Gray Wolf's Woman

by Peggy Webb

Hands on hips, she confronted him. It was hard because she was five foot seven to his six foot two, but she did her best.

  “Oh, yeah?” she challenged.

  “Oh, yeah!” he returned.

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Oh, yeah!”

  “OH, YEAH?”

  “OH, YEAH!”

  They both began to laugh at the same moment. He took firm hold of her hand and said, “There was a last-minute crisis in the kitchen, and I couldn’t get away. I was going crazy thinking of you here. Still, I knew you’d wait for me, no matter how long.”

  “I’d thump you if I could get my hand free.”

  “Great. I’ll consider myself thumped. Now let’s find something to eat.”

  She thought he meant a burger bar, but when she mentioned it, he said, “Burgers?” in such a tone of loathing that she knew him at once for a kindred spirit.

  He took her back to the guest house where he lived, and where he partly paid his rent by cooking the evening meal twice a week. The rest of the time he had the run of the kitchen to do his own experiments. Pippa watched in admiration as he concocted a delicious salad, unlike anything she’d ever eaten before.

  “I’ll show you what real food is,” he said with unashamed arrogance. “Burgers, indeed!”

  “Hey, I’m a cook, too. I don’t like burgers, either,” she said.

  “Then what made you think I would?”

  “Well—you’ve got an American accent—”

  He gave her a speaking look.

  “Sorry, sorry!” she said hastily.

  “I’m American, and it therefore follows that I have the taste buds of an ox and the refined sensibilities of a fence post,” he said, sounding nettled.

  “I’m sorry I spoke.”

  “You should be!” But he was grinning. “I thought prejudice against foreigners was outlawed in this country.”

  “It is, but Americans don’t count as foreigners, despite the hideous things you do to our language.” She added provocatively, “After all, most of you are descended from us.”

  “Not guilty,” he said at once. “My ancestors are French, Spanish and Irish. If there are any British in that tree they’re hidden in the closet with all the other skeletons. Now, come upstairs and eat.”

  His room consisted of a bed, a table, two chairs and shelves full of cookery books. In these shabby surroundings he gallantly pulled out a chair for her and served up the meal with as great a flourish as if they were in the Ritz dining room.

  “What were you doing down there, anyway?” he wanted to know.

  “I just wanted to look at the kitchens, to know what I’m aiming for.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “I’m not really a chambermaid,” she confided. “I’m actually the world’s greatest cook in disguise. Well, I will be, when I’ve finished learning. I’m going to be so great that one day the Ritz will beg me to return, to reign over its kitchen. And people will come from far and wide to taste my creations.”

  Luke was a good listener, and soon she’d told him everything, especially about her mother, her most precious memory.

  “She was a fantastic cook. She’d have liked to be a chef, but she got married instead. Women did in those days,” she said, speaking as though it was a distant age instead of twenty years ago. “And all my dad wanted was fish and chips, egg and chips, beans and chips.”

  “Chips? Oh, you mean French fries.”

  “I mean chips,” she said firmly, trying to not respond to his grin. If she died for it she wouldn’t let him tease a rise out of her. Well, not that easily, anyway.

  “If she offered him anything imaginative he’d say, ‘What’s this muck?’ and storm off to the pub. So she started teaching me how to cook properly. I think it was her only pleasure in life. We used to plan how I’d go to cookery college. She got an extra job so that she could save up to give me a start. But it was too much for her. We didn’t know it then but she had something wrong with her heart. Mitral stenosis, the doctor said. It killed her.”

  For a moment her pixie face was sad, but she recovered.

  “Rough deal,” Luke said sympathetically. And through the conventional words she could sense the real kindness.

  “Yes. The next thing I knew, Dad got married again, and suddenly I had a stepmother called Clarice, who loathed me.”

  “Real Cinderella stuff.”

  “Well, to be fair, I returned the compliment with interest. She used to call me Philippa,” she added with loathing. “It wasn’t enough that I never had time to do my homework because she developed a headache whenever there was any dusting to be done, but she actually addressed me as Philippa.”

