by Peggy Webb
He realized that he was smiling as that daft, quarrelsome, delightful female danced through his brain. She’d been so passionate about everything that she was exhausting to be with: passionate about her dreams, about food, about every tiny little argument. And she’d argued endlessly! He’d had to kiss her to shut her up. And then there had been no way to stop until he’d explored the whole of her glorious, vibrant body and discovered that she was passionate about him, as well.
Pippa knew she’d done everything the wrong way. It had been crazy to decide to go to Los Angeles one minute and book for the first available seats the next.
Now here she was, weary from the long flight, with an inner clock that said it was nearly midnight, the hardest part still to come and the day barely started. And since she hadn’t warned Luke she was coming, he might not even be there.
Oh, why didn’t she think before she did these impulsive things?
It was Jake’s fault. And Harry’s and Paul’s and Derek’s. They should have stopped her, especially Jake, who was supposed to be the sensible one. Instead he’d come up with the name of a friend in the airline who could get her a couple of heavily discounted tickets.
Paul and Derek had checked her medicines repeatedly and given her a list of rules for taking care of herself. Harry had driven her and Josie to the airport in his old car. And they’d all come along because they couldn’t let her go so far away without waving her off.
If only her bags would appear on the carousel soon. She seemed to have been standing here for ages. She took a deep breath to disguise the fact that she was growing breathless, hoping Josie wouldn’t notice. But Josie was bouncing about in excitement, eager to be the first to spot their luggage.
“There it is, Mummy! Over there.”
“Don’t rush.” Pippa restrained her daughter from dashing over and trying to haul the bags off. “Wait for them to reach us.”
Josie shook her head so that her long, red-brown hair swung jauntily. “I hate waiting. I like things to happen now.”
“Then there’d be nothing left for later, and then what would you do?” Pippa teased her fondly.
“I’d make something happen later. I can make anything I like happen.”
It always gave Pippa a pang when her daughter talked like that, for she remembered someone else who’d thought life was his to invent as he pleased. And he had been right.
Looking around made her realize how far she’d traveled, in more than miles, since she’d left England. This wasn’t just a part of another country, but another world, another dimension.
Everyone looked so good. Where was the leavening of dowdiness that existed in any other population? Where were the overweight, the plain? They couldn’t all be wanna-be movie stars, surely?
What had Luke said once?
“The cream of the crop came out West to get into the movies, and when they didn’t, they stuck around and married each other. What you see on the streets is the third generation.”
So much beauty was unnerving, like finding yourself in one of those episodes of Star Trek where nobody could crew a spaceship if they didn’t look good enough to wear short skirts or skintight suits.
She’d dressed sensibly for the long flight, in old jeans and a sweater. Now being sensible felt like a crime.
At twenty-nine Pippa was tall and slim, with reddish brown, shoulder-length hair that curved naturally and a heart-shaped face. She had large, luminous eyes and a wide mouth that had always laughed easily. Her charm lay in that laughter and in the hint in her eyes that it came from way down deep inside her.
But she hadn’t laughed so much recently, not since the doctor had said, “Pippa, I have to be honest with you…” And just now she felt as though she might never laugh again.
At last she had their baggage, they were safely through Immigration and could head for the airport hotel.
“Why couldn’t we just stay with Daddy?” Josie wanted to know as they unpacked.
“Because he doesn’t know we’re coming, so he won’t be ready for us.”
It didn’t take long to put everything away, and then Josie wanted to be up and going. They found a cab, and Pippa gave the driver Luke’s address. “Will it take long?”
“’Bout ten minutes,” he told her.
Only ten minutes, and she hadn’t yet decided what she was going to say to Luke when he opened the door and saw her standing there with his daughter. Why hadn’t she warned him they were coming?
Because he might have vanished, said a wry voice in her mind. The Luke she’d known eleven years ago had been delightful, but the words serious and responsible weren’t in his vocabulary. Kind was there. So were charming and generous. So, for that matter, were fun, magical, and warm-hearted. But commitment might never have been invented, for all he’d heard of it.
Which was why, although he’d paid generously toward his daughter’s support, he had never seen her. And that was why they had crossed the Atlantic now, for Pippa was determined that he should meet his child before—she checked the thought there. She was good at not thinking beyond that point. Before Josie grew up too fast, she amended.
She had made the decision and put it into action without giving herself time to think—or to lose her nerve, as she admitted. Now here they were, almost at Luke’s house. And the enormity of what she’d done was beginning to dawn on her.
If she could have turned around and gone right back home, she would have done so. But the cab was slowing down….
The heart of Luke’s home was the kitchen, a stunning workplace that he’d designed himself, knocking a large hole in a wall so that it could run the whole length of the house.
There were five sinks, so that he was never far from running water, three burners, two ovens and a microwave. Every one of them was the latest, the most sophisticated technology, a mass of knobs that might have seemed excessive on the deck of a spaceship. People who knew Luke only superficially were always surprised by the precision of his kitchen. His looks were the tousled variety, as if he’d just gotten out of bed, and his personal entanglements might tactfully be described as untidy. But the kitchen, where he worked, was a miracle of organization.
