A Touch of Notoriety

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 choose 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.