Gray Wolf's Woman

by Peggy Webb

  In moments Ruiz and Alfonso had opened the trunk to remove all the baggage, Sonia and Catalina were ushering them into the house, welcoming them volubly, assuring them that everything was prepared, the rooms were ready, the food was laid out.

  Inside, the air was blessedly cool. Long white curtains wafted gently in the floor-to-ceiling windows.

  Claudia escorted Pippa upstairs to a room at the front of the house.

  “This is yours,” she said. “Luke’s is across the way.”

  The room, which matched the one directly below, was big enough for ten. It had floor-to-ceiling windows, hung with white net curtains, and mosaic tiles on the floor. Its high ceiling and wide spaces gave it an air of peace that seemed to bless her as soon as she walked in. The bed, which could have slept an army, was covered in white lace. The furniture was rosewood, warm, glowing and beautiful.

  Catalina was already there, unpacking Pippa’s clothes and hanging them in the huge closets. She showed her where everything was, smiled and disappeared.

  Pippa wandered out onto the wrought-iron balcony to stand looking over the pool and beyond it the sea, feeling all the troubles fall away from her soul.

  “Do you like it?” Claudia asked from the doorway.

  “Claudia, it’s beautiful.”

  “It’s my room. I chose it because it overlooks the sea.”

  “But I can’t drive you out of your room. I’ll take somewhere else.”

  “Oh, but I won’t be here. I have to dash off for a few days. Did I forget to mention it?”

  “Yes, you somehow forgot that,” Pippa said.

  “Well, I have a memory like a sieve,” Claudia declared gaily. “I forgot to mention this, too.”

  On the bed lay a robe of pure silk, multi-colored in shades of olive-green, tan, orange, pale-yellow. It was the most exquisite thing Pippa had ever seen.

  “It’s an old Spanish custom to make a gift when someone stays in your house,” Claudia said. “This is my gift. It’s for lying around by the pool.”

  She held it up, and it looked so perfect that Pippa gasped with pleasure. “It looks fantastic with your coloring,” Claudia said. “I’m rather conceited with myself for getting that so right.”

  “Claudia it’s—it’s—”

  “Oh, hush, it’s nothing. Just enjoy it.” Then abruptly the gaiety faded from her face, and she spoke quietly. “You probably wonder why I brought you here, when you and Luke could simply have returned to his house. But I thought you needed to get away completely. It’s all been about Luke and Josie, but what about Luke and you?”

  “I’m not sure that there can be a Luke and me.”

  “Now you can find out. And I want you to take this.” She handed Pippa a scrap of paper on which a name and address were written. “He’s my own doctor here and he knows how to be discreet.”

  “I don’t know what you—” Pippa began quickly, but her protests died under the gentle honesty on Claudia’s face.

  “I don’t know what it is exactly,” Claudia said. “But I know there’s something, and you haven’t told Luke. Maybe you’ll tell him while you’re here. I think it should be soon.”

  Pippa looked down at the paper in her hand. “Thank you,” she said quietly. “You won’t—”

  “No, I won’t interfere. Besides, I’ll be gone in a few minutes.”

  Impulsively she put her hands on Pippa’s shoulder and kissed her on the cheek. Pippa clung to her for a moment, smiling. Suddenly she felt full of courage. She would tell Luke without delay.

  Chapter Nine

  Claudia whisked herself out of the house with very little fuss. She stopped briefly with Luke to tell him, “If I’m not back to drive you home, just take something from the garage.” Then she gave him a hug, said, “Bye, both of you. Don’t bother to be good.”

  “We won’t,” Luke promised her fervently. And Claudia was gone.

  Then an odd thing happened. As Luke and Pippa turned to look at each other a constraint seemed to fall over them. Pippa understood it in herself. She had something momentous to tell him. But Luke seemed actually embarrassed.

  Sonia saved them by waddling from the kitchen yodeling, “Food! You come and eat little snacks while I cook big dinner.”

  “Great,” Luke said with evident relief. “Let’s have them by the pool.”

