For His Little Girl

by Lucy Gordon

  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 ran" 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 whan 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 reca
lling 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 pureed 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?'''

  "Fourteen hours?" Luke echoed.

  "Jake's just qualified as a doctor," Pippa explained. "Which means he lectures the rest of us about healthy eating and stuffs himself with stodge."

  It was Josie who finished first, devouring Luke's helping as well as her own, then hopped up and down impatiently until they were ready to go to the hotel for the bags. For the short journey she sat in the back of Luke's Porsche, eyes popping at everything she saw. Luke and Pippa were together in the front.

  "I still can't get my head around this," he said.

  "You mean I shouldn't have come?" she asked quickly.

  "No, I love surprises. And you were an answer to a prayer."

  "Yes, I could see. What would you have done without me?"

  "Lord knows," he said with a shudder. "But I didn't mean that. I meant you. You always did things without warning, like a firecracker. It's great to know you haven't changed."

  "Well, perhaps I should have changed by now. I'm eleven years older, but I don't seem to be much wiser. You might have been living with that woman.''

  He gave a reminiscent grin.

  "No way. Know something? The only woman I ever lived with was you."

  She'd moved into the guest house with Luke. "Ma'' Dawson, upon whom his charm had a powerful effect, had found them a room just big enough for two, just down the corridor from the kitchen. She was a kindly soul but a dreadful cook, something that she blamed vaguely on "me rheumatics," without ever explaining the connection. Pippa took over the cooking for three evenings, in addition to the two Luke had already been doing, and Ma gave them a heavy discount on the rent.

  Pippa loved the happy-go-lucky atmosphere of the house. It stood a couple of blocks away from a big teaching hospital, and most of the residents were medical students. They lived on the edge of poverty, kept incredible hours without collapsing, studied a lot, ate and drank a lot and laughed a lot.

  There were magic nights sitting up until the early hours discussing "Life" with a capital L with Angus and Michael and Liz and Sarah and George and anyone else who dropped in. She added her mite to the talk, snuggled in the curve of Luke's arm, relishing the warmth of his lean body, half hearing half sensing the beat of his heart.

  He would sit there contentedly with her, but he said little. He was too busy living life to talk about it, and he hated analyzing abstractions. In fact, he hated abstractions.

  Life reached Luke through his senses, through the taste of food, the smell of ingredients, what he felt against his skin and in his loins. To him the world was physical, tangible, and where it wasn't, he shrugged.

  When he was bored with these talks he would nibble softly on her ear. Then they would slip away together, and the rest of the night would be even more magic.

  She seemed to be floating through life in a blissful haze of newly discovered pleasure, so that everything that happened was sensual and lovely. This was true even of things that weren't directly connected with Luke, but a hundred times more true about things that were. She couldn't be in the same room with him without growing excited and impatient. When he was cooking she watched his hands. They were artist's hands, powerful and muscular, yet sensitive, too, and the mere sight of them could thrill her body, which carried the memories of their intimate touch.

  At work she wore the sedate, respectable uniform of a chambermaid, but it told a lie. Beneath it she wasn't respectable at all. It made her laugh sometimes to think how shocked people would be if they knew her head was filled with thoughts of Luke, who wanted her as uncontrollably as she wanted him-Luke, in bed with her, naked and aroused. In thought she dwelt on every inch of him: how long and slim his flanks were; how firm his behind; how unexpectedly strong his hands; how big and hard he was inside her; how badly she wanted him there.

  Once, at home, the urgency grew more than she could stand, and as soon as he closed the oven door, she fastened her lips on his in the fiercest kiss she'd ever given him-avid, devouring, voracious, gloriously shameless, both giving and demanding. With one hand she cupped his head, while with the other, began undressing him. After the first shock he'd responded avidly, drawing her swiftly out of the kitchen and along the corridor to their room. They barely had time to shut the door before they were pulling off each other's clothes, almost competing to see who could strip whom the fastest. She could never remember who'd won, but they were both naked before they hit the bed.

  She pulled him over her with strong, determined movements. She wasn't fooling. She wanted Luke on the most basic, primitive level and no nonsense about it. Ro
mance and candlelight were lovely in their place, but right now she would go crazy if she couldn't feel him inside her, completing her, filling her to satiation point.

  At last she had her way. He was there, thrusting vigorously in the way she loved. She drove back against him, drawing him deep into her, knowing this excited him to madness. She loved his strength, the fierce power in his loins, his tirelessness. To match it she offered her craving for him that could never be satisfied for long, her delight in pleasing him as much as he pleased her.

  Later she tormented herself with questions. Had she spoiled things by being too forward, too eager, too always ready? Should she have held off, teased him, made him wonder about her? That might have been subtle and clever, but it would also have been a kind of deception that her passionately honest nature couldn't have managed. She was young and bursting with health. To enjoy sex with your lover seemed natural, like discovering the secret of life itself, or being given a Christmas present every day. And each day the present was a little different, a little better. But had her own gifts to him grown better? Or had he gradually become bored with her? She would always wonder. Or perhaps wondering was just a word for knowing the truth but not admitting it.

  But there were other memories to set beside these, glorious nights when she'd lain naked in his arms while he worshipped her body by moonlight. And other nights when he acted like a clown, spicing passion with wit, making her laugh even while her body was in a fever. Once he'd said, "I'm trying to work out which part of you I like best. It's a tough decision because you have the most perfect breasts of any woman in the world."

  As he spoke he was tracing a finger over the swell of her right breast, lingering over the nipple, teasing it until the excitement stormed along her nerves and it was all she could do to say, "You'd know, would you? About all the others?"