Welcome to Temptation (19 page)

"We should play along." Sophie tried to look blasé. "You want me to sacrifice myself to the mayor again."

"From what I saw last night, it was no sacrifice."

Amy managed a weak smile. "And see if he's got a letter sweater we can borrow. He looks like the type
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who'd have one."

Sophie frowned at her. "A letter sweater?"

Amy nodded, not happy. "Clea wants to do this thing where she's driving up the road on her way home remembering Frank in high school so that when she sees the real Frank, everybody will understand the shock. And then when Rob shows up as his son, it'll make sense that she falls for him."

"I still don't get the lett—"

"She wants Rob to play Frank in her high-school memories." Amy wrinkled her nose. "Corny as hell, but she's calling the shots."

"Right," Sophie said. "I'll ask the mayor for a letter sweater."
And great sex
. She stopped breathing for a moment just thinking about it.

"Soon," Amy said.

Sophie tried to look noble. "I suppose I could go visit the bookstore now. He said he was going to be working there today. And maybe if I can't find anything in the books, he'll have some ideas."
I have
some ideas
.

Amy looked down at the lamp scene. "I'd count on it." She still seemed down. "You're just toying with the mayor, right? You're not getting involved?"

"No," Sophie said, cooling off a little. "It's pretty much mutual toying."

"Because I don't need a scene if this is going to be anotherChadthing," Amy said. "I really hate it that that happened to you. And the mayor hasChadwritten all over him."

"He's not," Sophie said. "He was very sweet last night."

"I hate Zane, too," Amy said, not really listening.

"We'll take care of Zane," Sophie said as she got up to go. "Really, nothing but good times ahead." For once, at least for the rest of the afternoon, she was pretty sure that was true.

~7~

That same afternoon, Rachel's father called her out of the garden onto the cement patio behind their house. She sat gingerly on the steel garden chair beside him, her weeding gloves on, wary of both the sun-warmed metal and her father's topic of conversation.

"So you're working on this movie," he said. "What are they doing?"

"Just shooting people talking on the porch," Rachel said.

"Oh." Her father seemed disappointed. Then he said, "You let me know what they're doing. It's
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important for the town."

"Why?"

"It's my civic duty to know what's happening in this town," her father said, puffing up a little. "These outsiders, they could be bad influences. So you tell me everything, you understand?"

"Yes, Daddy," Rachel said, having no intention of doing any such thing. "The Coreys are painting the house this weekend and after school. There's some news."

Her father didn't look interested. "Maybe I should drop by, see for myself. Phin Tucker's out there a lot, isn't he?"

"He showed Sophie how to change the fuses," Rachel said, although she was pretty sure that wasn't the only thing Phin was showing Sophie how to do. Even from the backseat of Phin's convertible the night before, Rachel had picked up on the sexual tension in the front seat. When her mother had met her at the door and said eagerly, "Was that Phin Tucker who brought you home?" she'd said, "Mom, he didn't even know I was there."

"So he's involved with the movie people," her father was saying, and without thinking, Rachel said, "Oh, yeah."

"Does that upset you? Does it upset you that I'm running against him in the election?"

"Why would I be upset? You do it every two years." Rachel stared out at the garden, the garden she'd have to go back to weeding soon, the garden she'd weeded every summer for her whole life. She wanted to go someplace where somebody else did the weeding.

"I don't want you to be hurt if he's spending time with other women," her father said. "And I don't want you to think you have to choose between your father and your husband."

"
Husband?
" Rachel said. "Not in a million years. Mom's got it in her head that we're going to be together, but she's wrong."

"I'm sure she—" Stephen began, but Rachel cut him off.

"Look, Daddy, it's
Phin
, for God's sake. He taught me to ride my bike and stuck Band-Aids on me when I fell off, and he coached me in softball and yelled at me when I fell over third base in the tournament game. After that, it's kind of hard to get hot looking at him."

"Oh." Stephen looked uncomfortable, and Rachel added, "Sorry, Dad. More than you needed to know."

