A Touch of Notoriety - By Carole Mortimer Page 0,61

to you to tell you that I had taken your advice and gone to see my father.’

Her eyes widened. ‘And is everything...all right between the two of you now?’

‘Yes. Beth, I—’ Raphael stopped what he had been about to say as he heard Esther’s voice just outside the door. ‘Your family will want to be with you now.’ He released her hand. ‘The two of us will talk once you are home and feeling better.’

Now that Beth was fully awake, and remembered—remembered being with Raphael at the inn, realising how much she loved him, and how he had walked away from her without so much as a goodbye, she wasn’t sure she would ever feel completely ‘better’ again. Oh, no doubt, now that she had regained consciousness, she would very quickly recover from the operation to remove her infected appendix. It was the pain in her heart, her love and longing for Raphael, that would never heal...

She raised her chin. ‘I’m really pleased, about you and your father, Raphael, but I don’t think we have anything else left to talk about.’

He blinked those long-lashed lids over those piercing blue eyes. ‘You wish me to leave?’

Beth nodded abruptly. ‘I believe that would be for the best.’

A nerve pulsed in his tightly clenched jaw. ‘If you are sure that is what you want?’

‘It is,’ she bit out softly.

‘Very well.’ He stepped back from the bedside. ‘I will send your family in now.’

Beth refused to look at him again as she heard the softness of his tread as he crossed the room to the door, the door softly opening, followed by a brief conversation outside before her family rushed to her bedside and she laughingly gave them her reassurances that she really was okay.

There would be all the time in the world for tears later...

* * *

‘Beth, he came back to Buenos Aires the moment Cesar told him you were in the hospital,’ Grace admonished softly.

Beth didn’t turn from where she sat convalescing beside one of the windows in the sitting room of Cesar’s apartment. But she knew who the ‘he’ was that Grace was referring to. The same ‘he’ who had been asking to visit her since she came home from the hospital two days ago. The same ‘he’ that Beth had turned away each and every time Grace came in to tell her that Raphael was outside asking to see her.

‘Beth—’

‘I can’t, Grace!’ She turned to her sister fiercely. ‘Don’t you understand? I can’t see him...!’ she choked.

Grace crossed the room until she was able to go down on her haunches beside Beth. ‘You love him.’

Beth breathed raggedly. ‘Yes.’

‘Then—’

‘He doesn’t feel the same way about me, Grace.’ She sighed. ‘He— I don’t know why he came back from his father’s ranch. Or why he keeps asking to see me now. A guilty conscience maybe? But I can’t—!’ She gave a fierce shake of her head, her hands tightly clasped together in her lap.

‘Why should Raphael have a guilty conscience where you’re concerned?’ Grace looked at her searchingly.

Beth drew in a deep and shaky breath. ‘I’m sure you can guess why. He thought— He originally thought that the pain I was in had been caused by—’ Her cheeks flushed a fiery red as she shook her head. ‘He thought he had hurt me in some way. I told him he hadn’t, but he kept fussing, and—’

‘That still doesn’t explain why he keeps asking to see you now,’ Grace maintained firmly.

Beth looked at her searchingly. ‘Don’t you have something to say about—about my...closeness, to Raphael?’

‘Why should I?’ her sister returned lightly. ‘You’re a big girl now, and quite capable of making up your own mind about who you go to bed with.’

‘I didn’t— We didn’t—’ Beth gave a pained frown. ‘We didn’t get that far,’ she admitted uncomfortably.

‘Even more reason for me to question why Raphael rushed back here the moment Cesar told him you had been taken to hospital, and refused to leave your bedside once he arrived back.’

‘He must have gone to the bathroom occasionally—’

‘Beth!’

She grimaced. ‘I don’t know why Raphael did that. Maybe he felt it was his duty, as Cesar’s Head of Security, to rush back and protect Cesar’s little sister while she was in hospital?’

Grace gave her an admonishing glance. ‘Aren’t you even a little bit curious as to why he’s asked to see you a dozen times since you got home?’

Was Beth curious as to why Raphael had asked to see her these past two days? Of