“Also you have no idea where it came from,” Sophie said.
“Don’t bust my chops tonight,” Phin said. “Are you really going to let me have you on the hood of this car in the front yard?”
“There’s no moon,” Sophie said. “Not much to see.”
“Unless your brother looks out the window,” Phin said. “Then I’m a dead man. How about the backseat?”
Sophie moved her knees apart and leaned back on her hands.
Phin sighed. “Or right here.”
She leaned over and kissed him, and he felt a lot better. “If you could make this day go away for a while,” he whispered. “I’d be really grateful.”
“I thought that might be the case,” she said, and climbed into his lap to straddle him, and he caught her to him, sliding his hands under his jacket and over all her smooth softness, and buried his face in the hollow of her neck.
“It’s just you and me, bear,” she whispered in his ear. “Nobody else.”
And then she made everything go away.
Three hours later, Phin was sleeping like the dead beside her, and Sophie was trying to find a comfortable place on her mattress. There was one errant spring in particular that was torturing her. She tried to shift over, but Phin was taking up most of the double bed, and the rogue spring dug into her even as she tried to shift him.
Phin murmured something in his sleep, and she tried to climb over him. If he was that fast asleep, he could sleep on the damn spring. But when she was on top, his arms went around her, and even though she said, “No, go back to sleep,” he rolled her to one side—-the good side of the mattress—and kissed her, still half asleep, and she thought, What the hell, and kissed him back.
Half an hour later, with the mattress rattling like a tambourine under them, Sophie felt her blood boil and dug her fingernails into him and said, “Oh, God, yes, now,” and he rolled so that he was on top, and the spring gouged into her again and cooled her blood on the instant. “Ouch!”
She tried to squirm so her spine was off it, but Phin was oblivious on top of her, rocking fast into her, making the bed bounce hard. She tried to bounce her hips over when he pulled back, but he was too fast, so they only hit the mattress harder in the same place. She said, “Ouch”—really loud this time—and tried to shove him away before her spine went, and Phin jerked up, finally hearing her, at the same time she heard a sharp crack with a whine behind it.
He rolled them both off the bed onto the floor, and she landed on top of him.
“Ouch,” she said again, trying to sit up, and he pulled her head back down and rolled on top of her.
“Stay down,” he said, breathless but not mindless anymore.
“What are you doing?” Sophie said. “Get off me—” and then Davy slammed the door open and said, “Sophie?”
“She’s okay,” Phin said from the floor. “I’d stay away from the window if I were you.”
Davy stepped back into the hallway. “Sophie?”
“I’m okay,” Sophie said from under Phin, as he stretched his hand to find his boxers. “What did I miss?”
“Sounded like a gunshot to me,” Davy said from the hall. “I thought maybe the mayor had gotten tired of you.” He was trying to keep his voice light, and failing.
Phin retrieved his boxers and stood up away from the window. Sophie pulled the sheet from the bed and wrapped herself in it.
“What are you doing?” she said as she propped herself up on one elbow, keeping an eye on the window. “If somebody shot at us—”
“At you—so you stay down,” Phin told her as he put on his khakis. “Remember the river? Somebody may be trying to kill you. The only person who wants me dead is Davy.”
“I’ve decided to let you live,” Davy said, back in the doorway. “Where’d it come from?”
“I’m still not sure it was a shot,” Phin said. “My mind was on other things.” He looked around the room. “But it sure as hell sounded like one and it was in this room.” He looked back at Sophie. “You stay there.”
“Through the window?” Davy said, coming in and looking at the wall opposite the window. “I’m not seeing a bullet hole.”
“Maybe it hit the mattress.” Sophie crawled away from the window in her sheet to get her clothes, trying to unscramble her mind from interrupted sex and the new knowledge somebody had just tried to kill her. “Or maybe a car backfired,” she said, going for normality.
“No,” Davy and Phin said at the same time.
She had crawled almost to the door when she saw the hole, a little one, about two feet up from the floor. “There,” she said, still on her knees, pointing to it, and Phin and Davy both bent to look.
Phin said, “Hold on,” and went to the bedside table to rummage through the drawer. “Here,” he said, going back to Davy, and handed him a pencil.
Davy put the pencil in the hole as far as it would go, and it stuck straight out.
“I don’t get this,” Sophie said from where she was sitting by the door, but they both ignored her to follow the line of the pencil.
“You’re kidding me,” Davy said, and they both moved to the bed.
Phin pulled up the quilt and said, “Nope.”
Sophie squinted over at the bed. There was a hole in the side of the box spring.
“Go out in the hall,” Phin told her, and they both went to the other side of the bed, while Sophie scooted out into the hall.
“No hole on this side,” Davy said, bending over.
