, and Amy said, “Easy, girl.”

  “Yeah, well, I should have stayed with him,” Clea said. “He never took anything from me, and he took care of me, too. Only you said you could do it better, remember? And I was such a fool I went for it.”

  Amy said, “See? She’s sorry,” and Sophie relaxed.

  “I’ve taken care of you,” Zane said. “For God’s sake, Clea, you live in one of the biggest houses in Cincinnati.”

  “How is stealing my money keeping me safe?” Clea shrieked at him.

  “Not to mention the weather girl,” Amy said.

  “I didn’t steal it,” Zane said. “I told you, I’ve got it in an offshore account, and it’s going to stay there until I move it, so if you want it, you’re going to stay my wife.”

  “That’s it, isn’t it? You knew I was tired of your crap, so you hid the money so I couldn’t leave.”

  “You’re my wife—”

  “Well, it’s not going to work,” Clea said. “Because my lawyer is going to make you give it up. And I’m selling this farm, too, and Frank says—”

  “Oh, God, not Frank again,” Zane said. “Frank the Great. Frank the Wonderful. Get over high school, Clea, he’s not—”

  “He’s a developer here,” Clea said. “He bought land from my dad before, and he said he’d give me seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars for the rest of the land around the farmhouse. When I get back what you stole, I’ll have almost three million dollars, and when I send this tape to Leo—”

  “Leo? No wife of mine is going to work for Leo Kingsley.”

  “He seems to be missing something key here,” Sophie said, as Clea said, “Zane, I’m not your wife anymore. We’re over.”

  “Not unless you want to give me half of that three million,” Zane said, and this time there was a long silence from the kitchen.

  “You wouldn’t,” Clea said.

  “The hell I wouldn’t,” Zane said. “If you’d left me before you got the money, you’d sure as hell have taken half of my assets. Well, I get half of yours, too, sweetie.” When Clea didn’t say anything he went on. “Now, there’s nothing to be upset about, I have all the money safe in an offshore account. If we ever need it, it’s just a phone call away.”

  “Prove it,” Clea said. “I want to see a bank book or something. I want—”

  “What good is that going to do you?” Zane said. “God, you know nothing about finance. Trust me.”

  “Oh, please,” Amy said.

  “You need me, Clea,” Zane wheedled on. “You think you can take care of yourself? You never have. There’s always been somebody around to be your daddy. And I’m the best one of the bunch. You think Leo is going to take care of you? The only reason’s he’s even talking to you is because he wants to make Coming Clean Two. You want to do that?”

  Sophie frowned at Amy and said, “Coming Clean Two?”

  Amy shrugged.

  “No, I don’t want that,” Clea said. “But there are other projects I can do with Leo. Sophie’s written some great stuff and she’s going to write more. She—”

  “Sophie couldn’t write for Sesame Street, let alone Leo Kingsley,” Zane said, contempt dripping from his voice. “Hell, look at her, she’s about the least exciting woman we know. She’s so repressed, she’s sexless.”

  Sophie felt herself flush. “Definitely the Mace.”

  “Besides, I told you, my wife does not make movies for Leo Kingsley,” Zane was saying to Clea. “Now you go get packed. I’ll wait for you on the porch, and then we’ll go home together.”

  They heard Clea stomp up the kitchen stairs and then her bedroom door slammed.

  Zane came into the living room, looking mad as hell but triumphant. “Did you get all that?” he asked them, and Amy said, “Pretty much, but we have a few questions. About the weather girl, did—”

  “You can pack up your video shit,” he said. “My wife is not making this damn movie, she’s coming home with me.”

  “Oh, no,” Rachel said, and Sophie said, “We’ll just wait to get the good word from her.”

  Zane shook his head. “My wife does what I tell her to. Someday you’ll understand that.”

  “ ‘And someday you’ll drop dead and I’ll come to your funeral in a red dress,’ ” Sophie said.

  Zane snorted and went out on the porch.

  They heard a car come down the lane, and Rachel got up to look. “It’s the Lutzes.”

  “Nothing but good times ahead,” Amy said, clasping her hands in front of her.

  They sat on the couch and listened to Frank and Georgia fawn over Zane on the porch—“A real celebrity right here in Temptation,” Georgia said over and over—until Rob came in from the porch looking annoyed. “That guy,” he said, and Rachel nodded.

  “We know.” She made room for him on the couch.

  “What a loser,” Rob said as he sat down.

  Sophie waited for him to elaborate, but he seemed to feel he’d said it all. Okay, so Rob wasn’t deep. Looking like that, he didn’t need to be. Except someday he wouldn’t look like that, and then he’d be Frank.

  “You know, Clea might be up there packing,” Amy said, but then Clea came down the stairs in her red-and-white dress, ready to film, and smiled at Rob when she saw him.

  “Well, hello there,” she said, and he leaped from the couch, elbowing Rachel in the process.

  “You look great,” he said.

  “So we’re still making a movie?” Amy said.

  “Well, of course,” Clea said, and went out onto the porch with Rob to torment her husband.

