Temptation Road (6 page)

“This is Fletcher, my brother. Fletcher, I’m
pleased introduce Reagan Hart.” Teddy said, giving his brother a
lopsided smile then turning his attention back to Rae. “So you’re
not a Mary? That’s odd, with you buying the house and all.”

She stood up and extended her hand to the
brother; he held it, staring down at the pale, smooth skin and long
tapered fingers. He was enthralled by its delicacy and gracefulness
and the way it fit perfectly in his own hand.

“Fletcher,” she said, as if testing the sound
of it, “Mary-Reagan is my given name; it just doesn’t work as a
California name. I’m from Texas originally, when I started working
as… a model, I dropped the Mary.”

Fletcher continued to hold her hand and
without realizing it, smoothed his fingers over it as she babbled
on. He looked directly at her when she mentioned that she was a
model and he seemed on the verge of actually saying something. She
wasn’t sure if he recognized her as the woman he’d kissed on her
first night in town, he gave no solid hint of recognition, but he
still held onto her hand as if it were something rare that only he
had discovered.

She looked into his eyes in the lighted room,
they were so amazingly large and deeply blue in his sun-touched
face. Those blue-black eyes drew her in so that she wanted
desperately to move toward him and press her face to his neck and
inhale and let her lips and tongue taste his skin. He looked as if
he’d spent untold days working hard in the brilliant sunlight high
up in the mountains. He radiated health and strength, his muscles
were well defined under his thin chambray shirt, and he was
disarmingly handsome. Beyond all his physical attributes, Rae
simply felt as if he belonged with her and she belonged with
him.

“She bought the Mary’s house and wants to
hire us to restore it, I’m ready for a challenge like that. What do
you think?” Teddy asked, and his brother looked as if he wanted to
answer, but he let Rae’s hand fall at last, then turned and walked
away. “Alright,” Teddy said, “we’ll go out there at sun-up and get
a feel for things, then we need the rest of the week to finish a
job we’re doing now. How about you meet us at the house next
Wednesday and we’ll get started?”

“Are you sure he wants to work on the house,
is he okay with working for me?” Reagan asked, watching Fletcher’s
broad back and long legs disappear up the narrow set of stairs.

Teddy laughed and his eyes had a mischievous
glint, “he definitely wants to do this job, believe me!”

*

The following Wednesday morning she dressed
in sweat pants and layered on a tank top and two sweatshirts
against the autumn cold. She drove to the house and when she
stepped out of the car the sun was already warming the top of the
mountain. She stood at the cliff edge of the property and the view
across the valley was a tapestry of red and gold all the way to
Grandfather Mountain and beyond. A small breeze moved the fallen
leaves and they rattled as they knocked into each other, twirling
like corkscrews from the trees to the ground.

She wandered back toward the house, past the
runaway garden, the leaves of the old plants were huge and the
twining vines seemed to move, the heavy sunflower heads turned to
watch her, she was almost certain. She felt that if she stood among
them for more than a moment she might be lost, swallowed into the
whispering foliage and the green darkness and the fertile black
earth. The ground had absorbed the sun’s heat and reflected it up
into her body, so she peeled off the sweat shirts and kept
walking.

The house somehow looked better that morning
and she realized that in just a few hours the Green brothers had
managed to haul away truckloads of debris. Rae hopped up on the
porch and came face to face with Fletcher Green, shirtless and as
splendid as a carved statue. He dropped his eyes, stepped off the
porch and carried a load of rotted wood to a pile at the edge of
the property.

Friendly guy
, Rae thought,
oh well,
he’s probably been swooned over by too many love struck mountain
girls.

“Reagan, come in, take a look around, this
old place is a treasure for sure!” Teddy smiled a big; ‘
I’m in
my element’
smile and motioned for her to come inside. One of
the brothers had wiped most of the grime off the windows and
sunlight was pouring in, the house was more magnificent than she’d
imagined, and her heart soared.

