by Penny Jordan
‘None,’ Philippa admitted tiredly.
The letter from the bank was still on the kitchen table, her promise to Rory very much to the forefront of her mind.
Susie was right. What real option did she have?
‘Ring him now and tell him that you’ve thought it over and that you’ve decided to take the job,’ Susie urged her.
* * *
Numbly, Philippa stared at the telephone.
It was pointless trying to put off what she knew had to be done.
She picked up the receiver and slowly punched out Blake’s number.
The answering machine was on again. She waited for the tone before leaving her message.
There, it was done. There was no going back now, unless Anya took a dislike to her.
The phone rang as she stood there, her stomach still churning with reaction to what she had done.
‘Philippa?’
‘Blake.’ She hadn’t expected him to ring back so quickly.
‘I was working at home,’ he told her. ‘But you rang off before I could reach the phone. I’m glad you changed your mind.’ He paused. ‘I’m due to collect Anya from the foster mother who has been looking after her tomorrow. If you’re free it might be a good idea if you come with me.’
‘Wouldn’t you prefer to get Anya settled first, let her find her feet a little…?’ Philippa protested.
‘Philippa, I might be a psychiatrist, but I’m also a man; what I know about pre-teenagers and their problems might fill half a dozen textbooks in theory, but theory is exactly what it is. The thought of applying that theory to good old-fashioned hands-on reality terrifies me and so do the thoughts I can almost see running through the mind of the Social Services people.
‘What Anya needs more than anything right now is a bit of human warmth and comfort. I can’t give her that. She might be my god-daughter, but she’s also a stranger to me. I’ve seen her once since Lisa and Miguel were killed… until all this happened, I hadn’t seen her since she was christened…’
Philippa could hear the exasperation in his voice. It made him seem more human.
‘I’m not asking you to come with me as some kind of Macchiavellian psychological test,’ he told her drily. ‘I’m asking you to come because Anya needs you and so do I.’
It was the last admission she had expected him to make, and hearing it shocked her into complete silence.
‘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.
She was, he recognised on a sudden sharp spear of pain, exactly what Deborah would be in fifteen years’ time.
‘Odd, isn’t it?’ Stephanie commented drily. ‘You think that by running away from something you’re escaping but still somehow it manages to come after you.
‘What is it exactly you’re running from, Mark… or is it a someone rather than a something?’
‘Both,’ Mark admitted.
‘Ah… And you don’t want to talk about either it or her? Well, why should you?’ she asked drily. ‘After all none of us likes admitting to a failure…’
A failure… Mark frowned. What was she implying? How could she know…?
‘If you’re running from a woman, a relationship, there has to have been a failure,’ she told him, apparently reading his mind. ‘A failure of communication… understanding… sharing… loving…’ She gave a small shrug. ‘That’s something we women tend to forget far too easily—that when we embrace a lover we’re also embracing the risk of failure and of loss.’
‘You make it sound as thou
gh women are always the victims in relationships.’
‘Most of the time they are,’ she told him succinctly. ‘We bring it upon ourselves, of course… take on far too willingly the responsibility for making it work, for being the one to nourish and sustain…’ She stopped and shook her head.
‘I’m sorry. I’m getting too maudlin… Now, where are those balance sheets?’
She went over to her desk, picked up a file and came and sat down opposite him.
‘On the face of it the purchase of this company will be a good asset for us. They have a good distribution network for the flowers they grow, selling into the areas where we don’t as yet have much penetration, but I have a feeling, an instinct, if you like, that they’re hiding something from us. If the figures are as good as they seem, why are they so anxious to sell?’
‘It’s a family business, with no one to take it over,’ Mark reminded her.
‘Not true.’ Stephanie shook her head. ‘There’s a grandson, born illegitimately to the daughter… and besides… bear with me, Mark; I have a gut feeling about this one… it’s too perfect… too tempting.’
‘Without a few more acquisitions you could be very vulnerable to takeover yourself,’ Mark warned her.
‘Don’t remind me…’
The company had fought off a takeover only the previous year and Mark knew how determined Stephanie was that it remain under her control. It seemed incredible that she could have built up such a successful business in so short a space of time, almost by accident.
She had initially started doing dried-flower arrangements merely as a hobby, and it had been curiosity initially which had led her to seek out suppliers direct as she searched for flowers that were not readily available.
She had bought her first wholesale business, ailing and run-down, from a small legacy left to her by her parents. Now she owned not only several wholesale businesses, but their suppliers as well—the growers. Her company owned growing fields in England and abroad, particularly Holland.
She was, he reflected, a very clever woman; a very shrewd woman; a very sexy woman… Like Deborah.
He fought to pull his attention back to what Stephanie was saying to him.
‘You must be very proud of all that you’ve achieved,’ Mark commented later.
‘Why? Because I’m a woman?’ She put down the file and gave him a level look. ‘That’s a very sexist remark,’ she told him. ‘And one you wouldn’t have made were I a man.’
Mark flushed uncomfortably. ‘I’m sorry. I…’
‘Don’t apologise,’ she told him. ‘Yes, I am proud… proud and lonely.’
She saw the look on his face and gave him a small half-smile.
‘What is it, Mark? Did you expect me to behave like a man and claim that I’m better off without my husband? It isn’t because I hate him that there hasn’t been anyone else in my life, you know…’
She got up and walked over to the window.
