For His Little Girl

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.