Susan Phillips - It Had To Be You

A book in the Chicago Stars / Bonner Brothers series, 1994

This book would not have been possible without the gracious assistance of the Chicago Bears' organization. A special thanks to Barbara Allen for opening doors and answering questions. Go Bears!

I am also deeply indebted to the following people and organizations:

The National Football League

The Dallas Cowboys' and Denver Broncos' organizations

The public relations staff at the Pontiac Silverdome and the Houston Astrodome

Linda Barlow, Mary Lynn Baxter, Jayne Ann Krentz, Jimmie Morel, John Roscich, and Katherine Stone, for brainstorming, answering questions, providing perspective, and, in general, bailing me out of trouble

The wonderful reference librarians at Nichols Library Claire Zion, for years of guidance and support

The people at Avon Books, especially my enthusiastic and helpful editor, Lisa Wager.

A special thank you to my husband, Bill Phillips, who, since my writing career began, has planned golf tournaments, designed computers, and spent the past year managing a professional football team. This book truly would not have been possible without his help.

Susan Elizabeth Phillips c/o Avon Books

1350 Avenue of the Americas

New York, New York 10019

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 Seven Year 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 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 self-consciously. 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 just because of his exotic good looks, but because there was something hauntingly familiar about this gorgeous hunk of a Hungarian. A few of them correctly identified him as the model who posed, hair undone, oiled muscles bulging, and zipper open, in a national advertising campaign for men's jeans.