19 Phoebe studied her reflection in the long, narrow mirror that occupied . . .

20 “Are you sure you’ve told me every- thing that happened after I left?”

21 Dan walked across the bedroom, unselfconscious about his nudity.

22 “Stop scowling, Darnell. You’re scaringthe photographers.” Phoebe . . .

23 The pep band struck up “Ain’t She Sweet?” and the Star Girl . . .

24 On the sideline Dan called Jim Biederot over. He hoped the quarterback . . .

25 Ron met Phoebe just inside the door ofthe locker room, and after assuring . . .

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

About the Author

About the Publisher

Copyright

1

Phoebe Somerville outraged everyone by bringing a French poodle and a Hungarian lover to her father’s funeral. She sat at the gravesite like a fifties movie queen with the small white poodle perched in her lap and a pair of rhinestone-studded cat’s-eye sunglasses shielding her eyes. It was difficult for the mourners to decide who looked more out of place—the perfectly clipped poodle sporting a pair of matching peach satin ear bows, Phoebe’s unbelievably handsome Hungarian with his long, beaded ponytail, or Phoebe herself.

Phoebe’s ash blond hair, artfully streaked with platinum, swooped down over one eye like Marilyn Monroe’s in The SevenYear Itch. Her moist, full lips, painted a delicious shade of peony pink, were slightly parted as she gazed toward the shiny black casket that held what was left of Bert Somerville. She wore an ivory suit with a silky, quilted jacket, but the outrageous gold metallic bustier beneath was more appropriate to a rock concert than a funeral. And the slim skirt, belted with loops of gold chain (one of which sported a dangling fig leaf) was slit at the side to the middle of her shapely thigh.

This was the first time Phoebe had been back in Chicago since she’d run away when she was eighteen, so only a few of the mourners present had ever met Bert Somerville’s prodigal daughter. From the stories they’d heard, however, none of them were surprised 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 throw-back 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.