Welcome to Temptation/Bet Me Read online

  “No,” Sophie said to both of them. In a way it was a relief. She’d been getting the sneaking suspicion that the dog’s name was Dog, and that would have been much worse.

  “So,” Leo said. “Clea here?”

  “Of course I’m here, Leo, darling,” Clea said, coming in so on cue Sophie would have bet money she’d been listening in the kitchen. Amy trailed behind her as Clea embraced Leo gracefully if not warmly and said, “It really is good to see you.” Clea ignored Davy completely, and he watched her with no expression on his usually mobile face.

  Leo patted her arm and said morosely, “Nice to see you, too, kid.”

  Then Amy caught sight of Davy and shrieked, and Sophie pushed them both into the kitchen so Clea and Leo could talk.

  “I can’t believe it,” Amy said and hugged him as Sophie got Leo’s Dove Bar from the freezer. “I didn’t think we’d see you until Thanksgiving.”

  “I didn’t, either, until Leo told me you were making porn,” Davy said, and Sophie dropped Leo’s ice cream.

  “What?” Amy said, as Lassie grabbed the bar.

  “Getting the news that you two were making a skin flick brought me right home. Have you lost your minds?”

  “Skin flick.” Sophie sat down. “We’re not making a skin flick.”

  “Clea wants Leo to distribute it,” Davy said.

  “Right.”

  “Leo only does porn,” Davy said. “That’s why they call him the Porn King.”

  “ ‘Porn King’?” Amy said.

  “He doesn’t look like a Porn King,” Sophie said. “Are you sure?”

  “Harvard MBA,” Davy said. “They don’t mention him much in the alumnae mag. So what’s going on?”

  “Good question,” Sophie said, and went into the living room to find out.

  “It’s not real porn,” Clea said when they’d cornered her in the living room. “You’ve been filming it, Amy, you know that.”

  “Okay, well, fine,” Leo said. “So what the hell am I doing here?”

  “It’s a new kind of porn.” Clea sat down next to Leo on the couch and smiled at him. She looked beautiful. He looked doubtful. “It’s called vanilla porn and it’s very hot right now, it’s just flying off the video-store shelves, and I think you should make it, Leo, I really do. We’ve got a great story, about me coming home to meet my old high-school lover and being disillusioned, and then meeting his son, who seduces me and sets me free of my past, and I drive off into the sunset with him, getting everything I’ve ever wanted. It’s a real woman’s fantasy, Leo, you’ll make a mint—”

  “I think I should make Coming Cleaner,” Leo said.

  “What the hell is Coming Cleaner?” Amy said.

  “I don’t want to make Coming Cleaner,” Clea said. “I want to make Return to Temptation. I swear to God, Leo, this is good stuff. You could make a lot of money here. Don’t blow it by being old-fashioned.”

  An old-fashioned Porn King, Sophie thought. An old-fashioned Ivy League Porn King. Her world was getting weirder by the minute.

  “What is Coming Cleaner?” Amy said again, and Davy said, “Clea’s second film. Set in a car wash. Lots of soap.”

  “Oh, bleah,” Sophie said. “Clea, how could you?”

  “How do you think I met your brother?” Clea said. “Working for Disney?”

  Amy rounded on Davy. “You were in a porn film?”

  “No,” Davy said. “I worked for Leo who made porn films. Forget about me. Concentrate. You’re making porn.”

  “No,” Sophie said.

  “Yes,” Clea said. “Porn about a woman achieving all her dreams. Classy porn.”

  “Sort of like ‘military intelligence,’ ” Davy said.

  “Shut up, Davy,” Clea said without looking at him. “This is completely different. It’s not gross stuff, it’s straight-to-video erotica for women.”

  “No,” Sophie said.

  Clea exhaled. “Sophie, what’s your favorite scene in The Big Easy?”

  “ ‘Your luck’s about to change, cher,’ ” Sophie said automatically.

  “And what’s the only thing you don’t like about it?”

  “It’s too—” She broke off when she saw where Clea was going.

  “Short,” Amy finished for her. “I got it.” She cheered up some. “I like it.”

  “It’ll be romantic, not crude,” Clea said. “I was thinking maybe we should change the title, maybe to something like Cherished, because it’s about emotion, not sex.”

  “You want me to do a movie called Cherished?” Leo looked at Davy. “Get the cab back.”

  “The cab’s halfway to Cincinnati by now,” Davy said. “Look at my sister’s tape.”

  Leo sighed and moved to the monitor, and Sophie went to get him a Dove Bar, feeling sorry for him even if he was a porn king.

  “It’s going to need some work,” he said, when the last screen was dark again. “But Clea was right, you’ve got a good start there. It needs a lot more sex, of course.”

  Amy looked at Sophie and said, “We have somebody working on that.”

  “No, we don’t,” Sophie said.

  “And the score will add a lot,” Leo went on, and Amy winced.

  “I don’t know how—” she began, and Leo waved her away.

  “We can do that in L.A.,” he said. “No problem. Along with the titles and credits. You just shoot the footage and let us handle the details.”

  “The sound is a detail?” Sophie said, but Amy shushed her.

  “But mostly you need more sex,” Leo said. “A lot more nudity.”

  “Leo,” Clea said. “Don’t forget what I told you. This is women’s porn—”

  “Oh, no,” Sophie said, and Amy kicked her ankle.

  “Don’t get in Clea’s way,” she whispered to Sophie. “This is my chance.”

  “—so it’s not going to be vile like the other stuff you do,” Clea finished.

  Leo sighed. “I need skin.”

  Sophie winced, and Amy whispered, “He’s a real producer, Sophie, please.”

  “Jesus,” Davy said. “The Dempsey morals at work again.”

  Leo smiled at Clea, which didn’t look natural at all on him. “Now about Coming Cleaner—”

  “Later, Leo,” Clea said. “We’re making Cherished now.”

  “Cherished,” Leo said, and looked more depressed than ever.

  Rachel was out in the front yard watering what little grass there was when Leo came down the porch steps. He didn’t look like a big Hollywood producer. He was only a couple of inches taller than she was, and even though he was good-looking in a Hollywood kind of way, he looked tired and depressed. So when he said, “Are you the gofer around here?” she squeezed the water out of the front of her T-shirt and said, “That’s me,” without trying to be anything special.

  “I need a place to stay,” he said.

  “Sure.” She dropped the hose and started for the car. “Get in the car. I’ll take you to Larry’s Motel out by the Tavern.”

  “Larry’s Motel.”

  She turned back and saw his look of pain. “It’s all we’ve got.” Rachel opened the car door for him. “Just be grateful you’ve got me for a driver because we don’t have a taxi, either. You could be, like, walking.”

  “No, I couldn’t,” Leo said, and got in.

  “So you know Clea from L.A.?” Rachel said when they were on the road.

  “Yes.” Leo peered out the window

  “Cool. I want to be the next Clea.”

  “No you don’t,” Leo said.

  Rachel flipped the neck of her damp T-shirt back and forth to get some breeze going there, too. “Why not? She’s rich and successful and she got out. Sounds good to me.”

  Leo didn’t answer, and she looked over in time to catch him staring at where her T-shirt was stuck to her chest.

  He caught her eye and said, “Sorry,” and she shrugged and said, “Hey, I was the one flapping the wet T-shirt.”

  “I still s