It was high-ceilinged with large rooms that
attached to one another willy-nilly and with no discernable order.
The dining room opened to a side porch that was connected to a
potting shed. The laundry room occupied one corner of an impressive
library with floor to ceiling shelves stuffed to overflowing with
leather-bound books. In the kitchen there were tall white cupboards
and bracketed open shelves made from grey and white marble. There
were stately French windows and one set opened outward over the
deep farm sink to views of the garden. Right in the exact middle of
the dreamy kitchen a grand piano stood where an island should have
been.

The staircase in the front hall was a wide
ornate work of art with woodland creatures, foxes and birds and
squirrels, carved into the thick newel post and handrail. There was
a second stairway leading upward from the breakfast room, it
whimsically turned back and forth upon itself as it made its way to
the second floor bedrooms, then the large cluttered attic and
finally to a watch-tower ending at a miniature door to a
widows-walk at the very top of the house.

Rae was in love with the rambling old house
and she knew she’d made the best decision of her life to find it
and make it her own. It offered up endless adornments to delight
the eye and she was jubilant just standing in the enormous foyer
with its breathtaking details. That space alone boasted a fireplace
with a gorgeous mantle and wavy-glass-fronted curiosity-cabinets
set into the walls, all with the same sprightly carved animals that
frolicked on the woodwork of the stairway. She felt so powerful and
euphoric just standing in her own piece of paradise that she only
wished Fletcher would walk through the door at that exact moment so
she could pull him down on the dusty floor and make love to him
until he screamed her name.

“Teddy,” she said, blinking away the image of
her naked body tangled with his brother on the floor and shocked at
her wanton lust, “you know we didn’t talk about money, I have an
idea what building materials will cost, but what about your fee and
your brother’s.”

“We’re glad for the work, this is an
important project for us as well, and the Mary’s were my father’s
cousins several times removed. They were in their eighties at
least, when we came to live with Pop. They were like aunts to us,
kind of took the place of our mother. We spent a lot of time out
here when we were boys. Pop would tend the garden and gather plants
for his experiments and Fletcher, Quinton and I would play in the
house, we know every nook and cranny. Don’t worry, pay what you
can, our living expenses are low, it’s the work we love and now the
house will come alive again.”

“Well, I should pay a retainer up front and
what about lumber and supplies?”

“We have accounts with suppliers, we’ll give
you those bills as they come and no need for an advance, don’t
worry, it will all work out.”

Fletcher moved through the room, seemingly
oblivious to Rae and Teddy, he’d put on a shirt and he disappeared
up the stairs carrying a ladder over his shoulder.

“Okay,” Teddy said. “I better get to it, he
wants to get started upstairs now. We’ll get an electrician out
here tomorrow; the whole place needs to be rewired. It’s a big job,
we could do it ourselves, but with plumbing and plaster and
woodwork on top of that it would take a lot longer.”

“Right, yes. Get it done; I want to move in,
what about the roof?”

“We’re going up there for a look after
lunch,” he pointed to a longer extension ladder in the back of his
truck. “You should go on out to Builders Supply on the highway,
pick some paint colors and roof shingles. We can rebuild the
cabinets here at the site, and those old soapstone counters will
last forever. All the sinks and bathtubs need resurfacing or you
can pick new ones. The faucets are solid, they’ll need polishing
but they’re sound. If you want fancier fixtures there’s a plumbing
showroom in Asheville, it’s a couple of hours drive each way.”

“Teddy,” she said as he turned to go, “I hope
I haven’t offended your brother in some way that I’m not aware of,
I would never…”

“No, no, Fletcher’s not very sociable and I’m
sure you figured out that he doesn’t talk. Don’t mind him he loves
this house and he thinks you’re God’s gift to the mortal world.
He’s been pretty much a fan since that ad with you and the
bullfighter was plastered on a billboard out on the county highway.
Don’t tell him I said so, but when he heard they were taking it
down he climbed up there and peeled off the section with your face.
It’s still hanging on the wall in his room!” He said and smiled his
lopsided smile. “We’ll be here until dark and you might want to
make a wish list, write down your hopes and dreams, for the house I
mean, what’s most important to you, how you want it to turn out.”
Then he clicked up the stairs carrying a giant tool box in his
fingerless hand.

