“Shut up for a minute,” Leo said, and Rachel was so surprised, she shut up. He’d tightened his arm around her when he’d told her to shut up, and that felt good, too, to have him holding her that tight and sure, and, for the first time since Zane had grabbed her, she felt safe. If she could spend the rest of her life with Leo’s arm around her, she’d be okay.
“L.A. is not your answer,” he said. “We’ll just go to Wes and tell him everything and you’ll get points for being so honest.”
Going to Wes sounded like a lousy idea, except he’d said “we’ll go,” and that sounded wonderful.
“But we should get there first, before anybody else. Who else knows about this?”
“Just you,” Rachel said, feeling almost cheerful. “Rob knows about the Tavern because he was driving and he knows Zane grabbed me, but he doesn’t know I Maced him and pushed him.”
“You only told me?” Leo sounded amazed.
“You’re the only one I trust,” Rachel said. “Besides, you’ll know what to do. You know everything.” It sounded dorky when she said it, but it was true.
“Oh, great.”
Leo tightened his arm around her, so she leaned into him a little more, and that felt so good she put both her arms around him and hugged him to her.
“I know I’m a pain,” she said into his chest. “I know I drive you crazy, but you’re the only one I—”
“Rachel, don’t—” He let go of her but she held on.
“I need you,” she said. “I need you and I trust you and I love you.” She hadn’t meant to add the last part, but there it was and it was true, and she felt wonderful as soon as she said it. “I know you think I’m just a hick kid, but I really love you. I just didn’t realize until this happened and you were the only one.” She swallowed and then raised her head so she could look in his eyes. “I want to be with you. It’s okay if you don’t—”
“I’m not what you think I am,” he said. “Nobody could be what you think I am.”
She shook her head. “You can be. You are. You’re the best.”
He closed his eyes, and she pressed closer, afraid of losing him.
“I should let go of you,” Leo said.
And then she kissed him.
Phin sat at the bar—the only guy in the Tavern in a linen jacket—wondering if Sophie was going to go through with her promise. He pressed his cold beer to his bruised eye and thought about Sophie and his fantasy, such a great thing for her to do, slink into the Tavern with half the town watching and tell him she wanted him while he grinned down into those big brown eyes. . . .
He looked at his watch.
Fifteen minutes past eight. Sophie was never late. She’d chickened out. He tossed a ten on the bar to take care of his tab, and then turned to go, and that’s when she slid onto the stool next to him. “Promptness is a virtue—” he began, but the rest of his sentence died in his throat as he got a good look at her.
She was wearing a bright red tube dress that started low on her breasts and stopped halfway to her knees, a narrow red ribbon tied behind her neck holding it up. Her hair was loose in dark ringlets on her shoulders, and her cheeks were flushed, and she’d put on a lot of lipstick so that her usual pink mouth was a red slash that matched the dress. The only jarring note was the bruise on her forehead, and she’d mostly covered that with makeup. He looked down at her breasts again, stretching the red fabric of the dress far past any safe point, and his palms itched to jerk that dress down and set her free. “Very hot dress.”
“Literally.” Sophie tugged at the top, making everything shift beautifully. “It’s Clea’s. This stuff doesn’t breathe and it itches.”
“I don’t think that was your line,” Phin said. “Are you sure that’s going to stay up?”
“No,” Sophie said. “That’s why I’m tense and forgetting my lines. Wait a minute.” She frowned in concentration and he grinned at her, and she said, “Knock it off. You’re not supposed to patronize me, you jerk.” She took a deep breath, which he appreciated, and then she leaned closer to him, and he almost fell into her cleavage.
“I saw you across the room,” she said throatily. “I want you, I need you, I must have you, and I’m not wearing—”
“Phin, I need to talk to you,” somebody said behind him, and Phin said, “No, you don’t,” but Sophie had looked over his shoulder and was already sliding off the stool, taking her breasts with her.
“Are you all right, Georgia?” she said in her normal voice, and Phin shook his head to get his mind back to where it belonged.
