The Stranger

CHAPTER TWO

She felt the room start to swirl around her. instinctively,she grabbed the edge of the kitchen table and clung on to it.

Not true 

It was not true what this man had just said,it was absurd, stupid and impossible. Then she steadied herself, and made herself to look across at the man who had just said such an impossible thing.

He had just said that Ben's father had been the son of a….,she forced her mind to say it..the son of the prince of Valderra.But he had said he was Ben's uncle, He's dead father's brother. which meant that his father was also a prince.

‘I am Rafael Valderra ‘,he enlightened her.

Do you really know who I am ? There was almost curiosity in his voice.

‘Off course I don't fuckingly know ‘.The worst burst from her mouth without her thinking.

‘ I'm sorry,I didn't mean to speak rudely.

‘I find this very hard to understand,I have many questions to ask and I also need time to come to terms with this.

She looked at him directly, refusing to look away.

Long sexy lashes swept down over his brown eyes.

Shocked kicked through her again 

I can't take this anymore she said.

Rafael shifted his head slightly and glanced behind him as the traffic on the motorway illuminated the interior of the vehicle.

Rico's son.. Rico's son was sitting in the car,A son that none of his family knew about.

How could it have happened?

How

 Prince Rico of Valderra,dead at thirty-two ,had left an orphaned son behind.

The story would move across every tabloids.

He loathed the thought of all the tabloid coverage that was in evitably going to erupt .

He turned in his seat, his eyes resting on the sleeping form of the small boy.

His heart squeezed again, even in the dim light,he could see Rico's features.

Rico's son.His brothers child,the brother who had been killed so tragically.

All these years, growing up here,in this foreign country, raised by a woman who was not even his own mother,not knowing who he was.

For a long moment his eyes watched over the sleeping boy, seeing his little chest rise and fall, the long lashes folded down on his fair skin.

Then slowly,they moved to the figure beside the child's seat.

His expression changed,his mouth tightening.

A frown gathered between his brows. He has never encountered anyone who did not know who he was.

He was totally unaccustomed to not being recognized,he has been recognized wherever he went to all his life.

He glanced at her again,his face tightening in automatic male distaste, at the plain -faced female, with her frizzy hair and even more unflattering nondescript clothes.

She couldn't be more different from Lizzy Laurent. Lizzy had been one of those naturally eye-catching ladies,tall and slender, with wide set blue eyes and a heart shaped eyes.

The photos Captain Octavia had dug up of her had shown exactly how she must have attracted Rico.

Pain swept through him,both of them wiped out, their young lives cut short in a crush of metal,but leaving behind a secret legacy.

Elena stirred,she reached across the wide bed .

It was all right,Ben was still there .

They were in a private house,at which they'd arrived in the middle of the night.

A safe house,safe from prying journalist.

Disbelief washed through her ,as it has done over and over again since the moment when she'd stared at the man who had invaded her cottage and realized who he was.

She shifted on her bed. No man that good looking could make feel anything other than awkward and embarrassed.

She knew with her usual searing honesty,a man like that could never be comfortable with her around.

Men like that wants to be surrounded by beautiful women, women like Lizzy.

Female's who were plain and unattractive,as she was didn't exist for them.

She jerked her mind away from her thoughts,back to what she did not want to think about,The paternity of her son.

And his uncle,Prince Rafael.

He won't still be here,she guessed. 

Why would he hang around? He probably came to the cottage in person because he wanted to check out that Ben really did look like his brother.

She opened her eyes, looking around her. The bedroom was large, and from what she could tell,the house was small. Presumably sufficiently remote for the press not to find Ben

How long would they need to stay here? She wondered anxiously.

The sooner the story broke , the better.

She frowned. Would Ben be upset that his mysteriously arrived uncle had simply disappeared again?

She'd have to tell Ben that even though prince Raphael was his uncle,he lived abroad, and that was why he wouldn't see him again.

For the hundredth time since the bombshell about Lizzy's lover had broke, Elena felt disbelief wash through her, and a terrible chill.

With all the horror of rushing out to France ,to the hospital her injured sister had been taken to.

And yet he had been Ben's father. Lizzy had an affair with Prince Rico of Valderra. And nobody had known. No one at all.

It was unbelievable. But it was true.

I have to accept it,I have to come to terms with it.

She stared bleakly over the room. Deliberately,she forced herself to think instead of feel.

Once all the fuss in the news has died down,we can just go back home. Everything will be the same again,I will just have to wait, that's all.

Beneath her hand,she could feel Ben start to stir and wake up.

A rush of emotion went through her .

Nothing would hurt Ben. She would keep him save always.

Nothing on this earth would ever come between her and the son she adored with all her heart.