  He vanished upstairs at once, leaving Pippa feeling puzzled. She returned to Claudia’s room and put through a call to England.

  “Mark, hi! Yes, I know I should be on the plane by now, but we’re staying over a few more days. I called so that you’d know not to meet us at the airport.” She saw a shadow slip past her half-open door. It was Luke on his way down to the pool. On the other end of the line Mark sounded troubled.

  “Pippa, you’ve got major surgery scheduled for next week—”

  “I know, but I can have a few extra days here and still be back in time. I’ll call Frank and—”

  “No need, he’s here. He was going to come to the airport with me. You’d better talk to him.”

  She heard the mutter of voices, and the next moment there was Frank, sounding outraged and fearful. “You must be out of your mind.”

  “Frank, I’m feeling really well. Please try to understand.”

  “Fine, it’s plainly useless for me to talk sense to you. I’d like to speak to Josie, please.”

  “She’s not here. She’s staying with Luke’s parents.”

  She heard his sharp intake of breath. “So that you can be with him, I suppose. He broke your heart once and he’ll do it again, but don’t you care about that! Don’t you care about anything but your fancy man!” He slammed down the phone.

  Such violence of feeling was so unlike Frank that she could only sigh, pitying him. In many ways she knew he was right. She ought to be strong and say goodbye to Luke. But the happiness that possessed her now was so sweet, and there had been so little of it in her life, that no power on earth could have prevented her claiming just a little more, perhaps the last she would ever know.

  She called Luke’s parents. Zak answered and said they’d taken Josie to the zoo. He promised to tell Josie that she’d arrived safely, and get her to call when she arrived home.

  When she went down, dressed for swimming, with the silk robe over her costume, Luke was already in the water. Sonia was setting out the snacks and wine by the pool.

  “Champagne,” she said. “Miss Claudia’s orders.”

  “Miss Claudia’s really organizing things,” Pippa murmured.

  “She’s like a big sister to Mr. Luke,” Sonia confided. “She knows what’s good for him.”

  She poured a champagne into a tall, fluted glass, handed it to Pippa and put the bottle back on ice. Pippa sipped and found herself drinking vintage Krug, chilled to perfection. She slipped off her robe and sat on the side, dangling one foot in the water. It was deliciously cool, and glinted in the sun as though the very water was made of champagne.

  “Come on,” Luke called from the water. “It’s great.”

  “So’s the champagne,” she called back.

  He swam over to her, threw his head back, mouth open wide. Laughing she poured champagne directly into it. “More! More!” She filled the glass again, but this time she emptied it over his head. “Hey!” he spluttered, and vanished beneath the water.

  Pippa peered down at him, but the next moment a hand had encircled her ankle and she was in the water with him. He released her at once and carried her to the surface, spluttering and struggling. Pippa found herself pressed against his bare torso, feeling the flesh warm despite the cool water, and suddenly very, very conscious of how much of her own body was uncovered.

  “You let me go, right now,” she said breathlessly.

  To her surprise, he did so, and swam away, leaving her startled.

  He shouldn’t have left her like that, even if she’d told him to. His hands seemed to have made imprints in her waist where he’d held her, and the sensation of his body against hers was s
till alive. But he had gone. He was up at the far end of the huge pool, splashing and frolicking as though nothing had happened between them.

  She swam lazily, crossing the pool at the width rather than risking the length. She was feeling good, but she knew how quickly that could evaporate.

  At last they climbed out and dried themselves off. Luke held up the robe for her to put her arms in. “Pretty,” he said. “I haven’t seen it before.”

  “Claudia gave it to me. I feel a fraud, it’s such perfect silk, and I’m not really a silk kind of person.”

  “Why shouldn’t you wear the best?” He briefly kissed her cheek and settled down on his own recliner. “Let’s eat. It looks good.”

  The snacks were Spanish tapas, small portions of fish, meat and salad, and Sonia, whose family came from Andalucia, had turned them into an art form.

  They both enjoyed them with gusto, until Luke said, “Pippa, we have to talk.”

