Gray Wolf's Woman

by Peggy Webb

  “Don’t wake Mummy,” she said.

  “Think she’ll still be asleep?”

  “Mummy gets tired a lot. She’s always napping during the day, ’cuz there’s so much to do for the boarders.”

  “Well she’s not going to work while she’s here. We’ll spoil her. Why don’t you go and have a shower while I rustle up something to eat?”

  Josie skipped off into the bedroom, but Luke saw her emerge a moment later, clutching some clothes, her finger to her lips.

  “She still asleep?” he asked, and received a vigorous nod.

  Luke went quietly past her and up to the bed. Pippa was lying on her face, one arm hanging over the edge, in exactly the same position as when he’d left her three hours ago. Sleeping like the dead.

  Which was strange, because Pippa had never slept like that.

  She was a compulsive twitcher. He remembered one particular time years ago when she’d asked, “Luke, what are you doing on the floor?”

  “I spent the entire night on the floor. It was more comfortable that way, you mad woman.”

  “Meaning? Meaning?”

  “Meaning that being with you is like trying to sleep with a flailing windmill. You punched me in the eye once, and where your knee landed I’d rather not think of.”

  “Oh, darling, I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry. Just keep your knees to yourself,” he remembered saying.

  Josie came into the kitchen while Luke was just about to dish up an egg concoction. She was wearing jeans and a shirt and shining from the shower.

  “Coming up!” he exclaimed, heading for the place at the bar that he’d laid for her.

  But Josie seemed not to hear him. She was gazing at the picture of Pippa and herself, standing in its place of honor. Luke put the plate down slowly. He’d seen the blissful smile on her face and knew he would need to tread very carefully for the next few minutes.

  “What are you thinking?” he asked gently.

  “Is it—here all the time?”

  For a crazy instant he toyed with a fantasy in which the picture was always on show to an admiring world. It was so easy to say what women wanted to hear, and he’d never thought twice about it before.

  Except once, years ago, with a girl whose honesty brooked no compromise, and who’d made him honest, too—at least for a while. It hadn’t been anything she said, just the look in her deep brown eyes, always expecting the best from him. The same eyes in another face were watching him trustfully now.

  “No,” he admitted. “You and Mommy have been my special secret.”

  “Mummy said—” Josie didn’t seem to know how to go on.

  “What did she say?”

  “She said she knew you loved us but—”

  “Yes?”

  “But you had another life, and we weren’t part of it.”

  For once Luke was stuck for something to say.

  “She said you knew lots of other people now, and maybe they didn’t know about us and—”

  He thought fast. “You were too precious to share. I’ve kept you for myself.”

  Josie smiled and seemed satisfied. She didn’t know that she’d done what no other woman had ever managed: made Luke totally and thoroughly ashamed of himself. He recovered, but only with an effort.

  “Why don’t we get this eaten, while it’s still good?” he said. “I’ll make some more for Mommy when she’s awake.”

  The little girl frowned. “Why do you say Mommy? It’s Mummy.”

  “It’s Mummy in England. Over here it’s Mommy.”

  Josie frowned. “But Mommy’s wrong. It’s Mummy.”

  He set his chin. “Mommy!”

  She set hers. “Mummy!”

  “Mommy!”

  “Mummy!”

  “Oh, boy, are you ever her kid! Stubborn, argumentative—”

  “What’s argu—?”

  “It means that nobody else ever gets the last word. She was just like that.”

  And about the damnedest things, he remembered:

  “Pippa, what are you doing on the floor?” Luke had asked, the night following his sleep on the floor.

  “I’m trying to go to sleep.”

  “Then get into the bed. I’m sleeping on the floor.”

  “You slept on the floor last night. And according to you, it was all my fault. You said I was twitching, which was a black lie—”

  “I said you kneed me in the groin, and I have the bruises to prove it. Don’t expect any action from me tonight.”

  “So sleep well and recover, fast!”

