‘Want me to stop?’ he offered harshly.
Philippa stared at the back of his head, her face flushing as she realised how much she had betrayed.
‘No, thank you,’ she told him quietly.
‘An old friend?’ Blake persisted.
Philippa could sense his anger and was confused by it. So he had seen her looking at Joel and guessed… something. That was no reason for him to cross-question her… or judge her. She was not ashamed of what she had shared with Joel.
‘Not a friend, no…’ she said steadily. ‘If you must know, we were briefly lovers… very briefly…’
As she watched Blake’s hands tighten on the steering-wheel she knew that she had surprised him.
‘It’s over now,’ she added quietly. ‘What’s wrong, Blake?’ she challenged him when he remained silent. ‘You asked, I told you—or am I not allowed to be truthful? Do you, like my father, prefer me to conform to your values and judgements? Well, I’m sorry, but the only values that matter to me now are my own. I’m not ashamed of what I had with Joel. What would make me ashamed would be hiding or denying it. He gave me something that no one else has ever given me, showed me a part of myself I didn’t think existed, gave me back a part of myself I thought I’d lost forever.’
‘Was that why you took this job with me?’ Blake asked her harshly. ‘Because your affair with him was over?’
‘No,’ Philippa told him. ‘I took it so that our affair could never get the opportunity to start… among other reasons.’
Somewher
e in among the turmoil of jealousy he could feel seething through him there was also awareness and respect, Blake acknowledged.
Awareness, respect, and an overwhelming sense of loss.
Many times over the years he had allowed himself the indulgence of imagining what manner of woman she had become. He had not done her justice, though, he acknowledged tiredly—nowhere near.
* * *
‘Here, let me take her.’
Philippa tensed as Blake reached into the back of the car to lift Anya’s still sleeping body from her arms so that she could get out, but there was no need for that wary tensing of her muscles, she recognised; Blake was scrupulously careful about not touching her, not even by the merest brush of his fingertips, as he lifted Anya away from her.
A sense of forlornness, of aloneness filled her as she relinquished Anya to him. What was it about the sight of a big man with a small child in his arms that tugged so emotionally at the heart-strings?
‘Would you like me to come inside with you… make sure…?’
‘No… You mustn’t wake Anya,’ Philippa told him, shaking her head. ‘What time tomorrow…?’
‘Whatever time best suits you,’ Blake told her.
As she turned to walk away, he said quietly to her, ‘Philippa, I’m sorry. What I said earlier… your private life is your own affair.’
‘I have no private life—at least not in the context you mean,’ Philippa told him steadily. ‘But you’re right, it is my own affair. I intend that the only arbiter of what I may or may not do or be shall be me. It’s your choice, your right to judge me as you wish, Blake, just as it’s mine to decide whether or not to allow that judgement to have any power over me or any jurisdiction over my life.’
As she walked away from him, Philippa told herself that she had broken free of the shackles which had once bound both her life and her, and that no one, not even Blake, could be allowed to reimprison her in them.
Not even Blake.
Why the ‘even’? He was no more important, no more special to her than anyone else. Less so, in fact; much, much less so.
* * *
Blake felt Anya stir slightly in his arms. It was too late for regrets now, he reminded himself, too late to dwell on what he had lost and denied himself.
But it didn’t stop him thinking… remembering, he admitted to himself later when Anya was in bed.
Even without closing his eyes he could still visualise the expression on Robert’s face, the afternoon he had told him that his parents—his father—wanted him to leave and why.