He closed his eyes. “You kept on doing it. When you knew we weren’t a one-night stand.”
“I stopped a long time ago,” Sophie said. “Before Stephen caught us in the kitchen, even. Before it was more than you just exercising with me.”
“Sophie, it was never just exercise.”
“Well, you never told me that.” Sophie felt her temper spurt even as she said it. “You make jokes and you stay cool and you do not get involved, and I’m supposed to feel guilty because I don’t recognize your deep emotional involvement?”
“You’re not supposed to betray the people you sleep with,” Phin said.
“By the time I realized there might be something to betray, it was too late,” Sophie said. “I owed Amy, too. And we didn’t think anybody would ever know. Nobody does know, except for you and Amy. And now the tapes are all gone. There’s nothing left of all that work.” She lifted her chin. “So you’re off the hook.”
“Then why does it still feel like it’s buried in my back?” Phin said.
He hadn’t turned to look at her once, and she lost it and punched him hard on the shoulder so he jerked around. “What do you want from me?” she said. “An apology? I’m sorry, I really am. You want me to destroy the tapes? They’re gone. You want me to feel guilty, to suffer? I do, I am. But you’re part of this, too, you know. You never said, ‘Sophie, you’re important to me, Sophie, this is important to me.’ You never even said, ‘I love you.’ You remember what you said when I said it on Saturday? You said, ‘Thank you.’ ”
Phin turned away from her, and she said, “ ‘Thank you.’ Yeah, that was a clear indication that you cared desperately about the sanctity of our relationship. You arrogant bastard.”
“Wait a minute,” Phin said. “Why are you yelling at me?”
Sophie stood up, and Phin grabbed the chain as the swing bounced. She said, “Because you betrayed me ten times more than I betrayed you. You knew you cared and you didn’t tell me, and now you come out here all wounded, saying it was more than just playing around and I should have known that?”
“I’m just saying,” Phin said quietly, “that it’s pretty much a basic rule that you don’t make public what a lover says to you in private.”
“What ‘private’?” Sophie waved her arm at the yard. “We weren’t private. You went down on me on the dock. You threw a lamp against the wall so you wouldn’t have to be alone with me. You did me on a car. It was all a game. And now you change the rules and you want me to feel guilty? Well, I’m not going to, so there. I’ve changed my mind. This is your fault.”
“My fault.” Phin stood up. “My fault. That’s rich.”
“Oh, that’s good.” Sophie nodded. “Now you can feel indignant and go back into town and lord it over the council meeting tomorrow and patronize everybody and think about how lucky you are to not be involved with somebody as irrational as me because you are clearly the cool one in control and—”
“Sophie, shut up.” Phin leaned against the porch post, looking more tired than she’d ever seen him. “I’m so far out of control, I don’t think there’s anything left of my life.”
“Well, then, do something about it instead of standing there all smug,” Sophie said. “You’re playing so many balls ahead, you don’t even know there’s a game in front of you.”
“You know, I knew you were the devil’s candy,” Phin said, as if he weren’t listening to her at all. “As soon as I set eyes on you, I knew you’d bring me down. You and that mouth.”
Sophie stuck out her chin. “And I knew you were a town boy, out to get my virtue and leave me crying.” She waited for him to say something snarky about her virtue, but all he did was shake his head.
“We should have gone with our instincts,” he said, and started down the porch steps.
Sophie stared after him, nonplussed. “So what did you come out here for?” she called after him. “Vindication? Validation? Revenge? What?”
“I don’t know,” he said, as he jerked open his car door. “But I sure as hell didn’t get it.”
“Well, that’s the first time you came out here and didn’t get what you wanted,” Sophie yelled. “You’re long overdue to go home empty-handed, as far as I’m concerned.”
He stood inside the open car door for a minute and then he said, “Do you know who pushed you into the river?”
“What?” Sophie looked at him incredulously. “What are you talking about? We’re in the middle of a fight here.” When he stood there, waiting, she said, “No, I’ve told you a million times, I don’t know.”
