Revealed: A Prince and A Pregnancy by Kelly Hunter Page B

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’scolouring 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 herI 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