“I just need to talk to Phin,” Georgia said, as she looked at Sophie’s dress, and then she hopped up on Sophie’s stool and smiled at Phin.
“Oh.” Sophie looked a little taken aback. “Uh, I’ll just be over . . . here.” She gestured behind her, and Phin looked past her to where several assorted townsmen were watching her with great appreciation.
“Do not talk to anybody,” he told her.
She nodded, and went down to the end of the bar, and Phin craned his neck to see her go.
“Phin?” Georgia said, leaning forward to smile weakly at him and then she blinked. “What happened to your eye?”
Sophie’s end of the bar began to get crowded as a general migration headed in her direction. “Make it fast, Georgia,” Phin said. “I’m in the middle of something here.”
“Oh,” she said. “Okay. It’s about Frank. I’m really worried—”
“Georgia, I don’t do marriage counseling.” He tried to see Sophie at the end of the bar, but there were too many people. Male people.
“I think he might have killed Zane,” Georgia said, her voice shaking. “He wasn’t home that night, he didn’t come home at all, and he was so mad when he found out—” She dropped her eyes. “You know.”
“I know,” Phin said. “Try not to fuck other men, and he won’t get so mad.”
“Well, he was doing it with that bitch Clea,” Georgia said, stung. “What was I supposed to do?”
“Not have sex with Zane,” Phin said, trying to see around her. “Georgia, go home. Get some rest, talk to Frank, apologize, he’ll probably tell you he spent the night at Larry’s, and things will be fine in the morning.”
“You think so?” Georgia hiccuped. “Oh, Phin. I’m so worried.” Her voice dropped an octave. “And I hate that bitch Clea.”
“Right.” She started to lean into him, and he took her arm and helped her off Sophie’s stool. “Good night, Georgia. Careful going home. Do not drive.”
Georgia nodded and wobbled off, and Phin caught Sophie’s eye. She sidled out from the group at her end of the bar and came slinking unsteadily back, teetering, he saw for the first time, on ridiculously high, red spike heels.
Her legs were flawless. And they went all the way up to where she wasn’t wearing underwear, if she was telling the truth. Given how short that dress was, Phin wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d hedged her bets on that one.
“Hello, gorgeous,” she said as she slid onto the stool. “I saw you across the room—” She met his eyes and grinned, which shouldn’t have been sexy at all but was, and he grinned back and thought, Hell of a woman, my Sophie.
“—and I want you—” She licked her lips and leaned closer. “I need you, I—”
“Phin, I have to talk to you,” Frank said from behind him, and Phin said without turning around, “Get out of here, or I will hurt you.”
“It’s about Georgia,” Frank said, and Sophie said in her normal voice, “I’ll just be at the end of the bar.”
“No you won’t,” Phin said.
“I’ll just be at the jukebox.” Sophie slid off her stool, and Phin looked down at her round butt in that tight dress and saw no panty line. In that dress, he’d have seen a birthmark, so she wasn’t wearing underwear. And she was walking away from him.
“This better be good, Frank,” he said.
Frank took her place on the stool, and Phin sighed, resigned to at least another tw
o minutes of Lutz.
“I saw you talking to Georgia,” Frank said. “And—” He frowned at Phin. “What happened to your eye?”
“Frank, what do you want?”
“What did Georgia say?”
“She’s afraid you killed Zane,” Phin said. “Why don’t you go discuss that with her?”
“I think she did it, Phin.” Frank looked pasty in the dim bar light. “I think she went after him after that Jell-O crack. She went for me with a knife when we were first married and I told her that it was okay to move in bed, and let me tell you, she wasn’t kidding.”
Phin watched Sophie at the jukebox. “I don’t want to know this, Frank. Tell Wes. Human interaction fascinates him.”
“And it was that time of the month, too.” Frank shook his head. “Georgia and PMS are a bad combination. Plus she was drunk. She’s a mean drunk.”
“Frank.”
“I’m just saying, you be careful believing what she tells you. She’s crazy. And Zane, he was crazy, too. You wouldn’t believe the lies he was telling. Probably told some about me.” Frank laughed.
