Welcome to Temptation

by Jennifer Crusie

  “Yeah,” Sophie said, drifting toward the door. “Tomorrow’s good.” She closed the door behind her and stood on the porch looking dazedly out at Temptation’s Main Street

  baking in the late-afternoon sun.

  Nice little town, she thought. Pretty.

  The door rattled behind her and Phin came out, holding a white sweater. “Forgot to give this to you.” He handed it to her just as a car went past.

  It slowed down, and Phin waved.

  “Anybody we know?” Sophie said, shaking the sweater out. It had a large red T with a red-and-white basketball in the middle of it.

  “I know them. You don’t,” Phin said, and Sophie thought, Story of my life, town boy.

  “We’ll be very careful with the sweater,” she told him, and he said, “Don’t bother, I have more.”

  “Of course you do,” Sophie said, and started down the steps.

  “Frosty,” Phin said, and went back inside.

  “Satisfied,” Sophie said to nobody, and went back to the farm.

  “I suppose you had to,” Wes said when Phin went back to join him at the table.

  “Pretty much. She seduced me.”

  “Yeah, right,” Wes said. “She said, ‘Please fix the kitchen drain,’ and you interpreted that—”

  “She said, ‘Fuck me.’ ” Phin put two balls on the table and picked up his cue. “I interpreted that to mean she wanted sex.”

  “Oh.” Wes picked up his cue. “That would have been my call, too.” He squinted at the table. “Why would she have said that?”

  “On a guess? Because she wanted sex.” Phin bent to shoot, and Wes did the same. They stroked the balls to the opposite cushion and then watched them roll back. Both balls hit the second cushion, but Wes’s stayed an inch behind Phin’s.

  Phin racked the balls for him and stepped away from the table. “She’s not as uptight as she looks. She wants to be a straight arrow, but she’s bent as hell.”

  Wes slammed the cue ball into the rack and the balls scattered, two finding pockets. “So you’re helping her find the real Sophie.”

  “I’m pretty much doing whatever she tells me to,” Phin said. “That’s working out well for me. She called the therapist last night and broke it off, so you can forget giving me grief on that account.”

  Wes made the next ball and walked around to the other side of the table. “So thanks to you, her relationship is over.”

  “Is this going to be a long conversation?” Phin said.

  “I just want to know why she’s giving up a solid relationship for seven more days of sex with you.” Wes stopped to chalk.

  “I have no idea,” Phin said. “I’m just grateful.”

  “You said that first day she was up to something.” Wes pocketed the second ball. “I think you were right. And Stephen is very hot to find out what and link you to it, and Zane Black thinks he knows.”

  Wes chalked again as Phin said, “Zane Black?”

  Wes nodded. “He came in today. Tracked me down on a Sunday to say I should look into Amy’s background. He said I should close down the movie because he was pretty sure it was something we wouldn’t like, and once I got a look at Amy’s history, I’d know it for sure.”

  Phin felt his old unease about the movie come sneaking back. “Did you check?”

  Wes nodded again. “She’s clean. But I’m still worried about Stephen.” He bent to shoot again, adding, “Especially since you appear to lose your mind every time you get near Sophie.”

  “So, you getting anywhere with Amy?” Phin said, and Wes miscued.

  “You want to play pool or talk?” Wes said.

  “I want to play pool,” Phin said, and began to run the table, trying not to think about what kind of trouble Sophie could be getting into out at the farm with that damn movie. He’d just have to watch her more closely, he decided.

  His civic duty.

  The next morning, Sophie handed Amy the almond-oil scene.

  “This is good,” Amy said when she’d finished reading. “Almond oil, huh?”

  “It wasn’t so much the oil,” Sophie said, “as what he did with it. I think he reads a lot.” She paused and then added, “I met his mother, too.”

  “That bad?”

  “Angela Lansbury in The Manchurian Candidate. I kept waiting for her to say, ‘Why don’t you pass the time by playing a little solitaire?’ and then the last thing I’d see would be Phin’s eyes glazing over.”

  “That would explain a lot about Phin,” Amy said. “There’s a considerable chill factor there.”

  “That would be because his mother is a Frigidaire,” Sophie said.

  “One of the Hill Frigidaires?” Amy said. “These old families sure know how to repel outsiders.”

  “Yeah,” Sophie said, feeling a little depressed. “They sure do.”

  They heard a car come down the lane, and Amy went to look. “Who do we know that drives a blue BMW?” she said, and Sophie said, “Us? Nobody,” but when the car stopped and a champagne blonde got out, she said, “Oh, no.”

  Amy squinted out across the yard. “Who is that?”

  “Phin’s mother,” Sophie said, and pushed past her to go out onto the porch.

  “My son is an important man in this town,” Liz said carefully, when they were sitting on the swing alone, Amy and the dog having taken one look at Liz and retreated into the house. Sophie was melting in the heat —she could feel the sweat trickling between her breasts— but Liz wasn’t even flushed, even in her silk suit. “The Tuckers have always been important here.”

