A Taste of the Forbidden

by Carole Mortimer

  Mostly she wished that the latter had never happened.

  Even now, several hours later, and with Cesar back to being that coldly remote stranger Grace had first met, she found it difficult to meet his gaze. Found it difficult to look at him at all when she remembered the intimacies the two of them had shared such a short time ago.

  Not that anyone looking at the two of them now would guess they had ever been intimate; Cesar was once again the arrogantly remote Cesar Navarro, and Grace—well, the last few hours had been so fraught with tension, of one kind or another, that she barely knew who she was any more, let alone what to make of her behaviour earlier in Cesar’s bedroom.

  Certainly she had never indulged in such intimacies with another man before today. Before Cesar. Intimacies that made her blush just to think of them. Which was why Grace had been trying so hard, these past two hours of waiting around at the hospital, to put them from her mind. There would be plenty of time, both for soul-searching, and recriminations, once she was alone on the plane taking her back to England.

  She raised her chin as her gaze focused on Cesar’s tee-shirt-covered chest rather than his face. ‘It is,’ she said firmly.

  He nodded tersely. ‘I will have Raphael drive you back to the apartment.’

  ‘There’s no need for that.’ Her gaze flickered up to Cesar’s face, and then as quickly away again, just that one glance at the coldness of his expression and chill in his glittering gaze enough to tell her that the two of them had nothing to say to each other. ‘I can easily get a taxi—’

  ‘I said Raphael will drive you,’ Cesar rasped harshly.

  And the two of them were obviously back to a situation where what Cesar said was going to happen was exactly what happened. ‘If you insist.’

  ‘I do, yes.’ The coldness of his tone brooked no further argument.

  ‘Grace, I— We will talk further when I am able to return to England.’

  She tensed. ‘Talk about what?’

  ‘Do not be naïve, Grace,’ he bit out tersely. ‘We obviously need to discuss what happened earlier today.’

  ‘I don’t see why.’ She forced herself to look up and meet that coldly glittering gaze. ‘You’re going to remain in Argentina for several more days, and I shall be leaving your employment soon anyway—unless you would prefer me to already have gone before you return to England?’ she added uncertainly. That alternative would certainly save them both the embarrassment of having to see each other again.

  ‘Of course I do not wish you to—!’ Cesar broke off his angry reply to draw in several deep and controlling breaths before speaking again. ‘By all means take the time of my absence to perhaps visit with your sister in London, but you will certainly remain in my employment until we have had chance to speak again.’

  Just the thought of being with the light-hearted Beth for a few days, away from the tensions of being anywhere near Cesar, was enough to lift Grace’s spirits. Even just the thought of that talk Cesar wanted once he had returned to England filled her with dread.

  They really had completely overstepped the line between employer and employee earlier today. Irrevocably. To such an extent that Grace knew there was no going back. To a degree she knew she wouldn’t be able to work out her three weeks’ notice once Cesar was back in England, something he must also be aware of.

  ‘Very well,’ she accepted stiffly. ‘If you wouldn’t mind making those arrangements with Raphael, I’ll go back to the apartment and pack my things.’

  ‘Grace.’

  ‘Yes?’ She looked up at him warily.

  Cesar drew in a sharp breath. Their relaxation during their sightseeing trip, dancing the tango together, and returning to the apartment to make love, seemed as if it had happened days ago rather than hours. Nor, at this point, did Cesar have any idea how he was going to feel, what he was going to say to Grace, when he returned to England and the two of them did have the opportunity to talk privately.

  ‘Nothing,’ he bit out tersely. ‘I hope that you have an uneventful flight back to England.’

  ‘Uneventful?’ she echoed wryly.

  Cesar’s hands clenched at his sides. ‘Grace, I am trying to maintain a politeness between us—’

  ‘Why?’

  He frowned as Grace looked up at him quizzically. ‘It is for the best.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ she allowed with a grimace. ‘Is there anything you want me to do once I’m back in England?’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘I have no idea.’ She sighed. ‘I was merely returning your own politeness.’

