A Touch of Notoriety(25)

‘I doubt anything would succeed in making this shoe leather palatable!’ Raphael muttered disgustedly as he lifted the glass to his lips and took a sip of the wine.

There was absolutely no way of missing the way that he stilled the moment he tasted the wine before slowly swallowing. ‘Is there something wrong with it?’ Beth prompted warily as she paused after sipping her own wine; Grace might have shown her how to remove the cork from a bottle of wine, and how to chill a white wine, and allow a bottle of red to breathe before drinking it, but differentiating between a good and a cheap and nasty wine was still beyond Beth’s palate.

Raphael carefully replaced his glass down on the table. ‘Where did you get this from?’

‘The rack near the kitchen door. Which was why I assumed it was okay to use. Please tell me I haven’t opened some priceless and irreplaceable bottle of wine that Cesar has been nurturing as an investment, or saving for a special occasion!’ She wasn’t feeling in the least reassured by the bleakness of Raphael’s expression.

Raphael affected a neutral expression as he reached out to pick up the bottle and look at the label. As he had thought, it bore the Cordoba name. His name. From his family vineyard.

‘Raphael?’

He forced the tension from his shoulders as he glanced across the table at the anxiously watching Beth. ‘No, you have not opened a priceless bottle of wine,’ he drawled reassuringly as he replaced the bottle carefully back onto the table. ‘I had forgotten that Cesar is partial to this particular red wine with his steak, that is all.’ He gave a shake of his head.

Beth reached out and picked up the bottle, a frown appearing between her eyes as she read the name on the label. ‘A relative of yours?’

Raphael gave a humourless smile. ‘My father.’

She sat back against the chair. ‘But I thought you said your father was a gaucho?’

‘I said he ranched cattle,’ Raphael corrected dryly.

‘But I thought— He owns the ranch,’ Beth realised with a frown, ‘and no doubt has gauchos who work for him? Just as he owns the vineyard where this wine came from?’

He gave a grimace. ‘Yes.’

‘Your family is wealthy?’

His mouth twisted derisively. ‘Nowhere near the Navarros’ fortune, but, yes, the Cordoba family is wealthy.’

‘I had assumed—’ She blinked. ‘Assumption obviously being the mother of all—’

‘Beth!’ he cut in warningly.

She gave him an impatient glare. ‘Well, you have to admit, Raphael, it’s a little unusual, to find the heir to a ranch and an obviously successful vineyard working as Head of Security for someone else, even if that someone else is as close to you as a brother.’

A nerve pulsed in Raphael’s tightly clenched jaw. ‘Not if that is what that person chooses to do.’

‘But you’re the son and heir, so why aren’t you working on the ranch or vineyard with your father?’

‘I do not believe I have to answer that.’

‘Why not, when it’s a perfectly valid question in the circumstances?’

Beth could have no idea of the circumstances surrounding Raphael’s reasons for leaving his home and his family fifteen years ago, and moving to Buenos Aires to stay with the Navarros. Nor did he have any intention of confiding in her as to the unacceptable—and persistent—sexual advances of his father’s second wife which, when discovered, had resulted in his father believing her claims that she hadn’t wanted to tell him but Raphael had been pestering her to have sex with him for months behind his back. It was perhaps that last detail that hurt Raphael the most. That, at the time, his father had chosen to believe his wife’s version of events rather than that of his own son...

Raphael looked at Beth coolly. ‘Perhaps because I do not make a habit of confiding my...personal family business with people I have only just met.’

Beth drew her breath in sharply. Was that how Raphael thought of her, as merely a person he had just met? And why should he think of her in any other way? Because they had shared a few kisses and intimacies earlier this evening? Albeit intimacies that Beth had never allowed with another man...

What had happened between the two of them earlier might have been unique in Beth’s limited physical experience, but it certainly wasn’t in Raphael’s. In fact, the opposite, if his expertise in that area was any indication. It was also an incident he had told her he would rather they both forgot...