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His long-lashed eyes locked on hers and she felt the almost painfully overwhelming love of motherhood. She steadied her breathing. ‘Do you remember that once you asked me why you hadn’t got a daddy?’
Philip stilled as Tim nodded.
‘And I told you that he had gone away a long time ago and that I wasn’t sure if he was ever coming back?’
Again Tim nodded, but this time Philip flinched.
‘Well…’ She hesitated, but in her heart she knew that there was no way to say this other than using clear and truthful words which a three-year-old would understand. ‘Well, he did come back, darling and…’
Tim was staring up at Philip. ‘Are you my daddy?’
He felt the prick of tears at the back of his eyes as he nodded. ‘Yes, Tim,’ he answered, his voice thickening. ‘I am.’
Tim nodded, and bent his head to push the train around the track once more.
‘Tim?’ questioned Lisi tentatively, because she couldn’t see the expression on his face, and when he lifted it it was unusually calm and accepting, as if he were told things like this every day of the week.
‘An’ are you going ’way again? To Malaban?’ he asked casually, as if it didn’t really matter, but Lisi could tell from that oddly fierce look of concentration on his little face that it did.
Philip shook his head, unable to speak for a moment. ‘No, Tim,’ he said eventually. ‘I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to buy a house in the village and see you as many weekends as your mummy will let me.’
He met her gaze with a question in his eyes.
So if I don’t let him, then I’m the big, bad witch, she thought bitterly.
‘An’ are you and Mummy getting married?’
The silence which greeted this remark made Lisi as uncomfortable as she had ever felt in her life. She shook her head. ‘Oh, no, darling—nothing like that!’
‘Why?’
Oh, why had she brought him up to be so alert and questioning? To pursue every subject until he was satisfied with the answers?
‘Because not all mummies and daddies live together, now, do they?’ she asked gently. ‘Blaine’s daddy doesn’t live with Blaine’s mummy any more, does he?’
‘That’s ’cos he’s livin’ with a witch!’
‘A witch?’ squeaked Lisi in confusion.
‘That’s what Blaine heard his Mum-mee say!’
Philip bit back a smile. He suspected that the word had been ‘bitch’. ‘I would like to get to know you a little better, if that’s okay with you, Tim. And Mummy and I will be great friends, won’t we, Lisi?’
‘Oh, yes,’ she agreed, but her eyes flashed him a different message entirely. ‘Definitely.’
‘So what have you got to say to all that?’ asked Philip, and, unable to resist it for any longer, reached out his hand to ruffle the silky blackness of the little head.
Tim put his train down and looked up at her. ‘Can I have more chocolate, Mum-mee?’ he asked.
The question shattered the tension in the atmosphere, and Philip and Lisi both burst out laughing, their eyes colliding in a brief expression of shared joy that made her heart thunder beneath her breast. It’s just relief, she told herself fiercely—nothing to do with her. Tim has accepted him, and he’s got what he wanted.
Though she wouldn’t have been human if she hadn’t half hoped that he wouldn’t.
She put more logs on the fire and then watched while Philip wholeheartedly entered into playing with Tim. For a man with little or no experience of children, she was forced to the conclusion that he was very good with them. If Tim’s reaction was anything to go by.
He stared wide-eyed while Philip made a horse out of some balloons and then blew up some others and let the air whizz out of them in a sound which had Tim collapsing in peals of giggles.
She had taken all the remains of the tea back out to the kitchen, and when she returned it was to find them playing rough and tumble on the rug and she realised that there were some things that fathers could do, which mothers never could.
They both looked up as she walked in, both flushed with pleasure but tinged with a kind of guilt—identical expressions on their faces. How could I ever have thought that they weren’t alike? thought Lisi with a touch of despair. The colouring might be hers, but Marian was right: he did have bits of Philip—lots of Philip—in him. Of course he did.
Gently, Philip lowered Tim back down onto the carpet, from where he had been sitting on his shoulders, and stood up.
‘Am I interrupting your routine, Lisi?’
So I am the bringer of routine and order, and he provides the fun, does he? thought Lisi. Or was she being unfair?
Philip saw the look of discomfort which had pleated her brow and understood exactly what had caused it. She had agreed to let him get to know Tim, but she had probably not anticipated what a success it would be.
Neither had he.
A different child might have refused to answer him. Or spoken in sulky monosyllables. Not chatted so openly and with such obvious interest. And much of that must be down to her.