“That would be the vasectomy.”
Frank closed his eyes. “Oh, crap, don’t tell Georgia.”
“I don’t plan to,” Phin said. You stupid son of a bitch.
“Jesus, if she knew,” Frank said, leaning against the bar, going weak at the thought, “she’d kill me. She really is crazy, Phin.”
“Well, the good news is, she’d kill you, not Zane,” Phin pointed out.
Frank frowned, not seeing why that was good news.
“Zane’s the one who died, Frank. If you were dead, she’d be a good candidate, but since you’re still with us—”
Frank perked up a little, “Right.”
“—she evidently doesn’t know about the vasectomy.”
Frank began to get a little color in his face. “Right, right.”
In the background, the jukebox started playing “Some of Your Lovin’,” and Phin lost what little interest he had in Frank. “Well, I have things to do. Go talk to your wife. Save your marriage. Whatever.” He took Frank’s arm and helped him off the barstool.
Frank nodded and wandered off, slightly happier than he had been when they’d started, and Sophie came back and boosted herself up on the stool, making everything bounce, including his libido. Then she leaned forward, stopping his heart with the view, put her hot little hand on his thigh (Higher, he thought), and said, “I saw you across the room—”
Then she stopped, caught by something from behind him.
He turned and saw Rachel searching the crowd with Leo close behind her. No, he thought, and then Sophie grabbed him by the knot in his tie, and he had to turn back to her to keep from choking.
“I’m not wearing any underwear,” she said, nose-to-nose with him. “Want to fuck me?”
The room swung around as all the blood left his brain. “God, yes,” he said, and pulled her off the stool to drag her to the door.
“I’m sorry, that wasn’t your fantasy,” she said from behind him.
“Not a problem,” he said, dodging people like a demented quarterback with Sophie in tow. “Yours was better.”
Behind him, Rachel called, “Phin!” but he didn’t stop until he had Sophie at the car and he’d opened the door to the backseat.
“Backseat?” Sophie said, and he said, “I’ll make this up to you later. Get in there and strip.”
She slid across the seat and he slid in after her, reaching for her before the door slammed closed. He shoved his hands up her thighs, pushing her rubber band of a dress up as he went, and when his hands moved over her naked butt, he said, “I’m going to last about five seconds here.” Sophie wriggled to slide under him, and he added, “Maybe not even that.”
“Your fantasy, bear,” Sophie said, twining her hands around his neck. “Do with me what you will.”
He tugged at the top of her dress, and she let go of him to reach behind her neck and untie the straps so he could pull it down. Her breasts popped out as if they were as glad to be free as he was to see them, and when he’d filled his hands with them, and she’d arched her hips into his, he said, “I swear, I’ll make this up to you later,” and reached for his zipper for the best fast fuck of his life.
And then Sophie said, “Ack!” and slid out from under him, tugging her dress up and down at once.
“What?” he said, trying to pull her back and she said, “Window,” and gestured with her elbow.
When he turned, Rachel was peering at them.
He rolled it down and said between his teeth, “Get out of here, Rachel, this is not the time,” and she said, “Please, Phin.”
“No,” he said, and started to roll up the window, and she said, “I think I killed Zane.”
He froze, a thousand thoughts colliding in his head, half of them to do with plunging hot into Sophie and the other half to do with Rachel in big trouble and the inevitability of the choice in front of him.
“We tried to find Wes, but he’s out, and we don’t have his pager number and we knew you—”
“Oh . . .” Phin searched for words vile enough to vent with and then banged his head into the seat in front of him and went for the classic, “Fuck!”
Rachel took a step back, and Phin took a deep breath. Then, in his normal voice, he said to her, “I’ll call Wes. You follow us to the station.” He rolled the window up and took another deep breath and then turned to Sophie, who was trying unsuccessfully to put everything back where it had been. “You know, before you came here, I never screamed like that.”
Sophie put her chin in the air and tried to look superior, which was difficult considering her hands were full of her breasts. “You were repressed. Which is why God sent me to save you.”