  And more power to her, Sophie thought, loathing Zane more than she ever had in her life.

  An hour later, Sophie was exhausted from watching all the raging egos in the dusty yard. Georgia flirted obnoxiously with Zane (keeping one eye on Frank), while Zane flirted obnoxiously with Rachel (keeping one eye on Clea), while Rachel politely did not tell him he was a jackass. Through it all, an oblivious Frank continued to drool on Clea, who flirted obnoxiously with Rob and kept an eye on everybody else to make sure she was the center of attention. It gave Sophie a headache, but Amy filmed it all with delight, including shots of the now bright red water tower. “It looks like a lipstick with a nipple,” she told Sophie. “Very female.” Sophie looked at Clea and said, “I’ve had enough ‘female’ for a while,” and went back into the house.

  She sat at the kitchen table with the dog at her feet and tried to work on the Phallic Variation, but Zane’s voice kept interrupting her thoughts.

  “She’s sexless,” she heard Zane say again, and she thought, You son of a bitch, I am not sexless. O
kay, maybe she wasn’t exciting, but she wasn’t sexless. Zane should talk to Phin, that’s what he should do.

  Although what would that prove? As Phin had pointed out the night before, he’d done all the work. She hadn’t exactly taken a walk on the wild side. It was more like she’d been walked.

  Which didn’t mean she couldn’t take a walk over there, it didn’t mean she couldn’t be sexy and exciting. When she thought about it, Temptation was the perfect place to go to the devil.

  Thinking about the devil made her think about Phin, and thinking about Phin made her sure. That’s what she’d do. The hell with Zane, she’d just go find Phin. And be exciting.

  She got up to call Brandon to tell him things were definitely off, and got his machine again. Well, she’d just work on an exciting sex scene for now and call him later.

  Two hours of anguished composition later, she’d tried to call Brandon four times and erased the words on her screen six times because they were so stupid, which proved Zane was right, damn him. Plus the temperature had risen at least ten degrees, and she was drowning in her own sweat. Even the dog had rolled over on its back and was panting heavily. Sophie looked at the words on her screen and thought, And that’s the only heavy breathing this garbage will ever hear, and deleted it all again.

  The problem was trying to write a love scene and stay a lady at the same time. It wasn’t possible. The minute you started thinking that writing sex was cheap and disgusting, your mind froze up and you wrote boring dreck. It was sort of like having sex. You either threw everything you had into it, or it wasn’t worth the bother.

  Which was probably why most of the sex she’d had up till now hadn’t been worth the bother.

  She sat back and stared at the wall as she contemplated this new thought, and the cherries sneered back again. Evidently they hadn’t gotten the good news they were apples.

  “Amy called and said you needed these,” Phin said from behind her, and Sophie leaped in her chair.

  “I hate it when you do that,” she said, trying to get her heart out of her throat.

  Phin dropped a box of fuses on the table and pulled out a chair. “Why are you so nervous?”

  “I’m not nervous.” Sophie refused to meet his eyes. “I’m annoyed. I hate those damn cherries, and now it turns out they’re apples. If you want to bring me something I really need, get me a gallon of white paint.”

  “If you don’t like them, don’t look at them,” Phin said. “Look at me.”

  “The cherries are beginning to look better,” Sophie said, staring at the wall.

  “You want to explain why you’re mad at me?”

  “I’m not mad at you,” she said, and made the mistake of looking at him.

  Even sitting in an ugly kitchen in the heat, he was gorgeous: cool and immaculate in another one of those damn perfect white shirts.

  “Good,” Phin said. “Amy says you’re coming to the Tavern tonight. Of course, this time you’ll be drinking Diet Coke without the rum.”

  Sophie forgot how gorgeous he was. “I’ll be drinking whatever I want. And give me one good reason why I’d want to go back to that dump.”

  Phin grinned at her, and Sophie’s heart betrayed her and kicked up a beat. “You had a good time last night, didn’t you?” he said.

  “Why do you give me an opening like that?” She turned back to her PowerBook, trying to ignore the sizzle that was making her dizzy. “You’re just begging me to say something crushing.”

  “You won’t.” Phin leaned back in his chair. “You’re too honest.”

  She wanted to wipe that smile off his face, to tell him it had been lousy, tell him he was entirely forgettable, tell him that she wasn’t honest, that she came from a long line of crooks and liars and deviants, that she’d been using him. . . . But when she met his eyes, she couldn’t do it. “Okay. It was phenomenal.”

  “I know,” Phin said.

  Sophie’s irritation rose again. “You know, women don’t find arrogance all that attractive.”

  “Giving me pointers on my technique?”

  “It could use some work.”

  “It got you on your back last night.”

  Sophie lifted her chin. “ ‘When you first came in for breakfast, when I first saw you, I thought you were handsome. Then, of course, you spoke.’ ”

  “So I make you nervous,” Phin said.

  “Not at all.”

  “Because that’s a movie quote, right? You know, if you do that with books, people think you’re intelligent.”

  Sophie lowered her chin. “If this is your pathetic attempt to seduce me again, you’re failing miserably.”

