‘For a special treat my sons love going to McDonald’s,’ Philippa offered, and was rewarded with a relieved look from Anya’s brown eyes and a brief hint of a smile.
‘McDonald’s, eh?’ Philippa had to fight hard not to laugh as she saw Blake’s expression.
* * *
‘Are you OK back there, Philippa?’ Blake asked quietly.
Philippa nodded. Anya had fallen asleep with her head on Philippa’s shoulder half an hour after they had resumed their journey after their stop for lunch. Now, as she gently eased her into a more comfortable position, Philippa didn’t risk waking her up by speaking.
Her appetite was healthy enough at any rate, she reflected, judging from the way she had demolished her lunch, although Philippa would have preferred to see her eating a healthier diet.
‘What am I to call you?’ she had asked Philippa politely when Blake had gone to get their food.
‘What would you like to call me? My name is Philippa, but you can call me Pip, or Pippa if you prefer,’ Philippa had offered.
‘Pippa—it’s a bit like Nanna, isn’t it?’ Anya had told her, adding quietly, ‘I don’t have a grandmother, or a grandfather. They’re dead. The secret police killed them…’ She’d said it matter-of-factly. ‘I don’t have anyone else at all now,’ she’d added.
‘You have us,’ Philippa had told her, swallowing down the emotion threatening her.
‘Yes, but you don’t really belong to me, do you?’ Anya had replied levelly.
There was nothing that Philippa could say, no words that could give Anya back what she had lost, she’d acknowledged, and it would be an insult to the child to pretend any different.
She had failed her already, Philippa had thought hollowly as Blake had come back with their food, including a huge sweet milkshake for her, which she knew she had not ordered.
‘I thought you would like it,’ Blake had told her innocently when she’d pushed it away after one taste, but there had been laughter in his eyes as he’d watched her expression and rueful acknowledgement in her own.
‘She’s really taken to you,’ Blake whispered softly now.
‘What’s that?’ Philippa responded drily after checking that Anya was still sound asleep. ‘Your professional opinion or wishful thinking?’
‘Neither,’ he responded promptly. ‘If you like, it’s just a plain basic male interpretation of the fact that she prefers to be close to you, that she relaxes and lets down her guard with you… responds to you in a way that she certainly hasn’t shown any signs of doing with me. I’d like you to move in with us as soon as you can. Anya obviously prefers your company to mine.’
‘She doesn’t seem to have had a lot of contact with her own father,’ Philippa told him. ‘She’s probably just not used to men.’
‘You spend so much time protecting others’ sensitivities, but who, I wonder, protects yours?’
‘Mine don’t need protecting,’ Philippa responded lightly, but inwardly his perception had jolted her, touching a vulnerable nerve. Once she would have been overjoyed at the thought that he had actually noticed something, anything about her, but now the knowledge that he had been studying her made her feel wary.
What else had she given away about herself to him without knowing it?
She had felt almost relaxed travelling back from Leeds with him, her attention concentrated not on the past, but on Anya, her awareness of how easy it would have been for her actually to enjoy being with him firmly pushed safely out of harm’s way.
Anya was a warm, slight weight against her arm, familiar from holding her sons and yet at the same time very different.
‘I’ll drop you off first,’ Blake announced as they reached the outskirts of their town.
They had already told Anya that tonight Philippa would be staying in her own home but that soon she would be moving into Blake’s house to take care of her.
Philippa nodded, and then froze as she glanced out of the window and saw Joel standing on the opposite side of the road.
He hadn’t seen her. He was waiting for the lights to change so that he could cross the road, his attention fixed on the traffic.
Her heart turned over inside her chest, her throat closing on a surge of mixed emotions: her body’s instant physical response to the sight of him, her emotional urge to reach out to him, her mind’s reminder of all the reasons why she could not do so.
She had not loved him, nor he her, she knew that, but the possibility of love developing between them had been there and a part of her still ached with loss for the tenderness of his lovemaking, the sense of being needed, wanted, protected.
Through his driving mirror Blake watched her face. He had seen the man standing on the pavement and her reaction to him, and for a moment the intensity of his emotions had caught him unprepared.