"No, no, you know you can tell me anything," Stephen said, but his expression added,
Just not that.
"It would be a good match. You could hyphenate your last name. Garvey-Tucker." He looked out into the distance. "Your son could take that name, too."

"Son?" Rachelsaid.

"Phin needs a son, and you need to stop running around and be settled."
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"Running around?" The unfairness of this was criminal. "Where do I run around?"

"I don't like you going out to the Tavern," Stephen said. "You're underage. Of course, I know you go with Rob and he's a gentleman. Too bad his father's an idiot. You're not thinking about marrying Rob, are you?"

Rachel thought about spending the rest of her days in Temptation and the rest of her nights with Rob.

"No."

"Well, you have to marry somebody," Stephen said. "You think about Phin. He's a good-looking man. You'd have good-looking sons."

Enough of this "son" talk. The last thing she needed was a baby, for cripes' sake. She was
twenty
. Her father was still talking, nodding to the house to their right. "And you'd live right next door, so we could help you out whenever you needed."

"Phin wouldn't kick Junie Miller out of that house," Rachel said. "That would be mean."

"There's no reason for him to house his ex-mother-in-law," Stephen said, and Rachel cast a wary look back at the kitchen in case her mother heard. Her mother could go on for hours about how Diane Miller had made Phin buy the house next door to the Garveys just so she could rub their marriage in Virginia 's face.

"Just don't wait too long to decide," Stephen was saying. "Or you'll end up like Clea Whipple, not getting married until you're over thirty, no children, living all over the place and never coming home until you're middle-aged..." He went on, and Rachel thought,
God, that sounds great.
Her father talked on, about family values and her living next door and how they'd see each other every day and how her son would grow up to be mayor, too, and Rachel decided that she was definitely going to L.A.

Whatever it took.

*

When Sophie peered through the glass front door of the bookstore in the heat of the late afternoon, she saw Phin frowning at papers on the counter. Then he saw her and his face cleared, and he let her in.

"Hello, Sophie Dempsey. What brings you here?"

"Amy needs to borrow a letter sweater. And I might buy some books." Sophie turned away so she wouldn't have to meet his eyes and discovered that she was in a really nice bookstore. It was the downstairs of a converted Victorian house, but it had been opened up with support columns so that what had once been four rooms was now one big room. There were a couple of comfortable chairs and four fireplaces, but mostly the room was filled with walnut bookcases, neatly labeled with copperplate signs.

"It's beautiful" she said. "Really beautiful."

"Thank you," Phin said, without any of the cynicism that could make his voice grate on her. "My grandpa did it all."

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Toward the back, there was an open doorway, and she said, "What's back there through that door?"

"My pool table," Phin said, and she went to check it out.

The kitchen and a breakfast room had also been opened into one big room, and the pool table sat in the middle of it.

"It's pretty," Sophie said when she saw it, knowing what a massive understatement that was. It was a magnificent nine-foot hand-carved oak table, with rosewood rails inlaid with pearl and gold silk fringe on the pockets. Phin winced at the "pretty," but he said, "Thank you," like the gentleman he was. She went to the cue rack and put her hands behind her back so she wouldn't touch anything. The temptation was terrible. The rack was old and very beautiful, an Eastlake design that had
New
England Pool Cue Companylettered in gold across the top. "This is really pretty, too." She backed up a step and almost fell over a stack of boxes behind her.

"Careful," Phin said. "Campaign posters."

There were cartons of them stacked all along the wall. "You planning on running a big campaign?" Sophie said, and Phin said, "No, my grandma made a mistake."

"My grandpa wanted these for his second campaign, back in 1942. He told her to order a hundred of them. So she did, but she didn't notice that they came in lots of a hundred, so she ordered a hundred lots and Grandpa ended up with ten thousand posters. We've been using them ever since."

"You haven't changed posters since 1942?"

"Only once. After Gil Garvey beat my dad because he'd built the New Bridge ." Sophie frowned and he went on. "Gil made a big deal out of what a waste of money it was because we had to buy that right-of-way from Sam Whipple to put the new road in, but by the time the next election came around, people had noticed that there weren't as many car wrecks and the driving was easier. So my dad had bumper stickers printed that said
He Built the Bridge
and he and my mom and I sat here one night and stuck them over the
More of the Same
part of the poster and then went out and hung them the next day."

