Cruel Legacy (25 page)

Joel read her mind.

'I recognised you in the social services office,' he told her. 'I used to work for your husband.'

Philippa flushed uncomfortably. 'I...I'm sorry ' she

began, but Joel interrupted her, shaking his head as he told her gruffly,

'It's not your fault, and besides, he seems to have left you as badly off as the rest of us.'

Philippa didn't try to deny it.

She still felt slightly sick and shaky and she wanted to get home. As she moved to walk past Joel he fell into step beside her. When she hesitated and looked at him, he told her lightly, 'I could do with the exercise; my wife complains that I spend far too much time sitting around making the place look untidy.'

Despite his smile Philippa could hear the bitterness in his voice. 'Why aren't you using your car? Walking around isn't the safest thing for a woman to do these days...'

'It wouldn't start,' Philippa told him, adding drily, 'And besides, walking's cheaper.'

They both stopped walking and looked at one another.

'Yeah,' Joel agreed. 'It helps to fill the time as well. Did Social Services give you a hard time?'

'Not really, but I feel so bad about being there.'

'Tell me about it,' Joel derided.

'You...you haven't been able to find another job?' Philippa ventured.

'No, and there isn't much chance that I will find ono either,' Joel told her. 'Not round here.'

He paused as he saw the look in Philippa's eyes, his voice softening slightly as he told her, 'It isn't your fault.'

'I feel as if I'm to blame,' Philippa said, stopping as she realised how intimately they were talking. They were strangers, she reminded herself, and yet...

'You're not,' Joel told her. 'In many ways we're both in the same boat.'

'Well, if we are, I'd better warn you now that we're not likely to get very far,' Philippa told him humorously. 'Because I'm not much good at rowing... or anything else,' she added more soberly.

'It isn't really that hard,' Joel told her. 'Rowing... all you need is someone to show you how.'

As she listened to the lightly husky timbre of his voice a tiny shiver of awareness ran down Philippa's spine. There was nothing either overtly or covertly sexual about his comment and she could see from his expression that he hadn't intended to make any sexual innuendo, and yet... Did he have the same awareness of her that she had of him?

Philippa was used to men being aware of her, making passes at her, but she certainly wasn't used to being sexually aware of them like this.

'Your wife...' she asked quickly. 'Does she... does she work?'

'Yes... she's a nurse,' Joel told her. He suddenly looked very bleak, Philippa recognised, as though talking, even thinking about his wife was somehow painful for him.

'Have you got children?' she asked, anxious to establish some kind of neutrality between them and to banish that disturbing sensual intimacy she had sensed earlier.

'Two—a girl and a boy. Not that you'd know it. It's their mother they've always turned to, and why not? She's also the one who holds the purse strings now...'

'I've got two boys,' Philippa told him. 'They're both at boarding-school. Andrew... I didn't want... but Andrew insisted. He said I was spoiling them.'

'Sally spoils our two, especially Paul. The minute they want anything she drops everything else...'

Philippa could sense the resentment in his voice. Was he really jealous of his children? she wondered.

'It's a habit mothers fall into,' she said gently. 'You see, when they're little they're so dependent on us that we automatically have to put them first. It doesn't necessarily mean...'

She stopped and Joel looked at her.

'What? That they do come first? No, when I was growing up it certainly didn't then but Sally keeps on telling me it's different now.'

'We all want to give our children the things we feel we didn't have ourselves.'

'Mmm.. .well, all my two seem to want is the latest piece of electronic rubbish... a new computer is what Paul is after now... I offered to take him fishing the other day but he said fishing bored him...'

He stopped as he saw the small betraying expression flicker across Philippa's face. 'What is it?' he asked her.

'Nothing,' she denied and then added quickly, 'Your children are very lucky to have a father who wants to spend time with them.'

She didn't say any more, and Joel didn't press her to explain.

So she thought his children were lucky to have him as a father? He doubted whether Sally would agree.

As they reached the front gate to her house Philippa stopped. Joel gave a small start of surprise. He hadn't realised they were there. They only seemed to have been walking for a few seconds.

He didn't want to end their conversation, to let her go, he recognised; there was something about her that had a soothing, warming effect upon him, that somehow made him feel good about himself. He couldn't explain exactly what it was, he only knew that during those few seconds while he had held her and felt her body tremble slightly against his he had been intensely aware of her vulnerability.

'It was kind of you to walk me home,' Philippa told him now.

'I enjoyed it,' Joel told her truthfully. 'It was... good to have someone to talk to.'

'Yes,' Philippa agreed, acknowledging all that he had left unspoken.

'I could come round tomorrow and take a look at your car for you if you like,' Joel offered.

Philippa felt her heart give a small betraying flurry of half-beats.

'Oh, I couldn't put you to so much trouble,' she protested.

'It's no trouble,' Joel assured her. 'It will give me something to do..,'

'Well, if you're sure you don't mind...'

She shouldn't be doing this, Philippa acknowledged on a small burst of panic.

'I... I can't afford to pay you,' she told him awkwardly. 'I'll...'

'There's no need... As I said, it will give me something to do. Come on,' he added, glancing up the drive. 'I'd better see you inside...'

She ought to have invited him in for a cup of coffee, Philippa acknowledged guiltily when Joel had gone, but she had already nearly consumed her small stock of coffee this morning with Susie's visit, and according to the Social Services, unless she had misunderstood the woman, it might be some time before she actually received any money.

