Welcome to Temptation/Bet Me Read online

  “I don’t know,” Wes said. “But I don’t think Zane bluffed anybody. I think everything he said was true. Had a real nose for secrets, Zane did, not that there’s anything there to show Diane’s death wasn’t an accident.”

  Phin tossed the folder back on Wes’s desk. “So what do you conclude from this?”

  “There’s a thorough report in there on all four of the Dempseys,” Wes said. “And there are reports on you and all the council members. Except one.”

  Phin felt sick. “Maybe he just couldn’t get anything on her. She’s damn near perfect.”

  “Nobody’s perfect,” Wes said. “Not even your mother. If he took Diane’s file to her and told her he was going after you—”

  Phin thought of Liz saying, “anything.” “What do you want?”

  “Bring me your dad’s .22,” Wes said.

  “Fuck,” Phin said.

  Out at the farm, Sophie stared miserably across the kitchen table at Davy while Lassie sniffed his suitcase by the door and Amy glared at them both. “You really have to go?”

  “Yes,” Davy said. “I’m catching a ride with Leo, but we’ll both be back Friday, so stop looking so tragic.”

  “I’m not tragic,” Sophie said, and Amy said, “Sure, go ahead, just desert us,” but then the phone rang, and when Sophie picked it up, it was Brandon.

  “Are you all right?” he said. “Amy called and said you’d fallen in a river. I think I should come down there.”

  Sophie glared at Amy, who looked at the ceiling. “No, you should not come down here. I’m fine. Brandon, you should stop calling. I appreciate your—”

  “Sophie, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, and I think you should come back home,” Brandon said. “I realize you feel the need to act out your anger with this man—”

  “Brandon, you’re a wonderful man,” Sophie said. “You deserve somebody who loves you completely, not somebody who loves you comfortably. I—”

  “Comfort lasts,” Brandon said. “The kind of passion you’re talking about doesn’t. A year after you marry this man—”

  “We’re not getting married,” Sophie said, looking at the pretty apples on the wall. “He’s not that serious about me.”

  “This guy needs his ass kicked,” Davy said, and Amy said, “Which one, Phin or Brandon?”

  “Both,” Davy said. “The two of you have terrible taste in men.”

  When the silence on the other end of the line lengthened, Sophie said, “Brandon?” and he said, “You deserve more than that, Sophie.”

  “I know.” Sophie swallowed. “I’m working on it. But—”

  “Sophie, I think Amy’s right. I should come down there—”

  “I have to go, Brandon,” Sophie said. “I’m sorry. Good-bye.”

  She hung up and said to Amy, “Do not call him again. Stay out of my life.”

  “At least he loves you,” Amy said. “He’s boring, but he’s committed. The mayor doesn’t even—”

  “Yes, he does,” Davy said. “He gets my vote. Now, let’s discuss the stupidity of a Dempsey getting involved with a cop.”

  “I’m not involved,” Amy said, trying to sound tough and only sounding more miserable because of it. “He hasn’t even called since he yelled at me.” She shoved back her chair. “It doesn’t matter, I have real problems. I have to finish cutting a documentary. I don’t have time to worry about some guy.”

  When she’d gone, Sophie sighed. “Do you really have to go?”

  “Things to take care of,” Davy said. “But I’ll be back. Don’t let her shoot anybody till I get here.”

  Sophie swallowed. “You don’t think—”

  “I don’t know,” Davy said. “I wish the cop would just take her over. She needs a strong hand, and you’ve babysat her long enough.”

  “Hurry back,” Sophie said.

  Phin’s next two days were lousy with problems and frustration, alleviated only by the time he spent with Sophie. Phin watched Wes move up to two packs a day and thought, We have to finish this before he gets lung cancer. It didn’t help that his dad’s .22 was gone from the locked gun cabinet. “Anybody could have taken it,” he told Wes. “The key’s on the top, up where Dillie can’t reach it, but we weren’t trying to keep anybody else out. I haven’t looked in there for over ten years. It could have been gone that long.”

  “Great,” Wes said, and turned down a pool game to obsess over his lack of evidence again.

  The premiere took over the townspeople’s attention, possibly because Zane had been such an outsider, probably because the video was more interesting because it was about them. Stephen suggested the schools assign it as homework. “I have to write a report,” Dillie said on Friday, “so I have to watch TV. Jamie Barclay said I could watch at her house and then we could do our reports together—isn’t that a good idea?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Phin said, and thought, I hope to hell they’ve got a G-rated version of that video.

  “I’m going out to the farm,” he told Liz, who looked at him with frozen contempt. He went out to the car, grateful that it had finally stopped raining, and then caught sight of the water tower on the Hill above him.

  It was peeling.

  “What the hell happened?” he said, when he’d tracked down the Coreys.

  “It’s that stupid cheap paint,” the older one said. “When that hard rain hit, it just peeled right off.”

  “It’s cool,” the younger one said. “Looks like blood dripping off. The newspapers were here taking pictures.”

  Phin looked back up the Hill where the tower did indeed look like a huge bleeding phallic symbol. “Can you get that red off and paint it white?”

  “Oh, yeah, like we’re gonna strip the water tower,” the older Corey said. “Just give it a couple of days and it’ll be off anyway. The tower’s gonna be a weird color, though. That red doesn’t stick, but it stains.”

  That would explain why the tower looked rosier this time, even more like flesh than before. Wonderful.

  He let the Coreys go and drove out to the farm for sanity and comfort, and by the time he’d slammed the car door, Sophie was on the porch. He went toward her, feeling better just looking at her, but she shook her head and whispered, “This isn’t a good time.”

  “Now what?” His irritation married his frustration and made him snarl. “Amy build a bomb? Davy decide he hates me again? Or are you just playing hard-to-get because you want to go out to dinner? Come on, Sophie, I’ve had a lousy day. Fuck me.”

  Sophie winced, and he frowned at her, wondering when she’d turned into a prude. The screen door slammed as he said, “What’s wr—” and then a fist slammed into his eye and he was on his back in the dirt, his head throbbing.

  “Brandon.” Sophie said, and Phin looked up through the pain at a guy the size of a tank.

  “You son of a bitch,” the therapist said.

  Chapter Twelve

  Sophie moved in front of the guy, blocking Phin’s view which was pretty hazy anyway. “All right, stop it, Brandon. He didn’t mean it the way it sounded—”

  “Nobody talks to you like that,” Brandon said, and Phin sat up and tried to figure out how he’d ended up the bad guy.

  “It’s his idea of foreplay,” Sophie said uncertainly, and Phin felt like hell.

  “It’s his idea of diminishing you so that you know you’re not important to him,” Brandon said. “He’s abusive, and you’re enabling him.”

  Wait a minute. Phin tried to stand up but the world swooped around him, so he sat back down in the dirt again.

  “He’s not abusive,” Sophie said. “He’s in a bad mood. He can be perfectly lovely when he wants to be.”

  “Ouch,” Phin said.

  “And what do you have to do to make him lovely?” Brandon said. “Sophie, I know he’s been exciting, but if this is the way he treats you—”

  “He treats me just fine,” Sophie said, and Brandon looked down at Phin in the dust and said, “He treats you like a whor