In one corner he had a desk and a computer. He switched it on now and got online to Luke’s Place, the restaurant he’d opened with such pride five years ago. The password got him into the accounts, where he could see that last night’s takings were nicely up. A visit to Luke’s Other Place, open only a year, produced an equally satisfying result.
His Web site showed a pleasing number of hits since yesterday, when his cable show, Luke’s Way, had gone out. It was a cooking program, and since the first show, eighteen months ago, the ratings had soared. It was broadcast twice a week, and his site, always busy, was deluged in the hours afterward.
He briefly glanced at his e-mail, found nothing there to worry about and a good deal to please him. Then he noticed something that made him frown.
The e-mail he’d sent to Josie last night hadn’t been collected on the other end. And that was unusual for Josie, who was normally a demon at reading his mail and coming back at him.
For a man who’d never met his daughter, Luke could say he knew her strangely well. He paid generously for her support. He had an account with the best toy store in London, and for Christmas and Josie’s birthday, he would call and ask a pleasant sales assistant to select something suitable for her age and send it to her.
Twice a year he received a letter from Pippa, thanking him for the gifts, giving him news of Josie and sometimes sending photographs. He could see how his daughter was growing up, looking incredibly like her mother. But she’d remained somehow unreal, until the day, a year ago, when he’d collected the e-mail that had come through his Web site and found one that said simply,
I’m Josie. I’m nine. Are you my pop? Mummy says you are. Josie.
The way she wrote Mummy in the English style, rather than Mommy in the American, told him this was real. When he’d recovered from the s
hock he e-mailed back, “Yes, I am.” And waited. The answer came quickly.
Hallo, Pop. Thank you for the bike.
“You’re welcome. How did you find me?”
Surfed until I found your Web site.
“On your own?”
Yes. Mummy’s all thumbs.
Her initiative and bravado delighted him. It was exactly what he would have done at the same age, if Web sites had existed then. They began a correspondence of untroubled cheerfulness, save for one moment when he begged, “Please stop calling me Pop. It makes me sound like an outboard motor.”
Sorry, Papa!
“‘Dad’ will do, you little wretch!”
At last Pippa had realized what was up, and entered the correspondence. Oddly, he found her harder to “talk” to. She still lived in his mind as a crazy, delightful girl. The woman she’d become was a stranger. But he persevered. She was the mother of his child, and he owed her. Their interchanges were cordial, but he was happier with Josie.
Recently he’d received a large photograph showing mother and daughter, sitting together, smiling at him. She was a great-looking kid, he reckoned.
Impulsively he pulled open the drawer where he kept the picture, took it out and grinned. Across the bottom was written, “Love to Daddy, Pippa and Josie.”
The last two words were in a different hand, large and childish.
That’s my girl! he thought.
He began to replace the photograph, then something stopped him. He drew it closer, studying the faces and the all-important words. An idea had come to him. It grew and flourished.
Wicked, he thought guiltily.
But his hands were already putting the picture in a prominent position. Not prominent enough. He changed it. Then he changed it back.
Wicked. Yes, definitely. But effective.
The good angel had come to his rescue again.
Inspired, he got to work on the perfect breakfast for a model. It was also a new recipe he’d invented for his restaurants. There was nothing like killing two birds with one stone, he told himself.
Onions, red wine vinegar, lettuce, fruit pieces, masses of strawberries, alfalfa sprouts. He laid them all out, then started on the salad dressing. This was going to be a work of art.
He could hear Dominique moving about upstairs, the sound of the shower. He prepared coffee and laid the breakfast bar to tempt a lady. He was a master of presentation.
Her eyes gleamed when she saw the trouble he’d taken for her, and she gave him her most winning smile.
“Darling Luke, you’re so sweet.”
“Wait until you see what I’ve created for you,” he said, pulling out a high stool and seeing her into it with a flourish. He laid the beautiful dish before her. “Less than two hundred calories, but full of nourishment.”
“Mmm! Looks delicious.” She put the first forkful into her mouth and made a face of ecstasy. “Heaven! And you invented it just for me.”
And for the customers who would pay $25 a throw, and a few hundred thousand people who watched every Tuesday and Friday.
“Just what a hard-working model needs,” he assured her. “Only three grams of fat. I measured each gram personally.”
“What about each calorie?”
“All 197 of them.”
She chuckled. “Oh, Luke, darling, you are a fool. It’s why I adore you so madly. And you adore me, too, don’t you? I can tell by the way you like to do things for me.”
Sensing the conversation straying into dangerous waters again he filled her coffee cup and kissed the end of her nose.
But Dominique wasn’t to be diverted. “As I was saying earlier, we go together so perfectly that it seems to me…” Just in time her eyes fell on the picture. Luke breathed a prayer of heartfelt relief.
“I’ve never seen that before,” Dominique said, frowning.
“What—oh, that? I just had it out for a moment,” Luke said quickly, moving as if to hurry the picture away, but actually relinquishing it into her imperiously outstretched hand.