It hadn't helped discovering that, while the owner of the second-hand shop was more than delighted to sell her clothes, she wouldn't actually receive any money for them until a customer came into the shop and bought them.

'I work on a flat commission basis,' the woman had told Philippa briskly, 'and I'll account to you at the end of every month.'

So much for hoping that she could use the money for the boys' school trip.. .which meant that she now had no option other than to go to her parents... It made no difference knowing that her father could easily afford the relatively modest amount involved; she was a grown woman of thirty-four and, even if her relationship with her parents had been a good one built on mutual love, she still wouldn't have wanted to approach them for money. She was not, despite what others seemed to think, a woman who enjoyed being financially dependent on others; she never had been. Even as a teenager, she would have preferred to be allowed to earn her own pocket money, but there had been no question of her father allowing her to do that.

She remembered how scathing Blake had been about her financial dependence on her parents.

'Can't you see what you're doing? They're buying you, Philippa, and you're letting them. If you really wanted to go to university, to be independent, you'd find a way of financing yourself.'

'How?' she had demanded tearfully.

She had loved him so much... worshipped him in dumb, heartaching silence. He had filled all her teenage dreams with fantasies of how it would feel to have Blake's mouth touching hers, kissing her the way she had seen lovers kissing in films, open mouth pressed to open mouth in hungry, fierce need. Her body had grown hot and achy just thinking about how it would feel to have Blake kiss her like that.

In the privacy of her bedroom she had studied her naked body, shivering as she'd watched her nipples grow into hard, urgent points when she'd imagined Blake touching her, but a fantasy was all it had been, and after that final quarrel between them, when he had made it clear to her what he thought of her, she had been almost feverishly grateful that they had not been lovers, that she had been spared the final humiliation of being used sexually by him in the way that she herself had pitifully and stupidly invited.

But she had no illusions left. That restraint had been for his sake and not for hers.

The pain of loving him and of forcing herself to destroy that love had left her very weak, with no energy to spare for any further battles with her father.

Andrew's intense and determined courtship of her had been a panacea, a means of distracting herself from a pain she could neither suppress nor deny. Her father had approved of him, and at least marriage to Andrew would be some form of escape.

Only by convincing herself that she had found someone else to love would she be able to banish the humiliation of Blake's rejection of her, by convincing herself that she was worthy of being loved.

Sometimes, just occasionally, when she was feeling particularly reckless, she allowed herself to wonder what her life might have been like if she had not visited Blake that evening.

All through the winter and then the spring she had been looking forward to the summer holidays, to what she feared would be Blake's last visit to her home, since Michael would soon have completed his course. She was eighteen now, not a child any longer but a woman, a woman who was determined to put to the test what all her feminine senses were telling her. It wasn't enough any more to watch Blake smile, to listen to him talk and to dream her dreams of him alone in bed at night. The kisses she wanted from him now were no longer merely the fantasy ones she conjured up for herself.

All her burgeoning femininity told her that Blake was aware of her, that when he smiled at her and watched her he was well aware of the effect he was having on her and that the burning look she sometimes saw in his eyes meant that he too wanted more...

Frustratingly, though, once he had arrived, she never seemed to get the chance to be alone with him; someone else, normally her father or Robert, would appear and the opportunity to show him how she felt, to encourage him to recognise that she was no longer a child, would be lost.

Once or twice they had been alone, but on both occasions she had been stricken by such a paralysing shyness that she hadn't been able to say what was in her heart.

The first time had been when she had seen him emerging from the guest bathroom one evening, his legs bare beneath his robe, bare and soft-furred. Her stomach had contracted on a sudden surge of shocked excitement, hot shivers burning her skin like fine needles. She had taken a step towards him but he had stepped back, leaving her feeling self-conscious and confused.

The second occasion had been when she had gone in search of Michael to fasten her pearls and had found Blake in her brother's room waiting for him.

'Perhaps you could fasten them for me,' she had suggested shyly, her throat so constricted with her awareness of him that her voice had sounded unfamiliarly husky. She had turned her back to him as she spoke, lifting the weight of her hair off her shoulders, her body trembling even before she'd felt the heart-stopping cool touch of his fingertips against her hot skin.

She had been standing in front of the bedroom mirror and had watched as Blake fastened her pearls, greedily drinking in the sight of his dark head bent over her fair one, achingly aware of the proximity of their bodies, of the heat she could feel coming off his, of its strength and maleness. All she had to do was to close her eyes and lean back against him...

But, even as the thought had formed, Blake was placing his hands on her shoulders and turning her round, his eyes sombre as he'd begun, 'Philippa, I...'

She never learned what he had been about to say because Michael had walked in, apologising to Blake for keeping him waiting, teasing Philippa and grimacing as he saw the pearls she was wearing.

'Daddy likes me wearing these,' she had told him, not wanting to explain just why it was so important to her to keep her father in a good mood. She sensed instinctively that her father did not particularly like Blake, but she had no idea why. It was true that Blake's family did not have money or position but Blake was very clever, much more so than either Robert or Michael.

One day he would be rich and successful. Blake himself had laughed when she'd told him so a couple of summers before, plainly amused by her childish defence of him. She had been only sixteen then... a girl still...

As she had left her brother's bedroom she'd reminded herself that Blake's visit had barely begun and that there was still plenty of time...