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.