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  Then he hit the bottom of the stairs and saw Sophie.

  She was bent over the table, racking balls and humming “Some of Your Lovin‘,” looking very hot in her pink dress, and the memory of where they’d just been and what they’d just done lessened his annoyance considerably.

  “Hey, you,” she said, and came around the table to kiss him, no hassles and no nagging, and when she broke the kiss and smiled lazily at him, he smiled back.

  “How about a game?” she said. “We’ve got time for nine ball.”

  “You know nine ball?” he said, and she said, “Everybody knows nine ball, although I’m not in your league, of course. Do you want to play?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Davy said you were really good,” Sophie said. “Try not to beat me too bad.”

  “I’ll go easy,” he said, planning on blowing a few shots. It really wasn’t fair to play her straight-on when she wasn’t as good as he was.

  She smiled at him again. “This is a magnificent table,” she said, and the last of his tension eased away as he watched her stroke the rosewood rails. “But then, everything about you is magnificent.”

  He felt a faint stir of alarm, but then she came to the end of the table with cue in hand. She took a stance that dynamite couldn’t have shifted, gripped the cue firmly with her thumb and two fingers and bent to sight down it in perfect form. Phin tilted his head to see her better. Perfect form and the world’s best butt in a short pink dress.

  She looked up at him, still smiling. “You playing, here?”

  “Yeah.” He picked up his cue and bent to shoot for the lag, but she was close beside him in that pink dress, and she shook his concentration and took the break away from him.

  “I’ll be damned,” he said. “Very nice.”

  “Rack ‘em.” She chalked her cue, and then, while he watched, her smile evaporated and she pocketed the seven on the break with a power stroke that banished “cute” from his vocabulary for her forever.

  “I never told you this before,” she said, after she’d chalked and taken aim on the one. “But I come from a long line of felons.”

  “Really.” Phin watched the ball fall into the pocket without hitting the back.

  Sophie stood and chalked. “My father’s on the lam right now on a fraud charge.” She bent and fell into perfect position again, and Phin stifled a sigh. “He’s a recidivist. A big one.” She pocketed the two with a follow shot that left her exactly where she needed to be, and stood to chalk again. “Then there’s my brother.”

  “Davy.” Phin watched her bend again.

  “He makes his living defrauding people who defraud people.” Sophie pocketed the three. “They’re not really in a position to go after him, so he gets away with it, although there are a considerable number of people who don’t like him.”

  “Can’t imagine why,” Phin said, and Sophie chalked again.

  “Amy had a few small problems with the law, but in general she’s pretty straight now.”

  “That’s good.”

  “And then there’s me,” Sophie said.

  She pocketed the four on a beautiful stop shot, and Phin said, “You.”

  “Yeah.” Sophie nodded and chalked again. “I’ve been ducking my destiny, trying to go straight and be good. But you know—”

  She bent to take her shot, aimed carefully, and followed through with such perfect form that Phin went a little dizzy for a moment.

  “—that’s not really me,” she said as she straightened. “I was born to be bad.” She smiled at him. “I learned that from you. Thank you so much.”

  Phin swallowed. “You’re welcome.”

  Then Sophie put away the six, and he thought, Hell, she could beat me. It was a strangely arousing thought. But there was a limit.

  “Actually, I already knew about your family,” he said. “Zane told me.”

  She had chalked and bent to shoot again, but now she hesitated. “He did?”

  Phin nodded. “He seemed a little annoyed that I didn’t care.”

  “Oh,” Sophie said, and sighted down the cue to the eight. When she missed the shot, it was by such a tiny miscalculation, hitting the ball just a fraction too hard, that he was almost sorry.

  But not sorry enough not to put the eight and nine away. This was, after all, pool. He chalked his cue and looked at the eight. She’d left him a cut shot, not an easy one, but one he could make. He bent to shoot, and she said, “There’s something else you should know.”

  “What?” he said, without raising his head.

  “I’m not wearing any underpants.” She sat down out of his sight line, and when he turned his head to look at her, she smiled at him innocently with her legs crossed, the slender, curving line of her thigh disappearing into her short, clinging pink dress. “Sort of like your fantasy.”

  His cue wavered, and he straightened. “You really think I’m going to fall for that?”

  Sophie shrugged. “Check your back pocket.”

  Against his better judgment, he did, and felt the slippery slide of nylon and lace. He pulled it out and held it up in front of him. Definitely Sophie’s pink lace drawers. He shrugged. “Big deal.” He stuffed them back in his pocket and bent to take his shot, and then he thought about her bending over the table, making draw and follow shots with such elegance, hitting that one stop shot that had been so simply beautiful that he’d felt dizzy just looking at her. All without underpants.

  Steady, he told himself.

  Then he thought about the incredible things she’d just done to him in bed, and for the first time in his life, he thought seriously about having sex on his pool table. The hell with the felt. Great-grandpa would understand.

  “You going to take that shot anytime soon?” Sophie asked, and he lined up the shot, thought of Sophie’s naked butt, and miscued, just a fraction of a fraction of an inch, but a miscue just the same.

  “So close,” Sophie said as she stood up. “But then pool, like love, is not a forgiving sport.” She went to the table, and he watched her make the cut shot with perfect draw and then pocket the nine with that stop shot that made his heart clutch.

  “God almighty,” Wes said from the doorway, and Phin looked up and said, “I know. It’s a beautiful thing.”

  “Thank you.” Sophie put her cue carefully back in the rack, and Phin followed the line of her back as she did, lingering on her naked-under-that-dress butt.

  He had to do something to get some blood back to his brain. “I need to see you upstairs.”

  “I don’t think so.” She reached for his back pocket and pulled her underwear out as she walked past. “Turn around, Wes.”

  Wes raised his eyebrows at the underpants and then turned his back, and Sophie stepped into her drawers and pulled them up over her firm, round butt.

  Phin said, “No, really. Upstairs.”

  “No, really, I can’t. If I go up there, I’ll just lose my head and ask for commitment. So later for you.” Sophie drifted past Wes, a vision of skill and sex, and Phin let his breath out as she went.

  “I missed something, didn’t I?” Wes said when she was gone.

  Phin leaned on his cue, staring at the doorway where he’d seen her last, her pink dress imprinted on his retina.

  “I knew it. I knew it the first minute I saw her. The devil’s candy.”

  “What?”

  “She just fucked me six ways to Sunday.”

  “She beat you at pool, too,” Wes said, looking at the table.

  “That’s what I mean,” Phin said. “It’s going to take me years to recover from this.”

  “It’s just pool,” Wes said. “She’s leaving after the premiere on Tuesday. Get a grip. I need to talk to you.”

  Phin ignored him to replay Sophie’s stop shot in his mind. Then he replayed her body in his bed. Then he remembered the way he needed to talk to her every night, and the way she’d stood up for Dillie at the game, and the way she laughed and made his heart pound harder every tim