When outrageous, curvaceous New York knockout Phoebe Somerville inherits the Chicago Stars football team, she is definitely not prepared for the Stars' head coach, Dan Celebow, a sexist jock taskmaster with a one-track mind. The mismatched pair spark fireworks of all sorts in this sexy, heartwarming, and hilarious "prequel" to Phillips's This Heart of Mine (also available from PerfectBound).

All of Susan Elizabeth Phillips's novels are available from PerfectBound, including the Chicago Stars trilogy: It Had to Be You (1994); Nobody's Baby but Mine (1997); and This Heart of Mine (2002).

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 ran 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 comers, 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.

 

"Phillips is fantastic. What the world needs is more books by Susan Elizabeth Phillips."

 

"Susan Elizabeth Phillips writes a story that wraps around your heart and doesn't let go"

 

Susan Elizabeth Phillips soared onto the New York Times bestseller list with her 1998 smash Dream a Little Dream. In addition to being the only two-time recipient of the Romance Writers of America's prestigious Favorite Book of the Year award, she holds the Romantic Times Career Achievement Award. Susan delights fans by touching hearts as well as funny bones with her wonderfully whimsical and modern fairy tales. All of her titles are PerfectBound e-books: Breathing Room; Dream a Little Dream; First Lady; Heaven, Texas; It Had to Be You; Just Imagine; Kiss an Angel; Lady Be Good; Nobody's Baby but Mine; and This Heart of Mine. A resident of the Chicago suburbs, Susan Elizabeth Phillips is a wife and the mother of two grown sons.

 

It Had to Be You by Susan Elizabeth Phillips
Continue Browsing		View Wish List