For His Little Girl

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.”