“Remove your hand this instant!”

Pippa commanded.

“Nah, they’d suspect something. It’s more convincing if I just tighten it around your shoulder,” Luke replied.

“I’m warning you—”

“And then draw you closer to me—like this….”

“You let me go this instant—Luke!”

He mustn’t kiss her, because if he did, her heart would melt and she would forget why she was mad at him. And she wanted to stay mad. That was always safest with Luke.

“You can’t kiss me in the middle of an amusement park.”

“Why not?” Luke asked plaintively.

She gave up arguing. The feeling that was spreading through her was taking over, silencing her. It was sheer happiness, of a kind she’d almost forgotten: the happiness of being with this one man, in his arms, with nothing else to worry about.

At least for a brief time.

Dear Reader,

Fall is upon us, and there’s no better way to treat yourself to hours of autumn pleasure than by reading your way through these riveting romances in September’s Special Edition books!

The lives and loves of the Bravo family continue with The M.D. She Had To Marry, in Christine Rimmer’s popular CONVENIENTLY YOURS miniseries. In the page-turner Father Most Wanted, beloved writer Marie Ferrarella combines a witness protection program, a single dad with three daughters and an unsuspecting heroine to tell a love story you won’t be able to put down. Bestselling author Peggy Webb deals with family matters of a different kind with yet another compelling Native American hero story. In Gray Wolf’s Woman a loner finds the hearth and home he’d never realized he’d yearned for.

Lucy Gordon’s poignant reunion romance, For His Little Girl, will sweep you away as an unexpected turn of events promises to reunite a family that was always meant to be. Janis Reams Hudson continues her Western family saga miniseries, WILDERS OF WYATT COUNTY, with A Child on the Way, a compelling amnesia story about a pregnant woman who ends up in the arms of another irresistible Wilder man. And Patricia McLinn’s Wyoming miniseries, A PLACE CALLED HOME, continues with At the Heart’s Command, a tale of a military hero who finally marches to the beat of his own heart as he woos his secret love.

We hope this month brings you many treasured moments of promise, hope and happy endings as Special Edition continues to celebrate Silhouette’s yearlong 20th Anniversary!

All the best,

Karen Taylor Richman

Senior Editor

For His Little Girl
Lucy Gordon

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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Books by Lucy Gordon

Silhouette Special Edition

Legacy of Fire #148

Enchantment in Venice #185

Bought Woman #547

Outcast Woman #749

Seduced by Innocence #902

Forgotten Fiancée #1112

Anything, Any Time, Any Place #1227

For His Little Girl #1348

Silhouette Romance

The Carrister Pride #306

Island of Dreams #353

Virtue and Vice #390

Once Upon a Time #420

A Pearl Beyond Price #503

Golden Boy #524

A Night of Passion #596

A Woman of Spirit #611

A True Marriage #639

Song of the Lorelei #754

Heaven and Earth #904

Instant Father #952

This Man and This Woman #1079

Silhouette Desire

Take All Myself #164

The Judgement of Paris #179

A Coldhearted Man #245

My Only Love, My Only Hate #317

A Fragile Beauty #333

Just Good Friends #363

Eagle’s Prey #380

For Love Alone #416

Vengeance Is Mine #493

Convicted of Love #544

The Sicilian #627

On His Honor #669

Married in Haste #777

Uncaged #864

Two Faced Woman #953

This Is My Child #982

Blood Brothers #1307

LUCY GORDON

met her husband-to-be in Venice, fell in love the first evening and got engaged two days later. They’re still happily married and now live in England with their three dogs. For twelve years Lucy was a writer for an English women’s magazine. She interviewed many of the world’s most interesting men, including Warren Beatty, Richard Chamberlain, Sir Roger Moore, Sir Alec Guiness and Sir John Gielgud.

In 1985 she won the Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Award for Outstanding Series Romance Author. She has also won a Golden Leaf Award from the New Jersey Chapter of RWA, was a finalist in the RWA Golden Medallion contest in 1988 and won the 1990 RITA Award in the Best Traditional Romance category for Song of the Lorelei.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter One

Luke had chosen his bedroom because it overlooked the golden California coast, glittering water and Manhattan Beach pier. In fact he’d bought his house on the Strand because it had this glorious view, and his first sight of it each morning was precious.

Today, as on every day, he slipped naked out of bed and went to the window. He was about to pull up the blinds when he stopped and cast a fond glance behind him to where he could see a riot of blond curls spilling across the pillow.

Dominique was a darling, but never at her best in the morning. And after the crazy night they’d had together, she deserved her sleep. Her “beauty sleep” she called it, though why the most incredible face and body in the whole of Los Angeles—no, make that the world, he thought generously—should need beauty sleep was beyond him.

He left the blind in place, pulled on some swimming shorts and went downstairs to his oversize kitchen. From his refrigerator he took out the glass of orange juice he’d squeezed the night before as he always did. He drank it slowly, savoring each mouthful of the cold, tangy liquid. He never insulted good food by hurrying it.