‘The year I made my first million I bought myself a Mercedes sports car. Not so much as a reward for doing so well, but as compensation for losing so much…’ She turned round. ‘My husband… he grew tired of being the husband of a successful woman, of having publicly to take second place, of feeling that my success demeaned him in the eyes of other men. In the end it was easier for him to bow to that peer pressure, to prove that he was still a “man” by leaving me for another woman, a younger, prettier woman—trophy wives, they call them in America, I understand—than to stay with me…
‘Easier on him, easier on his pride… easier on the collective male psyche of his “friends”, but it certainly wasn’t easier on me.
‘I wonder if any man can really understand what a woman goes through when she loses someone to whom she has given her trust, her love… her life? It destroys something inside us that I don’t believe can ever be replaced.’
She pulled a wry face, and Mark saw that there was no trace of any mischief at all in her eyes now, only intense sadness.
‘His affair wasn’t the cause of our break-up, but the culmination of it. At first, in fact, he was proud of me, encouraged me… but then slowly he started distancing himself from me. Initially he blamed me for not having enough time for him, for making him feel that he wasn’t important to me any more… Then he stopped making love to me.’ She gave him a brief look. ‘Have you any idea what it does to a woman when a man, her man rejects her sexually… how demeaning it is to discover what you thought was a temporary incapacity on his part turns out to be a far more serious failure on yours? If a woman tells a man he’s failed to arouse her, he can always save his ego by telling himself that she’s lying. But when a woman fails to arouse a man…’ She shook her head.
‘That’s how it starts; and the way it ends… It wasn’t his sexual infidelity with another woman I couldn’t forgive, but his infidelity towards the bond which I believed existed between us. He was the rock on which I had built my whole life; it was the security of believing I had his love that gave me the self-confidence to become the woman that on my own I had hardly dared believe I could be.
‘He claimed that fulfilment and growth came at his expense, but that was his view of the situation, not mine. And the most ridiculous thing of all about it was that I never particularly wanted to be successful… initially it was just something for me to do while he forged ahead with his career… Just something to bring me in a little bit of pin-money so that he wouldn’t feel I was totally dependent on him.
‘Sometimes on a bad day I wake up in the morning feeling that I know how Midas must have felt… but do you know the worst thing of all?’
Mark shook his head. His muscles were tense, his heart thudding uncomfortably, his mind trying to close itself off from what his emotions were telling him.
‘Success is like a drug—once you’ve tasted it there’s no going back—for anyone. You become addicted to it… dependent on it, and very soon there isn’t room for anything else in your life. All your energy, all of you is given over to feeding its voracious appetite; you daren’t leave it or ignore it because it’s all you’ve got left.
‘Mark…’ she said suddenly. ‘What is it… what’s wrong?’
‘Nothing,’ he denied. ‘Nothing.’
* * *
‘Of course, it’s no wonder he left her. Everyone knows that the only reason she got that promotion in the first place is because…’
‘Shush…’
Deborah tensed as the two girls chatting by the coffee machine fell silent as she walked past. She pretended that she hadn’t heard them. What else could she do?
She knew, of course, that it had been her they had been gossiping about, putting two and two together and doing a bit of ‘creative accounting’ with it.
‘You look a bit down… Not still missing the boyfriend, I hope. You’re better off without him.’
Deborah froze as she felt Ryan moving close to her. Too close, she decided wearily as she moved back from him.
‘You’re doing a nice job with the Kilcoyne liquidation,’ he told her approvingly. ‘I had the bank on this morning full of praise for the way you’re handling things…’
Deborah said nothing. Three days ago he had been complaining that she wasn’t showing enough aggression towards the company’s debtors, and besides, Ryan never gave a compliment without demanding repayment for it—one way or another.
‘We got a new case in this morning… I’d like you to have a look at it,’ he added.
A new case… Had he forgotten that only last week he’d given her five case-files to work on, all of them involving an enormous amount of careful checking and crosschecking, dull, boring routine work… the kind of work she had thought she had left behind in her first junior job?
‘I’m not sure if I’ve got time,’ she began, but he overruled her, raising his eyebrows and telling her vigorously,
‘Then you must make time… Delegate…’
‘Delegate. To whom?’
When they had initially dis
cussed her promotion, the package he had described had included extra staff to work under her, but so far they had not been forthcoming. She pointed this out to him now, watching as he shrugged and gave her a charming, lazy smile.
‘I know… but there’s nothing I can do, I’m afraid. Not until the partners ratify your promotion officially…’
‘And when will that be?’ Deborah asked him, trying not to sound too anxious. She was tired of the looks and innuendoes she was constantly intercepting, implying that her promotion was still not ‘official’ and that there was therefore something suspect about it.
Ryan shrugged carelessly. ‘Not for a while yet. There isn’t another full partners’ meeting until the end of the month. But don’t worry,’ he told her, smiling at her. ‘There won’t be any problem.’
His capriciousness was wearing her down, she admitted after he had gone. It made her feel uncomfortable and on edge; wary and defensive. She had begun to feel so isolated and alone here since Mark had gone… isolated, alone… and… and vulnerable.
* * *
She shouldn’t have changed the décor of the bedroom in such a rush, Deborah acknowledged as she stripped off her suit and pulled on her leggings and a thick sweater. The blue which had looked so pretty on the paint chart seemed cold and hard on the walls, the bedlinen she had chosen too stark and plain. The room still smelled of paint and she woke up in the morning with her head aching.
Increasingly she felt reluctant to go home at night, dreading the moment when she would open the door and walk into the empty flat.
She went into the kitchen and made herself a meal which she then pushed around her plate for twenty minutes before admitting that she didn’t want it.
She was just scraping her food into the waste-bin when the doorbell rang. Automatically her stomach muscles locked even though logically she knew it wouldn’t be Mark.
It wasn’t… it was Ryan.
She stared at him blankly for several seconds until he stepped past her and into the flat.
