Temptation Road
chiseled face of the man she’d kissed on the
porch that morning as the sun was rising. He must have cut his hair
she thought sadly, as he slid into the booth next to her, smiling
and holding out his hand.
    “I’m Quinton,” he said and kissed her hand,
never letting his eyes leave hers, “and you are the legendary
Reagan Hart. The girl who stole my heart a long time ago,
but I guess you hear that all the time.”
    “It’s Rae,” she said, caught up in his dark
blue velvet eyes, “I go by Rae when I’m just being myself… which I
am right now… and intend to be from now on… so you cut off all your
wonderful hair?”
    “Seriously?” he asked and turned to smirk at
Dody and Wade who had settled in across from them, then he turned
back to Rae and laughed, “You met Fletcher? If you tell me he spoke
to you that would be classic, although I suppose if a man chooses
to speak after twenty years it should be to a beautiful and famous
woman. But he didn’t, did he? I’ll bet my long suffering big
brother held fast to his ‘strong silent type’ image even when he
was face to face with his heart’s desire.”
    She could see the subtle differences then,
the man sitting next to her was probably a few years younger and
less strikingly handsome than her mystery man and although her
heart had beat at first, its wild thumping had slowed. They were
brothers and the one she had not met formally but had kissed as he
kissed her back was Fletcher and he couldn’t talk, and his brother
Quint was making a joke about it.
    “Your brother can’t speak and you find that
amusing?” she said, gathering her purse and giving him a venomous
look that caused him to stand hurriedly and let her out of the
booth. “You’re rude and maybe just a bit arrogant and obviously not
a very loyal family member. I have to tell you,” she said, bending
toward him so that he and Wade both got an eyeful of her breasts in
her Agent Provocateur bra when the neckline of her blouse gaped
open, “I find that highly detestable in a man.”
    *
    It began to rain and the wind blew crazily as
she walked back to the grocery store looking for Miss Bess, she dug
around in her purse trying to find her foldable umbrella. Dody
stood at the door of the Snakebite and called after her when she
stormed out of the café but Rae didn’t turn around. She wasn’t
exactly sure what had pissed her off so badly, Quint’s easy smile
and kissing her hand like he was James Bond or some sort of
pretentious jackass. Or his disregard for his mute brother, or the
look in his eye that said “I’ll have you in bed before you know
what hit you.” He just rubbed her the wrong way she decided, and
for some inexplicable reason she felt a deeper connection to his
brother whom she had only seen twice, and kissed once and had never
spoken a word to.
    *
    Miss Bess Lamar sat in a hickory wood rocking
chair in the over-stuffed grocery store that her son owned. She was
a paper-thin bird-like woman who rocked and hummed while she worked
the New York Times crossword puzzle. She spat tobacco juice into an
empty tuna-fish can with deadly precision. Her teeth rested next to
her in a glass of water on a small table. She looked up and saw Rae
looking at the teeth and said, “Damn thirstiest teeth I ever owned,
they’re always in that glass!” and she laughed to beat the band.
“What makes a movie star like you think you can just waltz in here
and buy up that little patch of magic up on Temptation Road,
anyhow?”
    “I’m not a movie star,” Rae said, sitting
down on an unopened box of canned sweet corn, “and I can feel the
house calling to me, please tell me about the Mary’s and then point
me in the right direction so I can make an effort to own it because
honestly, I’ve been wishing for something extraordinary to happen
in my life.”
    “Well, I’ll tell you about the day those old
ladies disappeared and then you’ll want the Green boys to put the
old house to rights if the

Similar Books

Carola Dunn

The Actressand the Rake

A Textbook Case

Jeffery Deaver

The Green Mile

Stephen King

Unintentional Virgin

A.J. Bennett

Celtic Moon

Jan DeLima

Afternoon Delight

Kayla Perrin