It had to be you | Page 2

that Bert had disinherited her. What father would want to pass on his estate to a daughter


who'd been the mistress of a man more than forty years her senior, even if that man had
been the noted Spanish painter, Arturo Flores? And then there was the embarrassment of
the paintings. To someone like Bert Somerville, naked pictures were naked pictures, and
the fact that the dozens of abstract nudes Flores had executed of Phoebe now graced the
walls of museums all over the world hadn't softened his judgment.

Phoebe had a slender waist and slim, shapely legs, but her breasts and hips were plump
and womanly, a throwback to an almost forgotten time when women had looked like
women. She had a bad girl's body, the sort of body that, even at thirty-three, could just as
well have been displayed with a staple through the navel as hanging on a museum wall. It
was a bimbo's body�never mind that the brain inside was highly intelligent, since
Phoebe was the sort of woman who was seldom judged by anything except appearances.

Her face wasn't any more conventional than her body. There was something off-kilter
about the arrangement of her features, although it was difficult to say exactly what since
her nose was straight, her mouth well formed, and her jaw strong. Perhaps it was the
outrageously sexy tiny black mole that sat high on her cheekbone. Or maybe it was her
eyes. Those who had seen them before she'd slipped on her rhinestone sunglasses had
noted the way they tilted upward at the corners, too exotic, somehow, to fit with the rest
of her face. Arturo Flores had frequently exaggerated those amber eyes, sometimes
painting them larger than her hips, sometimes superimposing them over her wonderful
breasts.

Throughout the funeral, Phoebe seemed cool and composed, despite the fact that the July
air was heavy with humidity. Even the rushing waters of the nearby DuPage River, which
ran through several of Chicago's western suburbs, didn't provide any relief from the heat.
A dark green canopy shaded both the gravesite and the rows of chairs set up for the
dignitaries in a semicircle around the black ebony casket, but the canopy wasn't large
enough to shelter everyone attending, and much of the well-dressed crowd was standing
in the sun, where they'd begun to wilt, not only from the humidity but also from the
overpowering scent of nearly a hundred floral arrangements. Luckily, the ceremony had
been short, and since there was no reception afterward, they could soon head for their
favorite watering holes to cool off and secretly rejoice in the fact that Bert Somerville's
number had come up instead of their own.

The shiny black casket rested above the ground on a green carpet that had been laid
directly in front of the place where Phoebe was sitting between her fifteen-year-old half
sister, Molly, and her cousin Reed Chandler. The polished lid held a star-shaped floral
spray of white roses embellished with sky blue and gold ribbons, the colors of the
Chicago Stars, the National Football League franchise Bert had bought ten years earlier.

When the ceremony ended, Phoebe cradled the white poodle in her arms and rose to her
feet, stepping into a shaft of sunlight that sparked the gold metallic threads of her bustier
and set the rhinestone frames of her cat's-eye sunglasses afire. The effect was
unnecessarily dramatic for a woman who was already quite dramatic enough.


Reed Chandler, Bert's thirty-five-year-old nephew, got up from his chair next to her and
walked over to place a flower on the casket. Phoebe's half sister Molly followed selfconsciously.
Reed gave every appearance of being grief-stricken, although it was an open
secret that he would inherit his uncle's football team. Phoebe dutifully placed her own
flower on her father's coffin and refused to let the old bitterness return. What was the
use? She hadn't been able to win her father's love while he was alive, and now she could
finally give up the effort. She reached out to give a comforting touch to the young half
sister who was such a stranger to her, but Molly pulled away, just as she always did
whenever Phoebe tried to get close to her.

Reed returned to her side, and Phoebe instinctively recoiled. Despite all the charity
boards he now served on, she couldn't forget what a bully he had been as a child. She
quickly turned away from him, and in a breathless, slightly husky voice that fit her
chicky-boom body almost too perfectly, she addressed those around her.

"So nice of you to attend. Especially in this awful heat. Viktor, sweetie, would you take
Pooh?"

She held out the small white poodle to Viktor Szabo, who was driving the women crazy,
not