A Touch of Notoriety

chapter TWELVE



‘BETH?’ RAPHAEL SHOOK her gently by the shoulder as he sat down on the side of the bed in the cabin at the back of the Navarro jet, where Beth had disappeared to, and apparently been sleeping, almost from the moment the plane took off from England. ‘Beth!’ he repeated more firmly as he received no response.

She gave a groan as she turned onto her back and slowly opened her lids, her eyes appearing dark and slightly unfocused rather than the clear and challenging glitter Raphael was used to. ‘Are we there?’ She pushed back the long tangle of blond hair from her face.

‘We will shortly begin our descent,’ Raphael answered her distractedly: if anything Beth looked paler to him now than she had earlier. ‘Are you still...in discomfort?’ he amended tightly as he remembered her angry reaction to the last time they had this conversation.

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Raphael...!’ She reacted just as impatiently this time, too, shooting him an irritated glance from beneath lowered brows as she pushed herself up against the pillows.

‘I am merely concerned—’

‘I’m fine!’ Beth glared at him in the hopes of hiding her grimace of pain from him; far from going away, the pain in her side seemed to have got worse! ‘What are you doing?’ She flinched back as Raphael reached a hand out towards her.

‘Checking to see if you have a temperature.’ Raphael scowled at her reaction.

‘I would be flushed, not pale, if I had a temperature,’ she scoffed dismissively.

Raphael ignored her protests as he touched his hand against her forehead. ‘You feel hot...’

‘So would you if you’d had your head buried under the bedcovers for hours!’ Beth swatted his hand away exasperatedly before pulling ineffectually at the bedcovers he sat on. ‘For goodness’ sake, move, Raphael, so that I can get out of bed and come through to the main cabin and strap myself in for landing.’

He remained exactly where he was as he continued to look at her frowningly. ‘Perhaps I should call Cesar and ask him to have a doctor standing by for when we arrive—’

‘And perhaps you should just do as I ask and go away,’ Beth instructed through gritted teeth.

He stared at her in obvious frustration for several long seconds. A penetrating stare that Beth met head on, her chin raised stubbornly.

There was no way, absolutely no way, that she was going to admit to the amount of pain she was in. She certainly wasn’t going to submit herself to some sort of internal examination—along with an embarrassing explanation as to why Raphael felt it was necessary—the moment she arrived at Cesar’s apartment in Buenos Aires. Not only would that be too humiliating, it was likely to cause trouble between Cesar and Raphael.

She might be angry with Raphael, might inwardly wish that he felt the same way about her as she did him, but that didn’t mean she wanted to cause a rift between Cesar and Raphael. As there was sure to be if Cesar learnt just how close she and her bodyguard—former bodyguard—had become these past few days.

Raphael gave a shake of his head. ‘I do not believe this amount of...discomfort is normal, in these circumstances—’

‘I don’t want to hear what is or isn’t normal “in these circumstances”.’ Beth continued to glare at him. ‘Or how you happen to know what’s normal,’ she muttered irritably. ‘I’m a little sore from last night, and slightly hot from sleeping under the bedcovers, but that’s it.’

‘If you are sure?’

‘I’m so sure that if you don’t soon leave then I swear I’m going to start screaming,’ she threatened.

Raphael stood up abruptly. ‘Your bad-temperedness in the mornings obviously extends to whatever time of day you wake up.’

Beth gave a reluctant smile. ‘Nice to know you were listening to me.’

‘Oh, I always listen to you, Beth,’ he murmured huskily. ‘Even when what you are saying is not pleasant.’

She gave him a sharp look. Did Raphael know how she felt about him, after all? And was his answer, to realising she was in love with him, to immediately put Rodney in his place as her bodyguard? God, was the humiliation never going to end?

‘Fine,’ she bit out abruptly. ‘Well, what I’m saying now is that I’m perfectly okay, and that I just need a couple of minutes’ privacy to freshen myself up, and then I’ll join you and Rodney in the main cabin.’

‘Very well.’ He gave a terse inclination of his head. ‘But if you are not improved by the time we get to Cesar’s— Do not scream!’ he bit out harshly as Beth opened her mouth to do exactly that.

She gave an unrepentant shrug. ‘Can’t say I haven’t warned you.’

No, Raphael could not claim that at all; Beth was a woman who always did what she said she was going to do. Including screaming, if he didn’t leave immediately and give her the privacy she asked for.

Which in no way changed the fact that, whether Beth liked it or not, Raphael had every intention of talking to Cesar if she seemed no better by the time they reached her brother’s apartment.