When he’d finished it he raced across the Strand, just as he was, and down the beach. The sting of the fresh water drove away the last of his sleep, making him ready for the new day in a life that was good in every way.

Luke Danton, thirty-four, popular, handsome, successful. For as long as he could remember, whenever he’d held out his hands, life’s pleasures had fallen into them. Not without effort on his part, for he was a man who worked as hard as he played, which was very hard. But his efforts almost always brought their just rewards.

For an hour he bodysurfed, challenging the waves and enjoying the sense that they were challenging him back. At last he turned and stood, looking back at the panorama of the beach and the houses beyond, fixing his eyes lovingly on his own home, his pride and joy. The price had made him gulp, but it was worth every cent.

As a child he’d played on this beach. As a youth he would bum around it until his mother screamed at him. But in the intervals between screaming she’d taught him to cook, and he’d found his true vocation. As a man he’d returned to buy a house just a couple of blocks away from the Manhattan Pier.

He hurried home to take a shower. Dominique was still asleep, so he closed the bathroom door before bursting into tuneless song under the stream of water.

There wasn’t an ounce of fat on his lean, hard body, but he never bothered with workouts. His crazy energy, demon-hard work and hours in the sea kept him in shape. His legs were long and muscular, his hips taut, his shoulders broad.

His face looked younger than his thirty-four years, with a permanent touch of mischief. The dark eyes and black hair might have come from a remote Spanish ancestor, but the generous, laughing mouth echoed his father. Max Danton had been a ne’er-do-well in his youth and wasn’t much better now, according to the woman who loved him and had borne his children.

“And you’re just as bad,” she often reproved Luke. “It’s time you got a proper job.”

Owning two restaurants and having his own spot on cable television didn’t count as a proper job in her book. Luke simply grinned at her criticisms. He loved his mother, while seldom heeding a word she said.

When he’d finished showering, he pulled on a pair of slacks and went back down to the kitchen. Dominique was already there, padding about, dressed in his best silk robe, and Luke moved to forestall her. He hated anyone else in his kitchen, just as an artist would dislike anyone tampering with his brushes.

“What time is it?” she yawned.

“Nearly midday! Hell, how did we sleep so late?”

“We didn’t leave that nightclub until four,” she said, leaning against his chest, her eyes closed. “Then, when we got back—”

He grinned. “Yes,” he said slowly, and they both laughed.

“Where do you keep the coffee?” she asked. “I can never remember.”

“I’ll make it,” he said hastily, guiding her to a chair. “You sit down and let me wait on you.”

She gave him a sleepy smile. “Not too much cream, please.”

“As though I didn’t know how to care for your figure by now,” he said, starting to grind coffee.

She opened the robe wide, giving him a grandstand view of her perfect shape. “It takes work to keep it like this,” she observed.

He grinned. “Cover yourself up. I’m still wornout after last night.”

“No, you’re not. You’re never worn-out, Luke.” She came up behind him and put her arms about him, pressing close in a way that nearly made him drop a spoon. “And I’m not worn-out, either—at least, not with you.”

“I noticed that,” he said, smiling, as some of the riper moments of the night came back to him.

“We go so well together—in every way.” When he didn’t answer she gave him a squeeze and persisted, “Don’t you think so?”

Luke was glad she couldn’t see his face right then. A life spent avoiding commitment had left him with antennae on permanent red alert. They were yelling now, warning him where this conversation was leading, telling him that the next few moments would be crucial if his pleasant life was to remain pleasant.

“I know we go perfectly together in one way,” he said lightly. Turning, he kissed the tip of her nose. “And who needs more?”

She pouted. “Sooner or later, everyone needs more.”

Oh, Lord, she’s going to take it right down to the line!

“Not this baby,” he said, still keeping his tone friendly. He kissed her again, this time on the lips. “Let’s not spoil a beautiful friendship.”

She let it drop, but he didn’t think it would be for long. He knew Dominique’s awesome willpower. It had gotten her onto the books of the best modeling agency in Los Angeles. It had gotten her the plum jobs by methods that, Luke suspected, wouldn’t bear scrutiny. What Dominique wanted, Dominique got. And now, it seemed, she wanted to tie him down.

His heart quailed at the thought of the coming battle. He wasn’t afraid he would lose, because where his survival was concerned he had reserves of stubbornness that surprised people who’d seen only his laughter and cheerful kindness. But it seemed such a waste to be fighting when they could be doing other things.

Fight? Hell, no! He never fought with women. There were other ways to let them know where he stood. Subtle ways that left them still feeling friendly enough for a night of pleasure.

Luke both liked and adored women, not merely their bodies but the way their minds worked. He was enchanted by their oddities, their strange little secrets, and the way one of them would unconsciously teach him lessons that he could apply to others.

There wasn’t one of his lovers who wouldn’t welcome him back to her bed with glee. He wasn’t conceited about this; he was profoundly, humbly grateful for their generosity. He wanted to go on being grateful. And no man was grateful for a ball and chain.