  “A hanging offense,” Luke said gravely.

  “Yeah!”

  “Any wicked stepsisters?”

  “One stepbrother. Harry. But he made enough mess for ten and expected me to be his slave.

  “When I mentioned going to college, Clarice glared at me and said, ‘Where do you think the money for that’s coming from? You’ve got grand ideas, think you’re better than everyone else.’

  “I argued, though you’d think I’d have known better by then. I said most people went to college these days. She sniffed and said, ‘Not Harry.’ And I said that since Harry was a moron that didn’t come as a surprise, and she said I was an insolent little cow, and I said—well, you get the drift.”

  He was chuckling. “I wish I’d been there to see it. I’ll bet you’re a heckuva fighter.”

  “I am,” she said, stating the simple truth.

  “What about your mom’s savings?”

  “Dad took them. I remember him looking at the bank passbook and saying, ‘I knew the bitch was hiding money from me!’ I think he spent most of it on a honeymoon with Clarice.”

  “Wasn’t there anyone to stick up for you?”

  “Frank, my mother’s younger brother, had a go at Dad. But Dad just told him to mind his own business. What could he do? I stuck it until I left school, then I got out.”

  “Cheered on by the dreadful Clarice?”

  “No, she was furious. She’d got it all planned for me to work in her brother’s grocery store for slave wages, and go on doing all the housework.” Pippa’s eyes gleamed with mischief. “I told her where she could put that,” she said, with such wicked relish that Luke laughed out loud.

  “I’ll bet you did!” he said admiringly.

  “She said she’d never heard such disgraceful language. I told her she’d hear it again if she didn’t get out of my way. She screamed at me while I was packing, down the stairs, through the front door and all the way to the bus station.

  “She said I’d come to a bad end in London, and I’d be crawling back in a week. I told her I’d starve first. I got on the bus and watched Clarice getting smaller and smaller until she vanished from my life and I vanished from hers. I’ve kicked the dust of Encaster off my feet, and it’s staying off.”

  “Encaster? Don’t think I’ve heard of it.”

  “Nobody’s heard of it except the people who live there, and most of them wish they hadn’t. It’s about thirty miles north of London, very small and very dreary.”

  “Didn’t your dad want you home?”

  “I called him at his work once to let him know I was all right. He told me to ‘stop being an idiot’ and come back, because Clarice was giving him a hard time about it. That was all he cared about. If he’d been just a little bit concerned about me I’d have told him where I was. But he wasn’t. So I didn’t. That was the last time I talked to him. I’m still in touch with Frank, but he and Dad aren’t speaking. He won’t give me away.”

  “So you came to seek your fortune in London? At sixteen? Good for you, kid! Did you find the streets paved with gold?”

  “They will be, one day. I do cookery courses in the evenings, and when I’ve got some diplomas I’ll get a job as a cook. Then I’ll do more courses, get a better job, and so on, until the gourmets of the world are beating a path to my
door.”

  “S’cuse me, ma’am, but it’s my door they’re going to beat a path to.”

  “Well, I expect there’ll be room for both of us,” she conceded generously.

  “You mean the three of us, don’t you?” he asked with a grin. “You, me and that colossal ego of yours. They’ll have to build somewhere just to house it.”

  “And the rest! Everyone knows Americans can’t cook.”

  “Can’t—May you be forgiven! And since you come from the nation that eats French fries—”

  “Chips!”

  “—with everything, doesn’t think food is properly cooked unless it’s swimming in grease, and can’t make decent coffee—”

  “All right, all right, I give in.” She threw up her hands in mock surrender, then pointed to her plate. “This is really delicious, I’ll admit that.”

  “All my own invention. When I’ve got it perfect I’ll present it to the head chef.”

  “Oh, great! Now I’m a guinea pig. If I don’t drop dead after eating this you’ll know it’s safe to offer it to the Sultan of Thingy and the Duke of Whatsit?”