They grabbed the mattress at the same time and pulled it off the bed.
“No wonder my back’s been killing me,” Phin said, and Sophie craned her neck around the doorway to see a box spring so ancient, the top fabric had rotted to ribbons.
Davy looked at the wall and then back to the box springs and said, “Someplace about here.” He began to peel the rotted ribbons of fabric from a section of the spring in line with the hole, and after a moment he stopped. “Son of a gun.”
“Literally,” Phin said.
Sophie stood and inched her way over to the bed, trying not to trip over her sheet. A small gun lay caught in the box springs, pointing toward the wall. It was so surreal, she felt detached from the moment, as if she were watching a movie. “Somebody booby-trapped my bed?”
“No,” Phin said.
“Somebody stuck a gun under your mattress,” Davy said. “And then you and Harvard fucked it into the box spring and set it off.”
“Beautifully put,” Phin said, looking at him with distaste.
“Somebody’s trying to frame you, Soph,” Davy said.
Sophie looked down at the gun again. “Well, somebody’s not too bright. It’s been decades since anybody looked under this mattress.”
“So somebody’s still waiting for this to be found.” Phin looked at Davy.
“And getting anxious,” Davy said, nodding at him. “So now what?”
“What do you mean, ‘now what?’ ” Sophie said, fear making her cranky. “We call Wes.”
“Quietly,” Phin said. “Because we don’t want anybody to know about this.”
“You really think somebody’s going to believe I killed Zane?” Sophie said.
“No, he really thinks somebody’s going to go nuts waiting for the damn gun to be found,” Davy said. “And the crazier somebody gets, the more likely it is he’ll overplay his hand.”
Sophie looked back at the gun. “I can’t believe I’ve been sleeping on that.”
Phin looked back at the mattress. “I can’t believe I’ve been having sex on that. From now on, we do this in my bed.”
“I don’t want to know about this,” Davy said. “She’s my sister.” He left the room without a backward glance, and Sophie looked back down at the gun.
“Somebody really hates me.” The thought made her cold, and she drew in a long shuddering breath.
“Not necessarily.” Phin picked up his shirt. “Somebody may just want you out of the way.”
Yeah, your mothe
r, Sophie thought, but even she couldn’t imagine Liz sneaking into the house to plant a gun. “How’d it get in here?”
“Anybody can get in here.” Phin buttoned his shirt and tucked it in. “The damn place is always full of people, and they all came upstairs to use the bathroom. Go sleep with Amy.” He looked back at the mattress. “I’m assuming you’re out of the mood.”
“Maybe forever,” Sophie said, picking up her shorts.
“Just until tomorrow,” Phin said, and went to tell Wes.
“What happened to you?” Phin’s mother said to him when he came down to breakfast after three hours of sleep.
“What? Oh, the eye?” He looked at Dillie. “I ran into a door.”
“Really?” Dillie said, pushing back her softball cap.
“Sophie’s ex-door,” he told Liz, under his breath. “No cap at the table, Dill.”
“You ran into a therapist?” Liz said, and Dillie put her cap by her plate.
“Yes, it surprised me, too,” Phin said. “Next topic.”
“What’s a therapist?” Dillie said.
“Like a guidance counselor,” Phin said.
“Sophie has a guidance counselor?” Dillie said.
“No,” Phin began and then stopped as his mother’s face darkened.
“Do you know Sophie, Dill?” she asked.
“Oh, ye—” Dillie began, and then stopped, just as her father had. “A little.”
“You took your daughter to meet your... friend?” Liz said, her voice taut as piano wire.
“No,” Phin said. “My daughter went to meet my friend on her own after talking with Jamie Barclay. I told you that kid was no good.”
“Jamie Barclay’s mother said that Sophie was Daddy’s girlfriend so I went to see,” Dillie said. “Sophie said she wasn’t. It’s perfectly all right.”
“You went to see.” Liz’s eyes softened a little as she turned to her granddaughter, but she still wasn’t happy. “All by yourself?”
“While Grandma Junie was napping.” Dillie looked from her father to her grandmother. “It’s all right. I’m perfectly safe. I’ve done it dozens of times.”
“What?”
“You have not done it dozens of times,” Phin said. “You’ve been there twice.” After Dillie was silent for a moment, he added. “That I know about.”
“This stops now,” Liz said. “Dillie, you do not go back there. Ever.”
“But—”
“Never,” Liz said. “Do you understand?”
“No,” Dillie said, and both Phin and Liz zeroed in on her.
“Don’t tell your grandmother no,” Phin said.
“Well, I don’t understand.” Dillie looked scared but determined. “Sophie’s my friend. She likes me. She’s expecting me. I go on Sundays and Wednesdays when I’m at Grandma Junie’s and Sophie likes it. I play with the dog. We talk. And sing. She’s expecting me.”
