are you staying?’ she asked.
‘The Prince Edward.’
‘But that’s…’ She paused, dismayed.
‘That’s what?’ Rafael said. ‘We found it on the Internet, Matty and I. It looks splendid. We checked in this afternoon and it seems really comfortable.’
‘Yes, but it’s over a really popular pub,’ she said. ‘Thursday night here is most people’s pay night. The Prince Edward is the party pub. By two in the morning it’ll be moving up and down on its foundations.’
‘Oh,’ he said, in a voice which said that if Matty hadn’t been present he might have said something else.
‘I need to go to sleep,’ Matty said unnecessarily.
‘You can stay here,’ Kelly said before she realized she intended to say it.
‘We can’t…’
‘I’ve just got the one bedroom,’ she said quickly. ‘But it’s a double bed. You and Matty could have it and I can sleep on the settee.’
‘This settee?’ Rafael asked. There was no separate living area from the kitchen in this cottage. The settee stretched out along one wall, big and piled with cushions and incredibly inviting.
‘I could sleep on that,’ Matty announced.
‘So you could,’ Rafael said. ‘If that’s okay with your mama. I’ll go back to the Prince Edward.’
Matty’s face fell. ‘I want to go with you,’ he whispered.
Of course. Kelly was his mother but he’d known her for all of two hours. Rafael was his security.
But now she’d said it, Kelly knew the invitation had come from the heart. She so wanted them to stay. She wanted Matty to stay.
Rafael was watching her face. He wouldn’t have to be brilliant to see the aching need she had no way of disguising.
The thought of them going to the Prince Edward, where she knew they’d lie awake all night rocked by the vibrations of truly appalling bands was almost unbearable. But in truth the thought of Matty going anywhere was unbearable. She’d put up with Rafael—with a de Boutaine in her house—to know that Matty was under her roof.
‘So here’s a plan,’ Rafael said gently, looking from Matty to Kelly and back again. ‘Matty, your mama says the hotel we’re planning on staying in is very noisy. She’s invited us to stay in this little cottage with her. Would you like to do that?’
‘Yes, but only if you stay here too,’ Matty said, and his bottom lip trembled.
‘Then I will,’ Rafael said. ‘But you know, you and your mama look as tired as each other. Why don’t you pop under the blankets on one side of your mama’s bed? Your mama can sleep on the other side and I’ll sleep by the fire.’
‘Why can’t you and mama sleep in the bed while I sleep by the fire?’ Matty whispered but he was losing force. He was drooping as they watched.
‘It wouldn’t be dignified,’ Rafael said. ‘You know Aunt Laura says you and I need to learn to be dignified.’
‘It’s not dignified to sleep in the same bed as my mama?’
‘For you, yes. For me, no.’
‘Okay,’ Matty said, caving in with an alacrity born of need. ‘Can I go to bed now?’
And an hour later she was in bed with her son.
It felt like a weird and spacey dream. She lay in her big double bed and listened to him. Her son was breathing.
No big deal. To listen to a child breathe…
How could she go to sleep? She’d left the blind open and the moon was shining over her little vegetable garden, into the window, washing over her little son’s face.
Normally she blocked the moon out. She had a single woman’s need for security—privacy—so the blind went down every night.
There was no way the blind was coming down this night. She lay and watched Matty’s chest rise and fall, his small face intent even in sleep, the way his lashes curled, the way his fingers pressed into his cheek…
She could see his father. She could see the de Boutaine side. But she could also see little things about herself. She had funny quirky eyebrows, too thick for beauty. Whenever she had a haircut, the hairdresser tut-tutted and thinned them out.
Here were those same thick brows.
On a guy they’d be gorgeous.
On Matty they were gorgeous.
Her son.
There were vague sounds from outside and she looked out of the window in time to see the security guards wandering past her back fence. Yes, she should get up and close the blind. It wasn’t safe.
It was safe, for just through the door Rafael de Boutaine was stretched out on her settee.
Her son was in bed beside her. The Prince Regent of Alp de Ciel was just through the door.
‘As if that makes us safe,’ she muttered into the night.
But…but…
‘He’s different from Kass. He’s honourable, I know.
‘How do you know?’ She was whispering in to the dark. Her hand was lying on Matty’s pillow. She wouldn’t touch him. She wouldn’t for the world wake him, startle him. But with her hand on his pillow she could feel his breathing. It was enough.
‘Rafael brought him home.
‘There must be some underlying motive.
‘Maybe, but he’s brought him home,’ she whispered and the thought of Rafael lying in the darkness just through the door remained solid. Good. Comforting in a way she hadn’t been comforted for years.
Her little boy was asleep beside her. Rafael had brought him to her.
What more could a woman want?
‘I have my son,’ she whispered into the dark and thought how could she sleep with such happiness?
But she was still recuperating from the flu. She hadn’t slept well for weeks.
She leaned up on her elbows and gazed for one long last moment at her son. She touched her lips with her finger and then transferred the kiss to her son with a feather touch that wouldn’t disturb him for the world.
She snuggled down on to her pillows where she could watch her son’s breathing.
He breathed. He breathed.
Rafael was just through the door. Prince Regent of Alp de Ciel. A prince who’d brought her son to her.
She felt warm and safe and almost delirious with love.
She slept.
Kelly woke to the smell of coffee. She opened one eye. They were standing at the bedroom door, smiling. Both of them. Identical smiles, where warmth and mischief combined.
Rafael was dressed in the same casual cords and soft sweater he’d been wearing the night before. Last night Matty had been wearing jeans and a soft blue coat. Now he was wearing almost identical cords to Rafael and a sweater of the same colour as well. They looked… They looked…
She blinked fiercely. She’d been awake for seconds and she was close to tears already.
‘H…hi.’
‘Hi, yourself, sleepyhead,’ Rafael said, carrying in a mug of steaming coffee. ‘Mathieu. Toast.’ Mathieu almost saluted, but his hands were occupied in balancing a plateful of toast.
The toast was spread liberally with marmalade and butter. Yum. But…