“Because it wasn’t Stephen,” Phin said. “Which means somebody else is gunning for you.”
“It could be anybody,” Sophie said. “The whole damn town hates me.”
Phin shook his head. “No, they don’t. Most of them don’t even know you, and the ones that do, like you. Nobody’d want to kill you.”
“After tonight they all do,” Sophie said.
“Oh, I think they’re pretty much concentrating on me, thanks to Stephen.” Phin looked grim in the moonlight. “And you’re leaving anyway. I’m the one facing the music. And it ain’t Dusty Springfield, babe. Have a nice life.” He got in the car and slammed the door and started the engine, drowning out anything else she might say, like, Come back here and fight this out, you bastard.
When he was gone, Amy came out on the porch and handed her a Dove Bar. Sophie took it and followed her to the swing, which Lassie crawled out from under, now that the shouting had stopped.
“That’s not over, you know,” Amy said.
“It might be,” Sophie said, trying not to sniff. “He’s such an uptight jerk, it just might be.”
“Nah,” Amy said. “He’s just trying to figure out what hit him. And what he’s going to do with the pieces. He’ll be back. He’s like us that way. Gets what he wants.”
They rocked in silence for a couple of minutes, and then Sophie said, “Are you okay with that? With Phin and me?”
“Yeah.” Amy nodded. “Davy was right. And Wes likes him so he must be okay.”
“What did Wes say about the video?”
“Not much.” Amy bit into her ice cream. “He didn’t care about the permit thing at all. He wants to know who switched the tapes and played porn to Temptation, and he wants to nail somebody for shooting Zane, preferably Clea or Davy. I don’t know why he’s so fixated on them, but he seems sure they know something.”
“They’re both gone, you know,” Sophie said. “She left before he did. I don’t think she even told Rob good-bye. So it’s just us.”
Amy nodded. “I’ll stick with you through the council meeting tomorrow. And then I’m going to L.A. Unless we get arrested for violating the permit.”
Sophie stopped the swing. “What?”
“Wes said it wouldn’t be a big deal and we could come back to the farm. He said he and Phin would work it out because the whole permit thing was probably unconstitutional. But he also said we had to stay until they got it fixed. By Thursday, he said.”
“Phin isn’t going to fix anything for me,” Sophie said. “And I was the only living Dempsey who’d never been in jail.”
“Dad will be so proud,” Amy said.
“There’s a comfort,” Sophie said, and rocked for a minute. “Phin said something else. He said Stephen wasn’t the one who pushed me.”
“And he got this information how?”
Sophie shook her head. “I don’t know, but he was sure. And he hates Stephen so if he could have pinned it on him, he would have. So who did?”
“This doesn’t make sense,” Amy said. “I’d bet money Stephen switched the tapes. If he was out to get you—”
“Why would he be out to get me?” Sophie said. “Phin’s the one in his way.”
Amy stopped swinging. “So it really was somebody else?”
“Whoever it was, pushed me really hard,” Sophie said slowly. “And then watched me fall into that river and get swept away. Somebody really had t
o hate me to do that. So who was it?”
“ ‘We all go a little mad sometimes,’ ” Amy said.
Sophie thought about Liz and Phin and Dillie, trapped together, tearing each other apart. “That has to end,” she said. “I have to at least fix that before I go.”
“You’re not going to go see her, are you?” Amy said.
“I have to,” Sophie said. “She’s trying to kill me.”
Chapter Fifteen
At noon the next day, Phin watched Wes climb the steps to the bookstore. “Good, it’s you. I couldn’t take one more person telling me how disappointed they were in me, what a loss I am as mayor to have let that happened, or how delighted they’ll be not to vote for me in November. It’s been a real stampede in here.” He rubbed his neck. “And not one of them bought a book.”
Wes sat down in his chair and put his feet on the rail. “So it’s all over, huh?”
“Looks that way,” Phin said. “I’ve still got six weeks before the election, but this is the kind of thing that sticks in people’s minds.”