‘It’s your bathtime, Tim,’ she said, with a quick glance at her watch, and then forced herself to meet Philip’s gaze. ‘Unless you’d like to?’
He would like to. He wanted to bath his son more than he had wanted anything in a long time, but he recognised that Lisi might now be feeling the outsider. He shook his head. ‘No, you do it. He’s used to you.’
‘Philip do it!’ demanded Tim, unwilling to lose sight of his new friend.
Philip shook his head. ‘I have to make a few phone calls,’ he said.
She carried Tim to the bathroom and wondered who he was phoning on Christmas Day. Obviously somebody very close to him. He had told her that he wasn’t married—but that didn’t preclude a girlfriend, did it?
But he kissed you, a voice reminded her. He kissed you passionately and told you that he still wanted you—would he betray a second woman if he got the opportunity?
He isn’t going to get the opportunity, she told herself as she squirted bubble bath into the running water and watched it become big, foamy clouds. No matter how much she wanted to—it wasn’t right. There was too much bitter history behind them and only potential heartache lay ahead if she was crazy enough to give in.
She let Tim splash around in the bath for ages, wondering whether Philip would stick around. He might just get the message and go. But he was still there, talking in a low voice into his mobile phone as she carried a sleepy, pyjama-clad Tim past the sitting room to his bedroom and tenderly put him into bed.
‘Have you had a lovely Christmas, darling?’ she asked him softly.
‘Yes, Mum-mee.’ His eyes opened wide. ‘Is Philip coming tomorrow?’
She sincerely hoped not, but she made herself smile a placating smile. ‘We’ll see. Okay?’
He nodded against the pillow, letting his eyelids drift down, and then automatically stuck his thumb in his mouth.
He was almost asleep, but story-telling was sacrosanct and Lisi put her hand out and pulled out the nearest book, which just happened to be Cinderella. How very appropriate, she thought wryly, and began to read.
She waited until she was certain that he was sound asleep, then reluctantly made her way back to where Philip lay sprawled on the floor in front of the fire, his phone-call finished. He had, she noted with surprise, put all the toys neatly away, so that the room for once didn’t look as though a bomb had hit it. She had never had anyone do that for her before.
She hovered in the doorway, unsure of what to say or do. She could hardly ask him to leave. ‘Can I get you a drink of something?’
He heard the lack of enthusiasm in her voice. ‘One for the road?’ he suggested sardonically.
She shrugged. ‘If you like.’
He shook his head, got to his feet and went over to where she stood. ‘No, thanks. You must be tired.’
Again she had the sense of him dominating the room, of his raw masculinity exuding from every pore of that spectacular body. In an effort to distract herself, she said, rather awkwardly, ‘It went well, I think, didn’t it?’
‘Yes.’ He was aching to touch her, but he realised that he owed her something. ‘Thank you, Lisi,’ he said simply. ‘For letting me.’
She wasn’t going to read anything into what he said. This was a purely practical arrangement, solely for the welfare of Tim. ‘I had no choice, did I?’ she questioned tartly. ‘I imagine that if I’d refused you would have sought some kind of legal redress.’
Her brittle words extinguished the warmth he had been feeling, but did absolutely nothing to put out the fire in his groin. He knew he shouldn’t do this, but something drove him on—a need to see that cold, frozen look wiped clean off her beautiful face.
He reached his hand out to cup her chin, his thumb and his forefinger stroking along its outline almost reflectively.
Lisi shivered. Where he touched her, he set her on fire. She knew that she should move away but something was stopping her and she wasn’t sure what. ‘Please don’t,’ she whispered.
Her lacklustre words belied the shining darkness in her eyes and the need to kiss her overpowered him. ‘You want me to,’ he whispered back.
‘No—’
But he kissed the word away with his mouth, feeling its unresisting softness become as hard and as urgent as his.
She rocked against him—all the cold and the hunger and frustration she had experienced letting itself go as his mouth explored hers with a thoroughness guaranteed to set her on the path to inevitable seduction. She felt the prickling sensation as her breasts grew heavy and aroused, and a long-forgotten molten sweetness began to build up at the very core of her.
Her mind was spinning. She wanted to burrow her hands up beneath his sweater and to feel the warm bare silk of his skin once more, but she had been a mother for too long to let her own wishes be paramount. For one split-second she imagined what could—would—happen next, if she didn’t put a stop to it.
They couldn’t possibly let things progress naturally and make love in front of the fire—Tim might walk in at any second. Which left going to her bedroom and the embarrassment of silently getting undressed, of having to keep their voices—and moans—low, just in case they woke Tim.