  And Cesar found her politeness as irritating as Grace probably had his own pitiable attempt! ‘There are some papers for Raphael to collect from my study, but other than that I can think of nothing else that I will need.’

  Nothing else that he needed...

  Cesar certainly didn’t need her, would never need her, Grace acknowledged heavily a short time later as she sat silent and withdrawn in the back of the car as Raphael drove her back to Cesar’s apartment.

  It was only as she was packing her things that Grace realised that the bra that matched the panties she was wearing was still in Cesar’s bedroom somewhere. She had no intention of leaving it there for him to find when he returned home later today!

  ‘What are you doing?’

  Grace looked up guiltily from where she was kneeling on the carpeted floor searching for her bra beneath Cesar’s bed, colour burning her cheeks as she saw the way in which Raphael’s brows were raised in mocking query as he stood in the bedroom doorway looking across at her.

  She sat back on her heels. ‘I—er—I left something in here earlier.’

  He folded his arms across the width of his chest. ‘“Something”?’

  ‘Yes, I—ah.’ Grace had finally located her bra hidden beneath the bedspread as it draped over the end of the bed, quickly picking it up to stuff it into her jeans pocket before standing up. ‘What time are we—? Damn!’ she muttered as she caught her elbow on a photo frame on the dressing table as she walked past, only just managing to catch it before it fell to the floor. ‘I am such a—’ She stopped dead as she looked down at the photograph she now held in her hand.

  It was a photograph of Cesar, aged about eleven or twelve, with a little girl standing beside him and looking up at him adoringly, her tiny hand tucked trustingly into his much larger one.

  A little blonde-haired angel, with deep brown eyes and a dimpled smile. His sister, Gabriela?

  His sister, Gabriela, who looked all too familiar to Grace...

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  ‘WHAT EXACTLY ARE you looking for, Grace...?’ Beth watched curiously as Grace searched through the cupboards beneath the dresser in the kitchen they had shared with their parents for most of their lives.

  It was almost twenty-four hours since Grace had knocked over that photograph in Cesar’s bedroom in Buenos Aires. Twenty-four hours during which she had flown silently back to England with Raphael, before going to her bedroom to collect her things and then later driving up to London to see her sister. Twenty-four hours when Grace’s emotions had fluctuated from being convinced she had to be wrong, to being absolutely sure that she wasn’t.

  What was she looking for now?

  The impossible, surely?

  Except, Grace couldn’t be sure of that until she had found the photo album she was looking for. A photo album of Beth when she was younger. Much younger. A photo album that was all that Beth had left of the parents who had brought her up until she was five years old, when the Blakes had adopted her and she became Grace’s younger sister.

  Photographs that showed Beth as a brown-eyed blonde-haired angel...

  The same brown-eyed blonde-haired angel standing beside Cesar in the photograph displayed on his dressing table in his apartment in Buenos Aires?

  Except it couldn’t be.

  Grace knew that it couldn’t be.

  And yet...

  Until Grace found that old photo album, and looked at the p
hotographs inside for herself, she simply couldn’t dismiss the idea—the incredible, unbelievable idea—that Beth was somehow the missing Gabriela Navarro.

  Grace had spent the whole of the flight back from Argentina unable to stop thinking of that photograph she had seen in Cesar’s bedroom, wasting no time, once she had collected her things, in going to Cesar’s study to say goodbye to Raphael, while at the same time checking as to whether the photograph on the desk was the same one in Cesar’s bedroom in Buenos Aires, and not in the least surprised when she found that it was. Nor had she felt in the least guilty, when she had taken advantage of Raphael’s distracted looking for Cesar’s business papers, to have placed that second photograph quickly inside her shoulder bag and bring it up to London with her. Hopefully she would be able to put it back before Cesar returned from Argentina. She had needed to know, needed to compare—

  ‘Ah ha!’ Grace nodded her satisfaction as she finally pulled the old photo album out from beneath some more recent ones, holding it tightly to her chest as she slowly stood up.

  ‘What on earth do you want with that?’ Beth looked even more puzzled by her behaviour now.

