A Perfect Stranger

A Perfect Stranger Read Online Free PDF

Book: A Perfect Stranger Read Online Free PDF
Author: Danielle Steel
Tags: Fiction, Romance
was only a platonic affection between Alejandra and her husband, which she knew from her sisters was perfectly normal.
    Antoine was perfectly content to leave things as they were, and when the marquis died, the marriage paid off. No one was surprised at the arrangement. Alejandra and Antoine had jointly inherited the Banco Quadral. Her brothers were amply compensated, but to Antoine went the empire he so desperately wanted to add to his own. Now it was of his son that he thought as he continued to build it, but Antoine’s only sonwas not destined to be his heir. At sixteen Julien de Mornay-Malle died in an accident, in Buenos Aires, playing polo, leaving his mother stunned, his father bereft, and Raphaella Antoine’s only child.
    And it was Raphaella who consoled her father, who flew with him to Buenos Aires to bring the boy’s body back to France. It was she who held her father’s hand during those endless hours and as they watched the casket being lowered solemnly onto the runway at Orly. Alejandra flew back to Paris separately, surrounded by sisters, cousins, one of her brothers, and several close friends, but always surrounded, protected, as she had lived her entire life. And hours after the funeral they urged her to go back to Spain with them, and acquiescing tearfully, she allowed them to take her away. Alejandra had a veritable army to protect her, and Antoine had no one, only a fourteen-year-old child.
    But later the tragedy provided a strange bond between them. It was something they never spoke of, but it was always there. The tragedy also provided a strange bond between her father and John Henry, as the two men discovered that they had shared a similar loss, the deaths of their only sons. John Henry’s boy had died in a plane crash. At twenty-one the young man had been flying his own plane. John Henry’s wife had also died, five years later. But it was the loss of their sons that for each had been an intolerable blow. Antoine had had Raphaella to console him, but John Henry had no other children, and after his wife died, he had never married again.
    At the start of their business association, each time John Henry came to Paris, Raphaella was in Spain. He began to tease Antoine about his imaginarydaughter. It became a standing joke between them until a day when the butler ushered John Henry into Antoine’s study, but instead of Antoine, he found himself staring into the dark eyes of a ravishingly beautiful young girl who looked at him tremulously, like a frightened doe. She gazed up almost in terror at the sight of a strange man in the room. She had been going over some papers for school and checking through some reference books her father kept there, and her long black hair poured over her shoulders in straight streams of black silk punctured by cascades of soft curls. For a moment he had stood there, silent, awed. And then quickly he had recovered, and the warm light in his eyes reached out to her, reassuring her that he was a friend. But during her months of study in Paris she saw few people, and in Spain she was so well guarded and protected that it was rare for her to be alone anywhere with a strange man. She had no idea what to say to him at first, but after a few moments of easy banter she met the twinkle in his eyes and laughed. It was half an hour later when Antoine found them, apologizing profusely for a delay at the bank. On the way home in the car he had wondered if John Henry had finally met her, and he had to admit to himself later that he had hoped they had.
    Raphaella had withdrawn a few moments after her father’s arrival, her cheeks blushing to a delicate pink on the perfect creamy skin.
    “My God, Antoine, she’s a beauty.” He looked at his French friend with an odd expression, and Antoine smiled.
    “So you like my imaginary daughter, do you? She wasn’t too impossibly shy? Her mother has convinced her that all men who attempt to talk to a young girlalone are murderers or at least
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