“It wasn’t God,” he said, watching her trying to stretch fabric where it would never go again. “It was the devil.” He thought about just ripping the damn dress off her, but then he’d never get to the station, and Rachel needed him there.
“I have to go to the police station,” he said.
“I picked that up. Uh, could I borrow your jacket? I don’t think this is ever going to work again.”
He took off his jacket and passed it over and watched as she gave up the good fight and the breasts he wanted appeared within reach again, only to be covered by his linen jacket. He thought about the smooth silk lining of the jacket sliding over all that smooth, warm flesh and felt light-headed again. “We have a minute,” he said, and reached for her, and she blocked his hand.
“Rachel,” she said, and he gave up and moved to the front seat to call Wes on the car phone and tell him about their latest disaster. “I’m sorry this didn’t work out,” Sophie called to him from the backseat.
“The night is still young,” he said, trying to see her in the rearview mirror, and then Wes answered, and he concentrated on the problem at hand instead of the pleasure in the backseat.
The only part of Rachel’s confession that Phin found even vaguely interesting was that Rob had called her to meet him exactly where Zane had turned up. From the look on Wes’s face, that was the only part that interested him, too. When he’d sent Rachel off with Leo and a stern warning to tell the police everything from now on, Wes turned back to Phin and said, “I want to talk to that dumb fuck Rob.”
“Me, too,” Phin said. “But not now. I have unfinished business with Sophie.”
“How’s Amy?”
“Miserable. Call her. Hell, you knew she was bent.”
“She lied to me,” Wes said.
“She lies to everybody,” Phin said. “It’s part of being a Dempsey. You want the excitement and the tube top, you have to take the lies, too.”
“I don’t want them that bad,” Wes said miserably, and Phin said, “Sure you do,” and went out to find Sophie.
When he got to the farm, everything was dark and the door was locked. Given the turn the crime rate had taken in Temptation, that was smart, but it wasn’t helping
him get to Sophie. He stood out in the front yard and considered trying to climb the front porch to her window and rejected it for the moment. No point in killing himself for sex unless he had to.
Instead, he picked up a stone from the yard and threw it at her window. Unfortunately, it was open, but on his next one he got lucky and hit Sophie, who had come to the window.
“Ouch,” she said as she stuck her head out. Her shoulders were pale and naked in the moonlight, and he realized she was wrapped in a sheet.
“Are you naked?” he said.
“You threw a rock at me,” Sophie said.
“Think of it as foreplay,” Phin said. “Come down and play.”
“It’s midnight,” Sophie said, and pulled her head in.
Well, he’d tried. He sat down on the hood of the Volvo and decided to give her five minutes in case she changed her mind, but she surprised him by showing up almost immediately, wearing his jacket and nothing else, Lassie padding sleepily beside her.
“You’re a biddable woman,” he said, as she boosted herself up on the hood beside him, and the dog stretched out in the dirt and fell asleep.
“There’s generally a payoff if I do what you tell me,” Sophie said. “Also, it seemed weird tonight not arguing with you flat on my back, so this is sort of closure.”
“Closure?” She’s leaving, he thought, she’s going back to the therapist, and panic kicked up his pulse even though he knew it was stupid.
“We never did finish your fantasy,” she told him. “We were building to a climax there, and then you wandered off. How’s Rachel?”
“Not guilty of anything but self-defense,” Phin said. “How are you?”
Sophie smiled up at him. “I have a fantasy.”
“If it takes a lot of energy, it may stay a fantasy,” Phin said, and thought, Anything you want.
Sophie let his jacket fall open so that she sat pretty much naked on the hood of the car. “ ‘Right here,’ ” she said in a Brooklyn accent, patting the hood. “ ‘On the Oriental.’ ”
“It’s a Volvo,” Phin said, trying to be cool. “It’s Swedish.” Then he looked at how round and hot she was and gave in. “A naked woman on an expensive car. I think this is my fantasy. Without the movie quote, of course.”
Welcome to Temptation/Bet Me Page 28