  “Something like that,” he admitted with a grin.

  She saw him regarding her outfit and said, “Nice, huh?”

  “Love it, and the purple thing you were wearing when I saw you the other day.”

  Pippa chuckled. “The head housekeeper nearly fainted. She couldn’t get me out of it and into my uniform fast enough. But I don’t like people to overlook me.”

  “No danger of that. How do you afford fashion and pay for classes, as well?”

  “I make my own fashion from other people’s rejects. The jeans came from a rummage sale, the boots had been reduced five times because the color frightened people, the hat came from an Oxfam shop, and I knit the sweater from remnants.”

  He grinned, enchanted.

  His own story delighted her. He was, as she’d guessed, American, from Los Angeles, and his life seemed to have revolved around sun, sea and sand. His passion was cookery and the only books he ever opened were recipes. Beyond that there wasn’t a thought in his head apart from swimming, bodysurfing, eating, drinking and generally having a good time. There had been so little fun in Pippa’s life that this young man, who seemed to make almost a religion of merriment, seemed to usher her to a new and magical world, one in which the light was always golden, the sensations exquisite and youth would last forever.

  He had ambition, of a kind.

  “I don’t just want to be a cook, there are plenty of them,” he explained. “I want to be the cook, so I had to find something that would make me stand out from the others. I scraped together all the money I could and came to Europe, to work in some of the great hotels. I did six months in the Danieli in Venice, six in the George V in Paris, and now I’m doing the London Ritz. When my work permit’s up I’ll go back to Los Angeles as Luke of the Ritz. Hey, have you swallowed something the wrong way?” For Pippa was doubled up and apparently choking.

  “You can’t do that,” she spluttered when she could speak. “Luke of the Ritz? Nobody will be able to eat for laughing.”

  “Oh!” he said, deflated. “You don’t think they’ll be impressed?”

  “I think they’ll chuck tomatoes at you.”

  The awful truth of this hit him suddenly and he began to laugh, too. The more he laughed, the more she laughed, and it became funnier and funnier.

  If this were a romantic comedy, she thought, they would laugh until they fell into each other’s arms. She found herself tingling with anticipation.

  But Luke pulled himself together and said in a choking sort of voice, “It’s late. I ought to be getting you home.”

  “It’s not that late,” she protested.

  “It is when I have a 6 a.m. start. Come on.”

  He borrowed a battered old car from one of the other residents, and drove the couple of miles to the hostel where she lived. As he pulled up, Pippa waited for his arm around her shoulders, pulling her close, his lips on hers…

  “Here we are,” he said, pulling open the passenger door.

  Reluctantly Pippa got out of the car. He came with her to the front door.

  “See you tomorrow,” Luke said, giving her a brief peck on the cheek. In a moment his taillights were vanishing around the corner, and she was left standing there, muttering some very unladylike words.

  Pippa was proud of being a modern young woman, unshackled by the prejudices and restraints of outmoded convention, free to enjoy worldly delights on equal terms with men. If she wanted to smoke, drink and pursue the pleasures of the flesh, she had every right to do so.

  That was the theory. The practice was more difficult. The only cigarette she had ever tried had been in a pub with a party of friends. She’d promptly had a violent coughing fit, upset a bowl of peanuts all over the floor and been ordered out by an exasperated publican. She hadn’t tried again. It had tasted disgusting, anyway. So much for smoking.

  Alcohol was also a problem. She could twirl a glass bravely, but more than a little of the cheap plonk, which was all she could afford, upset her stomach. So much for drinking.

  Which left sex. And that wasn’t working out brilliantly, either.

  She’d naively imagined that London would be filled with attractive, lusty males, all eager to meet a liberated young woman. But a depressingly large number of them were middle-aged and boring. Too many of the young ones were studious, married or gay. They talked too much. Or too little. Or about the wrong things. It was like being back in Encaster.

