Temptation Road by Kimball Lee Page B

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.”
    “Where did you come from?” Dody asked, giving
Wade the evil eye. “You better leave my child outta this, and her
crazy daddy don’t even know she exists. As for Reagan Hart she
don’t have no use for a mountain man like Fletcher or his ‘too good
for the rest of us’ little brother, and Quinton ain’t a boy. Hell,
if he ever gets out of college or finishes his doctoral thingamajig
the whole town will throw a party or keel over dead from shock!
Besides, some nice man called here lookin’ for her earlier, said he
was an officer of the law from California. His name is Sean and I
could tell he’s good lookin’ just from the sound of his voice.” She
turned to Rae, “He said you’ve got his number and he wants you to
call him so he can come out and talk to you. He’s in love with you,
I just know it and he asked if you were here in North Carolina by
yourself. I gave him this address, I hope you don’t mind, he just
sounded like he needed to see you real bad.”
    Wade smiled at Rae as if he didn’t care to
hear a thing Dody had to say, then he said, “If you want a man who
knows how to treat a lady, forget about the cop and these local
boys. I’m from Knoxville and I have a way with fancy women.”
    “Yes, I can certainly see that,” Rae said,
slipping by him and up the stairs. She was going to her room to
call her mother and then Alana from the new cell phone, then she
was packing her bags and moving to the Mary’s house as soon as
humanly possible.
     
    *
    In the following week Rae wandered around the
Temptation Road property. She worked to pull some weeds and
untangle a clutch of vines in the cutting garden only to find new
sprouts spring up immediately in their place. One day a big white
rooster joined her, strutting his stuff around the garden and
pulling fat worms from the soft earth. He was just there from
seemingly nowhere and he pecked at the ground around her feet,
following her and making strange little noises if Rae was out of
his sight.
    Rae and Fletcher drove all over the mountain
and Rae asked if anyone was missing a rooster, but no one was. She
decided she liked him, when she sat on the porch swing he hopped up
and sat with her. She stroked the red comb on top of his head after
she got over being afraid of him and he would settle against her
and fall asleep. Teddy named him Colonel Sanders and Rae became
ridiculously fond of him. He followed her everywhere and cocked his
head this way and that like a little mechanical bird, ogling Rae
with his beady little chicken eyes.
    Fletcher’s own eyes sparkled as he stopped
before going into the house one day, he was assembling an antique
four-poster bed in the master bedroom so Rae could move in that
afternoon. She was sitting in a rocker on the porch, reading a book
and petting the rooster that perched on her lap. When she looked up
and into Fletcher’s delighted eyes she jumped, dropping the book
and spilling Colonel Sanders onto the floor boards. Fletcher shook
his head and laughed, the first sound she had ever heard him make,
a deeply erotic lyrical sound, and she heard it still as he went on
into the house and vanished up the stairs.
    A few days later it was a red fox that
climbed stealthily through an open window, and Teddy and Fletcher
found Rae backed into a corner of the sunroom watching the animal
sniff around. Fletcher tapped his fingers against the leg of his
jeans and the fox ran to him and rubbed against him like a cat.
Teddy told Rae to get used to it, the animals and the plants and
the house yearned for company and most especially they’d been
waiting patiently for the new Mary.
    The next morning when Rae rolled around in
her big antique