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‘I don’t want to,’ Philippa told him, and it was only when she saw the way he looked at her that she realised how afraid he had actually been, despite her reassurance, that a part of her was holding back from committing herself to him.
As she held out her arms to him and he came into them he told her thickly, ‘I love you too much to bear the thought of losing you now, but…’
‘You won’t lose me,’ she promised him.
When he held her face in his hands and pushed her hair back off her face, cradling her jaw as he bent to kiss her, she was filled with a sense of strength and purpose, an awareness of being in control of her own destiny; of knowing that Blake loved and accepted her as she was, unconditionally and without any reservation.
As she loved him.
The future they would all share was there waiting for them, but to reach out greedily for it, to act in panic rather than in the sure knowledge that their love would endure, would be a step backwards in time for her, back to the old insecurity and lack of self-esteem she was only just beginning to recognise and push aside.
Their love would be all the better, all the stronger, all the more mature if she listened to what her intelligence was telling her as well as her heart—and so would she.
Knowing that Blake understood and accepted how she felt made her feel, not insecure that because he wasn’t trying to push her into an immediate marriage he didn’t love her enough, as the old Philippa would have felt, but aware instead of just how deep his love actually was.
EPILOGUE
Three years later
‘RIGHT—have we got everyone …?’
Philippa smiled as she heard the chorus of response to Blake’s question.
‘I’ll take Rachel, shall I?’ Anya offered, softly removing one of the sleeping babies from the rear of the car before calling over her shoulder, ‘Come on, Rory—you take Simon.’
Over their heads she and Blake exchanged glances. Life wasn’t always as harmonious as this, especially when the twins were awake.
They would be one in two months’ time, walking and creating even more havoc. A rueful smile curled her mouth.
She had been in the second year of her Open University course when she had discovered she was pregnant. At first she hadn’t been sure how Blake would react. After a year of marriage had resulted in her failure to conceive they had agreed that enough was enough; they had three children, after all. Blake was heavily involved in helping to raise finance for the new children’s ward they were hoping to open, Anya and the boys were already teenagers, and they shared a happy and fulfilling life together.
She had started doing part-time voluntary work at the hospital in the children’s ward and concentrating on her studies.
On her birthday they had celebrated with a small family party; and, as she had told Blake lovingly in bed later that night, she felt she had a lot to celebrate.
Four days later, when she woke up in the morning, she had felt oddly queasy.
Idiotically, she had put it down to delayed stress after the effects of the difficult months before she and Blake had married, when she had struggled to sort out the financial mess Andrew had left behind him.
When the factory had ultimately been sold at a knockdown price nowhere near its real value, she hadn’t known whether to laugh or cry. After the house had been sold the bank had decided to write off what remained of its losses. Andrew’s personal debts she had managed to pay off herself … after a fashion. Without the salary Blake had insisted on paying her before they married she wouldn’t have stood a chance of doing so.
She had earned the money, he’d insisted, adding that if she didn’t take it he would begin to believe that she did not want to marry him after all.
‘Stress?’ Susie had laughed when she’d told her how ill she’d felt. ‘Sounds more like you’re pregnant to me …’
Blake had come home to find her sitting in the kitchen staring into space.
‘What’s wrong?’ he’d asked her.
‘I’m not sure,’ she had told him. ‘Blake … do you still want children …?’
He had sighed, taking hold of her and telling her softly, ‘I thought we’d agreed that what we’ve got is more than enough. I may not have fathered the boys or Anya but to me they are my children, Pip.’
‘So you don’t want any more children?’ she had asked him intensely, plucking at his jacket with her fingertips.
‘I have what I want,’ he had told her gently. ‘All that I want … Pip, what is it?’ he’d asked when he’d seen that she was crying.
‘Oh, Blake, Susie thinks I could be pregnant, but you don’t want me to be,’ she had wailed against his chest.