A conversation that would no doubt for ever damn him in Cesar’s eyes, as well as Beth’s...

* * *

‘Beth...! Oh, my God, Beth!’ Esther pulled her into a fierce and emotional hug the moment Beth stepped into the hallway of Cesar’s apartment, the other woman’s body shaking slightly as she burst into unashamed tears.

Beth hesitated for only a fraction of a second before she wrapped her own arms about Esther, tears blurring her vision as she clung to the woman who was her mother, wanting, somehow needing, that comfort at this moment. ‘I’m sorry. So sorry that I wouldn’t believe you before—’

‘And I’m sorry you had to go through the trauma of yesterday alone.’ Esther groaned as her arms tightened. ‘I should have been there for you...!’

‘I wasn’t alone, Raphael was there,’ Beth soothed, knowing, no matter how strained their relationship might be now, that without the strength of Raphael’s quiet support visiting Elizabeth Lawrence’s graveside yesterday would have been every bit as traumatic as Esther thought it was. ‘And it seems to me,’ she continued huskily, ‘that you’ve been there for me, waiting for me to return, for the past twenty-one years.’ She glanced over Esther’s shoulder and saw Carlos standing in the doorway of the sitting room, tears of happiness glistening in his dark eyes so like her own. ‘Both of you have,’ she added emotionally as she removed one of her arms from about Esther’s waist to hold her hand out to Carlos.

Carlos didn’t hesitate as he stepped forward to tightly grasp her hand in his. ‘Brela...!’

Beth gave him a tearful smile. ‘Papa.’ She used the same term of address she had heard Cesar use with their parents, surprised—overjoyed—at how right it sounded, and without feeling in the least a betrayal of the love the Lawrences and the Blakes had shown her for so many years. She had called the Lawrences ‘Mummy and Daddy’ and the Blakes ‘Mum and Dad’. She smiled tremulously at Esther. ‘Mama.’

Esther gave another choked sob as Carlos gathered both women in his arms and hugged them tightly to his chest. As if he never wanted, or intended, to let them go ever again.

How long the three of them remained that way Beth had no idea, clinging tightly to Esther and Carlos as she felt something inside her give way, collapse completely—a door opening into her heart?—to allow these two wonderful people inside.

These were her parents. The mother who had carried her in her womb for nine months, the two wonderful people who had loved and nurtured her for the first two years of her life, who had continued to love, to mourn, the daughter they had lost so many years ago. As Cesar was her brother—

Beth looked up and saw him standing in the same doorway where their father had been only seconds ago, a tall and imperiously arrogant man, and yet there was that same bright sheen of tears glinting in his dark eyes. ‘You, too, ’Zar,’ she encouraged huskily as she held her hand out

to him.

‘Brela...!’ he choked even as he stepped forward to wrap his arms about all of them, the two Navarro men cradling their women within the protective circle of their arms. ‘Oh, God, Brela!’

* * *

Raphael stood off to one side watching this exchange, more happy than he could ever have expressed at seeing the Navarro family reunited at long last.

‘Thank you so much for all that you’ve done, Raphael.’

Raphael glanced down at Grace Blake as she moved to stand beside him, tears falling hotly down her cheeks as she watched her adopted sister being embraced by the man who was her brother—and also the man who would soon become Grace’s own husband—and Beth’s real mother and father, the couple who would shortly become Grace’s own mother- and father-in-law. It was, Raphael decided, a fitting solution to a situation that could have proved so delicately awkward.

He gave a shake of his head. ‘I did very little.’

‘I don’t believe that for a moment.’ Grace gave a firm shake of her head.

He gave Grace an indulgent smile. ‘Why is it that you Blake women never have a handkerchief when you need one?’ he teased softly as he pulled a neatly folded white silk handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to Grace.

She mopped up the worst of her deluge of tears, a frown now between her blue-green eyes. ‘Beth has been crying?’

‘Naturally so.’ Raphael nodded.

Grace glanced across at her adopted sister. ‘I’m so proud of her for the way she’s now dealing with all this.’

Raphael felt equally proud—unaccountably so, when he was a complete outsider to this emotional reunion—of the way in which Beth had at last embraced who she really was.

At the same time as he knew an inward sadness, at the distance that now stood between the two of them...

‘Yes,’ he agreed huskily as he continued to look at Beth as she talked softly, and laughed and cried, with the three people who were her family.

‘Are you okay, Raphael?’

