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.
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