Welcome to Temptation/Bet Me Read online

  Cal pulled a waxed paper bag from the cooler. “Doughnuts,” he said, but before he could go on, a too-familiar piping voice came from behind him.

  “Can I have one?”

  He sighed and turned around to see his skinny, grubby, dark-haired nephew standing at the end of the picnic table. “Shouldn’t you be home by now?”

  “They forgot again,” Harry said, putting a lot of pathetic in his voice. It helped that he wore glasses and was small for his age. He peered around Cal. “Hello,” he said cautiously to Min.

  “Min,” Cal said, glaring at Harry. “This is my nephew, Harry Morrisey. He was just leaving. Harry, this is Min Dobbs.”

  “Hi, Harry,” Min said cheerfully. “You can have all the doughnuts.”

  Harry brightened.

  “No, you can’t.” Cal took out his cell phone. “You’d just throw them up again.”

  “Maybe not.” Harry sidled closer to the doughnut bag.

  “You do remember the cupcake disaster, right?” Cal said as he punched in his sister-in-law’s number.

  “Can’t he have one?” Min smiled at Harry as he drew closer, her face soft and kind, and Cal and Harry both blinked at her for a moment because she was so pretty.

  Then while Cal listened to the phone ring, Harry looked at Min’s skirt and poked it with his finger.

  “Harry” Cal said, and Min pulled out one of her sandals.

  “Here,” she told Harry, and he poked at the flower.

  “Those are shoes,” Harry said, as if he were observing an anomaly.

  “Yep,” Min said, watching him, her head tilted.

  Harry poked the flower again. “That’s not real.”

  “No,” Min said. “It’s just for fun.”

  Harry nodded as if this were a new idea, which, Cal realized, it probably was. Not a lot of floppy flowers on red toes in Harry’s world.

  Min reached in the bag and handed him a doughnut.

  “Thank you, Min,” Harry said, still channeling abused orphans.

  “Don’t buy his act,” Cal said to Min.

  “I’m not.” Min grinned at Harry. “You look like you’re doing fine, kid.”

  “I had to play baseball,” Harry said bitterly. “Are those hot dogs?”

  “No,” Cal said. “You know you’re not allowed to have processed meat. Go over there on that bench and eat your doughnut.”

  “He can eat it here,” Min said, putting her arm around him protectively.

  Harry, no dummy, leaned into Min’s hip.

  Bet that’s soft, Cal thought, and then realized he was close to being jealous of his eight-year-old nephew. “Harry,” he said warningly, but then his sister-in-law answered her phone. “Bink? You forgot to pick up your kid.”

  “Reynolds,” Bink said in her perfectly modulated tones. “It was his turn.”

  “He’s not here,” Cal said.

  Bink sighed. “Poor Harry. I’ll be right there. Thank you, Cal.”

  “Anything for you, babe.” Cal shut off his phone and looked over at Harry. “Your mother is coming. Look on the bright side, you get a doughnut and your mother, instead of nothing and your father.”

  “Two doughnuts,” Harry said.

  “Harry, you barf,” Cal said. “You can’t have two doughnuts. Now go away. This is a date. Seven years from now, you will understand what that means.”

  “This isn’t a date,” Min said. “He can stay.”

  Harry nodded at her sadly. “It’s okay.”

  “Oh, come off it, Harrison,” Cal said, knowing Harry was milking the situation. “You have a doughnut. Go over on that bench and eat it.”

  “All right.” Harry trailed disconsolately across the grass to a nearby Lutyen bench, his doughnut clutched in his grubby little hand.

  “He’s so cute,” Min said, laughing softly. “Who’s Bink?”

  “My sister-in-law,” Cal said, watching Harry, who still looked skinny, grubby, and bitter to him. “I don’t see the cute part. But he’s not a bad kid.”

  “Bink,” Min said, as if trying to get her head around the name.

  “It’s short for Elizabeth,” Cal said. “Elizabeth Margaret Remington-Pastor Morrisey.”

  “Bink,” Min said. “Okay.”

  Cal picked up a doughnut. “Your turn, Dobbs.”

  Min leaned back. “Oh no. No, no, no.”

  He leaned forward to wave it under her nose. “Come on, sin a little.”

  “I hate you,” Min said, her eyes on the doughnut. “You are a beast and a vile seducer.”

  Cal lifted an eyebrow. “All that for one doughnut? Come on. One won’t kill you.”

  “I am not eating a doughnut,” Min said, tearing her eyes away from it. “Are you crazy? There are twelve grams of fat in one of those. I have three weeks to lose twenty pounds. Get away from me.”

  “This is not just a doughnut,” Cal said, tearing it in two pieces under Min’s eyes, the chocolate icing and glaze breaking like frost, the tender pastry pulling apart in shreds. “This is a chocolate-iced Krispy Kreme glazed. This is the caviar of doughnuts, the Dom Perignon of doughnuts, the Mercedes-Benz of doughnuts.”

  Min licked her lips. “I had no idea you were a pastry freak,” she said, trying to pull back farther, but the wind blew her skirt over to Cal again, and this time he moved his knee to pin it down.

  He broke a bite-size piece from one of the halves. “Taste it,” he said, leaning still closer to hold the piece under her nose. “Come on.”

  “No.” Min clamped her lips shut, and then shut her eyes, too, screwing up her face as she did.

  “Oh, that’s adult.” He reached out and pinched her nose shut, and when she opened her mouth to protest, he popped the doughnut in.

  “Oh, God,” she said, and her face relaxed as the pastry melted in her mouth, her smile curling across her face.

  Cal relaxed, too, and thought, Feeding this woman is like getting her drunk.

  Then she swallowed and opened her eyes, and he held out another piece so he could see that expression again. “Come here, Dobbs.”

  “No,” Min said, pulling back. “No, no, no.”

  “You say that a lot,” Cal said. “But the look in your eyes says you want it.”

  “What I want and what I can have are two different things.” Min leaned back farther, stretching her skirt, but her eyes were on the doughnut. “Get that thing away from me.”

  “Okay.” Cal sat back and bit into it while she watched, the sugar rush distracting him for a moment until Min bit her lip, her strong white teeth denting the softness there. His heart picked up speed, and she shook her head at him.

  “Bastard,” she said.

  He bit into the doughnut again, and she said, “That’s enough, I’m out of here,” and leaned forward to pull her skirt out from under him. “Would you get off—” she began, and he popped another piece of doughnut in her mouth and watched as her lips closed over the sweetness. Her face was beautifully blissful, her mouth soft and pouted, her full lower lip glazed with icing, and as she teased the last of the chocolate from her lip, Cal heard a rushing in his ears. The rush became a whisper—THIS one—and he breathed deeper, and before she could open her eyes, he leaned in and kissed her, tasting the chocolate and the heat of her mouth, and she froze for a moment and then kissed him back, sweet and insistent, blanking out all coherent thought. He let the taste and the scent and the warmth of her wash over him, drowning in her, and when she finally pulled back, he almost fell into her lap.

  She sat across from him, her sweater rising and falling under quick breaths, her dark eyes flashing, wide awake, her lush lips parted, open for him, and then she spoke.

  “More,” she breathed and he looked into her eyes and went for her.

  Chapter Five

  Cal’s eyes were as dark as chocolate, and Min panicked as he leaned close again. She put her hand on his chest, and said, “No, wait,” and he looked down and said, “Right,” and picked up another piece of doughnut. She opened