Has my picture on his wall.
She’d
posed for that picture ten years before and Fletcher had saved it
from being destroyed and he thought she was beautiful. Her stomach
and her heart felt strange, good but strange. The way she looked
had only been her meal ticket in the past, now a mouth-wateringly
sexy man who’d never said a word to her harbored a secret crush on
her, it made her beauty suddenly seem worthwhile. She walked
outside, stepped off the porch and heard wood scraping above her.
An upstairs window was being forced open, the old paint catching
and cracking. When it was fully open Teddy leaned out, smiling and
waving.

“Reagan, your bedroom will be in pretty good
shape by next week, we’ll be finished with the paint and the
woodwork and the fireplace should be working. We know you’re
anxious to move in, Fletcher thought you might want to bring a bed
and your things and sleep here soon. We’ll have the hall bath in
working order too, and a makeshift kitchen. We can get someone out
here to do some serious cleaning and scrubbing if you like.”

“I can clean,” Rae said, “I’ll get supplies
and be right back. Should I pick up some lunch? Wait a minute,
Fletcher
said
I might want to move in?”

“Well not in so many words!” he laughed and
thanked her for the offer of lunch but said they had brought their
own, then he disappeared back through the window.

Fletcher walked out the front door just then
with another load of debris for the woodpile. He gave her a quick
glance and a smile that caused a burst of pleasure down deep in her
belly, and as he passed the garden she could’ve sworn the plants
vibrated at his nearness.

*

Later on when the brothers were still hard at
work long past sundown and Rae was exhausted from just watching the
ferocity with which they worked, she drove down the mountain to the
Inn.

Dody sat on the old sofa drinking a glass of
wine, the empty bottle rested on a table beside her next to a UPS
package.

“Hey doll, a package came for you today, why
don’t we open it and see if it’s a million dollars! Come sit with
me a minute or two, I just got Coco to bed, you wouldn’t believe
the homework they send home with an eight year old. You want some
wine? I can open another bottle,” she tried to stand and sank back
down on the sofa. “Guess you’ll have to get it yourself, I might
have had
a tad
too much.”

“I’m fine,” Rae said, sitting down beside her
and opening the small box. Inside was her new cell phone, she
unwrapped it and began programming numbers into it as she spoke to
Dody, “What about you? Did something happen, something with your
boss or that Quinton Green?”

“It’s an old story baby doll,” she slurred,
“the man I love don’t love me, but the funny thing is, he loves my
kid.” She looked at Rae and she seemed to be thinking a little more
clearly, “have you ever felt like your life is so messed up and
your heart is nothin’ but a punching bag? It’s my own damn fault
really, he ain’t done nothin’ wrong but try to be like a big
brother to Coco, and him knowing what he knows about me and her
daddy, how could he ever love me back?”

Rae’s heart began to ache, Dody was in love
with Fletcher, that much she was sure of. The big question was,
what did he feel for Dody? Maybe Rae was an idiot to think he would
fall in love with
her
, he might simply be like Carlo,
worshipping the DeLuca girl but not the real woman. Coco had told
Rae her favorite pastime was playing checkers with Fletcher in
front of the fireplace at the Inn and she’d heard Dody thank the
delivery guy for a pizza that Fletcher had sent for her and the
little girl. It was obvious he was the man Dody was love sick
over.

“Yes,” Rae said finally, “I’m divorcing a man
now who only loved the thought of me in a photograph, and I left a
good man years ago because I wanted all that glittered. Seems like
love isn’t as easy as we expect it to be, it’s more like in
fairytales where the princess gets locked in the cellar or sleeps
for a thousand years waiting for true love. I don’t know about you
Dody, but even though falling in love is frightening, I still think
it’s worth the risk.”

“Well I wouldn’t risk waiting around for
Fletcher Green if that’s what you have in mind,” Wade Campion said,
he was leaning against the door from the front hall, and neither
Rae or Dody had noticed him. “All the women seem to fall for that
quiet unreachable quality of his, for all the good it does them,
and here’s poor Dody trying to trap him with her fatherless child.
She can’t wait for me to roll into town so she can sleep with me
and think about him while were going at it. Now Quint is just a
college boy but he’s set his sights on you and that boy gets what
he wants. Just think about it, he’s smarter than his brother and
younger, and there’s nothing to compare with a young man when a
thirty year old woman is in heat.”