Cruel Legacy (50 page)

Had Joel ignored what she had said and come back? And, if so, would she have the strength to send him away again?

Unsteadily she went to open the door.

For a moment, when she saw who her visitor actually was, she almost started to panic and close the door in his face, until she registered bis expression. Her recognition of his grim determination and her relief that he was not, after all, Joel gave her the strength to say quietly and somewhat to her own surprise, 'Hello, Slake. You'd better come in.'

Blake was caught off guard by her reaction as well; she could see it in his eyes.

What had he been expecting? she wondered—that she would blush like a schoolgirl and fall at his feet in a fit of swooning adoration? She wasn't that idealistic, infatuated teenager any more.

'You sound as though you've been expecting me.'

His voice sounded deeper, harsher than it had done on the answering machine. She could hear his emotions in it: tension, impatience, irritation... Tension? Why should he be tense?

'Not really,' she told him, responding automatically to his question.

'No? But ycu did recognise my voice on the answering machine.'

'Yes, I did,' Philippa agreed. What was the point in lying?

'And, having recognised it, you decided not to bother going ahead and making an appointment to see me.'

'It seemed the best thing to do,' Philippa told him.

It came to her suddenly that this was not the man she remembered, the all-powerful, godlike hero-figure she had worshipped and adored; this was a human being who right now seemed more thrown off guard by the situation than she was.

It was a disconcerting sensation recognising that fact; it

gave her a dizzying, unfamiliar sense of freedom, changing things so that the balance of power between them had swung slightly in her direction, bringing home to her the fact that she was after all no longer that shy, adoring girl whose image had remained trapped in her memories, but an adult woman with far more important things to concern her than the urgings of her immature adolescent emotions and body.

Physically Blake might hardly have changed at all; his body, she recognised, was still as lean and powerfully male as she remembered, even if now he was dressed in the imposing formality of a dark suit and an immaculately ironed white shirt rather than the T-shirt and jeans she remembered. His eyes were just as clear and assessing as they had been, the dark, almost black iris banded by a rim of much clearer pale green; the high cheekbones still gave his face a faintly austere aura of sexual masculinity; and his mouth still possessed that full bottom curve of sexuality and passion. But
she
had changed, without knowing it, without even recognising it until now, because, although she was aware of all those things about him which had once made her heart and pulse race and her fevered sensual imaginings a physical torture to live with, now they no longer had any power to affect her.

Yes, she was aware of him as a very sexually powerful man, but it was her memories of Joel's lovemaking that made her body ache with sweet heaviness, not Blake's presence here in her house.

It was an odd, disconcerting feeling, a combination of relief and foolishness, like waking up from a terrifying nightmare to discover that the shadow which had haunted her sleep had been nothing more than a dress hanging on the wardrobe door.

'How is the little girl?' she asked him compassionately, dismissing her own feelings. 'Poor child, she must be suffering dreadfully...'

As he heard the genuine warmth and concern in her voice, Blake acknowledged that Elizabeth Humphries knew what she was doing. Philippa had been the only person he had interviewed for the job who had mentioned Anya first.

Only of course he was not interviewing her, and nor, he suspected, was he going to get the opportunity to do so.

This calm, slightly distant, wholly mature woman was nothing like the Philippa he would have expected to find given the circumstances Elizabeth had briefly outlined to him. The metamorphosis in her from the girl he had known both intrigued and slightly chagrined him.

The fact that her startling prettiness had not diminished over the years did not surprise him, but the fact that she herself was so unaware of it, so careless almost of it, did, he acknowledged.

Despite what Michael had told him about her he had still half expected her to fit into a very different image, given her upbringing: designer clothes, immaculately coiffured hair, polished nails; in fact, the kind of artificiality he had always found a turn-off in any woman.

That was how he had visualised the woman she would become, not this jeans-and T-shirt-clad woman with her softly tousled fair hair and short blunt nails, her face free from make-up and her manner equally free of any artifice or constraint.

As a teenager, looking as she did today would have been something her parents would never have allowed.

Then she had looked like an immaculate, untouchable little doll. Now she looked like a wholly and enticingly touchable woman; the kind of woman who laughed and cried, who was warm and giving, the kind of woman who would take a lonely, frightened child to her heart and wrap her in the safe security of her love.

How had she become that woman...? Via a man... her husband?

Immediately he suppressed his thoughts, answering Philippa's questions.

'Anya is naturally very unhappy and confused. She's a quiet child, mature for her age in some ways and very immature in others. She hasn't had much contact with other children and her parents' death has made her retreat into herself...' Blake frowned. 'Why did you change your mind about applying for the job, Philippa? I know that you...'

'That I what...? That I need the money?' Philippa supplied for him steadily. 'Yes, I do,' she admitted honestly. But you can have as little desire to have me working for you as '

'I am not concerned with
my
desires,' Blake interrupted her curtly. 'Only Anya's needs.'

He saw from Philippa's expression that his words had hit home. She always had been emotionally vulnerable, and it had been because of that— He stopped his thoughts, refusing to let them go any further. It was Anya he was here for, not...

'I won't be manipulated, Blake,' Philippa warned him steadily. 'And to be honest I'm surprised that you want me.'

Philippa stopped, abruptly silenced by her own choice of words and cursing herself inwardly, but if Blake was aware of what she was thinking he was not showing it.

