And no matter what Cesar and Raphael might think to the contrary, she really did like Carlos and Esther, and had no wish to hurt them any more than they had already been hurt over the loss of their young daughter…
She sighed. ‘Okay, I’ll agree to fly back in the private jet.’ She grimaced. ‘I’ll even agree to having Raphael accompany me— Don’t say a word,’ she warned hardly as he raised mocking brows. ‘But I draw the line at taking a leave of absence from my job—and if you dare to buy the company, Cesar, I will simply hand in my notice and go elsewhere,’ she warned firmly as he would have spoken.
‘At which time I will simply buy whichever company you seek employment with next,’ he stated mildly.
‘You really are a control freak.’
‘And you are as stubborn as a mule!’
‘Hah, it takes one to know one!’
‘I see now, Grace, why you came to the initial conclusion that Cesar and Beth may be related,’ Raphael spoke mildly. ‘Even without the proof of the blood tests, it is possible to see that the two of you are brother and sister,’ he explained as he found himself the focus of two pairs of identical chocolate-brown eyes, the one coolly questioning, the other accusing.
Grace chuckled softly. ‘It is pretty noticeable, isn’t it?’
‘Oh, yes!’ Raphael confirmed with feeling.
‘Everyone’s a comedian!’ Beth threw her hands up in disgust.
Raphael grinned, unabashed. ‘No doubt the situation is more amusing looked at from the outside.’
‘No doubt it is,’ Beth acknowledged dryly. ‘So, where were we? Oh, yes.’ She turned back to Cesar. ‘I’ve agreed, as the sister of your future wife, to the private jet, and having Raphael see that I’m safely delivered back to England, so now it’s your turn to agree to your half of the bargain and let me get on with the career I’ve worked so hard for.’
Raphael looked at Beth appreciatively; she was approaching this situation from a business angle Cesar could and would relate to. The only problem with these particular negotiations was that Cesar never compromised when it came to the welfare of the people who mattered to him. Stubbornly independent as Beth might be—and in denial as to her true identity—Cesar firmly believed her to be the sister he had adored when she was a baby, and for whom he and his parents had mourned these past twenty-one years.
Although none of them could possibly have realised that Gabriela would one day be returned to them a fully grown and independent young woman who refused to accept her heritage!
Cesar sat forward to take his coffee cup from his mother. ‘I do not believe you understood my earlier remark correctly. Raphael will not only accompany you back to England, but remain there for as long as you do.’
‘What?’ Beth gasped incredulously. ‘Not only is that utterly ridiculous, it’s also impractical!’
‘Nevertheless, that is my compromise.’ Cesar remained stubbornly decisive.
Beth turned to look at Raphael impatiently. ‘And you’re happy with that, are you?’
His eyes narrowed. ‘I go wherever Cesar wishes me to go.’
‘Oh, wonderful!’ She gave a disgusted shake of her head. ‘And exactly where do you intend staying while you’re there? Because you certainly aren’t staying in my home with me!’
Raphael eyed her coolly. ‘Hopefully I will have things in place before we leave tomorrow.’
She eyed him warily. ‘What things?’
Raphael maintained a blandly unsmiling expression as he held back his inner amusement at Beth’s obvious suspicion. ‘Things.’
‘Grace, do something!’ She turned to appeal to her older sister.
‘Darling, I know this is difficult for you, but—’ Grace winced ‘—in the circumstances—’ she glanced at Esther and Carlos ‘—I have to agree with Cesar and Raphael.’
‘Unbelievable!’ Beth stood up noisily from the table. ‘By all means, Cesar, you and Raphael arrogantly go ahead and finish making your arrangements—personally, I intend to go and start packing,’ she muttered emotionally. ‘The sooner I’m out of here, the better!’ She rushed out of the dining room.
‘She doesn’t mean it, Esther.’ Grace sat forward to reassure her future mother-in-law as the other woman paled. ‘Beth’s upset, and a little disorientated by all the changes being asked of her.’
