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She had shivered a little before curling up in his arms.
She had come far too close to losing what she now recognised was so important to her to want to risk spoiling this new harmony between them before it had had time to grow into something a little bit stronger.
In her sleep, Sally gave a small, sharp, frightened cry. Instantly Joel’s arms tightened around her.
‘It’s all right, Sal… everything’s all right,’ he whispered to her.
‘Joel.’ She turned her head to look at him, her voice trembling slightly as she told him, ‘I dreamed that you weren’t here…’
‘Of course I’m here,’ he reassured her. ‘Where else would I be… where else would either of us be? We belong together, you and I, Sal… here with each other… with the kids…’
‘Joel!’ Sally sat bolt upright in the bed. ‘Cathy… Paul—where are they…?’
‘Come back here and kiss me,’ Joel demanded, grinning at her. ‘Otherwise I’m not going to tell you…’
‘Joel,’ Sally threatened.
‘No kiss… no kids…’ Joel threatened back, straight-faced, laughing as Sally picked up her pillow and hit him with it.
‘Things are going to be all right, aren’t they, Joel?’ Sally asked him, her face suddenly grave and anxious.
‘Of course they are,’ he told her, pushing aside the pillow. ‘Of course they are.’
And he prayed that his words would prove true.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
‘NOT too close to the house,’ Philippa called out warningly through the kitchen window as she watched Rory and Anya setting up their tennis net.
It was just over two months now since she had moved into Blake’s large, comfortable house to take charge of Anya. Two months… in some ways it felt as though she and the boys had lived here forever; in others…
Outside, Rory was patiently demonstrating to Anya how to hold her racket. It had been an unexpected bonus, this rapport which had developed between her elder son and Anya.
It amused her to watch the protective fraternal manner he had adopted towards her and to observe Anya’s very determined insistence that he should treat her as an equal.
After an initial three weeks on her own with Anya, gently and compassionately trying to help her to adjust to her new life, she had been very anxious about how her sons, who had after all never had to share her time or attention with another child, especially a female one, would react to Anya’s presence.
‘Stop worrying,’ Blake had instructed her quietly when they’d gone to collect the boys from school. ‘You can’t protect them from all of life’s hazards, you know, and it wouldn’t be good for them if you could. They’ll find a way of co-existing…’
‘I was thinking of Anya just as much as the boys,’ Philippa had defended herself.
‘I know you were,’ Blake had told her.
When she’d shot him a surprised look he had turned his head and smiled at her.
‘You ruffle up like a protective mother hen the moment you feel that anything threatens her…’
‘It’s my job,’ Philippa had protested, unconvincingly, she knew.
Looking after Anya, helping her to make the adjustment from her old life to her new one, could never be just a job to her, and hadn’t been from the first moment she had set eyes on her.
Temperamentally and in almost every other way as well they were poles apart, and yet she had sensed in Anya a loss of personal identity similar to her own as a girl; she was determined that Anya, unlike her, would never be forced into a mould of someone else’s making.
The look in Blake’s eyes had shown her that he knew the truth just as well as she did herself.
‘Your job?’ he had repeated, his eyebrows lifting. ‘Who are you trying to convince, Philippa, me or yourself? If it’s me you’re wasting your time. Do you know what I see when I watch you with Anya?’
She had shaken her head.
