Cruel Legacy

‘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.’