A Touch of Notoriety. Carole Mortimer

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 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