The Mistress's Child Read Online Free Page A

memory-bank marked 'Closed'. She had done that for reasons of practicality and preservation—but seeing him today had made it easy to remember just why no one had ever come close to replacing him in her affections.
    And now he might be here to stay.
    She climbed over a stile and slid down onto wet grass, glad for the protection of her heavy boots as she set out over the field, but she had not walked more than a few metres before she realised that she was being followed.
    Lisi knew the village like the back of her hand. She had lived there all her life and had never felt a moment's fear or apprehension.
    But she did now.
    Yet it was not the heartstopping and random fear that a stranger had materialised out of nowhere and might be about to pounce on her, because some sixth sense warned her to the fact that the person following her was no stranger. She could almost sense the presence of the man who was behind her.
    She stopped dead in her tracks and slowly turned around to find Philip standing there, his unsmiling face shadowed in the fast-fading light of dusk. Out here in the open countryside he seemed even more formidable, his powerful frame silhouetted so darkly against the pale apricot of the sky, and Lisi felt the sudden warm rush of desire.
    And she didn't want to! Not with him. Not with this beautiful, secretive and ultimately deceitful man who had given her a child and yet would never be a father to that child.
    She had overplayed the bland, polite card in the office today and he had not taken heed of her wish to be rid of him. The time for politeness was now past.

'Do you always go creeping up on people in the twilight, Philip?' she accused.
    He gave a faint smile. 'Sometimes. My last employment meant that I had to employ qualities of stealth, even cunning.'
    She resisted the urge to suggest that the latter quality would come easily to him, intrigued to learn of what he had been doing for the past four years. 'And what kind of employment was that?'
    He didn't answer immediately. He wasn't sure how much of his past he wanted to share with her. What if anything he wanted to share with her, other than the very obvious. And his years as emissary to a Middle Eastern prince could not be explained in a couple of sentences in the middle of a field on a blisteringly cold winter's afternoon. 'Maybe I'll tell you about it some time,' he said softly.
    So he wasn't going to fill in any gaps. He would remain as unknowable as he ever had been. She looked at him in exasperation. 'Why are you really here, Philip? What brought you back to Langley after so long?'
    An unanswerable question. How could he possibly define what his intentions had been, when nothing was ever as easy as you thought it was going to be? Something had compelled him to return and lay a increasingly troublesome ghost to rest, and yet the reality was proving far more complex than that.
    He had been dreaming of her lately. Images which had come out of nowhere to invade his troubled nights. Not pin-point, sharply accurate and erotic dreams of a body which had captivated him and kept him prisoner all this time. No, the dreams had been more about the elusive memory of some far-distant sweetness he had experienced in her arms.
    Part of him had wondered if seeing her again would make the hunger left by the dream disappear without

trace—like the pricking of a bubble with a pin—but it had not happened like that.
    The other suspicion he had nurtured—that her beauty and charm would be as freshly intact as before—had sprung into blinding and glorious Technicolor instead. His desire for her burned just as strongly as before—maybe even more So—because nobody since Lisi had managed to tempt him away from his guilt and into their bed.
    Not that there hadn't been offers, of course, or invitations—some subtle, some not. There had been many—particularly when he had been working for the prince—and some of those only a fool would have turned down. Was that what he