  “Think I’m a ninety-eight pound weakling, huh? Pippa, get into that bed.”

  “Nope. I’m sleeping on the floor.”

  “So am I.”

  “And so am I!”

  “We can’t both sleep on the damned floor!”

  “Right! G’night Luke! I’m sleeping here. So off you go!”

  “Pippa, stop that, y’hear me? I’m ticklish. No, stop it. Gerroff! Now will you stop?”

  “Thought you were out of action tonight.”

  “Guess I’m not so bad as I thought.”

  “Mmm!”

  A while later he asked, “Wouldn’t it have been more comfortable in bed?”

  “Let’s find out.”

  “Daddy?”

  “Sorry, honey. What?”

  “You went into a trance with a funny smile on your face.”

  “I was just remembering one time—we had the craziest arguments—she just had to be the one who slept on the floor—guess I talked her out of that.” He saw his daughter giving him a puzzled look and said hastily, “Eat your supper.” He poured her a glass of orange juice and re-angled the picture.

  “Why do you keep a computer in the kitchen?” she asked.

  “Because this is where I live. It’s the center of my life.”

  Pippa’s head appeared around the door. She was wearing one of Luke’s capacious white bathrobes over her nightdress, and had obviously just gotten out of bed. But her eyes were bright, and she looked well. In fact, she looked like the old vigorous Pippa, and he could shrug aside the stillness that had worried him while she slept.

  He came to stand in front of her, grinning. She grinned back, and the next moment they were in each other’s arms, laughing, bear hugging with pleasure.

  “Oh, boy, is it good to see you!” he yelled. “Pippa! My Pippa, after all this time. Let me look at you.” He held her away. “Still as ugly as ever, I see. Yuk!”

  “Yuk yourself! What any woman ever saw in you I can’t imagine. You were bad enough then, but now you’re a disaster. Fat—balding—”

  “And you should see my dandruff!” he agreed.

  They exploded into laughter again, hugging each other and dancing around the kitchen. Josie watched them with glee, cramming her mouth full, and chuckling between bites.

  “Sit down and have some supper,” he said, pointing her to a bar stool.

  “Can I just have some coffee now and come back when I’ve had a shower?”

  “Your wish is my command. Fresh coffee coming up.”

  She took the cup he offered and turned to leave, but Josie forestalled her, calling, “Mummy, did you know that while we’re here, you’re Mommy?”

  “I had a feeling I might be.” She smiled at Josie. “Mommy it is.”

  “Come and sit down,” Josie commanded.

  “Well, I—” Pippa slipped a hand into the pocket of the bathrobe and fingered the pills that she must take very soon.

  “I want to tell you all about the beach,” Josie persisted.

  “Just a moment, then I must go and have a shower.” She sat down at the bar beside her daughter, who launched into a vigorous description of the last few hours, which had obviously been pure heaven to her. Pippa listened contentedly. This was exactly what she’d hoped for when she came here. All would be well.

  “What’s that you’re taking?” Luke asked, seeing her slip something into her mouth.

&
nbsp; “Just an aspirin,” she said quickly. “Bit of a headache.”

  A wise look came over Josie’s face, aging her several years. “Have you got another one of your headaches?” she asked kindly. To Luke she explained, “She’s always getting them.”

  “Darling, don’t exaggerate. I get tired with so much work to do in that stuffy boarding house, and today’s been a long day.” Pippa laughed. “I don’t know why I’m having a shower as though it was breakfast time, when it’s actually evening.”

  “It’ll make you feel better,” Luke said. “Wash the cobwebs away.”

  He was right. After a shower she felt like a new woman. She dressed hurriedly and returned to the kitchen, where Josie was trying to decide on the rival merits of toffee or banana ice cream, and finally honoring them both with her approval.

  “You’ve cleaned both plates,” Luke declared, as though astonished.

  “She’s ten,” Pippa reminded him. “What did you expect?”