She tore herself away.
What was she thinking of? She didn’t want to make love to him!
He had never been so frustrated in his life. ‘Lisi—’
‘No!’ She shook her head vehemently. ‘I am not going to have sex with you, Philip. The first time was bad enough—’
‘I beg to differ,’ he murmured, thinking how magnificent she looked when she was angry.
She carried on as if he hadn’t interrupted. ‘When I discovered you were married I felt like hell—but at least I thought that you had been so overcome with desire that you had been unable to stop yourself. Desire for me,’ she finished deliberately.
His eyes narrowed as he tried to work out exactly what she was getting at. ‘I’m not sure that I understand you, Lisi.’
‘It didn’t even have to be me, did it? I was just a vessel for your more basic needs!’ she carried on wildly. ‘Anyone would have done! Your wife was sick and you were frustrated—that’s what really happened, isn’t it, Philip?’
He went rigid. ‘My God,’ he said, in disgust. ‘You really know how to twist the knife, don’t you?’ He picked up his overcoat and walked to the front door and opened it without another word.
She wanted to call after him, to take back the hateful words which had seemed to come pouring out of her mouth like poison, but one look at the icy expression on his face as he turned round made her realise that it would be a futile gesture.
He gave a cold, hard smile. ‘If your idea was to insult me so much that I would go away and never come back again, then you have just very nearly succeeded,’ he said.
And, bizarrely, the thought that her hurt pride and resentment might have cost Tim a relationship with his father wounded her far more than anything else. ‘Philip—’
He shook his head. ‘Please don’t say any more—I don’t think I could take it. I’d better just tell you that this particular campaign won’t work. You see, Tim is far more important to me than the obvious loathing you feel for me. I’m here, Lisi—and I’m here for the duration. Better get used to it.’
And without another word, he was gone.
CHAPTER NINE
MARIAN Reece pursed her lips together in a silent whistle. ‘Good heavens—just how much do you think he’s spending on that property?’
Lisi looked up from her computer, and, lo and behold—another upmarket van was cruising past the office towards The Old Rectory. What was it this time? Lisi peered out of the window and read from the gold lettering on the side of the van. ‘Tricia Brady; Superior Interiors’. ‘He’s obviously having the place decorated now,’ she said, with a sigh.
Marian’s eyes goggled. ‘And how!’ she exclaimed. ‘I’ve heard of her—she must have come all the way down from London. This early in the New Year, too—I’m surprised she wasn’t fully booked.’
‘She probably was,’ said Lisi gloomily. ‘She’s probably got long blonde hair and legs up to her armpits and Philip probably just outrageously batted those beautiful eyes at her and she probably cancelled every engagement in her diary!’
Marian gave her a shrewd look. ‘Do I detect a sign of the green-eyed monster?’ she asked.
Lisi replaced the gloomy look with a fairly good impression of devil-may-care. ‘Not at all,’ she said airily. ‘I expect that’s exactly what happened. Either that or he’s paying well over the odds.’
‘He must be,’ said Marian. ‘It’s only the middle of January—and already he’s transformed the place! I’ve never known builders be quite so willing, or so efficient!’
‘No,’ said Lisi tonelessly.
Marian shot her a glance. ‘How’s it going between you two?’
‘It’s not between us two,’ replied Lisi carefully. ‘The only relationship I have with Philip is that we happen to share a child.’
‘Only?’ spluttered Marian, then sighed. ‘And is it…amicable?’
Lisi sighed. She had vowed to keep it that way, but ever since her outburst on Christmas night he had been keeping his distance from her. He had been round three times to see Tim, and the atmosphere had been awkward, to say the least.
For a start, the house always seemed so much smaller when he was in it, and the unspoken tension between them was so strong that Lisi was surprised that Tim wasn’t made uncomfortable by it.
But no. Tim didn’t seem to notice anything or anyone—he was so enraptured by the man he had almost immediately taken to calling ‘Daddy’.
The first time he’d done it, Lisi had spoken to him gently at bedtime that night. ‘You don’t have to say Daddy if you don’t want to,’ she suggested gently. ‘Philip won’t mind being called just Philip, I’m sure.’
He didn’t answer and she wasn’t even sure if he had registered her words or not, but he obviously had, because at the end of Saturday’s visit Philip paused on his way out of the front door, his eyes spitting with undisguised rage.
‘Did you tell Tim not to call me Daddy?’ he demanded.
She sighed. ‘That’s not what I said at all.’