  ‘Probably nothing.’ Grace frowned. ‘Except— Let me just look at these photos first and then we’ll talk.’

  Beth looked totally bewildered. ‘You’ve been acting very strangely since you got back, Grace. Did something happen in Buenos Aires that you want to talk about?’

  A lot had happened in Buenos Aires—most of which Grace didn’t want to talk about! Most especially she didn’t want to talk about Cesar, or the fact that she thought she might have fallen in love with a man who was so far out of her league it would be funny if it weren’t so heartbreaking!

  Instead Grace found herself studying her sister—possibly as a way of delaying the moment when she had to look at the photographs in the album and compare them to the one she had secreted away in her shoulder bag.

  Was the unusual blonde colour of Beth’s hair, although longer in style, the exact same shade as Esther Navarro’s?

  Did Beth’s chin have that same delicate curve as Esther’s, too?

  And were those brown eyes the same shape and rich dark brown as Carlos’s and Cesar’s?

  Was it really possible that Beth might be the missing Gabriela Navarro, or was Grace just letting her imagination run away with her? Perhaps seeing a likeness where none existed? What did she know—maybe all blonde-haired two-year-olds looked alike, with their chubby little bodies and unformed features?

  Besides which, a part of Grace didn’t see how Beth could possibly be Gabriela Navarro, when she had been born in England, the only daughter of James and Carla Lawrence.

  But another part of Grace couldn’t deny the likeness between the young Gabriela Navarro and Beth. Nor could she dispel that nagging feeling of familiarity she had felt, but couldn’t explain, when she was in Esther Navarro’s company on Friday evening. Or that Cesar had mentioned his sister having been allergic to flower pollen, just as Beth was. Or the fact that Beth had always wished her ‘sweet dreams’ on their way to bed every night when they were children—and still did if they spoke on the telephone late at night!—in the same way that Cesar had in Buenos Aires, because his mother had always done that when he was a child. When Gabriela was a child, too...

  All of them features of that muddled dream Grace had had a couple of nights ago.

  And all of them maybe coincidences, but too much so for Grace to completely dismiss them as such until she had looked at Beth’s childhood photographs again, and compared them to the one she now had of Cesar and his baby sister, Gabriela.

  ‘You’re creeping me out staring at me like that, you know.’ Beth frowned across at her uncertainly.

  ‘Sorry.’ Grace gave a dismissive shake of her head. ‘I was just— Never mind.’ She smiled brightly. ‘Just let me take a look at this and then I’ll try to explain.’ And she and Beth could either laugh together over Grace’s wayward imaginings, or all hell was going to break loose!

  * * *

  ‘I should never have let you talk me into this,’ Beth muttered uncomfortably as she sat beside Grace in a taxi on the way from their hotel to Cesar Navarro’s Buenos Aires apartment, and looking very beautiful in the brown jacket that Grace had bought for her, that she’d teamed with a white tee shirt and black jeans.

  Grace wasn’t as confident about what she was doing as she appeared outwardly, either...

  ‘And they weren’t at all pleased with me at work for asking for this week’s holiday so soon after I began working for them.’ Beth frowned.

  Grace reached out and gave her sister’s hand a reassuring squeeze. ‘You know why we’re here, Beth.’

  ‘Because you have totally lost your mind and somehow think I’m the long-lost Gabriela Navarro, yes,’ her sister confirmed impatiently. ‘And because I love you enough—or I’m just stupid enough!—to have decided to indulge your fantasy!’ she added crossly.

  Yes, Grace still hadn’t dismissed that ‘hare-brained idea’ that Beth might, just might, be Cesar’s missing younger sister.

  The photographs in Beth’s album hadn’t been conclusive, but the similarity between the two-year-old Gabriela Navarro, and Beth at the same age, had been close enough for Grace not to be able to dismiss her ‘hare-brained idea’, as Beth called it, that they were one and the same person.

  The fact that there were no photographs of Beth before she was two had done nothing to dispel that belief...

