It Had to Be You (2 page)

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.

Viktor took the dog from her. “Of course, my darling,” he replied in an accent that, although noticeable, was less pronounced than that of any of the Gabor sisters, who had lived in the States many decades longer than he had.

“My pet,” Phoebe purred, not at Pooh, but at Viktor.

Privately Viktor thought Phoebe was pushing it a bit, but he was Hungarian and inclined to be pessimistic, so he blew a kiss in her direction and regarded her soulfully while he settled the poodle in his arms and arranged his posture best to display his perfectly sculpted body. Occasionally he moved his head so that the light caught the sparkle of silver beads discreetly woven into the dramatic ponytail that fell a quarter of the way down his back.

Phoebe extended a slim-fingered hand whose long, peony-pink nails were tipped with crescents of white toward the portly U.S. Senator who had approached her and regarded him as if he were a particularly delectable piece of beefcake. “Senator, thank you so much for coming. I know how busy you must be, and you’re a perfect honey.”

The senator’s plump, gray-haired wife shot Phoebe a suspicious look, but when Phoebe turned to greet her, the woman was surprised at the warmth and friendliness in her smile. Later, she would notice that Phoebe Somerville seemed more relaxed with the women than the men. Curious for such an obvious sexpot. But then it was a strange family.

Bert Somerville had a history of marrying Las Vegas showgirls. The first of them, Phoebe’s mother, had died years before while trying to give birth to the son Bert craved. His third wife, Molly’s mother had lost her life in a small plane accident thirteen years earlier on the way to Aspen, where she was planning to celebrate her divorce. Only Bert’s second wife was still living, and she wouldn’t have walked across the street to attend his funeral, let alone fly in from Reno.

Tully Archer, the venerable defensive coordinator of the Chicago Stars, left Reed’s side and approached Phoebe. With his white hair, grizzled eyebrows, and red-veined nose, he looked like a beardless Santa Claus.

“Terrible thing, Miss Somerville. Terrible.” He cleared his throat with a rhythmic
hut-hut
. “Don’t believe we’ve met. Unusual not to have met Bert’s daughter, all the years we’ve known each other. Bert and I go way back, and I’m going to miss him. Not that the two of us always agreed on things. He could be damned stubborn. But, still, we go way back.”

He continued shaking her hand and rambling on without ever making eye contact with her. Anyone who didn’t follow football might have wondered how someone who seemed on the verge of senility could possibly coach a professional football team, but those who had seen him work never made the mistake of underestimating his coaching abilities.

He loved to talk, however, and when he showed no intention of running out of words, Phoebe interrupted. “And aren’t you just a
dear
to say so, Mr. Archer. An absolute
sugarplum
.”

Tully Archer had been called many things in his life, but he had never been called a sugarplum, and the appellation left him temporarily speechless, which might have been what she intended because she immediately turned away only to see a regiment of monster men lined up to offer their condolences.

In shoes the size of tramp steamers, they shifted uneasily from one foot to the other. Thousands of pounds of beef on the hoof with thighs like battering rams, they had thick, monstrous necks rooted in bulging shoulders. Their hands were clasped like grappling hooks in front of them as if they expected the national anthem to begin playing at any moment, and their freakish, oversized bodies were stuffed into sky blue team blazers and gray trousers. Beads of perspiration from the midday heat glimmered on skin that ranged in color from a glistening blue-black to a suntanned white. Like plantation slaves, the National Football League’s Chicago Stars had come to pay homage to the man who owned them.

A slit-eyed, neckless man who looked as if he should be leading a riot at a maximum security prison stepped up. He kept his eyes so firmly fixed on Phoebe’s face that it was obvious he was forcing himself not to let his gaze drift lower to her spectacular breasts. “I’m Elvis Crenshaw, nose guard. Real sorry about Mr. Somerville.”

Phoebe accepted his condolences. The nose guard moved on, glancing curiously at Viktor Szabo as he passed.

