Welcome to Temptation/Bet Me Read online

  “Wow,” Amy said when she came up to the porch at noon. “That looks good. It’s even pretty.”

  “Thanks,” Rachel said, but she watched Clea closer because Clea was frowning.

  “We should do the whole house,” Clea said finally, and Amy said, “No, we should not. Are you nuts?”

  “This film is a business expense,” Clea told her. “Tax-deductible. This paint therefore becomes part of that business expense. And I want to sell this house.” She nodded to Rachel. “Do the whole house.”

  “No,” Rachel said. “We can do the whole front porch if you want to film on both sides, that won’t take long. But I do not paint whole houses. I can call the Coreys for you, though. They’ll paint anything.”

  “Are they expensive?” Clea said.

  “It’s a tax deduction,” Rachel said.

  “Let me think about it.” Clea walked out to the edge of the yard to see the porch from a distance.

  Rachel turned back to find Amy grinning at her. “I like you, kid,” Amy said. “You remind me of me.”

  The screen door banged again and a brunette came out, saying, “If you want lunch—” She stopped when she saw Rachel, and Amy rushed to fill in the silence, saying, “This is my sister, Sophie,” to Rachel, explaining Rachel’s ideas and the paint to Sophie, all without ever mentioning the name Garvey.

  Sophie smiled politely at Rachel. “Well, it’s nice of you to offer to help, Rachel, but—”

  Rachel went tense, but Amy said, “Wait a minute. Come here.”

  Amy towed her sister out into the yard, and Rachel thought she’d never seen two more different women in her life, Amy in tight pink and Sophie in loose khaki. Then Amy turned Sophie around and said, “Look at the porch.”

  Sophie folded her arms and studied the porch, and Amy did the same beside her, just like her big sister, and that’s when Rachel saw how alike they were. Same big brown eyes, same curly hair, same full mouth, same incredible concentration, even the same white Keds, although Amy’s had pink shoelaces and were painted with gold spirals. They stood close, leaning into each other a little, and Rachel was struck by how together they were. She’d never stood that close to her sisters, ever, but Sophie and Amy were a team.

  “You think?” Sophie said.

  “I think,” Amy said.

  “Your call,” Sophie said. “The color is wonderful.”

  “Just one thing,” Amy said. “Her last name is Garvey.”

  Sophie started and Rachel thought, That’s it.

  “Give her a chance,” Amy said. “Why should she pay for her father’s crimes?”

  “Hey.” Sophie stepped back. “Don’t pull that on me.”

  “I’ll work really hard,” Rachel said from the porch.

  Sophie came toward her. “I know you will, honey.” She looked at the painted porch rail, gleaming warm in the sunlight, then nodded. “Come have lunch with us. Then you can paint the porch wall this afternoon and help Amy with whatever she needs. But if your father shows up, you’re fired.”

  Rachel relaxed as relief flooded through her. “He won’t ever know. And I’ll be a huge help, you wait and see. I’ll make things so much easier for you.”

  But after lunch, in spite of Rachel’s best intentions, things got difficult because Rob Lutz showed up with his parents. Clea almost had a heart attack when she saw Rob, and Rachel could understand why, since it was hard to see he was a moron when you looked at that face. That was how Rob had talked Rachel out of her virginity, by not talking, just by smiling at her with that face. There was a lesson learned, for sure.

  Clea had said, “This is your son?” to Rob’s dad, Frank, and Frank had grinned down at her like a dork, standing really, really close to her. That made Rob’s mom, Georgia, mad, which Rachel could also understand except that if she’d been married to Frank, she’d have been looking for somebody to take him away. Then Clea put her arm around Georgia and called, “Sophie, meet Georgia.”

  Georgia squinted at the porch where Rachel and Sophie and Amy were standing, and she looked about twenty years older than Clea, probably because she’d been baking her skin into shoe leather all her life so she could be a Coppertone Blonde. That was what she’d said to Rachel every summer since Rachel had started dating Rob: “Come on and lay out with me, honey, and we’ll be Coppertone Blondes. People will think we’re sisters.” Right.

  Then Clea said, “Georgia and I graduated together, Sophie! Isn’t that something?” and Sophie said, “And neither one of you has aged a day,” and glared at Clea to make her behave, and Rachel liked her more.

  Clea just laughed and called back to Rob, “Why don’t you come up on the porch?” and that must have been the first time Sophie saw him because she said, “Oh, Lord.”

  “What?” Amy said.

  “Look at the way he’s looking at Clea,” Sophie said.

  Amy nodded. “Like she’s whipped cream and he has a spoon.”

  Well, that was Rob for you. Always looking for sex. Rachel didn’t know if sex in general was bad or it was just bad with Rob, but as far as she was concerned, Clea could have him.

  Sophie moved to the top of the steps and called, “Come on up to the porch, we have lemonade,” and when she had Clea, Frank, and Georgia settled on the right side of the porch with a warning to stay away from the blush-painted wall, Amy began to shoot.

  Rachel handed Rob a scraper and said, “We need to scrape the other side of the porch,” and Rob said, “Cool.” As he worked, he kept his eyes on Clea, who sat perched on the porch rail looking adorable. Clea watched Rob from the corner of her eye while Frank sat opposite her, laughing and flirting, and Georgia sat between them on the porch swing, looking like a Coppertone Toad.

  Sophie had gone out into the yard to talk to Amy, and she looked concerned. Even after a few short hours, Rachel knew Sophie liked things calm and organized. So when Phin Tucker walked up behind her and said something, and she jumped a mile, Rachel could have told him that was a bad move. He and Wes had parked behind the Lutzes’ van, and Wes had said something to Amy and gone in the house, but Phin went to Sophie and stayed. So he wanted something—three guesses what—but he was doing it all wrong. Well, he’d figure it out. Phin got everything he wanted sooner or later.

  “Hey,” Rob said behind her. “Get busy.”

  “Right,” Rachel said, and crossed her fingers that Phin would do his usual good work.

  Her future depended on it.

  “I’m a little worried about Clea,” the mayor had said to Sophie out in the yard. “I had nine stitches because of her. She could put Frank in the hospital.”

  Sophie watched Frank making a fool of himself on the porch in front of his wife, who looked homicidal. “Clea’s not the only one who could hurt him.” She turned back to the mayor. “How did she give you nine stitches?”

  “I looked down her blouse and fell off my bike.”

  Sophie looked at him with contempt and he said, “Hey, I was twelve. She leaned over. Not my fault.”

  He was as immaculately handsome as ever in the sunlight, and it was even more annoying now that she knew he’d been a pervert at twelve. She started to tell him so and decided she didn’t want to get personal, she just wanted to get rid of him. “Did you say you wanted to look at the electricity?”

  “No,” he said. “I said Amy wanted me to look at the electricity.”

  “Right this way,” Sophie said, leaving Amy to handle the mess on the porch. Five minutes later, she was in the dark farmhouse basement, wishing she was back on the porch. At least in the sunlight she could see what the mayor was up to. “Uh, what are we doing, Mr. Tucker?”

  “Phin,” he said. “And this is your fuse box. We’re looking at it to see if it’s going to burn your house down.”

  “Where are the little switches?” Sophie squinted around his shoulder in the dim light. She’d expected to get a whiff of some expensive cologne as she leaned closer, but instead he smelled of soap and sun, clean, and she swallowed