He arched one dark questioning brow as he turned to look at Grace, a shutter coming down over his emotions as he saw the concern in her expression. ‘Why would I not be okay?’ he broached guardedly.

‘I don’t know...’ She gave a slow shake of her head as she continued to look up at him searchingly. ‘You look...tired. Or maybe a little sad?’

Raphael frowned at the extent of this woman’s intuition. He was very tired, and not just from the lack of sleep the past two days; his army training had ensured that he could endure several days without sleep and still remain alert and ready for anything that was thrown at him.

His present weariness was for quite another reason.

The mature way in which Beth had now embraced her real family—literally—brought into sharp contrast Raphael’s own strained relationship with his father. A strain that Raphael had allowed to continue as much as his father had. And it was past time for that breach to be healed.

It had taken Beth, with her unshakeable candour, for him to see that.

As for the sadness Grace believed she detected in him...

Raphael glanced back at Beth. She still seemed unnaturally pale to him, but at the same time she had never looked more beautiful to him, either. Not just her obvious outer beauty, but that inner strength she carried with her so innately, the ability she had to meet any situation head on and deal with it, at the same time as she was able to inspire laughter and warmth in those around her.

‘Raphael?’

He turned to give Grace a reassuring smile. ‘I believe I am simply in need of a holiday.’

‘Cesar said you’d requested a couple of weeks’ leave. I trust you’ll be back in time for the wedding next month?’ she added teasingly.

‘As Cesar has asked me to stand beside him in the church, I had better be,’ he confirmed dryly.

Grace nodded. ‘Are you going anywhere nice?’

Raphael did not believe his planned visit to his father’s estacia—ranch—would be in the least nice. Necessary, but far from nice! ‘Just visiting family,’ he dismissed easily. ‘Rodney will be here to take care of Beth’s security.’

‘It’s nice to see Rodney again.’ Grace gave a wry chuckle. ‘I still remember the incredulous look on Cesar’s face the day I suggested he might like to have Rodney shoot me and have me buried in the grounds of the estate in Hampshire!’

‘I believe Cesar mentioned that incident to me.’ Raphael gave a throaty chuckle.

‘Laughing while he did it, no doubt!’ She grimaced.

‘I believe he was slightly amused by the notion, yes,’ Raphael acknowledged dryly.

Grace nodded, her eyes glowing as she glanced across at Cesar. ‘It seems incredible that the two of us are now in love and going to be married next month.’

‘I have never seen Cesar happier than he has been since you agreed to become his wife,’ Raphael assured her huskily.

Grace gave him a glowing smile. ‘Thank you.’

Raphael only stated the truth; his own close friendship with Cesar had existed since their schooldays together, making it easy for him to see that Grace’s love had completed Cesar, filling the voids of loneliness that had existed inside him for so long, at the same time as she had rubbed away all the hard edges that had kept Cesar removed and so distant from the world around him.

In the same way that Beth had rubbed those same edges of detachment from Raphael?

* * *

Beth, glancing across at Raphael and Grace as they stood quietly talking together further down the hallway, couldn’t help but frown as she saw how easily the two of them were laughing together. The sort of companionable ease that Beth wished she and Raphael had together, but knew they never would.

She not only wanted him physically but had fallen in love with him, and although the night at the inn had proved that Raphael returned that physical attraction, his every action since had shown her that he certainly wasn’t in love with her.

Just looking at him now, and knowing how much she loved him, made Beth’s heart ache. Almost enough to take her mind off the nagging, insistent ache in her side!

A nagging and insistent ache that made her feel physically sick, and which she knew owed nothing, absolutely nothing, to the pain of the unrequited love she felt for Raphael.

She kept her arm about Esther’s waist as she pulled back slightly.

‘Would anyone mind if I went to my room to lie down for a while? This past couple of days have been a bit...emotional, and I’m feeling a little tired,’ she added ruefully.

‘I’ll come with you,’ Grace offered huskily.

‘I would like that.’ Beth turned to smile at her sister as she joined them, a quick glance behind Grace showing her that Raphael was nowhere in sight. ‘Has Raphael gone?’ she prompted with as much lightness as she could muster—and instantly knowing she hadn’t fooled Grace for a moment as her sister’s gaze narrowed on her speculatively. Beth never had been able to hide anything from Grace for very long!

Including the way she now felt about Raphael, apparently.

‘He said there were a couple of things he had to do,’ Grace answered her slowly.