‘She is spoilt and willful.’ A nerve pulsed in Cesar’s rigidly clenched jaw as a door was heard slamming down the hallway. Beth’s bedroom door, no doubt.
‘She is frightened,’ Raphael corrected softly, his gaze still turned in the direction in which Beth had just departed as he rose slowly to his feet. ‘Will you allow me to go and talk to her?’
‘Would you?’ Grace turned to him gratefully. ‘I would go myself, but at the moment Beth seems to see me as having defected to—’ She broke off with an uncomfortable grimace.
‘The enemy,’ Esther finished for her sadly.
‘No, not the enemy,’ Grace assured her instantly. ‘Try to understand this from Beth’s point of view,’ she continued gently. ‘Not only has she lost two sets of parents already, but she’s lived the past twenty-one years of her life in complete ignorance of all of you, and it’s going to take time, and patience on your part—’ she gave Cesar a pointed look ‘—for her to accept exactly who she really is.’
And, in the meantime, for all that Raphael understood and sympathised with Beth’s confusion of emotions, it was time for her to start considering feelings other than her own. ‘If you will all excuse me,’ he muttered with grim distraction before striding purposefully from the room.
* * *
Beth refused to cry as she threw her clothes into the open suitcase she had tossed on top of her bed a few minutes ago.
How and when had her life become such a nightmare? Including all of her carefully made plans for a future in publishing?
The moment Grace had met Cesar Navarro’s parents just over a week ago, that was when. And Beth refused to—
‘If you were my sister—newly returned to me or otherwise—I would have put you over my knee and soundly spanked your spoilt little backside by now!’
She hastily blinked back all evidence of tears before turning sharply to face Raphael, her spine straightening determinedly as he stood overwhelmingly tall and wide in the now open doorway. ‘Then it’s just as well I’m not your sister, isn’t it?’ she snapped.
Those laser-blue eyes narrowed in warning. ‘You hurt Esther just now, and that is as unforgivable to me as it is to Cesar and Carlos.’ The steely edge to his tone was unmistakeable.
Beth eyed him warily. ‘I didn’t mean to hurt Esther…’
‘And yet you did.’
Her gaze dropped guiltily from his. ‘I’ll apologise to her before I leave.’
He sighed heavily. ‘As I said earlier, why do you continue to fight what is inevitable?’
Her eyes flashed darkly. ‘And as I answered earlier—because to me it isn’t inevitable!’
Raphael gave an impatient shake of his head. ‘You are a fool if you believe that. Even more so if you think Cesar will ever leave you, his sister Gabriela, in a position of vulnerability ever again for even a moment! The fact that the Navarros are allowing you to leave at all—’
‘No one is “allowing” me to do anything.’
‘But they are,’ Raphael corrected harshly. ‘You think that Esther could not stop you if she were determined to do so? That she could not break down and cry, beg you not to leave them, and so make you feel too guilty to go?’
Beth flinched. ‘Esther is far too dignified to ever behave in that way.’
‘Yes, she is,’ he acknowledged softly. ‘But you are the daughter she has grieved for for over twenty years. Letting you go now is like having her mother’s heart ripped out for a second time.’
Beth blinked. ‘Then why doesn’t she try to stop me?’
He shrugged. ‘I can only believe it is because she knows it is best to let you go, and simply hope that one day you will ch
oose to come back.’
‘And if I don’t?’
‘You will.’
‘You sound very sure of that.’
‘Yes,’ he replied abruptly.
Beth sighed deeply. ‘You’re so obviously of the opinion that I should just accept all of this—’
‘I think you should accept what is,’ Raphael corrected harshly. ‘And that the sooner you do so, the easier this situation will become for you.’
‘I didn’t ask for any of this—this mess.’
‘Neither did your mother, father, or brother!’
Her cheeks flushed. ‘They aren’t—’
‘But they are, Beth,’ he insisted softly.
She shook her head. ‘I simply can’t—I won’t accept that, not until Cesar comes up with more conclusive proof.’
‘The blood tests are conclusive proof.’
‘Not to me!’
Raphael sighed. ‘What would it take to convince you?’
