by Peggy Webb
The supper was just as she had planned, soft lights, a rose beside her plate. But this time it was his doing. Afterward they sat on the sofa and he poured wine bought specially for the occasion.
“Forgive me?” he asked, lifting his glass to her.
“For what?”
“For being an insufferable know-it-all who can’t stop sticking his oar in where it isn’t wanted.”
“Oh, that,” she said airily. “I’m used to that. In fact, I’d better forgive you now for all the future occasions, too. Think how much time I’ll save.”
They laughed together. It was the perfect moment. She was sure of it. She leaned forward and very deliberately placed her lips against his.
She hadn’t gotten it wrong, she thought eagerly. She could feel the tremor in him that was the mirror image of her own. She pressed closer, kissing him more insistently until his response leaped up like fire, and his hands were on her arms, holding her tight.
But in the same moment she felt him gently pushing her away and separating his lips from hers. Pink with embarrassment and disappointment she glared at him.
“Is there something wrong with me?” she demanded, aggressive to hide her anguish.
“No,” he said gently, “there’s nothing wrong with you at all.”
She glared suspiciously. “You’re not gay, are you?”
He grinned and shook his head. “Word of honor.”
“Then why won’t you kiss me, you rotten swine?”
“Because I wouldn’t want to stop at kissing, and you—well, you’re young and—”
“Are you accusing me of being a virgin?” Pippa demanded hotly.
“It’s not an accusation—”
“Oh, no! It’s only like telling me that I’m a backward infant. In this day and age—”
“I suppose there are still virgins in this day and age,” he observed. He was looking tenderly into her face, and his lips were twitching.
“Not in London,” she said idiotically. She knew she was crazy, but she couldn’t stop herself.
“It’s just that there’s something about you—something very sweet and young—that made me think—oh, hell!” Now it was his turn to be embarrassed, and Pippa seized her chance to regain the initiative.
“You know your trouble, Luke? You think too much. What a lot of fuss you make over something that’s no big deal. The world is full of ships that pass in the night, and if…if people like each other…”
In later years, reliving that conversation, she’d heard the childish bravado and known that Luke must have heard it, too. He hadn’t been fooled—of course not. But whatever defenses he’d rallied against her had collapsed in a heap. Suddenly she was in his arms, his fingers were working urgently on her buttons, and everything was happening as she had dreamed.
When he released her breasts she was almost ashamed of them. They were so proudly peaked, the nipples already firm, the aureoles dark, telling their own tale of the desire she’d been trying to hold back. What had happened to maidenly modesty?
Then he laid his lips gently against one, teasing it with his tongue, and she thought, when she could manage to think at all, to hell with maidenly modesty!
As his tongue nudged the nipple softly back and forth she thought she might go out of her mind. How could anything feel like this, and how had she spent so long not knowing? So much time wasted! It was a conspiracy.
She took a long, trembling breath and dug her fingers into him as his lips and tongue continued their tormenting work. With every rasp the world shivered into glittering fragments, blinded her, faded, began again.
He undressed her slowly, removing garments as though there was plenty of time. Only his quickened breathing and the way his fingers shook as he eased off her jeans hinted at how frantically he was controlling himself until the right moment. Then her panty hose slid away, and at last she was naked.
He removed his own clothes in a hurry and chucked them on the floor without taking his eyes from Pippa.
“Hello,” he said, smiling.
“Hello.” She sounded breathless.
She’d never shown her body off to a man before, but she knew she could be proud of its slim, youthful lines, tiny waist and long flanks. Her breasts were small, firm and cheekily uptilted. She longed to ask him if he thought she was beautiful, but perhaps he was already letting her know in the loving way he stroked her smooth skin and traced the outline of her curves, murmuring appreciatively as he did so and sometimes stopping to bestow a light kiss before moving on.