“Life is full of disappointments,” Liz said. “You’re not going back.”
Dillie turned tragic eyes on Phin, and he said, “Do you want to say good-bye?”
Dillie nodded, tears starting in her eyes.
“I’ll take you tomorrow when I pick you up at Junie’s,” he said, and Liz said, “No, you will not.”
“Excuse me,” he said to his mother. “I’m talking to my daughter. And she’s going to say good-bye to her friend because it’s the polite thing to do. Tuckers are always polite.”
Liz pressed her lips together.
“Thank you, Daddy,” Dillie said, blinking back the tears. Tuckers didn’t cry.
“You’re welcome.” Phin met Liz’s eyes across the table. “Anything else you want to say about this?”
The phone rang again, and Liz said, “I will get it.” When she was gone, Dillie leaned forward and said, “Daddy?” in a half-whisper.
“What?”
“Remember how you said we could have sleepovers every Monday, and then I didn’t get them?”
Phin winced. “Yeah. Sorry about that.”
“That’s okay,” Dillie said. “Can I have something else? Just for one morning? Not a sleepover? Just once?”
“Probably,” Phin said. “What?”
Dillie hesitated a long time, but when she heard Liz hang up the phone in the hall, she leaned forward and said fast, so the words ran together, “I want Sophie to come to my softball game today. It’s my last one, and I don’t get any sleepovers, and I want you and Sophie to come to my game. Please.”
Liz came back in and sat down. “That was Virginia Garvey.”
“There’s a surprise.” Phin finished buttering Dillie’s muffin and passed it over, and Dillie took it, keeping her eyes on his face.
“Stephen’s concerned you’re up to something with those movie people,” Liz went on.
“No he isn’t,” Phin said. “He hopes I’m up to something with those movie people.”
“Well, you’re going to stay away from them from now on,” Liz said.
“Mother.” Phin waited until Liz met his eyes. “You tell me what to do one more time, and Dillie and I are moving down to the bookstore.”
“Phineas—”
“Back off or lose us.” Phin watched her bite her lip, and then she got up from the table and went upstairs.
Dillie sat next to him, frozen, her muffin clutched in her hand.
“You okay?” he said to her.
She nodded. “Are we going to move?”
“Probably not. Grandma knows when to quit.”
Dillie took a deep breath. “Can Sophie come to my game today?”
“Yes,” Phin said. “At least we can call her and ask.”
Dillie nodded and bit into her muffin, and Phin sat back.
“It will be exciting to have Sophie at my game,” Dillie said around her muffin.
“You have no idea,” Phin said.
Chapter Thirteen
The softball section of Temptation’s tree-filled park had four neatly marked white diamonds, each with its own stand of seats, all filled with parents, grandparents, sisters, brothers, and friends of the family. It was like four Christmases without the turkeys, unless you counted some of the coaches and the more obnoxious of the parents.
“Bat country,” Sophie said. “In every sense of the word.”
“Yep,” Phin said. “Temptation athletics at its finest.”
Dillie nudged Sophie’s arm. “Wish me luck, please.”
She looked so determined in her red-and-white uniform, her red ball cap tilted over her little pointed face, that Sophie resisted to the urge to say, You are cute as hell, kid, and said, “You bet. Break a leg,” instead.
“What?” Dillie said.
“It’s an expression,” Phin said. “One never used in athletics. Go do good.”
“Okay.” Dillie stretched up and Phin bent down to kiss her. Then she stretched up to Sophie, and Sophie bent down, too. Dillie’s cheek was satin-smooth where Sophie kissed her, and she wrapped her arms around Sophie’s neck and pulled her close for a moment.
“Thank you for coming to my game,” she whispered, and Sophie whispered back, “Thank you for inviting me.”
When Dillie ran off to join her team, Sophie turned back to the bleachers and faced a sea of fascinated faces, most of which were curious, some of which were disapproving, and at least one of which —Virginia Garvey’s— was actively hostile. “Why is Virginia here?”
“Niece on the other team.” Phin put his hand on the small of Sophie’s back to steer her toward the bleachers, and Virginia flushed. Probably from the effort of trying to reach Liz by mental telepathy.
“So this is like dinner, only more so,” Sophie said to Phin.
“This is dinner squared, cubed, and cloned.”
“It’s prom,” Sophie said. “I finally made it.”
Phin nodded. “They’ll be talking about this ten years from now.”
“They should get lives.”
“They did,” Phin said. “Ours. Go up to the top
. We can see better up there.”
Since the top was only a dozen rows up from the bottom, it was a short trip. It was also hot as hell, and by the middle of the first inning, Sophie was drenched in sweat.
Welcome to Temptation Page 32