  Sophie nodded. The woman had to be an alien.

  “I’m sure that seems amusing to you, coming as you do from the city—”

  “No,” Sophie said. “I’m not amused at all. He told me about the New Bridge. I understand how important it is.”

  Liz nodded. “Thank you. That makes what I have to say much easier.” She pressed her lips together. “I realize that you and my son are involved in a liaison, and that is none of my business. But the political well-being of this town is my business, has always been the business of the Tuckers, and it’s my duty to make sure that it is not threatened. Your association with him is unfortunate from a political perspective. When are you leaving Temptation?”

  Sophie drew back, stung in spite of herself. Well, what had she expected? Welcome to the family? “Next Sunday,” Sophie said, holding her temper.

  “Will you be seeing him in Cincinnati?”

  Sophie took a deep breath. “We haven’t talked about it.”

  “I see.” Liz stared out across the barren yard, her face like stone. “But if he decided to pursue the relationship once you went back to Cincinnati, you would agree.”

  “I have no idea,” Sophie said. “By this time next week, I may loathe him.” She thought about Phin, and fairness made her add, “Or not.”

  “He doesn’t have any money, you know.”

  Sophie jerked around to look at her, all the anger she’d been repressing breaking through. “What?”

  “He doesn’t have any money.” Liz stared out at the yard. “The Tuckers have never had money. The money comes from my family.”

  I’m not after his money, you ice cube. Sophie shook her head, willing herself to stay calm through her fury. “You know, you’re not thinking this through.”

  “Really, Miss Dempsey—”

  “I realize your view is clouded on this because you’re his mother, but he’s gorgeous and smart and funny and kind and skilled. He’s fixed half the stuff in this house. Do you know how attractive that is?”

  “His father was like that,” Liz said, taken aback a little.

  “Then you know how attractive that is. But mostly, he’s just sexy as hell.” Liz flinched, and Sophie thought, Good. “Trust me, if Phin were standing on a street corner in a barrel, holding a cup with pencils in it, women would still be lying at his feet.” Sophie stopped, caught by the image. “Okay, that’s a little weirder than I meant it to be, but you
get my drift. He doesn’t need money to be attractive. In fact, he’s a lot more attractive to me without it. Rich people are usually lousy human beings.”

  Liz raised an eyebrow at her.

  “Well, you haven’t impressed me much so far,” Sophie told her. “I still don’t know why you’re here. If I was after him for his money, what would you do? Buy me off? I’m warning you, I’m expensive.”

  Liz smiled at Sophie and Sophie wished she hadn’t. “I can offer you—”

  “Forget it,” Sophie said, cutting her off with pleasure. “You keep your money, I’m keeping him. As an investment.”

  Liz’s eyes grew colder, if that was possible. “Don’t underestimate me.”

  “Don’t underestimate me, either,” Sophie said, just as sharply. “I’m sure you’re out here to protect your son, and I can sympathize. My family is important to me, too. But I’m tired of being insulted. So let’s cut to the chase: I know he doesn’t have any money, which is fine by me because it’s not his money I want. We low-class women are like that. We just go for the cheap thrill. So the only thing you have that I want is your son. Sorry.”

  “Clearly I made a mistake by coming out here.” Liz got to her feet. “I was hoping to make you see reason.”

  “No, you weren’t,” Sophie said. “You were hoping to intimidate me so I wouldn’t try to get into your world. Well, you can relax. I wouldn’t have your world as a gift.”

  “You don’t get my world as a gift,” Liz told her, her voice slicing through Sophie’s bravado. “You earn the privilege of entering, so don’t even try to get in on your back.”

  “That’s it,” Sophie said. “I’m tired of you. Go sell paranoid someplace else. We’re all stocked up here.”

  “Good morning, Miss Dempsey.” Liz drew herself up even straighter, if that were possible. “Have a pleasant trip back to Cincinnati. And don’t even think about trying to trap my son. I’ll see you in hell first.”

  When she’d gone, Amy came out onto the porch and said, “Wow.”

  Sophie nodded, trying not to shake. “Yeah. ‘They’ll see and they’ll know and they’ll say, ”Why, she wouldn’t even hurt a fly. ’ ”

  Amy nodded with her. “ ‘We all go a little mad sometimes.’ ”

  “Except Phin’s not Norman.”

  “If that gave birth to him, he’s not normal, either,” Amy said. “Stay away from both of them.”

  “No, really, I think I might like her,” Sophie said. “If I had some time to get to know her, bond, do the mother-daughter thing.”

  “Like, a thousand years,” Amy said.

  “Maybe not that quick.” Sophie tried to relax. “God, she did everything but mention my good bag and cheap shoes.”

  “As long as she didn’t invite you to the house for a nice Chianti and fava beans.”

  “She’d never let me in that house.” Sophie shivered. “She’d fillet me on the front steps.”