‘I have absolutely no idea.’ She sighed wearily.
‘Perhaps a headstone in a graveyard with the name Elizabeth Lawrence, aged two, engraved on it?’
Beth raised her head slowly to look at him, her face paling even as her breath caught in her throat as she could read nothing from Raphael’s closed expression. ‘Are you saying that such a headstone exists?’
He shrugged those broad shoulders. ‘Would it help to convince you if it did?’
The palms of her hands felt clammy just at thoughts of that tiny grave with its damning headstone. ‘Do you already have the proof that Elizabeth Lawrence died?’
‘Not yet, no,’ Raphael admitted reluctantly.
‘But you will have?’
His mouth firmed. ‘Possibly.’
Beth stared at him wordlessly for several moments, unable to look away from those piercing blue eyes. ‘You aren’t just coming to England to act as my bodyguard, are you?’ she realised dully.
He gave a slight smile. ‘Did you ever believe that I was?’
Had she? In her heart of hearts, had Beth really thought that Cesar would ever give up trying to prove she was his sister Gabriela? And that he wouldn’t take full advantage of Raphael’s presence in England to continue those investigations.
‘And if you find that proof?’
Raphael shrugged. ‘Then perhaps you will finally be convinced.’
Would she? Was it really possible the original Elizabeth Lawrence had died? And if so, where was she buried?
It had only been a matter of a few days since Grace had put forward the suggestion that Beth might be the Navarros’ missing daughter, and those blood tests had convinced the Navarros, if not Beth, that she was. But they had also been days when she knew Cesar was continuing his own investigations, looking for the truth of how Gabriela could have been taken from Argentina to England twenty-one years ago, and given the identity of Elizabeth Lawrence…
‘There are many of us who, given a choice, would have preferred to have been born into a family which is not their own,’ Raphael drawled as he saw the array of emotions flickering across Beth’s expressive face. Dismay being the last of them.
‘Even you?’
His jaw tightened. ‘We were not talking about me.’
‘Weren’t we?’
‘No,’ Raphael replied with finality. His family, and the reason for the years of estrangement from his father, was not a subject he wished to talk about. The same reason that Raphael preferred to keep his relationships with women to the physical rather than the emotional. A line Beth Blake deliberately stepped over almost every time the two of them were together…
‘And if—if you find there is such a grave, are you going to tell me about it first or just report straight to Cesar?’ She looked at him challengingly.
His mouth thinned. ‘I am employed by Cesar—’
‘Please, Raphael!’ She looked up at him appealingly.
Raphael frowned darkly as he knew he was not as immune to that appeal as he might have wished. ‘Shall we just wait and see what happens?’
‘You sound as if you’re placating a child!’
‘Then perhaps you should stop acting like one.’ Raphael bit out his frustration with this situation. With the fact that he had never regarded Beth as a child.
Oh, she was almost ten years younger than him, and outspoken in a way he had never encountered before—except perhaps from her adopted sister, Grace—but there was no doubting Beth’s womanly curves, or her kissable mouth, or that Raphael’s response to those curves and those sensual lips was purely male!
She gave a pained frown now before turning away. ‘If you wouldn’t mind leaving now, I need to finish packing.’
‘And if I do mind?’
Beth stilled, as she knew, by the closeness of Raphael’s voice, that he was now standing just behind her. So close that she could feel the heat of his body and smell the spicy allure of his cologne, and that pure male smell that was Raphael alone. An insidious and heady combination, along with the predatory power of the man himself, that Beth responded to in spite of herself…
‘Beth?’
She kept her expression deliberately cool as she turned to face him, that coolness wavering slightly as she found that Raphael was standing only inches away from her, those piercing blue eyes still narrowed in his harshly chiselled face as he looked down the length of his nose at her.
Beth’s chin rose determinedly in the face of that implacability.
‘I’ve agreed to go back to England in Cesar’s jet, and to having you accompany me. Isn’t that enough?’
‘For now, perhaps…’
Her eyes flashed darkly. ‘What more do any of you want from me?’
What did Raphael want from this woman?