Of course he did. Raphael might have transferred her personal security to Rodney, but he was still Head of Security worldwide for Cesar, with all of the responsibilities that went along with that job description.

‘You go and rest now and we’ll see you later, honey.’ Esther touched Beth’s cheek gently as she smiled at her.

‘Querida.’ Carlos kissed her warmly on her other cheek.

‘Brela.’ Cesar lifted her hand and kissed the back of it.

Making the emotion catch in the back of Beth’s throat all over again. Not only would she always have Grace as her sister, but she now had this wonderful family as her own, too. Her cup wasn’t just half full, it was overflowing.

Apart, of course, from the fact that she was in love with a man who was never going to fall in love with her...

* * *

‘Okay, what’s going on?’ Grace prompted shrewdly once the two sisters were alone together in the same bedroom they had shared the last time Beth had visited Buenos Aires and stayed at Cesar’s apartment.

Just days ago, and yet those days had been life changing for Beth. In more ways than one! ‘Going on?’ she prompted with that same attempt at lightness as earlier as she lay down on one of the single beds in the room—and with just as much success if the look of scepticism on Grace’s face was any indication!

‘Between you and Raphael.’ Grace nodded as she dropped down onto the other bed. ‘He’s walking around with a face like thunder and trying not to look at you too often, and you have a permanent false smile fixed on your face—while also trying to give the appearance of not looking at him, either!’

Beth grimaced. ‘You’re imagining things.’

‘Don’t try that with me, Beth,’ her sister warned ruefully. ‘I know you far too well for you to get away with it. And, for some reason, you and Raphael are both trying to give the appearance that neither one of you believes the other exists.’

As usual, her sister had gone straight to the heart of the problem! ‘I think you have that slightly wrong, Grace. I’m only too well aware that Raphael exists—he’s the one trying to ignore me.’

‘Why?’

Beth gave a grimace as the twinge of pain in her side gave a particularly vicious twist. ‘Because he doesn’t like or approve of me any more now than he did four days ago?’

Grace gave her a reproving look. ‘We both know that isn’t it.’

‘Do we?’

Her sister sighed. ‘Okay, you obviously don’t want to talk about this right now. But when you do,’ she continued before Beth could relax her guard too much, ‘know that I’m here for you.’

‘Always,’ Beth acknowledged huskily.

Grace nodded. ‘And that I don’t judge.’

She felt the tears well up in her eyes. For what had to be the hundredth time today. ‘I’m just so emotionally exhausted at the moment, Grace, that I can barely see straight, let alone talk coherently,’ she admitted gruffly.

‘I can see that.’ Her sister stood up to pat one of her hands sympathetically. ‘You’re looking a little pale?’

‘Don’t you start!’ She grimaced. ‘Raphael has done nothing else today but tell me how awful I look!’

‘I’m sure he didn’t mean it in the way you’ve obviously taken it.’ Grace still studied her worriedly.

‘I admire your optimism!’

‘We’ll talk again later, hmm?’ Grace soothed softly. ‘And maybe this couple of weeks apart from Raphael will...help resolve whatever appears to have gone wrong between the two of you.’

‘He’s only turned my personal security over to Rodney, Grace,’ she dismissed lightly. ‘I’m sure I’ll still see his annoying presence about the apartment.’

Her sister gave a slow shake of her head. ‘He didn’t tell you?’

Beth raised her brows. ‘Tell me what?’

‘That he’s taken two weeks’ leave, effective immediately. In fact,’ Grace added with a frown as Beth gasped softly, ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if he hasn’t already gone.’

Gone?

Raphael had gone?

From Cesar’s apartment, possibly even Buenos Aires?

Without so much as telling her, let alone saying goodbye...

* * *

It was the screaming that woke Beth. A loud and piercing scream. And it was obviously a pained scream rather than one of fear.

And she wanted it to stop.

Now.

Wanted to just stay in her dream state, safe from the memories, the hurt, of Raphael’s defection.

Except the screaming was getting louder.

And louder.

‘Beth, wake up!’ Grace’s panicked voice pierced the last layers of Beth’s sleep as she felt her shoulder being shaken. ‘Beth, wake up now and tell me what’s wrong!’

Which was when Beth realised that she was the one screaming.

A pained scream rather than one of fear.

A ripping, roaring pain that began in her side and radiated out to her stomach.

She opened her eyes wide to stare up at a white-faced Grace. ‘It hurts, Grace! Oh, God, it hurts!’ she managed to gasp before the pain became too much, too unbearable, and the blackness carried her away...