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wallpaper," she said, trying to change the conversation.
    Clea looked at the wall and shrugged. "My mom put it up. She got that one wall done and my father saw it and made her take the rest of the wallpaper back. He was a tight old bastard." Sophie looked at the huge ugly bluish cherries. "Maybe he just had good taste."
    "No." Clea turned her back on the cherries. "He was just a bastard. He was lousy at taking care of us, but he was a real pro at saying no." She seemed bored by the change of subject and drifted out the door, leaving Sophie to scrub the sink.
    When Sophie finished the kitchen, she put her suitcase in a sweltering bedroom that included a hideous blue china dolphin lamp, and then she cleaned the bathroom, although she couldn't manage to unclog the showerhead or find a replacement for the pink-and-blue-fish covered, mildew-encrusted shower curtain. Finally she went back to the kitchen, put Dusty in Memphis on their CD player, and made ham-and-cheese sandwiches to "Just a Little Lovin'."
    "The plumbing works, sort of," Sophie told Amy when she came in. She rinsed out a glass in the kitchen sink and then watched the water seep down the drain. "Although showers will be a problem. I haven't checked the electricity – the basement looks like the pit of hell – but the refrigerator is on again and we're leaving Sunday. We can stand anything for five days."
    "You haven't met our leading man." Amy picked up a ham sandwich and bit into it. "A charter member in Buttheads Anonymous."
    "This would be Frank?"
    "This would be Frank. He got here half an hour ago, and already I want him dead." Amy dropped into one of the dingy white wooden kitchen chairs in front of the mutant-berry wallpaper. "He looks like Kurt Russell did in Used Cars . I mean, he's wearing a green suit , for heaven's sake, and he's drooling into Clea's cleavage."
    "The police and the mayor are here," Clea said from the archway, making Amy choke on her sandwich.
    "Frank says he'll handle it."
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    "Oh, no he won't," Sophie said.
    When she went out on the porch, tensed for battle, a guy in a green suit was talking with a cop in uniform, but they looked manageable. It was the third man, leaning bored against the passenger side of the squad car, who sent every instinct she had into overdrive.
    He had broad shoulders, mirrored sunglasses, and no smile, and Sophie could hear ominous music on the soundtrack in her head as her heart started to pound. His fair hair shone in the late-afternoon sun, his profile was classic and beautiful, the sleeves of his tailored white shirt were rolled precisely to his elbows, and his khaki slacks were immaculate and pressed. He looked like every glossy frat boy in every nerd movie ever made, like every popular town boy who'd ever looked right through her in high school, like every rotten rich kid who'd ever belonged where she hadn't.
    My mama warned me about guys like you.
    He turned to her as if he'd heard her and took off his sunglasses, and she went down the steps to meet him, wiping her sweaty palms on her dust-smeared khaki shorts. "Hi, I'm Sophie Dempsey," she said, flashing the Dempsey gotta-love-me grin as she held out her hot, grimy hand, and after a moment he took it.
    His hand was clean and cool and dry, and her heart pounded harder as she looked into his remote, grey eyes.
    "Hello, Sophie Dempsey," her worst nightmare said. "Welcome to Temptation."

    ~2~
    Sophie's nightmare had a good six inches on her, and it was hard to smile looking that far up into cool eyes while her heart tried to pound its way out of her rib cage. "Oh. Thank you." He nodded down at her, his eyes never leaving her face as he favored her with a politician's practiced smile. "I'm Phin Tucker, the mayor, and this is Wes Mazur, our police chief." The cop had come to stand next to them, shorter than the mayor and pale in his white shirt and black pants. Under his brown crewcut, he peered out of serious, heavy black-rimmed glasses.
    "We came about