She was almost shocked by the fierceness of her own sensations, as if her body was possessed by another being, one that had never heard of restraint. For a wild moment all the old precepts of childhood—don’t grab—be patient—learn to wait—flashed through her head, and she knew they belonged to another world, not the world of thrilling, sensational delight Luke was offering her now. She was alive for the first time in her existence.
She reached for him, and it felt so good to be able to touch him all over at last. She’d tried so often to picture him without clothes, but nothing could match the reality of his lean, smooth body. She was at fever pitch. She wanted him so badly.
“Luke,” she whispered, “you do want me, don’t you?”
His answer came without words. Grinning, he drew back so that she could see the truth for herself, and there he was, proud and hard with the splendid, arrogant power of youth. And he was all hers.
“Luke,” she cried in an agony of impatience.
“Yes, darling.”
At last he parted her legs and settled between them. Then he was sliding easily into her, and it was beautiful, and she wanted him more and more. She wanted it never to stop. She wanted the whole world, and he was giving it to her. He thrust deeply and slowly, sending pleasure through every part of her body, starting with her loins and radiating out to her fingertips.
Then it happened. Something in the universe went click and everything fell into place. Instinct took over, guiding her perfectly. It was as though Luke had tossed her a dream and she’d caught it and run with it. Nobody had told her how, but her hips moved of their own accord, driving against him. The feeling of being able to heighten her own pleasure and his was thrilling, and when Luke responded by thrusting back more fiercely, she went into orbit.
As she felt the same happen to him, she threw back her head, almost caroling with joy. It was all true. Everything was true. There was magic in the world after all, and happiness and fulfillment and laughter and song. It was true. She was alive and glad and young, and it was all wonderfully, gloriously true.
He held her close as they came down from the heights. Pippa lay against him, blissfully happy, understanding now that all her rationalizing had been hot air. She could never have done this with Jack or Andy or Clive or any of the others. Because they weren’t Luke.
He kissed the top of her head, but she could sense that he was troubled about something. “What is it?” she demanded. “Am I no good?”
“You’re wonderful. It’s just that I promised myself I wouldn’t do this. And I guess I’m not very honest, because if I’d meant it I’d have stopped seeing you and put myself out of the way of temptation. I wanted you so much, and sooner or later I was bound to give in.”
“But why shouldn’t you?”
“Because of the way you are, because of the way I am. I won’t stick around, Pippa. I never do. When my permit expires, I’m back off to Los Angeles, on my own. It’s like you said—ships that pass in the night.”
She shrugged. “I knew that. So what?” It was easy to say when the glorious months stretched out ahead.
“Well—you’re special. You deserve a man who’ll be there—”
“You mean Mr. Solid and Reliable, who’ll march me to the altar and give me a semidetached house in the suburbs and a dozen kids? No, thank you! I left Encaster to escape him.”
“If there’s one thing I’m not, it’s Mr. Solid and Reliable.”
�
�If you were, we wouldn’t be lying here like this.”
How much of that brave talk had she meant, or thought she meant? And how much was just saying what she knew he wanted to hear? She never really knew. If he wanted her to be cool about it, then cool she would be. There were months to make him change his mind.
With her acute sensitivity to Luke’s moods, Pippa began to see life through his eyes. On a walk in the park one evening, she couldn’t help noticing the little family of two prematurely middle-aged parents and one demanding child.
“Daddy, listen to me—”
“In a minute, darling.”
“No, now Daddy, now!”
The woman sounded testy. “It wouldn’t hurt you to take some notice of your own daughter once in a while.”
“I might if she’d shut up occasionally.”
Luke grinned. “Poor sod!” he said. “Once he was a free man. Now he can’t remember what it felt like.”
Wearily the man looked down at the little tyrant. “All right, pet, what is it?”
“Come and look here. There’s a caterpillar, a great big one.”
Luke and Pippa strolled on, arms about each other, and the piercing voice seemed to follow them.
“Come and look now, Daddy. Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!”
