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 aspossible.
"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.