Welcome to Temptation/Bet Me Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Welcome to Temptation

  For

  Acknowledgments

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Bet Me

  For

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Also by

  Praise for New York Times Bestselling Author Jennifer Crusie and Her Novels

  Copyright Page

  Welcome to Temptation

  For

  Meg Ruley,

  the world’s greatest agent,

  who believed in this book

  when it was called Hot Fleshy Thighs;

  and for

  Jennifer Enderlin,

  the world’s greatest editor,

  who said, “Why don’t we get another title?”

  and then waited with the patience

  of a thousand saints

  until it was done.

  Acknowledgments

  I must thank Valerie Taylor, who has read in manuscript every book I’ve written since 1993 and who has made them all immeasurably better with her critiques; and Chene Heady, who read all of my MFA work and then still managed to write the magnificent “Salvation in Thirty Seconds or Less.”

  My thanks also go to Tom Stillman, who taught me how to play pool; Jeff MacGregor, who taught me how to make pornography; Monica McLean, who told me how to hide money offshore; Laurie Grant, who told me how to almost kill people; Jack Smith, who taught me how to electrocute people; and John Finocharo, who told me how to get away with killing people. Without the help of these fine people, this would have been a book about lemonade, ice cream, and wallpaper.

  I wrote the story myself. It’s about a girl who lost her reputation and never missed it.

  —Mae West

  Chapter One

  Sophie Dempsey didn’t like Temptation even before the Garveys smashed into her ’86 Civic, broke her sister’s sunglasses, and confirmed all her worst suspicions about people from small towns who drove beige Cadillacs.

  Half an hour earlier, Sophie’s sister Amy had been happily driving too fast down Highway 32, her bright hair ruffling in the wind as she sang “In the Middle of Nowhere” with Dusty Springfield on the tape deck. Maple trees had waved cheerfully in the warm breeze, cotton clouds had bounced across the blue, blue sky, and the late-August sun had blasted everything in sight.

  And Sophie had felt a chill, courtesy, she was sure, of the sixth sense that had kept generations of Dempseys out of jail most of the time.

  “Slow down,” she told Amy. “There’s no need to rush.” She stared out the window as she twisted the rings on her middle fingers. More riotously happy, southern Ohio landscape. That couldn’t be good.

  “Oh, relax.” Amy peered at Sophie over the top of her cat’s-eye sunglasses. “It’s a video shoot, not a bank heist. What could go wrong?”

  “Don’t say that.” Sophie sank lower in her seat. “Anytime anybody in a movie says, ‘What could go wrong?’ something goes wrong.”

  A green sign that read Temptation ¼ Mile loomed ahead, and Sophie reviewed her situation for the eleventh time that hour. She was going to a small town to make an unscripted video for a washed-up actress she didn’t trust. There were going to be problems. They’d show up at any minute, like bats, dive-bombing them from out of nowhere. A strand of her dark curly hair blew across her eyes, and she jammed it back into the knot on top of her head with one finger. “Bats,” she said out loud, and Amy said, “What?”

  Sophie let her head fall back against the seat. “ ‘We can’t stop here. This is bat country.’ ”

  “Johnny Depp,” Amy said. “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Stop quoting. There’s nothing to be nervous about, you’re just overreacting.” She turned off the highway and onto the old road that led into Temptation. The exit was marked by a shiny new gas station and a less shiny but still-plastic Larry’s Motel.

  “Colorful,” Amy said.

  “Trouble,” Sophie said.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Amy said. “It’s not the Bates Motel.”

  “You have no idea how dangerous small towns are.” Sophie scowled out the window. “You were only ten when we moved to the city. You can’t remember what hell all those little places we lived in were.”

  “Sophie.”

  “And it’s not as if we have a plan.” Sophie stared with deep suspicion as they passed a blackened, log-built bar that sported a rusting neon sign: Temptation Tavern. Beer. Music. “It’s all very well for Clea to say, ‘We’ll improvise,’ but even if this is just an audition video, I need more of a script than ‘Clea goes back to her creepy hometown and meets her long-lost love, Fred.’ ”

  “Frank.” Amy shook her head. “I don’t believe you. We’re finally filming something besides a wedding, and all you can say is, ‘Trouble ahead,’ and, ‘Why can’t we stay in Cincinnati?’ and, ‘I don’t trust Clea.’ Face it, the only reason you don’t like Clea is because she dumped Davy to marry a TV anchorman. That’s very sisterly of you, but it’s time to get over it.”

  “That’s not it,” Sophie said. “I don’t know what it is, it’s just—”

  “Come on, Sophie. This is good for you. It gets you away from Brandon.”

  Oh, yeah, sure this is good for me, Sophie thought, but Amy couldn’t help it. It was in her blood to turn everything into a con.

  “Why you’re dating your therapist is beyond me,” Amy was saying. “Your health insurance covered his fees.”

  “My ex-therapist.” Sophie squinted at the deserted tree-lined road before them. Ominous. “It saved a lot of time. You don’t know what a relief it was not to have to explain the family to him.”

  “You know, sometimes I think it’s just our destiny to be bad.” Amy took her eyes off the road to smile at Sophie. “What do you say we quit making wedding videos and fall like the rest of the Dempseys?”

  “No,” Sophie said. “The fall will kill us.”

  She waited for an argument, but Amy was already distracted. “Oh, wow.” She leaned forward and slowed the car. “Gotta love these road signs.”

  Sophie read the battered white-and-black signs: Temptation Rotary Club, First Lutheran Church of Temptation, Temptation Ladies’ Club, Temptation Nighttime Theater. The last one was a corroded green-and-cream metal sign that said, Welcome to Temptation. Under it a smaller sign in the same rusted antique green said, Phineas T. Tucker, Mayor. And under that, a newer but still battered sign said, We Believe in Family Values.

  “Get me out of here,” Sophie said.

  “Can you imagine how old Phineas T. must be if the sign is that rusted?” Amy said. “Older than God. Hasn’t had sex since the Bicentennial. Do you think the Church of Temptation is like the Church of Baseball?”

  “Not if it’s Lutheran,” Sophie said.

  Then they crested the hill and there was Temptation.

  “Pleasantville,” Amy said, taking of