  She wasn’t short of offers. A tall, delicately built young woman with a daft sense of humor, laughing eyes and legs up to her ears was always going to turn heads. It should have been, as the song said, a matter of picking “the height, the weight, the size.” But the height was too often awkward, and the weight was usually excessive. So she passed up the chance to check the size.

  After two years in London Pippa was virginal, exasperated and uneasily aware that as an advertisement for riotous living she was a miserable failure. At this rate she might as well be a Victorian maiden. It was very disheartening.

  She wondered if it was too late to become a nun.

  But from the moment she met Luke everything changed. He won by default because he was none of the dreary things the others were. Also because his voice had a vibrant note she’d never heard before, and it produced a quickening of excitement in her. He won, too, because his eyes teased and tempted her, because his mouth was wide and mobile, and it could be tender, amused, or firm when his stubbornness was aroused.

  But mostly he won because just being in the same room with him could induce a fever in her. Plus, the rotten so and so had never shown any sign of wanting to entice her into his bed. It was an insult that she couldn’t let pass.

  What made it more galling was that everyone at work simply assumed they were sleeping together. Luke had a reputation as a love-’em-and-leave-’em heartbreaker.

  “He calls it traveling light,” one of the other maids confided. “He was going out with Janice on the third floor. Everything was lovely until she invited him to a family wedding. Big mistake. He only called her once more and that was to tell her he had to do a lot of overtime, so they’d better cool it.”

  Ears flapping, Pippa listened to all the gossip and made mental notes of what not to do. Deciding what to do was harder.

  He never actually asked her out, but their shifts were roughly the same, and whoever finished first would wait for the other. Then they would stroll home, his arm about her shoulders, while Luke talked like a crazy man and Pippa tried not to be too aware of how badly she wanted him to stop talking and start kissing.

  She decided to be subtle about it. Instead of Luke always doing the cooking, she would prepare an intimate supper, at his place, candlelight, soft music, and one thing would lead to another.

  It was a disaster.

  It might have worked with any other man, but Luke was constitutionally unable to sit quiet while
somebody else cooked for him. With the best will in the world he couldn’t refrain from suggesting that she turn the gas down and give this dish or that just a little more time.

  In the end she stormed out. It was that or throw the lot over him.

  Next day he was waiting for her with a posy and a heartfelt apology.

  “I did you an injustice, didn’t I?” he said humbly. “You weren’t really going to do the crème caramel like that.”

  The quarrel that resulted from this remark took three days to heal. But nobody could quarrel for long with a man as sweet tempered as Luke. When he realized she wasn’t going to make the first move he waited for her to leave the hotel and approached her with a finger pressed over his mouth.

  “Good evening,” she said frostily.

  He made no sound, but pointed to the silencing finger with his other hand.

  “I’m going home now,” she declared.

  But it was impossible. Whichever direction she took he was there before her, blocking off her exit, herding her toward the boarding house like a sheepdog with an awkward lamb.

  “I don’t know what you think you’re playing at,” she said exasperated.

  From his pocket he took a small notebook on which he’d already written, “Every time I open my mouth you get mad at me.”

  “Oh, stop it!” she said, trying not to laugh, and completely failing.

  “I’m sorry, Pippa,” he said, meekly. “I just can’t help it. Some people can’t travel in a car as a passenger. They just have to drive. I can’t be a passenger in a kitchen. I get hung up about how I’d do it and…” Catching her eye, he said hastily, “Let’s drop the subject. Come home with me and I’ll do the supper.”

  She slid her arms about him, looking up into his face. “Hope it chokes you,” she said happily.

  “You can sit and glare at me and make sure it does.”

  They laughed. He kissed the end of her nose, and they strolled the rest of the way in perfect accord, their arms about each other’s waists.

  What had they been arguing about? She’d forgotten before they reached home. All that was left was the joy of being in harmony with him again. That joy lifted her up so that she seemed to float on air. He existed. The world was a perfect place.