LITMIR.BIZ

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      He watched her stalk away, beautiful in her anger, the emptiness left by her departure fuelling his.

      ‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ said the man beside him.

      ‘Who the hell asked you?’ Anger found a new target, the right target, this time. ‘Who are you to tell me what I should do?’ Anger ruled him. Despair rode him. ‘Let me tell you something, you right royal bastard. You’re no father of mine. I don’t care what you can prove by blood. I don’t know you. I don’t care about you. And I have no intention of ever being your son.’

      Simone’s luggage was gone from the car by the time the valet brought it around to the front of the hotel. She’d collected it not ten minutes ago, the hotel employee told Rafe. She’d had the doorman call for a taxi. She had seemed to be in something of a hurry. The young valet eyed Rafael anxiously, as if sensing something of the roiling emotions beneath the contained façade.

      The young valet paled and his Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed hard and asked Rafe if he’d done the right thing.

      ‘That’s fine. No problem,’ muttered Rafael before retrieving the keys and heading for his car. He knew the name of the hotel Simone was booked into. He knew what time her flight would leave the following day. He could have found her. Talked to her. Gone to her.

      He didn’t.

      For all that Simone had known—or guessed—Etienne’s connection to him, she wasn’t guilty of the subterfuge that had created this mess. Josien was. Josien, who’d hated him every day of her miserable life and he finally knew why. Bastard son of a prince who’d abandoned her.

      Bastard boy with his father’s eyes and his father’s colouring and God knew what else he’d inherited from the man. Arrogance and ambition that Josien had done her utmost to beat out of him. His burning need for independence. His fierce and cold intelligence. Had all that come from Etienne de Morsay too?

      Who knew?

      Josien would know, but Josien was dead to him. More so now than ever.

      Gabrielle had known. Somehow, Gabrielle had known, and hadn’t seen fit to tell him. The pain of that betrayal cut deep.

      And then there was Simone…Rafael closed his eyes to block out the image of Simone’s first frantic attempts to prevent his meeting with de Morsay. Those final whispered words before the older man had walked up to them. Run, she’d whispered, and catapulted him straight back to their childhood. Rafael, run.

      Simone hadn’t known of his true relationship with Etienne de Morsay beforehand. Oh, she’d guessed soon enough. The minute she’d seen them together in the same room her formidable brain had probably started connecting the dots. But she hadn’t put it together before then.

      De Morsay was right. When it came to Simone’s part in all of this, he’d been a fool.

      He almost turned the car around then. He almost went back for her, such was his need to talk with her and take comfort from her and try and make all the jagged shards of his life fit together the way he wanted them to fit.

      He didn’t.

      Maybe if he’d been a little more trusting he might have turned back.

      He didn’t.

      Harrison stood waiting for him on the verandah of Rafael’s house when Rafael finally pulled the car up beside it, several hours later. One look at the older man’s worn face and weary eyes and the heart Rafael had been holding together with a piece of string finally shattered.

      He left the car and headed for the door, ignoring Harrison at first as he attempted instead to push the house key into its lock. It wouldn’t go in. His hand shook too much and it wouldn’t go in.

      ‘You knew.’ He still couldn’t look at the older man. He looked at his hands instead and fisted them tight. ‘You knew I wasn’t yours.’

      ‘Yes, I knew.’ Harrison’s voice came low and strained. ‘You were born seven months after my wedding day, Rafael. A perfectly healthy, full-term baby boy. I didn’t know who had sired you, but I did know that you couldn’t have been mine. I didn’t care.’

      ‘How could you not care?’

      ‘You were an innocent child, Rafael. What would you have had me do? Turn you away?’

      ‘I wasn’t yours.’

      ‘And I loved you anyway, and always, as if you were mine. A heart can do that, you know. Love beyond measure something that doesn’t belong to you.’

      Rafael’s throat closed up tight.

      ‘When Josien left and took you and Gabrielle with her, she broke my heart,’ said Harrison in that quiet melodic way of his that Rafael had always loved. ‘When she refused to allow me access to you on the grounds that I wasn’t your father, she broke it twice over.’

      ‘Gabrielle…’ Rafael finally found his voice and pushed it past the constriction in his throat. ‘Is Gabrielle…?’

      ‘Gabrielle’s mine,’ said Harrison. ‘But to fight for her I would have had to abandon you, separate your sister from you, and I couldn’t do it.’

      Rafael put his cheek to the smooth, worn weatherboard and closed his burning eyes.

      ‘The day you turned up on my doorstep was one of the happiest days of my life,’ said Harrison quietly. ‘The day Gabrielle arrived was the other.’

      Rafael put his hands to the wall, his eyes still tightly closed. He wanted the boards to be cold to the touch. Why weren’t they cold? Grown men did not sink to the floor and weep.

      ‘Two hours ago I got a phone call from a man who claimed to be your father, and a king, and heaven knows what else. I don’t know what caused him to walk away from Josien and from you all those years ago, but I do know that where you were concerned it was his loss. And my gain.’

      Harrison moved closer. A large, warm hand came to rest tentatively on Rafael’s shoulder.

      ‘This man, this king, he wishes to meet with you again. He argued strongly for my support in the matter. He spoke of matters of state, and inheritance and regret. I told him I would speak with my son and that we would get back to him with an answer.’

      ‘I don’t know what to do,’ whispered Rafael. A cry from the heart while his soul silently wept.

      ‘That makes two of us,’ said Harrison. ‘But know this, Rafael. No matter what revelations lie ahead, I will think of you as mine and I will always stand by you. Always.’

      They stood like that for a very long time before Rafael finally gathered the courage to speak of other things that had happened during the day.

      ‘I hurt a woman today, Papa. I hurt a woman whose only crime was to care for me and to try and protect me.’

      Harrison took the keys from him. Harrison opened the door to the house. ‘Well…hell, son.’ Harrison’s words came delivered with a thread of dusty humour, drier than drought. ‘No one ever said loving you was easy.’

       Chapter Six

      HAVING Gabrielle and Luc back from their honeymoon and staying at Caverness while they made plans to restore the nearby Hammerschmidt house and vineyard brought both pleasure and sorrow to Simone. The pleasure lay in enjoying their company and in watching the love that flowed between them. The sorrow came when Gabrielle would speak to her of Rafael and what was happening in his fastchanging world.

      Rafael had gone to Maracey, Gabrielle had told her. Rafael and Harrison both, at Etienne de Morsay’s invitation, although Harrison had since returned to Australia. How it had all come about, Gabrielle never said, but apparently Etienne was making no secret of the fact that Rafael

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