Tempt Me Tonight (27 page)

Turning another piece of floured chicken in the skillet, her mother pursed her lips. “That part’s a little tricky. He’s been out tending the cattle all day—and I kind of didn’t tell him before he went.”

Trish felt her face drop. “Oh, Mom.” It was
so
unlike her mother to let them get into a sticky situation. It was much more like Trish. Lately, anyway.

Just then, the back door opened and her dad stepped inside. As the doorbell rang.

Her dad took off his cap, which sported the likeness of a wide-mouth bass on front. “Well, doesn’t this smell good?” Then he looked toward the foyer. “Who could that be?”

Trish and her mother exchanged panicky glances, frozen in place for a moment—until her mother set her tongs down, sang out, “I’ll get it,” then scurried for the door like some twenty-first-century Edith Bunker.

“What’s going on?” her dad asked, looking confused. “Are we expecting somebody?”

Trish peeked up, continuing to ram the potato masher into the stainless steel pot. “Um, kind of.”

He leaned forward, widening his eyes expectantly. “Who?”

She took a deep breath, then tried to speak matter-of-factly. “Joe. Joe’s here for dinner. And games.”

Her father’s face went rigid. “Joe? Again?
Why?
”

Somewhere in the front of the house, she sensed her mother going about the business of opening the door
very slowly.
“Because I invited him. Because it’s a nice way to thank him for his help with the hay. And because he and I are sort of…seeing each other while I’m here.” She forged ahead quickly. “But it’s nothing serious, so there’s no need to get worked up about it. I’m not home that often, as you know, and all I ask is that we have a pleasant dinner. Then you can beat him at Monopoly and it’ll make you feel better. Okay?”

He still looked inflexible—mouth grim, hands fisted—but gradually his expression began to soften.

In the distance, she heard her mother saying, “Hi, Joe—it’s nice to see you again. Come on in. I hope you still like fried chicken.”

Trish could practically
hear
his smile. “You made chicken? Aw, it smells great.”

And when he walked into the dining room adjoining the kitchen and Trish turned to face him—
oh yum.
He wore his usual—jeans and a tee, this one with a Mercedes logo on the chest—but it was the
way
he wore it, the way it fit him. Just slightly snug, enough to show off muscles—and a telltale bulge rose slightly behind his zipper. Most of his cobra coiled below one sleeve. His dark hair lay smoother than usual—he’d clearly worked to tame it for the evening—but a wayward lock still dipped recklessly over his forehead. His eyes shone on her, blue as ever, melting her enough that she nearly let the pot of now well mashed potatoes crash to the floor.

“Trish,” he said with a light nod. But his eyes said,
cupcake.

“Hey,” she replied, then realized he carried flowers, a small bouquet of mixed tulips—yellows, reds, pinks—which he held out to her. It took her breath away.

She shoved her pot toward the counter and moved toward him. She assumed she’d actually
made
the counter, since no crash resulted. “Thank you,” she said, taking the flowers. “You didn’t have to…”

But then she trailed off, because this was starting to feel like such a
moment,
and because she needed to play it down. And because one of the tulips in her fist was that warm pink color she thought Marjorie had been talking about for her nonexistent wedding.
Yeesh.
Yeah, she
definitely
needed to play this
way
down. “They’re pretty,” she said brightly, then whisked them off toward a cabinet where her mother kept vases.

“Mr. Henderson,” she heard Joe say grudgingly behind her.

Oh boy. This should be interesting. She tried to watch from her peripheral vision as she ran water in an old-fashioned porcelain vase.

“Joe.” Her dad sounded equally unhappy.

Both men looked as if they would draw six-shooters at any moment—but then Joe said, “Thanks for having me.”

And her father gave a slow, short nod. “Glad to.”

Of course, no one sounded anywhere remotely close to glad, but maybe this at least meant there wouldn’t be a showdown in the kitchen.

“Jasper, why don’t you get washed up,” Trish’s mom stepped in to say. “Joe, you take a seat, and Trish and I’ll get dinner served.”

Trish’s mom took the vase of flowers from her, parking them right in the middle of the table as Trish risked her life taking up chicken from the hot grease.

