Fancy Pants by Susan Elizabeth Phillips Read Free Book Online Page B

hit
upon an unexpected stumbling block. So much of her life had been spent
with adults that she didn't feel entirely comfortable with her peers,
even those worshiping boys who followed her around like well-trained
lapdogs. She understood that having sex would involve placing a certain
amount of trust in her partner, and she couldn't imagine trusting those
callow young boys. She had immediately seen an answer to her dilemma
when she set eyes on Evan Varian at Annabel's. Who better than an
experienced man of the world to escort her through those fragile final
portals into womanhood? She saw no connection at all between her choice
of Evan to be her first lover and her choice of him, years earlier, to
be her father.

So, ignoring Chloe's protests, Francesca accepted Evan's invitation to
dine at Mirabelle the following weekend. They sat at a table next to
one of the small hothouses where the restaurant's fresh flowers were
grown and dined on rack of lamb stuffed with veal and truffles. He
touched her fingers, angled his head attentively whenever she spoke,
and told her she was the most beautiful woman in the room. Francesca
privately considered that rather a foregone conclusion, but the
compliment pleased her nonetheless, especially since the exotic Bianca
Jagger was nibbling at a lobster souffle in front of one of the
tapestried walls on the opposite side of the room. After dinner, they
went to Leith's for a tangy lemon mousse and glace strawberries, and
then on to Varian's Kensington home where he played a Chopin mazurka for
her on the grand piano in the sitting room and gave her a memorable
kiss. Yet when he tried to lead her upstairs to his bedroom, she balked.

"Another time, perhaps," she said breezily. "I'm not in the mood." It
didn't occur to her to tell him that she would like it very much if he
would just hold her for a while or simply stroke her hair and let her
cuddle up against him. Varian didn't like her rejection, but she
restored his good mood with a saucy smile that promised future
pleasures.

Two weeks later, she forced herself to make the long trek at his side
up the curving Adam staircase, past the Constable landscape and
recamier bench, through the arched entry-way, and into his lavishly
decorated Louis XIV bedroom suite.

"You're luscious," he said, coming out of his dressing room in a maroon
and navy silk dressing robe with J.B. monogrammed in elaborate script
on the pocket, obviously a costume he'd appropriated from his last
film. He approached her, his hand going out to stroke her breast above
the towel she'd wrapped around herself after she'd taken off her
clothes in the bathroom. " 'Beauty like the breast of a dove—soft as
down and sweet as mother's milk,'" he quoted.

"Is that from Shakespeare?" she asked nervously. She wished he weren't
wearing such heavy cologne.

Evan shook his head. "It's from Dead Men's Tears, right before I pushed
the stiletto through the Russian spy's heart." He ran his fingers along
the curve of her neck. "Perhaps you'd go over to the bed now."

Francesca didn't want to do any such thing—she wasn't even certain she
liked Evan Varian—but she'd come too far to turn back without
humiliating herself, so she did as he asked. The mattress squeaked as
she lay down upon it. Why did his mattress have to squeak? Why was the
room so cold? Without warning, Evan fell on top of her. Alarmed, she
tried to push him away, but he was muttering something in her ear while
he fumbled with her towel. "Oh .. . stop! Evan—"

"Please, darling," he said. "Do as I ask. . . ."

"Get off me!" Panic pounded at her chest. She began shoving at his
shoulders as the towel gave way.

Again he muttered something, but in her distress she caught just the
last part of it. "... make me excited," he whispered, pulling open his
dressing gown.

"You beast! Get away! Get off me." As she screamed, she curled her
hands into fists and began beating
at his back.

He pried her legs open with his knees. "... just once