Read Fancy Pants for Free Online Page A

porcelain of the bowls, six mounds
of glistening wet caviar in various shades of red, gray, and beige. Her
hand touched the end bowl, which held a generous heap of pearly red
eggs. "Salmon roe," she said, pushing it away. "Not worth considering.
True caviar
comes
only from the sturgeon of the Caspian Sea."

Onassis laughed and one of the movie stars applauded. Francesca quickly
disposed of two other bowls. "These are both lumpfish caviar, so we
can't consider them either."

The decorator leaned toward Chloe. "Information gleaned at the breast,"
he inquired, "or through osmosis?"

Chloe gave him a wicked leer. "At the breast, of course."

"And what glorious ones they are, cara ."
Giancarlo ran his hand over
the front of Chloe's bare-midriff top.

"This is beluga," Francesca announced, not pleased at having the
attention slip from herself, especially after she'd spent the entire
day with a governess who kept muttering terrible things just because
Francesca refused to do her boring multiplication tables. She placed
the tip of her finger on the edge of the center bowl. "You'll notice
that beluga has the largest grains." Shifting her hand to the next
bowl, she declared, "This is sevruga. The color is the same, but the
grains are smaller. And this is osetra, my very favorite. The eggs are
almost as large as the beluga, but the color is more golden."

She heard a satisfying chorus of laughter mixed with applause, and then
everyone began congratulating Chloe on her clever child. At first
Francesca smiled at the compliments, but then her happiness began to
fade as she realized that everyone was looking at Chloe instead of at
her. Why was her mother getting all the attention when she wasn't the
one who'd done the trick? Clearly, the grown-ups would never let her
sit on the afterdeck with them tomorrow. Angry and frustrated,
Francesca jumped to her feet and swept her arm across the table,
sending the porcelain bowls flying and smearing caviar all over
Aristotle Onassis's polished teak deck.

"Francesca!" Chloe exclaimed. "What's wrong, my darling?"

Onassis scowled and muttered something in Greek that sounded vaguely
threatening to Francesca. She puffed out her bottom lip and tried to
think how to recover from her mistake. Her small problem with temper
tantrums was supposed to be a secret—something that, under no
circumstances, could ever be displayed in front of Chloe's friends.
"I'm
sorry, Mummy," she said. "It was an accident."

"Of course it was, pet," Chloe replied. "Everyone knows that."

Onassis's expression of displeasure did not ease, however, and
Franceses knew stronger action was
called for. With a dramatic cry of
anguish, she fled across the deck to his side and flung herself in his
lap. "I'm sorry, Uncle Ari," she sobbed, her eyes instantly filling
with tears—one of her very best tricks. "It was an accident, really it
was!" The tears leaked over her bottom lids and trickled down her
cheeks
as she concentrated very hard on not flinching from the gaze of
those black wraparound sunglasses.

"I love you, Uncle Ari," she sighed, turning the full force of her
pitiful tear-streaked face upward in an expression she had gleaned from
an old Shirley Temple movie. "I love you, and I wish you were my
very
own daddy."

Onassis chuckled and said he hoped he never had to face her over a
bargaining table.

After Francesca was dismissed, she returned to her suite, passing by
the children's room where she took her lessons during the day at a
bright yellow table positioned directly in front of a Parisian mural
painted by Ludwig Bemelmans. The mural made her feel as if she'd
stepped into one of his Madeline books—except better dressed, of
course. The room had been designed for Onassis's two children, but
since neither was on board, Francesca had it all to herself. Although
it was a pretty place, she actually preferred the bar, where once a day
she was permitted to enjoy ginger ale served in a champagne glass along
with a paper parasol and