Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You (v1.2) Read Online Free PDF Page B

toured Europe , traveled across America , rubbed elbows with the little people, learned all about this real life you’ve been hinting at so longingly tonight.”
    Shelby’s heart began to beat faster, excitement at her uncle’s adventures warming her blood, speeding her pulse. “You did? I never knew, never guessed. You broke out, Uncle Alfred? You broke away from all this, went your own way—experienced life?”
    “Oh, I most certainly did, my child.” He sighed, bent down, and picked up his snifter once more. “And then I… settled. Being cut off from one’s allowance while sitting in a broken-down Thunderbird in the middle of an Arizona desert tends to bring one sharply to his senses. Now I drink, and I squire old ladies wearing too much old family money and definitely too much scent, and I drink some more. But I do have my memories. Those I do have.”
    “Memories,” Shelby repeated, chewing on her bottom lip. Perhaps, she thought, being settled wouldn’t be so bad, not if she had memories. Her smile began to grow again, the fairly crazy idea that had knocked on her mind earlier now finding an open door and a welcome mat.
    She put her arms around her uncle and kissed him soundly on his flushed cheek. “Oh, thank you, Uncle Alfred. Thank you so much!”
    He stepped back, holding on to her arms, looking deeply into her eyes. “Thank me? For what?”
    “Why, for helping to create me, of course,” she said, kissing him yet again. “I’ve got some of your spirit somewhere inside of me. I must. And it’s about time I did something with it, before I settle.”

Chapter Eight
    If Shelby had taken the time to plan her every move, she probably wouldn’t have done it. She’d have thought of a dozen reasons, two dozen reasons, why she should just forget any thoughts of—the word she sought, then found, was freedom —and simply go on existing, not living.
    Go on being Somerton’s sister, Parker’s fiancee, the Ice Maiden. Spend the summer attending pre-wedding parties, unwrapping silver salad tongs, picking invitations, having fittings of her gown. Organizing the Taite-Westbrook merger—er, wedding—so that it would be the sensation of the year.
    Strangled by ivory peau de soie, trapped in a web of Alencon lace. Grandly wedded, politely bedded, and then spending the remainder of her life attending parties, hosting parties, volunteering in the hospital gift shop three hours a week, turning a blind eye to Parker’s litde sexual peccadilloes with a string of disposable females, drinking just a tad too much wine after dinner… and quietly going insane.
    So Shelby didn’t think. She didn’t plan. Well, not much anyway.
    Mostly she acted.
    Five days after the charity ball, she pulled Susie into the bedroom, flung open the doors to her walk-in closet—the one with the rotating hanging rods, the one that held enough clothes, shoes, hats, and purses to stock a large, upscale consignment shop—and told Susie to pick out some “normal” clothes for her.
    Susie Helfrich dutifully took two steps into the closet, then stopped, screwed up her pug nose, and looked at her employer. “Huh? Um, that is, pardon me?”
    “ Normal , Susie,” Shelby repeated, waving her arms a time or two, then pointing at her maid’s denim skirt and pink summer sweater, her scuffed white Keds. “Normal. Like yours, Susie. The sort of thing people would wear in… well, what people would wear in a small town.”
    Susie looked at the clothing hanging on padded hangers and shook her head. “You don’t own anything like that, Miss Taite. You shop in New York and Paris twice a year. Nor— Um—most people shop in malls and outlet stores. Your clothing is really beautiful, but you don’t exactly have anything that I’d wear back home or anything like that.”
    Shelby’s shoulders slumped, a princess who longed to be Cinderella before the fairy godmother showed up. “No, I haven’t, have I? Very well, let’s do the best we can with