Subtlety. That was it!

“You poor darling,” he said, kissing her tenderly. “Take this coffee and go back to bed while I make you something very special to eat.”

“What do you mean, ‘poor darling’? I don’t need to go back to bed.”

“Don’t you? You look a little sleepy still.”

“You mean I look tired?” she squealed in horror.

“No, no, just sleepy,” he soothed. “And it’s no wonder, after last night. You were just great.”

“Well, I know what you like,” she cooed, moving her hands over his skin.

“Don’t do that,” he begged, giving a skillful performance of a man afraid of being physically roused. Actually the reverse was true. Now that he knew what was on her mind, his senses seemed to have shut down, as they always did when he heard wedding bells. But it wouldn’t be kind to let her suspect this. And Luke always tried to be kind.

Gently but firmly he led her back up the stairs, murmuring, “Go and snuggle up, baby, and let me pamper you.”

He knew that was the offer no woman could refuse. And it would buy him a little time.

Maybe an hour. If he was lucky.

After he’d coaxed Dominique under the covers he returned to the balcony, looking up into the sky, silently imploring the angel who protected fun-loving bachelors to fly low over his nest.

From far off he could hear the faint sound of a plane preparing to land at LAX. But somehow, he doubted if his good angel was aboard.

Ladies and gentlemen, British Airways flight 279 from London to Los Angeles will be landing in twenty minutes. It is 12:10 p.m. local time, and the temperature is seventy-five degrees….

Ten-year-old Josie looked back from where she was glued to the window. “Mummy, we took off at half past nine in the morning, and we flew for eleven hours. How can we land at half past twelve?”

Pippa yawned and stretched as far as conditions allowed. “Los Angeles is eight hours behind London, darling. I explained it all with the map.”

“Yes, but it’s different when it’s real.”

“That’s true.” Inwardly Pippa was working out how long it would be until she could have a good cup of tea.

Josie was doing calculations. At last she sorted it out to her own satisfaction. “We’ve been flying backward,” she said triumphantly.

“I suppose we have.”

“You see, you can time travel.”

Flying backward, not eight hours but eleven years. Flying backward to revisit the naive girl of eighteen whose heart ruled her head, who’d loved one man totally, knowing that he only loved her casually.

Turn time back to the moment before she’d met Luke Danton. There she was, standing in the basement corridor of the Ritz Hotel, lost, wondering which way to go, trying the first door she saw, finding herself in the kitchen, where she had no right to be. And there was the handsome, laughing young man grabbing her arm, scooting her out, practically ordering her to meet him later.

Hurry past that door, quickly, while you still can. Run to the end of the passage and there’s a flight of stairs. Now you’ll never know he exists. Turn time back and be safe.

Safe. No Luke. No blazing, ecstatic four months. No anguished loneliness. No glorious memories. No darling, wonderful Josie.

She pushed open the door. And there he was….

It was crisis time.

Of course, he could always say bluntly, “No wedding! No way! And goodbye!” But Luke hated to hurt people, and he was fond of Dominique. He just didn’t want to marry her.

He suspected a connection between this and a recent crisis in her life. After being a top model for six years, Dominique had been stunned to lose out on a job she really wanted.

To someone younger.

She was staggeringly beautiful, but she was an old lady of twenty-six, and the writing was on the wall.

She hadn’t told Luke about the job, but he’d heard via the grapevine, and now he had a wry, goodnatured awareness that his personal charm was not the only issue here. He didn’t blame her. It was a tough world. Even the lovely face on your pillow could be working an angle, and Luke, who’d worked a few angles in his time, was relaxed about it.

But yielding to it was another matter.

His mind drifted to the one person, apart from his parents, who hadn’t been trying to get something out of him: who had even refused his consciencestricken offer of marriage, bless her heart!

Funny, kooky little Pippa, as crazy as he was himself, who’d made his months in London an enchanted time and seen him on his way with a smile and a wave.

He knew he’d been her first lover, and it still made him smile to remember how she’d enjoyed sex as though it were a box of chocolates. She’d jumped into bed with a whoop, unrestrained in her delight, warm and generous, as eager to give pleasure as to receive it. He hoped—yes, he really hoped—that she’d since found a man who could satisfy her as much as he had himself.

Who did he think he was kidding?

She’d even been cool about the discovery that she was pregnant. He was back home in Los Angeles by that time, but she’d dropped him a line. He’d telephoned her and dutifully suggested marriage, as he was an old-fashioned boy at heart. Pippa had thought that was very funny, he remembered. People didn’t have to get married these days. Of course she wanted to keep the baby, but who needed Luke?

He hadn’t been thrilled by her way of putting it, but it left him free and with a clear conscience. He’d thought of going over to see her, but flying was expensive, and it would be more sensible to send her the money. So he did that, and had done so ever since.

She still lived in his mind as the crazy kid with the wicked sense of humor that he’d known then. There were photographs to tell him what she looked like now, but they were somehow unreal beside the vividness of his memories.

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 shock 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.”

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.

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!”

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