Lady Be Good by Susan Elizabeth Phillips Read Free Book Online

figure out there’s more to life than hitting a golf ball.”
    As if Kenny could suddenly get to the bottom of what had eluded him for thirty-three years. He pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose, hearing his mother’s voice this time instead of the commissioner’s.
    “How dare you accuse my sweet Kenny of beating up that little brat of yours! You’re just jealous because my Kenny’s so much smarter than the other kids in this god-forsaken town!”
    He shook off the old, unwelcome memory from his childhood and turned his thoughts back to his current problem. Two days after Dallie had suspended him, Kenny’d gotten into a public fight with Sturgis Randall, an overpaid, substance-abusing, lecherous asshole of a network golf announcer, who never failed to use phrases like “born with a silver spoon in his mouth,” “playboy champion,” and “charmed life” when he was describing Kenny and his career.
    Never apologize, never explain , was Kenny’s motto. He couldn’t stand it when jocks started whining to the press about how misunderstood they were, so he made it a policy never to defend himself to reporters. Instead, he let his golf clubs do the talking, and he figured people could either take it or leave it. Which didn’t mean that he was averse to throwing a punch at some jerk who forgot his manners. Even so, he wouldn’t have hit Sturgis if the other man hadn’t thrown the first punch.
    That was all Kenny had needed. But just as Sturgis was beginning to understand the full extent of his mistake, Jilly Bradford, cable television’s most visible female reporter and Kenny’s former girlfriend, had appeared out of nowhere, and Kenny’s fist had accidentally connected with her shoulder. A network cameraman had caught the entire event on tape, including shots of Jilly crying pathetically afterward and a bloodied Sturgis Randall comforting her.
    Even then, Kenny might have escaped the ensuing scandal if Jilly had been fair about it. She knew it was an accident, but ever since their love affair had run its natural course, she’d been publicly vocal about her unhappiness with Kenny. Because of that, everybody thought it was a domestic dispute, and now Kenny not only looked like a man who was too stupid to take care of his money, but also like a slug who got his kicks beating up women.
    If he’d thought Dallie had been upset with him before his fight with Randall, that was nothing compared to the way he reacted after Kenny’s second brush with scandal.
    “You’re still the same no-good spoiled rich kid who was born with more natural talent than you deserve and a screwed-up set of priorities. Well, as far as I’m concerned, it’s long past time you grew up. As of now, your suspension is indefinite. And I’m warning you . . . if you want to be reinstated before you’re too old for the senior tour, you’d better keep that nose of yours squeaky clean.”
    Kenny refused to defend himself. He didn’t see the point. Dallie knew Sturgis Randall was an asshole, just as he knew Kenny would never deliberately hit a woman, but that didn’t seem to make any difference, and now Kenny understood what it felt like to be betrayed by the man who meant as much to him as anyone on earth.
    Hardly a day had passed since his suspension that he didn’t curse the fact that he’d been born and raised in Wynette, Texas, Dallie Beaudine’s hometown, along with cursing the fact that Dallie had taken an interest in him when he’d been a snot-nosed kid hot-rodding around town in the brand-new red Porsche his mother had given him for his sixteenth birthday. Except, when Kenny was thinking rationally, he knew that Dallie’s intervention had saved his life.
    Growing up with a crazy mother who’d suffocated him with her obsessive love, along with a distant father who hadn’t cared enough to intercede, had put Kenny on the path toward the worst kind of trouble. He’d been a bully, hell bent on cutting a wide swath of