It was only as they all settled at the table laden with chicken, potatoes, green beans, corn on the cob, and fresh rolls that Trish thought—
Holy mother of God, what was I thinking?
This was going to be a disaster of epic proportions. If it wasn’t bad enough to feel her father and Joe silently squaring off against each other, she had that dark pink tulip staring her in the face, making her suffer weird, indecipherable yearnings about home, and her heart, and what she wanted out of life.
Bleck.
But she couldn’t deal with any of that right now—she needed to try to make some sort of safe, pleasant conversation.

“Joe was working on a Lamborghini today,” she came up with. Her father was mildly interested in fast cars, a holdover from his youth.

“’Sthat right?” her dad said, and she thought—
Bingo!
He suddenly sounded more curious than mad.

Joe swallowed a bite of chicken, the drumstick still between his fingers. “An ’04 Gallardo up from Louisville. It’s a fine piece of machinery.”

“I imagine so,” her father said, then proceeded to ask some mechanical question that totally escaped her.

Joe’s answer went on at length—which suited her fine, all the better to get through the meal. She heard something about an Audi-inspired V-8 and an aluminum space frame, whatever the hell
that
meant. “Now, my Cobra has a tube frame and an aluminum chassis,” he went on, “but the Gallardo’s tube frame is more intricate and modern, loaded for tension and torsion.”

Her father was nodding, so apparently
he
knew what Joe was talking about. “I’ve heard about that Cobra of yours—boys up at the feed store have mentioned it from time to time. Hear it’s a beauty.”

Joe hiked a thumb over his shoulder. “It’s in your driveway right now. If you want to take a look at it later.”

Her father leaned forward, clearly delighted but trying not to let it show. “You don’t say. Well, maybe I’ll just do that after we eat.”

From there, new conversation bloomed. They talked about Joe’s business and the Hendersons’ retirement from the diner. Her mother thanked Joe for his help getting the hay in and, even if stodgily, her father added his appreciation, too. No one asked Trish about her work—her
real
job—and she was just as glad. It seemed so…out of place with everything here, in her parents’ home—in all of Eden, really.

“You still play Monopoly?” her father asked Joe when the meal was almost done. Joe had just taken the last roll because Trish’s mother had kept nudging him to eat it.

Joe shrugged, smearing margarine across the top. “Haven’t in a while, but I could be persuaded. You still
cheat
at it?”

Trish’s entire body tightened, but then she realized her father was actually holding in a grin. It had been a running joke back in the day—in addition to Joe’s claims that they’d all banded together to make sure he lost, he’d insisted that her father was the instigator.

“There’s cheating and then there’s strategy.
You
could never recognize the difference. But I’ll be willing to whip your butt in it, fair and square, as soon as you show me this car of yours.”

Both men were up and nearly out the door, quick as that, with Trish’s mother calling, “Hurry back—I made apple pie!” behind them.

And Trish simply sat staring after them, stunned. She’d spent the whole meal on pins and needles, willing it to be over, but now that it was—she realized she’d actually kind of enjoyed it. “Well,
that
went well,” she said to her mother.

“Your father’s not a complicated man. An appreciation for cars and Monopoly can do a lot to sway him.”

Apparently so. And how convenient that Joe was a man with an appreciation for cars and at least a
willingness
to play Monopoly.

Would Kent play Monopoly? Would he have even the faintest interest in cars? She knew he drove a Camry simply because all the reports said it was dependable and safe. And would he even have a clue how to win her father over?

Of course, it didn’t matter. When she returned to Indy, life would change—back to normal. Her dating life would no longer intersect with her family life. Which had always suited her fine—until right now.

Rising up to help gather dishes, she glanced again toward the vase of tulips, her eye drawn by the warm pink one. Then she picked up some dirty plates, but instead of taking them to the kitchen, she instead found herself walking to the front window, peering out to spot Joe pointing at something on the Cobra’s dashboard as he talked with her dad.

And—oh my God, was she seeing things or was her father really getting
into
the car, behind the wheel? Was he—dear Lord—actually starting the engine? Joe was actually letting him
drive
the Cobra? She nearly dropped her plates.