“‘Daddy’?” she echoed, reading the inscription. “You been keeping secrets, Luke? Is this your ex-wife?”
“No, Pippa and I weren’t married. I knew her in London when I worked there eleven years ago. She still lives there.”
“The child doesn’t look anything like you. How do you know she’s yours?”
“Because Pippa wouldn’t have said she was if she wasn’t. Besides, Josie and I talk over the Internet.”
The supreme idiocy of this last remark burst on him only when it was too late. Dominique laid down the picture and regarded him very, very kindly.
“You talk on the Internet, and therefore she must carry your genes? I guess it beats DNA testing.”
“I didn’t mean that the way it came out,” he said hastily.
“Darling, don’t treat me like a fool.”
No. Big mistake. Dominique’s eyes were sharp as gimlets. They always were when she was in an acquisitive mood, he realized.
“Josie’s mine,” he repeated. “We have a very good relationship—”
“Over the Internet? Boy, you’re really a close father, aren’t you?”
“Considering we live on different continents, I’m a very close father,” he said, stung.
“Luke, honestly, there’s no need for this.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that this child is no more your daughter than I am. You’ve probably never even met her mother. I expect you picked this up in some junk shop and wrote the inscription yourself. It was a clever idea putting ‘and Josie’ in different writing, but you were always a man who thought of the details.”
He took a long, nervous breath. This wasn’t going right. He grasped her hand.
“Dominique—sweetheart—”
“Luke, it’s all okay. I understand.”
“You…do?”
“It’s natural for you to be a little scared at first. You’ve avoided commitment for so long, and now that things are changing, well—I guess it’s all strange to you. But you show me in a thousand ways what I mean to you, and I can hear the things you don’t say aloud.”
Luke gulped. When a woman got to hearing things a man hadn’t said, he was in big trouble.
“Dominique…I swear to you that picture is genuine. Josie is my child, and Pippa is the very special lady who bore her—”
“Shh!” She laid a beautifully manicured finger over his lips. “You don’t have to keep this up. We understand each other too well for pretenses.”
Luke couldn’t speak. Now he knew how a drowning man felt when he was going down for the third time.
It was the perfect moment for a shadow to appear outside the back door, for a tap on the frosted glass, for him to open the door, for Pippa to be standing there with Josie, and for Josie to hurl herself at him with a cry of “Daddy!”
Chapter Two
The first words Luke Danton had ever spoken to Pippa eleven years before were, “Get out of here, quick!” after she’d barged into the kitchen of London’s Ritz Hotel, where he’d been working.
He’d followed it up by grasping her elbow and hurrying her out of the door about as ungallantly as possible.
“Hey!” she objected.
“I didn’t want you to be in trouble, and you would have been. You had no right to be in there.”
“How do you know I haven’t?”
“Because you’re a chambermaid. I’ve seen you coming to work, and I asked about you.”
“Oh,” she said, taken aback.
“What time do you finish?”
“In an hour.”
“Me, too. I’ll meet you in the park, on the bench near the entrance. Don’t be late.” He was gone before she could answer.
She scooted back to her own work, indignant, or trying to be. Suppose she didn’t want to meet him in the park? He had an almighty cheek. But he also had laughing eyes and a vibrant presence, not to mention being tall and handsome. In fact, she didn�
�t mind at all that he’d been asking about her.
After work she quickly changed out of her uniform and into her normal clothes. Not that most people would have called them “normal.” They were young and crazy and turned heads wherever she went. The tight orange jeans shrieked at the purple cowboy boots. The big floppy hat was deep blue, and the multicolored sweater went with everything almost, and nothing exactly. She was eighteen and sassy. She could carry it off.
She checked herself in the mirror, pushing back a strand of her red-brown curly hair. Then she ran all the way to Green Park, the huge swath of grass and trees that stretched behind the hotel. It annoyed her to realize that she was actually hurrying so as not to miss him.
Glorious as a peacock, she sat on a bench that gave her a good view of the path he would have to take, and waited.
And waited.
And waited.
She leaned back, resting one elegantly booted ankle over the other knee, the picture of impish nonchalance. After a while she changed legs.
And waited.
At the end of an hour she was in a temper, less with him than with herself for still being there. Fuming, she rose and began to walk away in the direction of Buckingham Palace, but she couldn’t resist one look back, and was in time to see him racing along the path as if his life depended on it. His hair was tousled, and his expression was desperate. She hadn’t enjoyed a sight so much in years.
“Oh, no!” he yelled as he saw the empty bench. He raised his arms to the sky. “Please, please, no!”
“Hm!” she said, coming from behind a tree to stand before him.
He leaped a foot in the air. “You waited! Bless you!”
“I most certainly did not wait. I left after five minutes. I just happened to come back this way.”
“Really!”
“Really. I hope you’ve got a good excuse.”
“Actually,” he said airily, “I forgot all about our meeting.”
“It looked like it.”
“Well, I thought I’d better drop by in case you’d hung around in hope.”