Fortune is a Woman by Elizabeth Adler

Author:Elizabeth Adler [Woman, Fortune Is a]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-03-11T01:32:41+00:00

CHAPTER 25

Harry threw the detective's typewritten report impatiently into his desk. He paced to the window and stared angrily out onto California Street. The fool had been unable to find Francie, but Harry knew she was out there somewhere, he felt it in his bones.

He turned away restlessly. He was irritated and upset; he was supposed to return to Princeton for the spring semester, but he sure as hell didn't feel like it. He was sick of college, sick of San Francisco, sick of thinking about his goddamn sister. He needed a change. He needed wine, women, and song. His spirits lifted as he contemplated the idea, and his mind instantly made up, he raced up the stairs and ordered his valet to pack. They were going to Paris.

He called up Buck Wingate and invited him to accompany him, then he reserved the two best suites on the next liner leaving for France and ordered his private railroad coach to be attached to the Southern Pacific to New York.

Buck Wingate was three years older than Harry. He had graduated from Princeton and was working in his father's Sacramento law practice, gaining experience before continuing his graduate studies in law at Harvard, and immediately after that he meant to enter politics. He was twenty-three years old and had been voted the best-looking man of his year at college. He was tall with dark, wavy hair that grew in a peak on his forehead, steady brown eyes, and a lean athletic body. He swam, rowed crew, played a nine average at polo, and had a golf handicap of seven. But his passion was his forty-foot gaff-rigged sloop, the Betsy Bee, which he sailed as often as possible off Newport, where the family had a summer home.

He wasn't sure the trip to Paris with Harry Harrison was exactly his style, but his father insisted he go along "to keep an eye on him." Jason Wingate had always taken care of Harmon Harrison's legal business and after his tragic death in the earthquake he had continued to keep a fatherly eye on the boy. And not without a bit of aggravation to Buck. He'd had to rescue young Harry from the authorities more than once. His latest scrape was when he'd been caught in a police raid on a notorious New York bordello. "He's just sowing a few wild oats," Buck had told the police, but Jason was worried because Harry wasn't paying too much attention to his studies either and his grades were slipping.

"I'd better take a sabbatical from Princeton, Mr. Wingate," Harry told him. "I need time to get over my father's death and sort myself out."

Buck had raised his eyebrows—it was five years since Harmon had died and he hadn't noticed Harry still grieving. But he said nothing. And now he dutifully packed and joined Harry on board the Normandie.

When he looked back on the trip later he knew his instinct had been right, it wasn't his style. Harry Harrison was

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