  Josie opened her mouth to say something, but no sound came out. She had been up for twenty-four hours, and before their eyes jet lag overcame her like a cloud. Her eyes closed, her head fell forward, and she would have fallen off the bar stool had Luke not caught her in his arms.

  They went up in procession to the bedroom, where Luke deposited the little girl on the bed. “Leave her as she is,” he said, pulling the coverlet over her. “She doesn’t want to be bothered with getting undressed now.”

  “Night, Mommy,” Josie murmured with her eyes closed.

  “Night, darling.” Pippa bent and kissed her.

  “Night, Daddy.”

  “Night, sweetheart.” He leaned down and kissed the child quite naturally, without a hint of the awkwardness many men would have felt.

  That was Luke, Pippa remembered: easy, tactile, uninhibited, the warmth and charm always available on tap—as long as they weren’t crushed by too many expectations.

  He gave her another delightful demonstration a moment later as they returned to the kitchen.

  “And now, eef Madame would care to be seated,” he declared in a horrible stage French accent, “zis establishment will provide eggs by Luke of ze Ritz.”

  “You remembered how I like them?” she exclaimed, astonished.

  “Of course. I created this especially for you. Don’t you remember?”

  It was a brilliantly simple invention consisting of poached eggs and avocado, with a sauce Pippa had never been able to analyze. It was her first taste of it for nearly eleven years, and it was delicious.

  “Just for me,” she echoed.

  “I have to admit that I put it in the restaurants—”

  “So I should jolly well hope! Is it a success?”

  “The greatest. But it was always really for you.”

  She looked into his smiling eyes and thought, I’m so glad that I’m not in love with you anymore. If I were, you could still devastate me. Lucky for me I’m wiser now.

  He made fresh coffee, and drank some with her, watching her fondly like a recovered treasure.

  “What happened to Luke of the Ritz,” she asked smiling, “after he got back home?”

  “Oh, he drifted around from one job to another.”

  “Don’t tell me he had trouble finding work? Not the genius I remember?”

  “Work of a sort, but not the sort I wanted. Always having to scale my ideas down to someone else’s guidelines, never allowed to do things my way.

  “I used to pour out my frustrations to an old fellow I met on the beach. His name was Tommy, and he had a dog, called Catch, the fattest spaniel you ever saw. I guess I just naturally gravitate to beach bums, being half one myself—my mom would tell you that—but Tommy and Catch became my best friends for a while.

  “I used to take them both back to my rooms, practice recipes on them, and we’d talk for hours. I visited him once at his home. He had a little place, but he didn’t spend much time there because it was too far from the beach. If you’ve finished eating, let’s go into the other room. It’s more comfortable.”

  Chapter Five

  They ferried the coffeepot into the large room where he lived when he wasn’t working. One wall was a huge window, overlooking the sea. Sofas and armchairs looked as though they’d been thrown down casually.

  “Here,” Luke said, settling her on a sofa directly in front of the window. “Coffee’s on the table beside you.”

  It was lovely to be waited on. Pippa kicked off her shoes and stretched out on the sofa. “Mmm!” she sighed.

  He laughed and settled into an armchair where he could see her face. “Where was I?”

  “Tommy and Catch.”

  “Right. Tommy shouldn’t have been living on his own, but his only relative was a daughter he didn’t get on with. She said he could stay with her if he had the dog put down. Said he was vicious, which was a damned lie because he was too fat to be vicious. So Tommy went on living alone, except for Catch, who was all he had to love.

  “Then Tommy died suddenly, and left a will, saying everything he had was mine, if I’d look after Catch. So I took him home, put him on a diet, and he lived another three years. But here’s the incredible thing. It turned out Tommy owned the place where he lived. He’d bought it fifty years ago before prices had shot through the roof, and I’m not sure he ever realized what it was worth.

  “That was when the daughter reappeared, screaming blue murder, saying how I’d influenced the old man and stolen her inheritance.”

  “What did you do?” Pippa asked, genuinely curious to know how Luke’s sweet temper would have dealt with this one.

