‘Philippa… Pippa… Are you still there?’
‘Yes. Yes… I’m still here.’
Why was it that she only had to hear anxiety in someone’s voice, sense their need, and she was hooked? Blake might claim that he was not manipulating her, but she wasn’t so sure.
‘Well… what do you say? Will you come with me?’
Philippa took a deep breath.
‘Yes…’ she told him quietly. ‘Yes, I’ll come…’
After she had put the phone down she reminded herself very firmly that there was nothing for her to fear. Not any more; after all, she was hardly likely to be stupid enough to fall in love with him a second time, was she?
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
‘MARK… Please come in.’
Mark smiled and then turned to follow the immaculately dressed dark-haired woman as she led the way through the house to her office.
She had good legs, he thought—like Deborah. His body tensed against the thought… against his memories.
It was almost two months now, during which he had slowly started to rebuild his crumbling self-respect.
He had hesitated at first when the agency had offered him this long-term temporary work in a small market town practice, but he liked the work, and the people. It was a single-partner practice with William Harcourt, the partner, close to retirement and anxious to get on top of the backlog of work caused by a recent illness before he put the practice up for sale.
He and Mark had jelled straight away and it had been William who’d suggested that Mark take over full responsibility for the accountancy affairs of the firm’s biggest client.
‘I never thought when she first started that it would turn out to be so successful. None of us did… There’s even been talk of making the company public, but I doubt that Stephanie would ever agree. She enjoys being in charge too much for that.’
Stephanie Pargeter had intrigued Mark before he had even met her. She was a millionairess several times over; she owned and ran her own highly successful business which she had built up from nothing, and she was also an attractive woman… extremely attractive, Mark noted as he followed the elegant sway of her body down the hallway to her office.
‘I’m sorry to drag you out here on a Saturday morning,’ she apologised to Mark as she showed him into the elegant, book-lined room, ‘but there were one or two points I needed to go over with you on the takeover.’
‘No problem,’ Mark assured her. ‘I was only going to play golf with William…’
‘Don’t,’ Stephanie advised him, laughing. ‘He’s a terrible cheat…’
Her smile robbed the words of any criticism. For a woman in her early forties she had an oddly youthful face, the look in her eyes often mischievous and teasing.
She didn’t look like the stereotyped image of a successful woman; the clothes she normally wore were soft and fluid, her hair fell just short of her shoulders in an unfussy silky bob, the only jewellery she wore was her wedding-ring and a watch… but successful she most certainly was.
‘Tea or coffee?’ she asked Mark now as she invited him to sit down.
‘Coffee, please…’
While she went to get it, Mark studied the room. It was decorated in a soft, pretty shade of lemon that made the room feel sunny and warm. Clever touches of dark blue broke up its softness and the desk in the corner was a large, solid, no-nonsense piece of furniture.
He was looking towards the desk when Stephanie came back with their coffee.
‘Hideous things, aren’t they?’ she commented, wrinkling her nose with disgust as she looked at the computer. ‘Hideous but necessary… like far too many things in life,’ she added wryly.
‘Including men?’ Mark asked slyly as he took his coffee from her.
They had developed a very good working relationship in the month he had been here and he knew his comment would not cause her any offence. It was no secret locally that, after her husband had left her, taking with him her twenty-two-year-old PA and a large portion of her fortune, she had announced that that was the first and last time that any man would make such a fool of her.
‘Some of them,’ she agreed, mischief darkening her eyes as she looked directly at him and added softly, ‘Although I do sometimes make an exception… in certain cases…’
Mark held her gaze. He wasn’t quite sure if she was actually coming on to him, or if she was just playing a game with him, testing him… but either way she was a very, very attractive woman; older than he was, but still extremely desirable.