  The Lawrences’ album was full of photos of Beth from the age of about two, dozens and dozens of them, but there wasn’t a single photograph of her as a baby or as a one-year-old. The first photographs in that meticulously maintained album of Beth’s childhood were of a fully formed toddler.

  On the basis of that Grace had decided to explain the situation to Beth, before turning her attention to convincing her sister to take a week off work, and spending money they could ill afford on airfare, and flying back to Buenos Aires with her. If Grace was wrong, then she was wrong—and she obviously couldn’t dismiss the knowledge that it would be a one-in-millions chance that she just happened to go and work for Cesar Navarro, and her own adopted sister looked exactly like his own missing sister! Just as she couldn’t deny that fate could be a fickle thing... But surely it was better to know she was wrong, than to simply ignore all of Beth’s similarities to Gabriela Navarro?

  Grace thought so. She only hoped that Cesar would see it the same way, because if he didn’t he was going to hate Grace for raising his hopes before perhaps having them completely dashed again when he proved that Beth couldn’t possibly be his long-lost sister. To the point that he would never want to set eyes on either of the Blake sisters again!

  Something which, having fallen in love with him, Grace was going to find unbearable. Not that she thought there was any future for the two of them anyway—how could there be, when they came from completely different worlds? But it was still going to be hard if Cesar coldly and completely dismissed her from his life. As he was sure to do if she was wrong about Beth being Gabriela...

  * * *

  Grace’s heart was thundering in her chest, her palms damp as she paid off the taxi before she and Beth both turned to look up at the building where Cesar had his apartment. Grace was dressed very similarly to Beth in faded blue denims, with a white tee shirt beneath a black jacket. They looked, in fact, like any other two twenty-something women on holiday. Except this trip to Buenos Aires was no holiday...

  ‘And you think I could be part of a family who live in places like this?’ Beth gave a disbelieving snort at the obvious opulence of the apartment building.

  ‘It’s because I don’t know that we have to do this, Beth,’ Grace said nervously. ‘You saw the photographs, the similarity between you and Gabriela Navarro, the fact that there were no baby photos of you—’

  ‘And I also remember pointing out to you that there could just have been another, earlier album of me, as a baby, and it was lost or misplaced a
fter my real parents died,’ Beth reasoned dryly.

  There could. Of course there could. And Grace had already thought of that possibility. It just wasn’t enough of a possibility for her to completely dismiss the idea that Beth as a two-year-old had looked enough like Gabriela Navarro to have been her twin. Or for her to actually be Gabriela Navarro.

  The why and how that could even be possible were something Grace hadn’t been able to confirm or deny, despite her efforts to do so in the two days before she and Beth flew out to Buenos Aires; the Lawrences had both been only children, with no parents or other family close enough to offer to look after five-year-old Beth after the couple had died. Or for Grace to question about Beth’s very early childhood...

  ‘Look on the bright side,’ Grace encouraged her sister lightly. ‘If nothing else you’ll get to spend a week’s holiday in Buenos Aires!’

  Beth looked totally unconvinced. ‘If the Navarros don’t decide to have us arrested, or something equally nasty, for trying to practise a deception on them! I— This is— I must have been mad to have let you talk me into coming here!’ She gave an impatient shake of her head as they entered the marble foyer of Cesar Navarro’s apartment building. ‘You do know that we’re going to end up in jail for the week—or more?’

  Grace sincerely hoped, whatever the outcome of this meeting with Cesar, that wouldn’t be the case. And if it was, then so be it. Grace’s employment with Cesar was going to end soon, anyway, after which she would never see him again, so she had nothing to lose if he should decide to terminate that employment immediately by throwing both her and Beth out of his apartment—and into jail! And, if her suspicions should turn out to be correct, then Cesar, and his family, had everything to gain.

  Quite where that outcome would leave Grace in regard to Cesar was another matter.

  Grace took a deep breath, before raising her hand to press the intercom button that could—or would?—decide Beth’s future, at least.

  ‘Grace?’ Cesar was frowning as he strode into the salon where Raphael had asked Grace to wait whilst he went to inform Cesar of her arrival.