In Serena's Web Read Free Page A

smiled to herself. “We’ll stay awhile, then, Daddy.”
    He laughed again. “Then I won’t look for you until I see you. Should I start shopping for a wedding present?”
    “Just be ready to give me away.”
    “I hope you know what you’re doing,” he offered dryly. “Otherwise I’ll have to get ready for a funeral. Yours. One of them’s bound to kill you.”
    “Oh, I think I know what I’m doing. See you, Daddy.”
    “Bye, honey.”
    She had barely cradled the receiver when a knock sounded on her door. Smiling, she went to answer it, and found a tall, dark, undeniably handsome man leaning against the jamb.
    “Thanks for the champagne,” he drawled, blue eyes quizzical.
        Coat and tie discarded, Brian paced his room restlessly. He was briefly tempted to call the genius who was in charge of the research and development division of Ashford Electronics and give him a piece of his mind. Several reasons kept him from making that call, one of which was Stuart Jameson’s probable response. He’d laugh.
    Brian had already given up attempting to understand the workings of Jameson’s mind. On the one hand, he’d seemed indulgently amused by Serena’s plan for a leisurely trip across the country; on the other hand, he had hinted strongly that if someone—unnamed—didn’t watch out for his daughter, he wouldn’t be able to concentrate on his work. His important work.
    He was not the type of genius who threw temper tantrums in order to get what he wanted, or threw his weight around in any other fashion; Brian simply assumed strong paternal feelings and volunteered to escort Serena home from Europe.Jameson accepted the offer instantly, fixing Brian with his vague gray eyes and assuring him that he knew his daughter would be safe in his hands. Completely safe.
    The last comment Brian had taken to mean that Jameson wasn’t worried his daughter would acquire an electronics magnate as a lover along the way. It hadn’t been an implied warning; Stuart Jameson never implied anything. He either said something flat out or said nothing at all. If he said his daughter would be safe in Brian’s hands, then that was what he meant. Period.
    Finding his charge waiting for him at Heathrow in London, Brian had mentally reminded himself of Stuart’s confidence. He’d had no idea of Serena’s age then, and had assumed she was leaving school in Europe to come home. When he’d found her in the airport surrounded by the baggage she’d just brought over from Paris, he’d seen instantly that Daddy’s little girl was little only in terms of physical size; there was nothing small about her effect on people. Particularly men. Like an oasis of calm in a violent storm, she sat atop a large suitcase and listened with apparent interestwhile a Frenchman and an Englishman argued in earthy terms about who would have the privilege of carrying her luggage out to the taxi queue. Since both men were dressed in immaculate three-piece suits, Brian gathered they didn’t usually do this sort of thing.
    Their meeting, Brian knew now, should have warned him of things to come. She had sweetly dismissed her knights-errant upon spotting Brian—she’d seen his picture in the newspapers, she told him blithely—and two skycaps had appeared out of thin air when she glanced around once with a lifted brow.
    “Would you have let them fight it out?” Brian had asked her curiously on the way to the hotel they would stay in for several days.
    Serena had smiled guilelessly at him. “Of course not, Brian.”
    She hadn’t explained how she would have prevented it, but Brian knew—now—that she would have.
    They were three weeks into the trip at this juncture, and Brian had learned that Serena Jameson could do just about anything she wanted—theconsequences be damned. He had bailed her out of jail for punching a policeman in the eye, fished her out of the muddy Mississippi River—“But I’ve always wanted to swim in it, Brian.”—watched her