A Perfect Stranger by Danielle Steel Page A

knew that he had scored a hit.
    “Oh, Alex, how could you—”
    “Will you see me later?”
    “Alex—”
    “Never mind. Eleven o’clock tonight. The Café Carlyle. We can talk and listen to Bobby Short. And if you’re not there, I’ll come upstairs and pound on your mother’s door.” But he looked suddenly worried. “Can you get away from them by eleven?” Even he had to admit that it was funny. She was thirty-two years old and he was asking her if she could escape her mother. In fact it was utterly absurd.
    “I’ll try.” She grinned at him, looking suddenly young again, but with a hint of something guilty about her eyes. “We shouldn’t do this.”
    “Why not?”
    She was about to tell him, but knew that she couldn’t, standing on the sidewalk with an impatient cab driver beginning to snarl. “We’ll talk about it tonight.”
    “Good.” He grinned broadly. Then she’d be there. And with that, he pulled open the door to the cab and swept her a bow. “See you this evening, Miss Phillips.” He bent slightly and kissed her on the forehead; a moment later the door was closed and the cab was speeding uptown as Raphaella sat in the backseat furious at her own weakness. She should never havemisled him from the beginning. She should have told him the truth on the plane, and she should never have gone to lunch. But just once, just once, she told herself, she had a right to do something wild and romantic and amusing. Or did she have that right at all? What gave her that right when John Henry sat dying in his wheelchair? How dare she play such games? As the cab neared the Carlyle she vowed that that night she would tell Alex that she was married. And she was not going to see him again. After tonight … there was still one more meeting … and her heart fluttered just at the thought of seeing him one more time.
    “Well?” Alex looked at his mother victoriously and sat down. She smiled at him, and as she did so she felt suddenly very old. How young he looked, how hopeful, how happy, how blind.
    “Well what?” The blue eyes were gentle and sad.
    “What do you mean, ‘Well what?’ Isn’t she incredible?”
    “Yes.” Charlotte said it matter-of-factly. “She is probably the most beautiful young woman I’ve ever seen. And she is charming and gentle and lovely and I like her. But, Alex ….” She hesitated for a long moment and then decided to speak her mind. “What good is that going to do you?”
    “What’s that supposed to mean?” He looked suddenly annoyed as he took a sip of his cold coffee. “She’s wonderful.”
    “How well do you know her?”
    “Not very.” He grinned at her then. “But I’m hoping to change that, in spite of her mother and her aunt and her cousins and her duennas.”
    “What about her husband?” Alex looked suddenly as though he had been shot. His eyes flew open as he stared at her, and then they narrowed again with rare distrust.
    “What do you mean, ‘her husband’?”
    “Alex, do you know who she is?”
    “She is half Spanish and half French, she lives in San Francisco, she is unemployed, thirty-two years old, I learned today, and her name is Raphaella Phillips. I just discovered her last name.”
    “That doesn’t ring a bell?”
    “No, and for chrissake, stop playing games with me.” His eyes darted fire, and Charlotte Brandon sat back in her chair and sighed. She had been right then. The last name confirmed it. She wasn’t sure why, but she had remembered that face, though she hadn’t seen a photograph of her in the papers for years. The last time was perhaps seven or eight years ago, leaving the hospital, after John Henry Phillips had had his first stroke. “What the hell are you trying to tell me, Mother?”
    “That she’s married, darling, and to a very important man. Does the name John Henry Phillips mean anything?”
    For a fraction of a second Alex closed his eyes. He was thinking that what his mother was telling him couldn’t be true.