Viktor, who stood only a few feet from Phoebe, had struck his Rambo pose, a feat not all that easy to carry off considering the fact that he had a small white poodle cradled in his arms instead of an Uzi. Still, he could tell the pose was working because nearly every woman in the crowd was watching him. Now, if he could only catch the attention of that sexy creature with the marvelous derriere, his day would be perfect.

Unfortunately, the sexy creature with the marvelous derriere had stopped in front of Phoebe and had eyes only for her.

“Miz Somerville, I’m Dan Calebow, head coach of the Stars.”

“Well,
hel-lo,
Mr. Calebow,” Phoebe crooned in a voice that sounded to Viktor like a peculiar cross between Bette Midler and Bette Davis, but then he was Hungarian, and what did he know.

Phoebe was Viktor’s best friend in the entire world, and he would have done anything for her, a devotion he was proving by agreeing to act out this macabre charade as her lover. At this moment, however, he wanted nothing more than to whisk her away from harm. She didn’t seem to understand that she was playing with fire by toying with that hot-blooded man. Or maybe she did. When Phoebe felt cornered, she could haul an entire army of defensive weapons into action, and seldom were any of them wisely chosen.

Dan Calebow hadn’t spared Viktor a glance, so it wasn’t difficult for the Hungarian to categorize him as one of those maddening men who was completely close-minded on the subject of an alternative lifestyle. A pity, but an attitude Viktor accepted with his characteristic good nature.

Phoebe might not recognize Dan Calebow, but Viktor followed American football and knew that Calebow had been one of the NFL’s most explosive and controversial quarterbacks until he had retired five years ago to take up coaching. In midseason last fall Bert had fired the Stars’ head coach and hired Dan, who had been working for the rival Chicago Bears’ organization, to fill the position.

Calebow was a big, blond lion of a man who carried himself with the authority of someone who had no patience for self-doubt. A bit taller than Viktor’s own six feet, he was more muscular than most professional quarterbacks. He had a high, broad forehead and a strong nose with a small bump at the bridge. His bottom lip was slightly fuller than his top, and a thin white scar marked the point midway between his mouth and chin. But his most fascinating feature wasn’t either that interesting mouth, his thick tawny hair, or the macho chin scar. Instead, it was a pair of predatory sea-green eyes, which were, at that moment, surveying his poor Phoebe with such intensity that Viktor half expected her skin to begin steaming.

“I’m real sorry about Bert,” Calebow said, his Alabama boyhood still evident in his speech. “We surely are going to miss him.”

“How kind of you to say so, Mr. Calebow.”

A faintly exotic cadence had been added to the husky undertones of Phoebe’s speech, and Viktor realized she had introduced Kathleen Turner to her repertoire of sexy female voices. She didn’t usually shift around so much, so he knew she was rattled. Not that she’d let anyone see it. Phoebe had a reputation as a sexpot to uphold.

Viktor’s attention returned to the Stars’ head coach. He remembered reading that Dan Calebow had been nicknamed “Ice” during his playing days because of his chilling lack of compassion for his opponent. He couldn’t blame Phoebe for being unsettled in his presence. This man was formidable.

“Bert surely did love the game,” Calebow continued, “and he was a good man to work for.”

“I’m certain he was.” Each prolonged syllable she uttered was a breathlessly delivered promise of sexual debauchery, a promise Viktor knew all too well Phoebe had no intention of keeping.

He realized how nervous she was when she turned and held her arms out to him. Guessing correctly that she wanted Pooh as a distraction device, he stepped forward, but just as she took the animal, a maintenance truck that had entered the cemetery backfired, startling the poodle.

Pooh gave a yap and leapt free of her arms. The dog had been restrained too long, and she began a wild dash through the crowd, yapping shrilly, her tail wagging so wildly the pom-pom looked as if it might fly off at any moment and whistle through the air like Oddjob’s hat.

“Pooh!” Phoebe cried, taking off after her just as the small white dog bumped against the slender metal legs that supported a towering arrangement of gladiolus.