Chapter Three
“Daddy, Daddy, DADDY!” Josie’s voice rose a note higher on each word.
Give him his due, Pippa thought, Luke reacted magnificently, sweeping his daughter up into his arms and crying, “There’s my special girl!” in a glad voice.
They surveyed each other, considering, sizing up. Pippa almost laughed at the uncanny mirror image of their attitudes. Their faces weren’t alike but their movements, their way of holding their heads back at a slight angle that said “Oh, yeah?” were identical.
Luke deposited the child gently on the floor and turned to Pippa, arms open. As he pulled her close he muttered into her ear, “Bless you as an answer to a prayer.”
Over his shoulder she saw Dominique, and things began to fall into place. Not everything, but enough to understand that Luke was “on the run” again.
He released her. “Pippa, my love, this is Dominique—a friend. Dominique, this is Pippa, who I was just now telling you about.”
All Pippa’s antennae were on full alert and she saw everything, even the very small tightening of the other woman’s mouth at “a friend.”
Dominique stood with her robe slipping open just enough to show that she was naked underneath. She held out a beautifully manicured hand, surveying Pippa in a way that was obviously meant to be intimidating. She smiled back, refusing to be awed.
“Better put some clothes on,” Luke said, an arm around Dominique’s shoulders, urging her to the door. “And don’t you have an appointment in an hour?”
“Three hours, actually,” the model said glacially.
“Well, you don’t want to be late, do you?” Luke switched his attention to Pippa and Josie. “Where are your bags?”
“At the airport hotel.”
“You’re not staying in any hotel,” he said, outraged. “My family stays with me. I’ll have the spare room ready in no time. You’ll love it.”
“Thank you. As long as I’m not putting you out—” this was to Dominique.
“Not at all,” the other woman drawled, adding with meaning, “I wasn’t sleeping in the spare room.”
“I’m sure you weren’t,” Pippa said, meeting her eyes evenly.
Luke had slipped away to talk to Bertha, who cleaned for him and had just arrived. Dominique lowered her voice, indicating the photograph. “Don’t kid yourself, honey! That picture never appeared before today.”
Pippa’s lips twitched. “Really? He must have needed it very urgently—today.”
“Oh, you’re very funny! But I know a con when I see one.”
“I’m sure you do. It takes one to know one, doesn’t it?”
Dominique flounced away, too wise to answer this.
It might have been a lot worse, Pippa realized. As it was, she’d had a welcome better than her brightest hopes, even if it was because she was saving his skin. That reference to “my family” had been for Dominique’s benefit of course, but it had been just what Josie needed to hear.
Luke returned, smiling, and placed his hands on her shoulders. “Let me look at you. Oh, Pippa, you’re a sight for sore eyes.”
“So I gathered,” she teased.
“No, not just because of that. After all this time you’re just—just my Pippa.”
“Hey, what am I?” Josie demanded indignantly.
“You’re my best girl,” he said at once, and hugged her. “Now, first things first. Coffee, then the hotel.”
“I’m hungry,” Josie declared.
“Josie!” Pippa exclaimed. “Manners!”
“Of course she’s hungry,” Luke said. “Milk and strawberry salad.”
“You can’t put strawberries in a salad,” Josie protested.
“You can, chez Luke.”
Josie looked puzzled, and he explained, “Chez means at the home of. It’s French. I use it when I want to impress people.”
“You said milk,” Josie reminded him in the accents of a starving orphan.
“Coming up!”
While he was finding the milk and pouring it for her, Bertha returned to say the room was ready. Pippa slipped away with her, while Luke got to work on the strawberry salad, collecting strawberries, raspberry vinegar, mint and lettuce.
“This is a concoction of Luke of the Ritz,” he declared, lining up a selection of other fruits like a general inspecting his troop. “Sour cream,” he added briskly. “That cupboard over there.”
Josie moved fast and brought the cream, just right.
“Now some honey. That one.”
She repeated the action, practically standing to attention when she’d delivered the honey.