"And he won," Sophie said.

"In a landslide." Phin stuck his hands in his pockets, a clear giveaway, Brandon would have said, that he was repressing his emotions.

"So what's the rest of the story?"

Phin shrugged. "He served his term, had a heart attack, served four more terms, had another attack, and died a year later from his third attack. He got the office back but he was never the same." Sophie frowned. "I can't imagine wanting anything that much."

"I don't think it was the wanting," Phin said. "I think it was the years of tradition he felt he'd broken. And then he thought he had to play it safe after that so he wouldn't lose again. It finished him."

"Just because he lost one election." Sophie shook her head.

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"Tuckers don't lose," Phin said. "Which is why I'd like to know if you're shooting porn out there." Sophieblinked. "Porn?Good grief, no. I wouldn't do that." She looked down at the posters and thought,
I don't want to be his
New Bridge . "We're shooting a sex scene, though."
Maybe two, if this
afternoon goes well
. "About at the level of the
NYPD Blue
stuff on TV. It's not porn, I swear, but some people might think it was."

Phin relaxed a little. "Not if it's something you could show on TV. If that's all you're doing, we don't have a problem." He smiled at her, and Sophie felt the heat kick in just because he was close.

"So I..." she began, and he moved closer, and she met his eyes and went dizzy at the heat there.

"Tell me what you want and you've got it," he said.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Sophie said, trying not to fall against him.

"I'm talking about that look in your eyes. I've seen it three times now, and it makes me cheerful." Sophie looked at the ceiling.

"Forget it, Soph," he said. "You don't want to do it, fine, but don't try to tell me you don't want it." She met his eyes. "Oh, I want it," she said, and he kissed her, running his hand up her side to her breast while she leaned into him.

Fifteen minutes later, she was stretched out beside the pool table with her blouse open, her zipper down and her body ready. Phin stopped to get his breath and said, "You know I have a bed upstairs," and then the front door opened, and she clutched at him.

"I locked that," he said. "
Fuck
, it's my mother." Sophie grabbed for her blouse while Phin rolled to his feet and tucked his shirt in.

"Hey, Mom," he said as he walked toward the front of the store, and Sophie heard a cold voice say,

"What were you doing back there? You've left papers all over the counter. People can see this mess from the street."

"It's Sunday," Phin said. "There are no people in the street. That's why you came in here?"

"I'm on my way to pick up Dillie, but I wanted to talk to you alone first." I shouldn't be listening to this, Sophie thought. She tucked in her blouse and then, just as Phin's mother said, "Virginia Garvey came by," she stood up and walked toward the front of the bookstore, saying, as nonsexually as she could, "Well, thanks for the help." She let her eyes drift to Phin's mother, casually, no big deal, but when she got a good look, she froze in place.

Liz Tucker was tall, elegant, blonde, and expensive, but mostly she was terrifying. And with the chill she was radiating right now, if they could get her to sit in the living room at the farmhouse, they wouldn't need central air. Ever. Sophie took a step back.

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"This is my mother, Liz Tucker, who is just leaving," Phin told her. "Mom, this is Sophie Dempsey. I like her, so be nice."

"How do you do, Miss Dempsey." Liz Tucker held out a perfectly manicured hand that had a diamond on it that could have paid off any young doctor's college loans. Sophie looked at her left hand. The diamond there was even bigger.

"Pleased to meet you," Sophie said faintly, and took her hand. It was cold and dry and the handshake Liz gave her was the equivalent of an air kiss, sliding away before any real contact could be made.

"You're one of the movie people," Liz said. " Virginia said you were working hard." Liz's eyes went to Phin. "And interacting with the community."

"You know, I should be going," Sophie said. "Lots to do."

"You're not going anywhere." Phin opened the front door. "Goodbye, Mom. Give my best to Virginia and tell her to get a life."