The Mistress's Child. Sharon Kendrick

have, or had, absolutely no intention of letting you take me in some damp and desolate field as if I were just some girl you’d picked up at a party and thought you’d try your luck with!’

      ‘Luck?’ he said bleakly, stung by the irony of the word. Maybe it was time he told her. Maybe he owed her that much. For what kind of bastard could have walked out on a woman like Lisi with only the baldest of explanations—designed not just to hurt her but to expurgate his own guilt? ‘I really do think we need to have that talk, Lisi—but not now, and not here—’

      ‘I don’t think talking is what you really have in mind, do you?’ she enquired archly. ‘So please don’t dress up something as simple as longing by trying to give it a respectable name!’

      ‘Something as simple as longing?’ he echoed wryly. ‘You think that longing is ever in any way simple?’

      ‘It can be for some people!’ she declared hotly. ‘Boy meets girl! Boy falls in love with girl!’

      ‘Boy and girl live happily ever after?’ he questioned sardonically. ‘I’m a little too old to believe in fairy tales any more, Lisi, aren’t you?’

      His scent was still like sweet perfume which clung to her skin, and she drew away from him, frightened by the depth of how much she still wanted him. ‘I’m going home now,’ she said shakily, and fought down the desire to do the impossible. ‘And I’m not taking you with me.’

      He nodded, seeing that she was fighting some kind of inner battle, perversely pleased that she was not going to give into what he was certain she wanted. Maybe it had all happened too quickly last time. Maybe this time he should take it real slow. ‘I’ll walk with you.’

      Her heart missed a beat. ‘No, you won’t!’ She didn’t want him to see where she lived, or catch a glimpse of her as she left the tiny cottage to go and collect Tim. And then what? For him to observe the angel-child who was her son and to start using that clever mind of his to work out that Tim was his son as well?

      It was too enormous a decision to make on too little information, and who knew what Philip Caprice really wanted, and why he was here? She wasn’t going to take the chance. Not yet.

      ‘I’m not letting you walk home alone,’ he said imperturbably.

      Was it her imagination, or had he grown more than a little autocratic in the intervening years? ‘Philip—this is the twenty-first century, for goodness’ sake! How do you think I’ve managed to get by all these years, without you leaping out of the shadows ready and willing to play the Knight in Shining Armour? Langley is safe enough for a woman to walk home alone—why else do you think I’ve stayed here this long?’

      He gave her a steady look. ‘I don’t know, Lisi. That’s what makes it so perplexing. It doesn’t add up at all.’

      Her breath caught like dust in her throat. ‘Wh-what doesn’t?’

      ‘You. Sitting like Miss Havisham at the same desk in the same office in the same estate agency. What kind of a life is that? What’s your game plan, Lisi—are you going to stay there until you’re old and grey and let life and men just pass you by?’

      She caught a sudden vivid image of herself painted by his wounding words. A little old woman, stooped and bent—her long hair grown grey, her skin mottled and tired from the day-in, day-out struggle of being a single mother, where money was tight. And Tim long gone. She drew in a deep sigh which was much too close to a sob, but she held the sob at bay.

      ‘I don’t have to stay here and be insulted by you,’ she told him quietly. ‘Why don’t you just go away, Philip? Go back to where you came from and leave me alone!’

      He gave a wry smile. If only it were as easy as that. He didn’t try to stop her as she turned away from him and ran back over the field, the heavy mud and the heavy boots making her progress slow and cumbersome.

      But she leapt over the stile like a gazelle and he stood watching the last sight of her—her hair almost completely free of its confinement now, and it danced like crazy black snakes which gleamed in the light of the moon—while his heart pounded like a piston in his chest.