  “What about?” she asked, puzzled by an edgy note in his voice.

  “There’s something we should have discussed days ago, but I guess I lost my nerve. You, too, maybe.”

  “Me…too?”

  “Lost your nerve. Because it’s something you really should have told me at the start, not let me blunder on, thinking that you—that we—”

  He floundered to a halt, and in the silence Pippa felt herself drowning in horror. Luke had guessed the truth about her illness. What else could this mean?

  “Luke, please don’t blame me too much—”

  “I don’t. I know some things are hard to say. It’s just that you were always such an honest person—well, you’d tell the truth if it brought an avalanche down on you…and on the rest of us.”

  “Maybe I’ve learned a little tact,” she said quietly. “When you grow up, you don’t want to risk avalanches. They tend to engulf the people you love.”

  “I wish I knew who you include on that list.”

  “Well…Josie mainly. You must understand that I’ve had to put her first.”

  “Of course.” He seemed deflated. “It’s just—would you tell me whether it’s too late?”

  Oh, God! He did know.

  “I can’t tell if it’s too late or not,” she said slowly. “How can I know that before I’ve got back to London?”

  “And seen him.”

  “What?”

  “Mark. That’s his name, isn’t it? You called him from your room….”

  “Yes, he was due to meet us at the other end. I had to let him know not to.”

  “You were on the phone to him a long time.”

  “I called Josie, too, but she was at the zoo.” She couldn’t mention Frank.

  “Is he a nice guy, this Mark?”

  “Very nice.”

  “A good friend?”

  “The best.”

  “Handsome, too.”

  “Very. In the guest house we call him Adonis.”

  “Oh, really! Well, I guess that’s that! More champagne.”

  “Luke—what is it?” She dismissed the suspicion creeping into her head as too impossible. “How did you know he was handsome?”

  “Josie showed me some snapshots. There was a real nice one of you and him together in his car. She says you go driving with him a lot.” He was looking out over the pool.

  “Luke is this what you were talking about just now? Mark and me?”

  “Of course. What else?”

  They’d been at cross-purposes. He hadn’t discovered her secret, after all. She could still tell him in her own way.

  And now the suspicion became a reality. He was jealous. “So, you put two and two together, and came up with—what?”

  “I don’t know,” he said grumpily. “You tell me. I mean, look—it’s fair enough. I guess there was bound to be someone—and you tried to give me a hint—all that stuff about things being different. That’s what you meant, wasn’t it? About this Mark guy, and his fast cars and his Adonis looks. What’s so damned funny?”

  “You are,” she chuckled. “Making a big deal about Mark.”

  “He isn’t a big deal?”

  “He’s no kind of deal. Just a friend. They all are.”

  “That wasn’t what you were trying to tell me the other night?”

  “No, it wasn’t. But, Luke, I want to talk to you about something quite different—”

  He never heard her. His relief took the form of leaping to his feet, yelling, “Yahooo!” at the top of his voice, and toppling headfirst into the pool, landing with a splash that soaked her.

  “Yahooo!” he yelled. “YAHOOO!”

  She knew she should be firm and insist on telling him everything now, but like that other time, the knowledge that he was jealous filled the world. It could do no harm to enjoy her happiness for just a little longer. She would tell him tomorrow.

  He swam back to her. “You’re not in love with Mark?” he yelled.

  She knelt down to talk to him. “No, of course I’m not.”

  “You’re not in love with anyone else?”

  “No!”

  “YAHOOO!” Pippa covered her ears, laughing. “Listen—” he yelled. She uncovered them. “What did you think I meant, then?”

  “Pardon?”

  “You said I shouldn’t blame you. Blame you for what? What did you think I meant?”

  Her mind went blank. “I didn’t know what you meant,” she prevaricated. “I thought you were talking gibberish, the way you usually do. I just played along.”

  “But you must have meant something when you said—”

  Inspiration came to her. “What’s that?” she called, leaning down to him. “I can’t hear you.”

  “I said—aaaaauuurgh!”

