A Touch of Notoriety

Over six feet of male perfection—dark hair framing a chiselled face dominated by piercing blue eyes that any male model would envy, broad shoulders and a leanly muscled body that not even the three-piece suits Raphael habitually wore could disguise—was apt to do that to a woman!

‘I thought only to talk to you?’ The younger man grimaced, obviously as overwhelmed by the forceful Raphael as Beth was.

‘I know.’ Beth shot Raphael a censorious glance.

‘It is safe to leave you with this man?’

‘Safer than with you, you—’

‘Raphael, please!’ Beth reproved wearily, having to admire the younger man’s persistence in the face of Raphael’s fierce displeasure. ‘It’s…complicated,’ she excused as she smiled at the other man reassuringly. ‘But it’s okay—he doesn’t have any intention of harming me.’

‘You are sure?’

‘She is sure,’ Raphael answered the younger man grimly, with a deadly expression she was also sure would be in those piercing blue eyes currently hidden behind black mirror-shaded wraparound sunglasses.

And if there was one thing Beth was very sure of, it was that Raphael Cordoba wasn’t going to harm her. The opposite, in fact; he was her bodyguard, employed by Cesar Navarro, and here to ensure that no one else harmed her. Or rather, that no one harmed Gabriela Navarro, the young woman everyone now believed Beth to be.

Except Beth herself…

Just a week ago she had been quietly going about her life in England, enjoying her new job working Monday to Friday in a London publishing house, and feeling only mildly anxious that her sister, Grace, had flown to Argentina for the weekend with her new boss, the breathtakingly handsome billionaire Cesar Navarro, in his private jet. Never in a million years could Beth ever have guessed that Grace’s stay in Buenos Aires would have such a profound effect on her own life!

But here she was only days later, also in Buenos Aires, the blood tests having convinced everyone—except Beth herself!—that she was Gabriela, the daughter of Carlos and Esther Navarro, who had been abducted twenty-one years ago.

And Raphael Cordoba, previously Cesar Navarro’s own personal bodyguard, now watched over Beth’s every move. To the point, it seemed, of attacking handsome young men who had only wanted to talk to her!

‘Let him go, Raphael,’ Beth muttered wearily, knowing her few minutes of freedom were very definitely over. ‘I’m leaving now anyway,’ she assured him heavily. ‘I think the milk has gone sour in my coffee!’ She drew some money from her shoulder bag and threw it down onto the tabletop to cover the cost of her drink before walking off without so much as a second glance at either man. Why bother, when she was never going to be allowed to sit and talk to the younger man—it was safer for him if she didn’t—and she knew if she left Raphael would only be a few steps behind her?

As he had been only a few steps behind her in the days since those blood tests had supposedly proven Beth was the missing Gabriela Navarro. Beth clung to that ‘supposedly’. She had to. Because she absolutely refused to accept the results of those blood tests until Cesar Navarro’s investigations had found some other form of proof to back up that claim.

Much as she had come to like Carlos and Esther Navarro these past few days, Beth was still sure there had to have been some sort of mistake. Her parents—her real parents, James and Carla Lawrence—had loved her. Her adoptive parents, the Blakes, had also loved her. Having to accept that she was neither Elizabeth Lawrence nor Beth Blake, but someone else completely, was enough to make Beth’s stomach clench and her hands tremble every time she thought about it.

And, despite her verbal protests, she thought about it a lot…

In the meantime, Cesar Navarro had placed his own bodyguard, Raphael Cordoba, the man who also happened to be Cesar’s closest friend, as Beth’s shadow.

Cesar Navarro…

Now there, although Beth would never openly admit it, was another man she found totally intimidating.

Another man?

Oh, yes, much as Beth liked to pretend otherwise, she found Raphael Cordoba beyond intimidating. All six feet and several more inches of him. There was a predatory stillness about the man, from the top of his military-short black hair, those piercing blue eyes set in that swarthy and startlingly handsome face, to those wide muscled shoulders and washboard chest, tapered waist, powerful thighs, and down the long, long length of his legs, and all shown to advantage in those expensively tailored suits he always wore.

At thirty-three, Raphael Cordoba looked exactly what he was; ex Argentinian military, and scary as hell!

To complicate matters even further, her sister, Grace, was busy making preparations for her wedding to Cesar Navarro next month. And happy as Beth was for her sister, because even she could see how much Grace loved the handsome Argentinian—a depth of love that was unmistakeably returned by that normally coldly aloof man—it also made Beth feel more trapped than ever, when what she really wanted to do was pack her bags and go back to England and just forget all of the Navarro family existed.

Which was never going to happen. Even if Beth could have made good her escape, she couldn’t escape Grace’s engagement and future marriage to Cesar Navarro. And no matter how much Beth might believe she was and only ever had been Elizabeth Lawrence before being adopted by the Blakes, she could never hurt Carlos and Esther Navarro by disappearing—as their baby daughter had twenty-one years ago—in that cruel way.