From Beth Blake, a woman he could not deny that he found physically attractive?
It was all too easy to imagine making love with that woman; kissing those delectable and poutingly stubborn lips, enjoying and pleasuring those lean and silkily slender curves, caressing and tasting the fullness of her breasts, arousing her until she was wet and open to his sinking his shaft between those delicious thighs, slowly and torturously at first, and then faster, pumping into her until they both found release.
Oh, yes, it was all too easy for Raphael to imagine making slow and leisurely love with Beth Blake.
But as Gabriela Navarro, the woman who was the sister of his best friend, and the daughter of the couple who had long ago taken him in as one of their own?
No, Raphael could only ever be the man who stood in silent watch over that woman, who ensured, for her family’s sake, that no harm came to her ever again.
His mouth tightened. ‘I do not recall ever saying that I want or need anything from you.’
She blinked at the harshness of his tone. ‘Please don’t hold back, Raphael. Just say it like it is!’ she scorned.
He raised cool brows. ‘I thought that was what I was doing.’
She raised her eyes heavenwards. ‘I was being sarcastic!’
‘I am well aware of that.’ He nodded. ‘I have also noticed that you resort to that sarcasm whenever you are feeling defensive.’
Her eyes widened indignantly. ‘Why on earth should I be feeling defensive?’
Raphael shrugged. ‘You would have to tell me that.’
Beth looked up at him wordlessly for several long, searching, seconds. ‘No, I don’t think I have anything else to say to you right now,’ she finally said slowly. ‘And surely you have those other “things” you need to go off and organise before we leave tomorrow?’ she added with hard dismissal.
He allowed a slight smile to curve his lips. ‘I do, yes.’
‘Well, don’t let me keep you,’ she prompted tautly as Raphael still made no effort to leave her bedroom.
Raphael continued to hold that challenging brown gaze with his own as he fought that inner battle not to take Beth in his arms and kiss that smart mouth of hers until she was senseless and wanting in his arms.
To
enjoy kissing that sarcastic mouth of hers until she was senseless and wanting!
The problem with that, of course, was that he might just enjoy kissing Beth a little too much. So much that he would not want to stop at just kissing her…
He gave a terse nod of his head as he stepped away from her. ‘I am sure that Cesar will keep you informed as to what time we are to leave tomorrow.’
‘Oh, I’m sure he will, too,’ she replied dryly.
He frowned his irritation. ‘His only concern is your protection.’
‘And what’s your concern, Raphael?’ She eyed him mockingly.
His mouth thinned. ‘Cesar does not employ me to have concerns, only solutions to security problems.’
‘Then it’s probably time you went away and found some!’ Having delivered her final scathing comment, Beth turned away, knowing she was wasting her time trying to bait this man. Raphael Cordoba really was that robot she had accused him of being earlier.
Nevertheless, she breathed a heavy sigh of relief as she heard his predatory step crossing the bedroom seconds later before the door closed softly behind him.
She dropped down weakly onto the side of the bed, her bravado of a few minutes ago completely evaporating as she once again acknowledged that, unless evidence could be found to the contrary, proving once and for all that she wasn’t Gabriela Navarro, her life was never, ever going to be the same again.
CHAPTER THREE
‘COMFORTABLE?’
Beth turned to look at Raphael Cordoba as he sat beside the chauffeur in the front of the car driving them from the airport to the home in London she had once shared with her whole family and now shared only with Grace—had shared with Grace, because, once her sister was married to Cesar, Beth knew Grace would never live in that family home with her again.
Which, besides being sad, meant that the house was going to be far too big for Beth to live in on her own. Maybe she could advertise for someone to share it with her—
‘Gabriela?’
Beth ground her teeth together at Raphael’s deliberate use of the name she refused to recognise as being her own. And it had been deliberate, she was sure. ‘Yes, I’m very comfortable, thank you,’ she assured him with cool politeness. The same cool politeness that had existed between the two of them since Beth said her goodbyes to Grace and the Navarro family the previous evening before leaving for the airport with Raphael.
A Touch of Notoriety Page 3