“Yeah.” Wes nodded sadly. “So how’s Sophie?”
“Furious,” Phin said, trying to sound detached about it. “She’s decided it’s my fault.” He shrugged. “It’s better this way. If I’d talked her around, I’d have had to listen to Dusty Springfield every day for the rest of my life.”
“Yeah, and there’d have been all that sex, too,” Wes said. “That would have gotten old.”
“You can shut up anytime now,” Phin said.
“And she could kick your ass at pool, too,” Wes said.
“So, Amy still going to L.A.?”
“Shut the fuck up,” Wes said.
“We did real well, didn’t we?” Phin said, giving up on detached. “Christ, I haven’t seen a crash-and-burn like this since . . .” He shook his head at the sky. “I’ve never seen a crash-and-burn like this. We’re good.”
“Finest kind.” Wes stood up, letting the legs of his chair hit the porch floor with a thud. “However, unlike you, I am not a quitter. I don’t have a plan, but I’m not a quitter.”
“I’m not a quitter,” Phin said. “I just have no interest in going out there and having Sophie slam the door in my face to ‘All Cried Out,’ shortly followed by Davy trying to beat me up.”
“He’s gone,” Wes said. “Hit the airport last night and flew to the Bahamas.”
Phin straightened a little. “Did he, now?”
“Yep.” Wes went down the steps. “So did Clea.”
“And you let them go?”
“I can get ’em if I want ’em. I think they’re both guilty as hell, but I can’t figure out what they did. So I’m not sure I want them.”
“But you want Amy,” Phin said.
“I’ll get Amy.” Wes started down the street and then stopped and came back a couple of steps. “Almost forgot. The ballistics report came back. Zane’s bullet did not come from your dad’s gun.”
Phin let his breath out. “Finally, something goes my way.” Then he frowned. “So my mother used the gun to frame Sophie, not caring that the ballistics test would trip her up? That doesn’t make sense. She’s nuts but she’s not stupid.”
“I think the real gun’s in the river,” Wes said. “Everything about this yahoo so far says he’s impulsive. It would make sense at the time for him to drop the gun in the water after he shot Zane. And with the current the way it’s been, I don’t think we’re going to find it. If that’s true, and somebody decided to frame Sophie as an afterthought, he’d have to get another gun. And if all he wanted to do was start gossip about Sophie he wouldn’t care about the ballistics report.”
“Or she.”
Wes shrugged. “God knows, our women are as nuts as our men. Which reminds me, looked at the water tower lately?”
“The water tower?” Phin went down the steps to look up the Hill. “Oh. Nice.”
The rain had done its work, washing off the bloody streaks of Stephen’s cheap paint, but, as the Coreys had told him, red stains. It was flesh again, but it was a rosy flesh, a glowing flesh, round and full above the trees. Only, the catwalk at the top was still red. “A lipstick with a nipple,” Sophie had said, but now it didn’t look like a lipstick anymore.
“I like this even better,” Wes said. “It’s friendlier. And God knows I could use some ‘friendly.’ ”
“Stephen’s really going to hate this,” Phin said.
“Yeah,” Wes said as he started back up the street. “It’s going to be some council meeting. See you there.”
Phin thought about the meeting and his neck tightened even more. Stephen would be after his butt, his mother would be even more homicidal over the tarnished Tucker legacy, the entire population would want him barbecued for contributing to the delinquency of their minors, and Hildy would ignore it all to protect her new mammary water tower.
And after all of that, Sophie wouldn’t give him the time of day because he was a dickhead town boy.
She’s a fucking nutcase, he told himself, and concentrated on the stuff that mattered in his life.
He was going to lose the election to that moron Stephen in six weeks, there was something to look forward to. His dad at least had gone down over the New Bridge, something civic. He was going down over a porn flick. And if he hadn’t gone down in the first place, he wouldn’t be in this mess. The devil’s candy, and he’d bit. He closed his eyes against the memory. “ ‘I coulda been a contendah,’ ” he said, to nobody in particular, and then walked back up the steps to the bookstore.