  The last sound was a yell that became a gurgle as Pippa “lost her balance” and toppled into the water, contriving to land neatly on top of him. They both sank into the depths and came up laughing. Pippa turned and swam away from him toward the shallow end where a brief flight of steps led up to the pool deck. She skipped up them, but they were slippery and she missed her footing, falling onto one knee.

  “Darling!” He caught her in time to prevent her going down any farther. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine—that is—my knee took a bit of a bang. Just help me sit down.”

  He did so, tenderly wrapping a towel robe around her, lifting her legs onto the recliner and gently rubbing her knee until she pronounced that it was better. By that time, she was relieved to see, he’d forgotten what he’d been trying to ask her.

  She was succumbing to an attack of blissful madness. It might be wrong, and sometime soon there would be a reckoning, but she would seize what life had offered her and count the cost later. Only a short time ago she’d been a sad creature, facing a return to the wilderness where there was no Luke, where she might never see him again. Suddenly all sadness was swept away. Before her stretched blissful days, and when the clock struck twelve, Cinderella wouldn’t complain.

  “What is it?” he asked quickly.

  “What?”

  “You sighed.”

  “Did I? I didn’t know.”

  “Let me pour you some more champagne. Then you can tell me what you’d like to do for the rest of the day.”

  “Well, first I’ll drink the champagne, and then—” she stretched and yawned “—then I’ll let you pour me some more champagne.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “After that I think I’ll take a nap. It’s been a tiring week, and now that I’m a lady of leisure I’m going to make the most of it. When I wake up I’ll have a long, luxurious bath.”

  “By which time supper will be ready.”

  “Hey, what are you doing?”

  “Carrying you, so that you don’t have to put too much pressure on that knee.”

  “Oh, yes, my knee,” she said vaguely, trying to remember which knee he was talking about.

  On the way into the house Luke said something in Spanish to Sonia, who bustled away. As they reache
d the top of the stairs, she was already in Pippa’s room, turning down the bed.

  “Shoo,” Luke said, when Sonia showed a disposition to linger.

  “And you can shoo, as well,” Pippa said as he set her down. “I’m going to have a long sleep.”

  “Can’t I stay?”

  “No,” she said firmly.

  He smiled and began to help her off with the towel robe. And from nowhere came that little spurt of resentment she’d felt at the airport. He was so assured.

  “Goodbye, Luke,” she said.

  He smiled and kissed the end of her nose. “You don’t mean that. Think how well I could help you to sleep!”

  “If I swing my fist, you’ll be the one who goes to sleep—for twenty-four hours,” she teased. “Now go.”

  “All right,” he laughed. “Have a nice snooze, darling.” He blew her a kiss and departed.

  She slid down blissfully into Claudia’s bed, wondering what had come over her to be so perverse. It was only half an hour ago she’d been happy just to be with Luke, longing for him. But he knew it and took it for granted just a little too much. And why shouldn’t he? Nobody had ever said no to Luke.

  But you did, said a perverse voice in her head. Since you arrived in Los Angeles a week ago, Luke has let you know in several ways that he still desires you, and you’ve turned him down.

  So he kidnapped you. He virtually admitted it and expected you to see it his way. Things happen when it suits him, and only when it suits him. He was disconcerted about Mark, but only for a moment. He didn’t really believe life could go against him. And now he thinks all he has to do is make his move.

  He’ll seduce you with teasing affection, delicately, subtly, making sure that you love every moment, for your pleasure will be as important to him as his own. That’s what makes him so dangerously charming. But the end result will be what it always is. Luke will get his own way.

  The clouds began to roll over her mind. She couldn’t think of this anymore. She was too comfortable. Bidding the voice be silent, she slept.

  She awoke to the sound of a bath being run. Sonia looked in, beamed and held up the robe for her to get into.

  The bathroom was an eye-opener. Claudia had fancied the idea of a Greek temple, and her designer had gone to town. The bath was sunk in the floor and decorated with jigsaw mosaic around the rim. Elegant mosaics covered the walls. Sonia poured something into the water, and a delicious aroma assailed Pippa’s nostrils.