In Serena's Web Read Free

and though jeans inevitably made her look sixteen, a dress such as this one turned her into a smoky-eyed siren.
    Serena sighed softly and shook her head. She wasn’t given to longing for what she didn’t have, but a few more inches of height and ash-blond hair would have served her purpose better at the moment.
    Remembering the blondes Joshua Long had escorted around the hotel during the past three days, Serena sighed again. She glanced at the clock on the nightstand and then sat down on the bed. He’d bribe the waiter to tell him who had sent the champagne, she knew, and would eithercall or knock on her door. In the meantime, however, she really should talk to her father.
    Before Brian did. Serena knew her parent too well to think he’d give Brian permission to spirit her away to California, but she’d always kept him informed of her plans, and this plan was no exception. She placed the call, and shortly heard her father’s vague, affectionate voice.
    “Hi, honey. Brian hasn’t murdered you yet?”
    Serena laughed and leaned against the pillows banked up behind her. “Not yet, Daddy. He’s threatened to, though.”
    “Yes, he’s called every other day or so,” Stuart Jameson said in an absent tone. “He seemed to think I’d be angry that he hadn’t kept you out of jail and out of the Mississippi.”
    “He’s being very stuffy,” Serena told her father severely.
    “Rena, stop playing your tricks on the man.” Her father’s tone matched hers now. “I’ve had twenty-six years to learn how to cope, but he hardly knows you.”
    “He’s learning.” She was unrepentant.
    “In self-defense, I’m sure.”
    She laughed. “He’s holding up, Daddy. He may be calling you tonight, by the way.”
    “What’ve you done now?”
    “Nothing,” Serena answered placidly. “Not yet, anyway. It’s just that I’ve decided to get married, and Brian thinks I’ve chosen the wrong man.”
    As her father had said, he had been granted some years to become accustomed to her sudden fits and starts. So he didn’t deafen her with exclamations of horror or surprise. He merely said politely, “You’re getting married?”
    “I thought I would.”
    “And who is it that Brian disapproves of?”
    “Joshua Long.”
    There was a long silence, and then her father murmured, “Joshua Long. I see. He’s in Denver? You
are
still in Denver?”
    “Yes to both questions.”
    “And you told Brian you’d decided to marry Joshua Long?”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “He believed you?”
    “He doesn’t know me very well,” Serena explained tranquilly. “Not yet, anyway.”
    “I see,” her father murmured. “I think. Brian disapproved—uh—strongly of these impending nuptials, I take it?”
    “Well,” she said, faintly dissatisfied, “not strongly enough. But I expect he’ll get better at it.”
    “With a nudge from you?”
    “That,” she said, “is the plan.”
    There was silence, and then a soft chuckle. “Rena, when you were a child, I believed you’d gotten few of my brains but all of your mother’s sweet temperament. Through the years, I’ve had to revise that deduction. You got your mother’s temper, all right—and my brains—and the cunning of the two pirates and three politicians on the family tree.”
    “Thank you,” she responded gravely. Then her amusement faded. “Daddy? Any more calls?”
    Stuart Jameson sobered as well, but his voice was reassuring. “No mention of you since New York, honey. You’ve lost them, I’d say. Does Brian know—?”
    “No, I haven’t really found the right opportunity to tell him. I think it’s time, though. He’sgoing to be angry when he finds out he’s been in the dark during all of this.”
    “I have a feeling,” the elder Jameson said dryly, “you’ll know how to handle him.”
    “Well, I’ll certainly try. D’you think it’ll be all right for us to stick around here for a while?”
    “Yes, but keep your eyes open, honey.”
    “I always do.” Serena