'I haven't got much time left,' he told her abruptly. "The Social Services have never been happy with the idea of me taking charge of Anya; they're already pressuring me to prove that she's going to be better off with me than under their care...'

'And you're getting desperate,' Philippa half mocked him.

'Yes, I'm desperate,' he admitted. 'But not so desperate that I'm prepared to employ someone who isn't one hundred and ten per cent the right person to have charge of Anya...'

'And you think that
I'm
that person?'

It was impossible for her to keep the cynicism out of her voice, and she could tell that Blake had recognised it.

'So.. .not quite everything about you has changed,' he told her softly. 'The Philippa I knew always did lack self-esteem.'

Not only did she not desire him any more, she didn't much like him either, Philippa decided.

'The Philippa you knew doesn't exist any more,' she told him icily. 'She was a girl... a child... I am a woman...'

'Yes...'

Why, after the control she had felt and exhibited, did that one slow, soft word make her feel as though her entire body was suddenly engulfed in a wave of self-conscious heat?

'I'm sorry, Blake,' she told him tersely. 'But I can't work for you.' She turned away from him. 'It just wouldn't work and I have the boys to consider now, as well...'

"That would be no handicap as far as I am concerned-far from it.'

Philippa looked back at him.

'Anya has been too isolated, she needs contact with other children, but I suspect that, thrown into a new school and with the trauma of her parents' death to cope with, instead of reaching out to her peers, she's far more likely to retreat from them completely.

'To have the opportunity to mix with other children in her own home, a home she shared with them, would be of enormous benefit to her.'

'Is that Anya's guardian speaking or her psychiatrist?' Philippa asked him sharply.

'Anya is my charge, not my patient,' Blake responded equally curtly, adding angrily, 'And if you're suggesting that I want to use her emotional vulnerability in some kind of absurd professional experiment...!'

She hadn't been; all she had wanted to do was to irritate him a little, scratch him to see if he really bled, a small compensation for the bruises she had received from flinging herself against the implacable rock of his uninterest. But someone obviously had suggested that. Who? Philippa wondered. The Social Services?

His temperament was far more mercurial than she had realised, she recognised, his emotions far closer to the surface.

'Why should I?' she told him, adding drily, 'I'm not the guardian of your conscience, Blake. I've got far more important things to worry about... like my sons...'

'Their father...your husband...did you love him?'

Philippa stared at him, unable to conceal her shock.

Blake was shocked as well, she recognised, as though his question had been as unanticipated by'him as it had been by her. For a second she was tempted to lie, to abide by convention and regress to the person her parents had

brought her up to be, but her pride wouldn't let her. Why should she, after all?

'No,' she told him, her head held high, her eyes defying him to criticise her. 'But I was grateful to him.'

'Grateful?' He was frowning.

'Because he wanted me...needed me, approved of me.. .because he reinforced my self-esteem, because he gave my life a purpose and a focus. Because,' she told him quietly, 'he provided an escape route from my parents.

'And you, Blake. Have you ever married?'

'No.'

Their eyes met and it was Blake who looked away first, Philippa noticed in surprise.

'I'd still like you to reconsider taking the job...'

He meant it, Philippa realised.

'Don't give me your final answer yet. Think it over for a couple of days,' he urged her. 'Anya needs you, Philippa.'

'That's emotional blackmail,' Philippa told him bluntly. 'And you don't even know yet how Anya will react to me.'

'Oh, but you're wrong,' Blake contradicted her softly. 'That is the one thing I do know...'

'Is that your professional judgement?' Philippa's mouth twisted slightly as she spoke.

'Yes... and it's my judgement as a human being as well... as a man...'

He was already turning towards the door, leaving while he felt he had the upper hand, Philippa realised, knowing that she was on ground that was far too unstable for her to challenge him. It didn't make any difference, though; she might as well allow him his small victory, because she wasn't going to change her mind...she wasn't going to take the job.

Why not? She had already proved to herself that she was immune to him now both emotionally and sexually.

In the empty kitchen she shook her head in silent rejection of her own unspoken question.

She just wasn't, that was all; she didn't need to give logical reasons, explanations, excuses... She just wasn't.

*

The letter arrived with the morning's post. She saw the bank's stamp on it and reached for it first, her fingers trembling as she opened it, knowing by some instinct that it contained a response to her request.

She read it once and then a second time as the sickening sense of shock and disappointment spread outwards through her body.

The bank was sorry, but it could not agree to her request.

There was a lot more to it than that, of course, but essentially that was what they were saying... a firm and unequivocal 'no'.

It was several minute before she realised that there was a second page to their letter. Its contents only reinforced the message of the first page. It named the estate agents who would be acting for them and warned her that the agents had been instructed to go for a quick sale.

So much for her promise to Rory that they would all be together for the summer holidays... Together where? At her parents'?

The temptation to give in to her own fear and misery was almost overwhelming, but what was the point? What good would it do?

When the phone rang she raced to answer it, illogically hoping that it might be the bank ringing to say they had changed their mind, but instead it was Susie.

'Hey, where are you?' Susie asked her cheerfully. 'You were supposed to be coming round here for coffee and a natter this morning—remember?'

'Yes... yes... I'm sorry... I was just about to leave...'