Phoebe wasn’t the most athletic of creatures under the best of circumstances. Further hampered by her tight skirt, she couldn’t reach the dog in time to prevent disaster. The flowers teetered and toppled backward, knocking into the wreath jammed next to them, which, in turn, upset a massive spray of dahlias. The arrangements were packed so closely together that it was impossible for one to fall without knocking into another, and flowers and water began to fly. The mourners who were standing nearby jumped away in an effort to protect their clothing and knocked into more of the floral tributes. Like dominoes, one basket tipped against another, until the ground began to look like Merlin Olsen’s worst nightmare.

Phoebe whipped off her sunglasses to reveal her exotically tilted amber eyes. “Stay, Pooh! Stay, dammit!
Viktor!”

Viktor had already rushed to the opposite side of the casket in an effort to head off the rampaging poodle, but in his haste he knocked over several chairs, which, in turn, flew into another group of floral arrangements, setting off a separate chain reaction.

A Gold Coast socialite, who fancied herself an expert on small dogs since she owned a shiatsu, made a leap for the frenzied poodle only to draw up short when Pooh dropped her tail, bared her teeth, and snapped at her like a canine Terminator. Although Pooh was generally the most congenial of dogs, the socialite had the misfortune to be wearing Calvin Klein’s Eternity, a fragrance Pooh had detested ever since one of Phoebe’s friends, who had been drenched in it, had called her a mutt and kicked her under the table.

Phoebe, whose side-slit skirt was showing far too much of her thigh for respectability, shot between two defensive linemen. They watched with open amusement as she gestured toward the poodle. “Pooh! Here, Pooh!”

Molly Somerville, mortified by the spectacle her half sister was making, tried to hide herself in the crowd.

As Phoebe dodged a chair, the heavy gold fig leaf dangling from the links of her belt bumped against the part of her that fig leaves had been designed to shield. She began to grab for it before she was permanently bruised, only to have the slippery leather soles of her pumps hit a batch of wet lilies. Her feet shot out from under her, and, with a whoosh of expelled breath, she fell.

At the sight of her mistress sliding across the ground on her rear, Pooh forgot about the menacingly perfumed socialite. Incorrectly interpreting Phoebe’s actions as an invitation to play, the dog’s yips grew delirious with excitement.

Phoebe tried unsuccessfully to scramble to her feet, giving both the Mayor of Chicago and several members of the rival Bears’ organization a generous view of the top of her thigh. Pooh dashed between the legs of a pompous network sportscaster and shot under the graveside chairs just as Viktor came toward her from the other side. The dog loved to play with Viktor, and her yips grew more fervent.

Pooh made a quick jog, but braked sharply as she realized she was blocked by overturned flower baskets and a large patch of sodden grass—a formidable barrier for an animal who hated getting her paws wet. Cornered, she leapt up onto one of the folding chairs. When it began to teeter, she gave a nervous yip and jumped to another and from there up onto a smooth, hard surface.

The crowd gave a collective gasp as white roses and streamers of sky blue and gold ribbon went flying. Everyone fell silent.

Phoebe, who had just managed to get to her feet, froze. Viktor cursed softly in Hungarian.

Pooh, always sensitive to the humans she loved, cocked her head to the side as if she were trying to understand why everybody was looking at her. Sensing that she had done something very wrong, she began to tremble.

Phoebe caught her breath. It wasn’t good for Pooh to get nervous. She remembered the last time it had happened and took a quick step forward. “No, Pooh!”

But her warning came too late. The trembling dog was already squatting. With an apologetic expression on her small, furry face, she began to pee on the lid of Bert Somerville’s casket.

Bert Somerville’s estate had been built in the 1950s on ten acres of land in the affluent Chicago suburb of Hinsdale, located in the heart of DuPage County. In the early twentieth century the county had been rural, but as the decades slipped by, its small towns had grown together until they formed a giant bedroom for the executives who boarded the Burlington Northern commuter trains that took them into the Loop each day, and also for the engineers who worked in the high-tech industries that sprang up along the East West Tollway. Gradually, the brick wall that bordered the estate had been enclosed by shady residential streets.