  “I don’t seduce women.” Phin shoved back his chair and stood up. “They just fall into my open arms.”

  “Clumsy of them,” Sophie said, feeling relieved and disappointed that he was going. She turned back to her empty screen and hated it that Zane was right. “A guy just called me sexless,” she blurted.

  “He’s wrong,” Phin said. “So, I’ll see you at the Tavern tonight?”

  There he stood, tall, blond, and capable of giving her not only the Phallic Variation and all the intense satisfaction that went with it, but also her love scene. And she wanted him. She was not sexless. She was practically hyperventilating because he was standing next to her. She was hot.

  “Yes.” Sophie swallowed. “We’ll be there.” He started to leave, smug as ever, so she said, “By the way, love the water tower. Looks like a giant lipstick with a nipple.”

  He turned back. “What?”

  She smiled at him. “The water tower. It looks like a lipstick now. Except there’s that bump on top.”

  “Catwalk,” Phin said. “It was harder to see when it was peach.”

  “It’s not hard now,” Sophie said. “In more ways than one. Gotta love it.”

  “Glad you like it,” Phin said, and left, not nearly as smug.

  Sophie went back to her PowerBook. She should be able to put all this heat to good use. Concentrate, she told herself, and tried to write the sex scene again.

  At seven, she put her head down on the kitchen table in despair, which was how Amy found her a few minutes later.

  “Not going well?” Amy said. “Not to worry. I asked Phin if he’d fix the slow drain in the kitchen sink tonight after the Tavern. And once you get him in the kitchen, how hard can it be to lure him upstairs?”

  “I don’t lure.”

  “Concentrate, Sophie,” Amy said. “Your insignificant other will be back tonight. What are you going to do about it?”

  “I have no idea.” Sophie thought about Phin, and blushed in the heat. “Maybe he’ll just take over like he did last time. And the earth will move, and then we’ll both look beautifully moist without being too disheveled.”

  “You don’t want to have sex,” Amy said. “You want to have sex in the movies.”

  Sophie thought about it. “No, I want to have sex. I’ve been trying to call Brandon all day to break things off so I can have the mayor tonight without guilt, but he won’t pick up the phone.”

  “He knows you too well,” Amy said. “He knows you won’t cheat, so if he doesn’t give you the chance to dump him, you’ll have to be faithful.”

  “I don’t have to be faithful.” Sophie thought again about the night to come, and began to have doubts. After all, this would involve taking her clothes off in front of a semi–complete stranger. “But I probably will be anyway. I have no moves, and I don’t see the mayor making one on his own. He’s not the aggressive type. The only reason he moved last night was that we were sort of talking dirty.”

  “So do that again,” Amy said.

  “I don’t think I can,” Sophie said, looking at the mess on her screen. “I can’t even write dirty.”

  “It’s easy. Just say, ‘Fuck me.’ He’ll take it from there.”

  “ ‘Fuck me.’ ” Sophie tried to imagine saying that to Phin. It sounded so unlike her. “I’ll think of something else.”

&
nbsp; “Simple ways are best,” Amy said. “Go with ‘Fuck me’ and get that scene.”

  Oh, right, Sophie thought. Then she thought of Zane. The least exciting woman he knew, huh? Then she thought of the dock. And Phin. And the heat rose again. Fuck me. “Fuck me,” she tried out loud.

  “There you go,” Amy said.

  “Fuck me,” Sophie said again, and went upstairs to practice while she put on Clea’s pink dress.

  Chapter Six

  At nine that night, Phin sat in the booth across from Wes and watched Sophie, stuck at a table with the rest of the crowd from the farm. She looked as fuckable as ever.

  “Amy’s over there,” Wes said. “We should—”

  “No,” Phin said, still watching Sophie. “As soon as Amy realizes she needs you, she’ll come over here and we won’t have to put up with Frank and Georgia. Although since you gave her that showerhead, she may not realize that anytime soon. Never give a woman an appliance that replaces you. She’ll use it and turn on you.”

  “She’s smart as hell,” Wes said, ignoring him. “And she’s funny and sharp, and she lays it right on the line. I like her.”

  “Try to think about something else,” Phin said.

  “I went to see Stephen Garvey this afternoon,” Wes said obediently. “He said he was going to take care of the Dempseys’ car to avoid negative publicity before the election. He seemed to think I was there because you’d sent me.”

  “Me?” Phin frowned at him. “Why would I—”

  “He said he knew if he went after the Dempseys, you’d be vindictive and use it against him, you being so closely tied to the movie people.”

  “ ‘Closely tied’?” Phin said, his mind drifting to rope and Sophie.

  “His words, not mine. He’s up to something and it’s got something to do with that movie.”

  Across the room, Sophie stretched, and Phin lost interest in Stephen. “Maybe if I ask nice, Sophie will tell me about the movie.”

  Wes rolled his eyes. “That’s good. Concentrate on the important stuff. What happened to her being a dangerous woman to get involved with?”

  Phin watched Sophie nod at Frank. Forget him, come over here to me. “I’m not talking about getting involved with her. I’m talking about seeing her naked.”