  “Good thing we’re leaving on Sunday.”

  Sophie thought of Liz Tucker and nodded, and then she thought of Phin, smiling at her with heat in his eyes, fixing everything she had that was broken and then making her laugh while he licked almond oil off her in bed.

  “Yeah, good thing,” she said.

  After lunch, an irate Zane went back to Cincinnati and the news, and Amy took Rachel and Clea off to film the driving-into-Temptation footage, and Sophie went out to the kitchen with the dog to work. But once she was alone, all she could think of was Phin. She was pathetic, that’s what she was. He certainly wasn’t mooning over her. When she’d told him that night in the kitchen that she was staying another week, he hadn’t even said, “Good.” You’d have thought he could have at least given her a “Good.”

  Well, that was men for you. She glared at the cherries across from her. Took what they wanted and then—

  It occurred to her that this thought wasn’t getting her anywhere. It was the same thought she’d been having for fifteen years without any insight or growth, it was the thought that had led her into two years of mind-numbing security with Brandon, it was the thought that had kept her from having the kind of wickedly abandoned sex she’d been having since she’d met Phin. It was, in short, nonproductive.

  Worse than that, it was boring.

  “I’m through with you,” she said to the cherries. “It’s a brand-new day.”

  When Phin showed up at five-thirty, he found her teetering on an old ladder, wrapped in apple wallpaper, sticky from the paste and sweaty from the heat and frustrated because the old paper kept tearing.

  “You’ve never looked better,” he said as she shoved a paste-matted curl out of her eye. “What are you doing?”

  “Hanging wallpaper,” Sophie said waspishly.

  He reached up and peeled a torn strip off her sleeve. “It’s supposed to go on the wall.”

  “You know that ‘frosty’ part you were talking about yesterday?”

  “Get off the ladder, Julie Ann,” Phin said. “I’m good at this, too.”

  “Of course you are, you do everything well,” Sophie said, feeling surly as she climbed down.

  “My mother has a house with fourteen rooms,” Phin said. “And one summer she decided to paper twelve of them. My dad called it the Summer from Hell. You know, I don’t mean to be critical—”

  “Then don’t be.”

  “—but that is ugly paper.”

  “You can go now.”

  He smiled at her and her pulse kicked up even though she didn’t want it to.

  “I can’t go.” He picked up the paper. “You want to wallpaper, we’ll wallpaper. Then we’ll do what I want to do.”

  Sophie tried to ignore the heat his voice flared in her. “You have to be kidding. I’m hot and sweaty and sticky and I look like hell and—”

  “I know,” Phin said. “I don’t care. Get out of the way so I can hang this wallpaper.”

  Sophie put her hands on her hips. “Listen, if you think I’m—”

  She stopped because he’d put the wallpaper down and was trapping her against the wall, one hand on each side of her head, his face close to hers. He started to say something and then he closed his eyes and laughed.

  “What’s so funny?” Sophie said, but she already knew. She looked awful and he was laughing at her, and she didn’t need this from him, she didn’t need it from anybody but certainly not from—

  “Me,” he said. “Christ. I met you six days ago and you’ve got me so crazy, I’ll hang wallpaper so I can touch you.”

  Sophie blinked. “What?”

  “What do you want, Sophie?” he asked, smiling down at her. “Fuses, books, wallpaper, flowers, candy, diamonds— whatever it is, you get it, just as long as I get you.”

  She was pretty sure he was kidding, but not completely, not with that look in his eye and that heat in his voice.

  “Six days,” he said and shook his head. “Hell, one day. One minute. One look at that mouth. The devil’s candy.” He bent his head to kiss her and she ducked under his arm and away from him as she began to realize he was serious.

  “Let me get this straight,” she said, as she put the corner of the table between them. “You want me.”

  “In every way possible,” Phin said, moving around the table to get to her, and she moved just as he did, beginning to smile as he came after her.

  “You can’t resist me,” Sophie said.

  “Not since I saw that mouth,” Phin said, following her. “Come here.”

  “I had you at ‘hello,’ ” Sophie said, still moving back, and Phin stopped and said, “What?”

  “I love this,” Sophie said, beaming at him. “I look like hell and you’re chasing me around the kitchen. This is great.”

  “I am not chasing,” Phin said.

  Sophie undid the top button on her blouse.

  “I’m chasing,” Phin said, and moved faster than she’d planned on. She’d made a dash for the stairs but he lunged for her, grabbing her around the waist and lifting her o
ff her feet to drag her back against him. She lost her breath because he’d knocked it out of her, and then he turned and trapped her against the table and pushed against her with his hips and she knew exactly how much he wanted her. “We’ll do the wallpaper later,” he said in her ear as his hands moved to her breasts. She tried to squirm away and he whispered, “Oh, Christ, Sophie,” and slid his hand under her shirt, pulsing against her from behind, and she closed her eyes because he felt so good.