A Perfect Stranger by Danielle Steel Page B

“He’s dead, isn’t he?”
    “No, not as far as I know. He had a series of strokes several years ago, and he must be almost eighty, but I’m sure he’s still alive. We’d certainly all have heard about it if he weren’t.”
    “But what makes you think she’s his wife?” Alex looked as though an earthquake had struck him, right between the eyes.
    “I remember reading the story, and seeing the photographs. She was just as beautiful then. It struck me as shocking at first that he was marrying such a young girl. I don’t know, she was seventeen or eighteen, something like that. The daughter of some important French banker. But when I saw them together at a press conference I went to with a journalist friend and I saw some of the photographs, I felt differently. You know, in his day John Henry Phillips was an extraordinary man.”
    “And now?”
    “Who knows. I know that he’s bed-ridden and seriously impaired by his strokes, but I don’t think the public knows much more than that. She has always been kept very much out of the public eye, which was why I couldn’t place her at first. But that face … one doesn’t forget it easily.” Their eyes met and Alex nodded. He hadn’t forgotten it easily either, and he knew that he never would. “I take it she hasn’t told you any of this.” He shook his head again. “I hope she does.” His mother’s voice was gentle. “She ought to tell you herself. Maybe I shouldn’t have ….” Her voice trailed off and he shook his head again, and then stared miserably up at the woman who was his oldest friend.
    “Why? Why should she be married to that ancient bastard? He’s old enough to be her grandfather, and he’s practically dead.” The injustice of it tore at everything in his heart. Why? Why should he have Raphaella?
    “But he isn’t dead, Alex. I don’t understand what she has in mind with you. Except that I’ll tell you honestly I think that she herself is confused. She’s not sure what she’s doing with you. And you should keepin mind that she has led a totally sheltered life. John Henry Phillips has kept her totally concealed from the public for almost fifteen years. I don’t think she’s used to meeting brash young lawyers or having casual affairs. I may be wrong about her, but I don’t think I am.”
    “I don’t think you are either. Christ.” He sat back in his chair with a long unhappy sigh. “Now what?”
    “Are you seeing her again?”
    He nodded. “Later tonight. She said she wanted to talk to me.” He wondered if she would tell him then. And then what?
    Alex realized as he sat staring into space across from his mother that John Henry Phillips might live for another twenty years—at which time Alex would be almost sixty, and Raphaella would be fifty-two. A lifetime of waiting for an old man to die.
    “What are you thinking?” His mother’s voice was very soft.
    Slowly he dragged his eyes back to hers. “Nothing very pleasant. You know,” he spoke slowly, “I saw her one night on the steps near her house. She was crying. I thought about her for days until I saw her again on the plane coming here. And we talked, and—” He looked up at his mother bleakly.
    “Alex, you hardly know her.”
    “You’re wrong. I do know her. I feel as though I know her better than anyone else. I know her soul and her mind and her heart. I know what she feels and how lonely she is. And now I know why. And I know something else.” He looked long and hard at his mother.
    “What’s that, Alex?”
    “That I love her. I know that sounds crazy, but I do.”
    “You don’t know that. It’s too soon. She’s almost a complete stranger.”
    “No, she isn’t.” And then he said nothing further. He put his credit card down for the check, looked at his mother, and said, “We’ll work it out.” But Charlotte Brandon only nodded, thinking it unlikely that they would.
    When Alex left her a few minutes later on Lexington Avenue, the look in his eyes