Temptation Road by Kimball Lee Page A

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