  “I’d have cheerfully fought her to the end. She was mean to Tommy, and everyone knew it, but she was miserable and lonely, and I reckoned money was all she was ever going to have, so I offered her a third and her lawyer advised her to settle.

  “When the house was sold, that still left me enough to get started. I found a place that was already a restaurant but not doing as well as it should. Tommy’s money paid just over half the purchase price, and a bank loan covered the rest including the cost of making it over how I wanted.”

  “And it was a huge success, and soon you had enough for the second restaurant,” Pippa said triumphantly.

  “Not quite. It was a success, but the money came in slowly, and banks are cautious. There was a moment when I just knew it was right to expand. There was a place for sale exactly where I wanted it, and the price was reasonable. I had one day to clinch it. Would the bank listen? No way.”

  “Tightwads!”

  “Right. If it wasn’t for Claudia, I’d be sunk.”

  “Who’s Claudia?”

  “Oil heiress. She owns a house a couple of hours from here, in Montecito, and she spends a month there every year. When she was in Los Angeles she would eat at Luke’s Place, and we got to know each other. To make a long story short, she gave me the loan for Luke’s Other Place, or I couldn’t have bought it. Soon after that I got the TV spot, and now I’m well on the way to paying her back, with interest.”

  Pippa chuckled. “If there was one thing about you that used to get up my nose, it was the way you always fell on your feet.”

  “That’s true,” he reflected. “The cavalry always came galloping to the rescue, like you today, turning up just when Dominique was getting heavy.” He became awkward suddenly. “About Dominique—”

  “Luke, you don’t owe me any explanations. We went our separate ways years ago. You put the picture in a drawer and took it out when it was useful.”

  Hearing it put that way, he winced. But there was no blame in Pippa’s eyes. She knew him from way back and accepted him for what he was. He was the one who suddenly didn’t like it.

  “It was fate,” he said. “Fate knew you were coming at just the moment I needed you. Come to think of it, that’s true.”

  “Yes, what would you have done without us?” she asked, amused. “You’d be halfway up the aisle by now.”

  He shuddered. “Please don’t say
things like that. It makes me feel queasy. From now on that picture’s staying there all the time. And while you’re here I’m going to take plenty more.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “Just what did bring you here suddenly? And why didn’t you let me know you were coming?”

  “You know I always did crazy things on the spur of the moment,” Pippa said with a shrug. “The guest house is doing well and I took on an assistant. Susan’s bright enough to be left in charge. One of my boarders can get cheap airline tickets, and I thought—why not?”

  She was quite pleased with the speech. It had just the right air of daft spontaneity, and who would guess how long she’d rehearsed it?

  “Besides,” she went on with her other prepared speech, “I needed a break. I’ve been having a load of minor ailments recently. I get migraines, and sometimes asthma, and the doctor says I’ve got a touch of anemia.”

  “That’s terrible,” he said, taking her hand. “You were always so full of beans.”

  “Well, I still am, basically. I just live on iron pills, and I’m better than I was. It’s only little things. Not life threatening.”

  Not life threatening. Not like the heart condition that she ought to be at home being treated for this minute.

  “But I get a bit short of energy,” she finished cheerfully, “so sometimes it’ll be just you and Josie doing things without me.”

  “Whatever you say. You do exactly what you want to.”

  “Well, I thought a holiday would do me good. So here we are.”

  “And I’m going to love having you, but you were crazy not to warn me. Suppose I hadn’t been at home? I’d have missed you.”

  “No, we’ll be here for about a week, and I know your show goes out twice a week, so we were bound to overlap.”

  “But we weren’t. I record those shows six at a time. In between I can be away for as much as ten days.”

  “I never thought of that,” she said, horrified.

  “I wouldn’t have wanted to miss Josie for anything. We’re already on the same wavelength.”

  “She’s the perfect age to appreciate you,” Pippa agreed.

  “Is that your way of telling me I have the mental age of a ten year old?”