And then, for one single, solitary moment, she allowed herself to feel it:
Leaving was going to be harder than she’d expected.
For lots of reasons.

Her dad. Her mom. Debbie.
Joe
.

The way things just somehow
fit
here. Naturally and inexplicably. Even her dad and Joe now—amazingly—finding common ground.

But then she banished the thought—because it was useless, and therefore impractical. She’d been doing pretty good with Debbie’s advice, to just enjoy Joe and their hot, steamy affair without any worries. So she was going to keep doing that.

And when she set the tulips aside on the rolltop desk a few minutes later, clearing the table for the Monopoly board, she turned the vase so that the pink one was in the back where she couldn’t see it anymore.

It was like stepping back in time for Joe to watch Trish’s dad collect most of the best property, but he held his own, capturing the green group on the fourth side of the board, along with Boardwalk and eventually Park Place. Of course, in the usual Henderson way, Trish’s dad had discouraged his wife from bargaining with Joe for the blue property, but he’d convinced her with big cash and utilities. Trish seemed in her own happy little world, with hotels spanning the first quarter of the board, a self-declared slumlord. Joe had also picked up one railroad to Jasper’s two, and hell if he’d sell it to him, no matter what he offered—Jasper was already raking in enough dough from the properties surrounding the No Parking space.

Not that it mattered if he lost. He’d come here
knowing
he would lose—he doubted anyone
ever
played Monopoly with the Hendersons and came out alive. What mattered was that Trish’s dad didn’t seem to hate him anymore. And even though he’d thought he’d accepted this invitation just to please Trish, as the night wore on, he began to realize he wanted to change Jasper Henderson’s low opinion of him.

Not because he cared what people thought of him—he was used to some people having a low opinion of him—but because…hell, because he wanted to be welcome in the Henderson home, and welcome in Trish’s life.

And not just now. Not just next week. He wanted to be
in her life.

Damn, he hated recognizing that. Hated the way it had been bearing down on him the last day or so.

This had snuck up on him fast. One minute it had been about some weird combination of lust and apology. The next it had become…something he hadn’t planned on. An attachment. A need.

Three long hours after the game had started, her father won. It had been inevitable, so Joe wasn’t too broken up over it, but he let Trish’s father gloat and pretended he’d cared. “Dice were against me from the start,” Joe said as they rose from the table. “You skated past my property almost every time.”

Jasper laughed good-naturedly. “The fourth side of the board isn’t enough to win on. Too much going to jail and advancing to Go and taking a ride on the Reading. Players reach that side of the board a whole lot less than the others.”

Hell, Joe had never thought about that before.
I’ll be damned.

“Now, me,” Jasper went on, “I like the orange and red properties. Prime location. And the railroads. You can get rich on the railroads alone when the dice are rolling right.”

When the game was packed away, Joe casually grabbed Trish’s wrist to glance at her watch—nearly midnight. He couldn’t believe the evening had passed so peaceably.

“Got late on us,” Trish’s dad said, standing up from his chair and stretching into a yawn, then scrunching his face into a grimace that showed his back was still bothering him.

Joe supposed that was his cue to go. But he didn’t want to.

The way he saw it, he’d done his time at the Monopoly board, now he wanted a reward.

He lifted his gaze to Trish, looking for a sign, an invitation for more—but salvation came from her mom instead. “I think it’s time for us to head up to bed, Jasper. Let these two have some private time.”

Of course, Jasper’s eyes narrowed in tight on Joe at the mention of “private time,” but he just turned to Trish with a shaking finger. “Don’t you stay up down here all night.”

She pasted on a small, calming smile. “Don’t worry, Dad.”

And when goodnights had been said and her parents had disappeared slowly up the stairs, Trish turned to Joe and grinned. “He still thinks I’m sixteen.”

Joe cast a lecherous grin. “Maybe he’s right to worry. Because all I can think is—alone at last.” He slid his arms around her, pulling her close, just soaking up the scent and feel of her. She wore another long, gauzy skirt—this one with a fitted little tee that had been tempting him all night. “You feel good,” he whispered down to her.

“Come on, lover boy,” she said, taking his hand and leading him through to the back of the house. “Let’s go out on the porch before you get yourself into trouble in here.”