“Wait a minute,” his mother called from the street, and he turned as she reached at the bottom of the steps. “I’m on my way to Hildy’s but I want to talk to you first.”
“Oh, good,” Phin said, and sat down.
“I realize we’ve had problems,” Liz said, as she came up the steps. “But that’s all behind us now that you’re not going to see that woman again. Things are bad right now, but we have six weeks and if you stay away—”
“Mom, we’re going to lose.”
“We are not going to lose,” Liz said. “Tuckers do not lose, we’re not going to lose, I’m not going to lose you, we’re going to—”
“What are you talking about?” Phin said. “You—” He stopped as what she’d said registered. “Fuck. That’s what this is about?”
“Watch your language,” Liz said. “Everything is—”
“Mom, You’re not going to lose me,” Phin said. “I’m not going to die if I don’t win. My heart is fine, and even more important, I don’t give a damn about being mayor. I care about winning, but not about being mayor. I’m not going to die if I lose.”
“Well, of course you’re not going to die,” Liz said, but her voice shook a little. “Of course not. Now, we’ll get everything back to normal. Dillie will forget, and you’ll be reelected, things will be just the same. I think you were right about not getting married again, I won’t bring it up anymore, we’ll just go back to the way we were.” She smiled at him, fiercely cheerful. “Just the three of us again.”
Just the three of them. Trapped and frozen in the house on the Hill.
“No,” Phin said, and Liz’s smile evaporated and the cobra came back.
“Listen to me. I know you’re blinded by your hormones on this, but will you just look at where this woman has left you?”
Phin nodded. “With nothing. She destroyed my life.”
“Exactly.” Liz bit off her words. “But we can get it back again. We—”
“Why the hell would I want to do that?” Phin shook his head at her startled face. “My life was a fucking wasteland; all Sophie did was clear the brush.”
“What are you talking about?” Liz said.
“I don’t want to be mayor,” Phin said. “I never wanted to be mayor. I’ll fight for the office this one last time, but don’t expect me to give anything more for the Tucker legacy. I’ve already given too damn much for it.”
“This is all because of that woman.�
� Liz looked as if she were about to hyperventilate.
“Yep.” No more mayor, he thought, and felt wonderful. No more council meetings, no more wrongheaded citizenry, no more fights over streetlights and bridges, just books and Dillie and pool.
And Sophie. The tension seeped from his muscles and he relaxed. Thank God for Sophie and her stupid fucking movie.
“She’s corrupted you,” Liz said, almost spitting in her frustration. “She’s—”
“Well, it runs in her family,” Phin said. “The rest of your grandchildren are going to be half-degenerate.”
Liz froze.
Phin nodded at her sympathetically. “Yeah, I have to marry her. I’m sorry, Mom. I know this wasn’t what you had planned. Any last words before you disown me?”
Liz swallowed and put on her Let’s-be-reasonable-or-I’ll-kill-you face. “You can’t possibly be serious about marrying her. She’s a known pornographer.”
Phin nodded. “She beat me at pool, too.”
“Oh, dear God,” Liz said, and sat down on the step.
Sophie waited in front of the courthouse until Liz came into view. Then she got out of the car and said, “I need to talk to you.”
Liz kept on walking. “I have nothing to say to you.”
“Then I’ll go to Wes,” Sophie said. “He’ll keep it quiet, but it would still be better if we just talked here. You know how this town finds out everything.”
Liz stood very still for a long minute, her jaw clenched as she stared at Sophie. “In the car,” she said finally. “I’d rather people didn’t see us together.”
Sophie nodded and got back in the car.
“Talk,” Liz said, when she was in the car.
“I want you to stop trying to kill me,” Sophie said, and Liz lost her frozen expression.
“What?”
“Somebody’s been trying to kill me. And you’re the only one in this town who hates me enough to do that.”
Welcome to Temptation/Bet Me Page 34