“Who was Luke of the Ritz?” she asked. “You?”
“No, but I nearly was. Can you open that door next to the sink, please?” She did so, and he took out his electric blender.
“Why nearly?”
“Because your mommy thought people would die laughing. She was right, too.” As he spoke he was washing the strawberries, then preparing to stem and halve them.
“I can do that,” Josie said, taking a knife.
“Hey, no! That’s too sharp for you.” But he fell silent as he saw how efficiently she got to work. “Done it before, huh?”
“I help in the kitchen at home. Mummy says don’t touch sharp knives, but I can handle them, so I do, anyway.”
“Guess you do,” he murmured, watching the neat little fingers flying and recalling another child who’d done what he wanted rather than what his mother said. “And what does she say about that?”
“Well—” Josie stopped for a moment to consider “—she starts to say things like, ‘Do as I tell you,’ and ‘Josie, did you hear me?’ But then Jake puts his head around the door and says, ‘Hey, Pip, I’m on early shift. Is it ready yet?’ Or Harry gets upset because he’s lost something important. Harry’s always losing things that he says are important. Or Paul comes in covered in axle grease—Paul restores old cars—or Derek—”
“Whoa, hold on there! Who are all these guys?”
“They’re our boarders, only they’re friends, as well. They’re all terribly fond of Mummy. I’ve done all the strawberries. What’s next?”
“Lettuce. Give it a good wash.”
While she washed he got out some china plates, then she arranged lettuce leaves while he puréed some of the strawberries.
“Now for the honey, mint and sour cream,” he declared dramatically, just as he did on his show.
But it wasn’t the camera fixing its gaze on him, or the audience crowding the benches, laughing at his well-rehearsed but so spontaneous-seeming flourishes. It was a cheeky little girl with laughing eyes, regarding him with her head on one side, exactly as another girl had done once before. It gave
him a strange turn.
In fact, everything about today was strange. Only a few hours ago he’d awoken next to a beautiful model, the ultimate bachelor’s dream. Suddenly he was a father. Okay, Okay, he’d been a father for years, but until this moment he hadn’t felt like a father. Now he did. And it felt good. Every man should have a daughter, he reckoned, especially one with long, curly red hair, a cheeky grin and her mother’s air of challenging everyone.
Once again Luke Danton had gotten lucky. The world’s goodies had fallen into his lap, just the way they always did. And again, as always, he was grateful.
Luke’s bathroom was modern luxury made to look like Victorian basic: white tiles on the walls, dark-red and brown decorative tiles on the floor, and glowing brass fixtures. The effect was sumptuous.
After splashing water on her face Pippa sat down while she dried herself, and took long breaths. She’d cleared the first hurdle. It had been tough, but she’d coped. She’d gotten over Luke long ago, but it was never going to be easy seeing him again, being physically close to him. Luke wasn’t just a handsome face, or charm personified, although he was both those things. He was a body that she still remembered during her lonely nights and a vibrant presence and warm, laughing eyes.
He might have been dismayed to see her, and she’d braced herself for that. But nothing had prepared her for the welcome she’d received, even if she did know that Luke was being practical. Being hugged close to him was unnerving, but she would get over that. She had come here for Josie’s sake, and that was all that mattered.
She took a few more deep breaths, and when she felt better she returned to the kitchen where Luke was dishing up. She was suitably impressed by the creation.
“One hundred and twenty calories, and four grams of fat,” he explained. “I add that bit automatically now. People always seem to want to know.”
“And it’s delicious,” Josie said blissfully. “Mummy, why don’t we have strawberry salad?”
“Oh, sure,” Pippa said wryly, “I can see Jake and Harry eating strawberry salad. If it doesn’t have chips and fried bacon they doesn’t want to know.” She assumed an attitude. “‘Hey, Pip, I’ve got a fourteen-hour shift. A man needs something to keep him going, know what I mean?”’