Fortunately she didn’t have to allow for that concern in regard to hurting Raphael Cordoba’s feelings! ‘Will you just back off?’ she snapped at him now as she sensed him walking—striding with that predatory grace that was such an inborn part of him—close behind her.

Instead he fell into step beside her. ‘It was very foolish of you to disappear from Cesar’s apartment in that thoughtless way.’

Beth winced at the rebuke. ‘I felt as if I was slowly being suffocated!’

Raphael’s mouth tightened. ‘You still should not have worried Esther in that way.’

How did he do that? How did Raphael know exactly the right thing to say to make Beth feel guilty?

Because impossible, unbearable, as her current situation was for her, Beth didn’t want to hurt the couple who had already suffered so much. To the extent that once Cesar was old enough to go to university, and despite their love for each other, Esther and Carlos had no longer been able to live together with the ghost of their beloved baby daughter standing so painfully between them.

A beloved daughter the couple now sincerely believed to have been returned to them in Beth…

It was a belief Beth simply didn’t—couldn’t—accept.

Not least because, at almost twenty-four, she felt like a fish out of water in the opulent lifestyle the Navarros all enjoyed so naturally. And while she had grown fond of the two older Navarros these past few days, and enjoyed nothing more than challenging Cesar Navarro’s haughty arrogance, she innately knew she didn’t really belong here. With the Navarro family. Or in Argentina itself. She was English through and through, and comfortable in her own skin, as a product of her well-off but far from wealthy adoptive parents, Clive and Heather Blake.

Nevertheless, Beth was totally aware—as was Raphael!—of the effect the supposed return of their daughter had had on the older Navarros’ relationship. After years of living apart, Carlos in Buenos Aires and Esther in the US where she grew up, the couple had been sharing a bedroom in Cesar’s apartment since Grace had returned to Buenos Aires with Beth at her side…

Beth sighed heavily. ‘I’m sorry, okay? I just needed some time to myself.’

Raphael looked down at Beth Blake from behind the mirrored shades of his sunglasses, easily able to read the emotions flitting across her expressive—and extremely beautiful—face. A part of him even sympathised with her obvious bewilderment at being taken to be the newly returned Gabriela Navarro. But the medical proof of blood tests could not be easily denied, and, as a childhood friend of Cesar’s, Raphael knew how important this young woman was to the Navarro family. A family—the calm and steady Carlos, the warm and loving Esther, and the coolly arrogant Cesar—who had taken Raphael in as one of their own after a row with his father so many years ago had caused him to leave home.

As such, whether the feisty and stubbornly independent Beth Blake accepted her new identity or not—and she obviously did not—Raphael intended ensuring, by whatever means possible, that she remained safe while on his watch. And, as far as Beth was concerned, his watch now covered the whole twenty-four hours of every one of her days!

Something she had shown him—once again!—by just disappearing from Cesar’s apartment earlier that she deeply resented. ‘Gabriela—’

‘My name is Beth, damn it!’ she corrected, her eyes flashing darkly, two bright spots of angry colour having appeared in her cheeks.

Cheeks normally as pale and smooth as the finest porcelain, her eyes a deep rich brown above her small uptilting nose, her mouth a perfect bow above her stubbornly determined chin. As for her long silky hair…! Raphael had only ever seen one other woman with hair those heavy layers of all shades of blond, from gold to the palest silver, and that was Esther Navarro. The woman blood tests had shown to be Beth’s birth mother.

He shrugged broad shoulders. ‘I now think of you as Gabriela Navarro.’ Having been only a precocious two years old when she was taken from her real family, Beth would no more remember having met Raphael before than she did the Navarro family. But he remembered her, had stayed often with Cesar’s family even then, usually during the school holidays, and Gabriela had been Cesar’s beloved baby sister, a golden-haired angel to be petted and spoilt by the two much older boys.

At the moment Beth Blake looked as pettable as a spitting tigress. ‘Well, isn’t it just lucky for me that I have absolutely no interest in what, or who, you happen to think I am!’

‘I do not “happen” to think anything, it has been medically proven as fact that you are Gabriela Navarro. And it is equally lucky for me that I have absolutely no interest in what you may think of me, either.’ Raphael allowed a mocking smile to quirk his lips, knowing by the way those rich brown eyes narrowed that Beth Blake did not appreciate his humour at her expense.

She gave an inelegant snort. ‘You really don’t want to know what I think of you, Raphael!’

As her bodyguard, perhaps not, but as a man? Oh, yes, much as she might wish it were otherwise, the completely carnal glances Beth Blake gave him from beneath those thick dark lashes whenever she thought Raphael wasn’t looking at her told him that she saw him very much as a man. And was attracted to what she saw.

As much as she resented his status as her bodyguard!

A status that Raphael, equally aware of the allure of the fullness of Beth’s breasts and the sensual curve of her gently swaying hips, was determined to keep front and centre in all of his dealings with Beth Blake. To do anything else would compromise his protection of her.

‘Perhaps not,’ he drawled dismissively. ‘Shall we return to the apartment now?’

She shot him a weary glance. ‘Why do you bother asking, when you have every intention of taking me back there now whether I want to go or not?’