A Touch of Notoriety(28)

‘Enough so that you will now answer my question?’

She sighed heavily as she glanced quickly away from his feet. ‘The people I work with all think that the two of us are having lunch together.’

Raphael raised surprised brows. ‘And why would they think that?’

‘Because I told them that we were.’

‘Why?’

Another one of those questions Beth would rather not answer. After the put-down she had received from Raphael the night before she would rather not spend any more time alone with him at all. Or be so aware now of the muscled tautness of his arm beneath her fingertips!

‘Oh, come on, Raphael, you’ve been standing out here for hours now, surely you must need a toilet break, if nothing else,’ she taunted in an effort to hide that awareness. ‘Unless, of course, your training in that special unit in the army involved bladder control!’

His mouth tightened. ‘It did.’

Beth shot him a frustrated glance. ‘Well, that’s just too bad, because whether you’re hungry or not, in need of the loo or not, we are having lunch together.’

‘Because the people you work with are expecting us to do so...’

‘Yes!’

‘Ah, I think I understand now.’ Raphael’s expression cleared. ‘You have possibly told your work colleagues that the two of us are...involved, as a way of explaining my presence here today?’

‘Well, aren’t you the smart ar—er—alec.’ Beth frowned up at him.

Raphael chuckled softly. ‘Purely a guess on my part.’

‘Yes. Well.’ She frowned her irritation. ‘It happens to be the correct one. And I’m not at all happy about it, so you can take that damned grin off your dark and broodingly gorgeous face!’

His brows rose higher. ‘I am assuming that is the opinion of one of your work colleagues and not how you personally think of me?’

‘You would assume correctly,’ Beth assured him evenly; how and what she thought of Raphael Cordoba was no one else’s business but her own—it certainly wasn’t something she intended sharing with Raphael himself. Again... Because Beth had no doubts that the previous evening she had revealed exactly how physically attractive she found this man. ‘I don’t suppose it’s occurred to you that I might already have a boyfriend, who isn’t going to be at all happy about my having claimed the two of us are now involved?’

‘And do you?’ The expression on that ‘dark and broodingly gorgeous’ face remained coolly impassive.

A reaction that irritated Beth intensely. ‘None of your damned business!’

‘But it is my business, Beth,’ Raphael grated. ‘Everything about you is now my business. And if there is a man in your life then he will need to be—’

‘Vetted?’ she suggested dryly.

‘Investigated,’ Raphael corrected stiffly.

‘And how do you go about doing that, Raphael?’ she taunted. ‘Do you check the man’s background—family, friends, place of work, previous relationships—before deciding whether or not he passes the Raphael Cordoba test?’

A nerve pulsed in the tightness of his jaw. ‘I cannot say I have ever been in quite this position before.’

‘But no doubt you’ve had to carry out such investigations into the women Cesar has been involved with in the past?’

His mouth thinned. ‘I will not discuss Cesar’s private life with you or anyone else.’

Beth’s initial irritation had faded to be replaced with the usual need she felt to tease this coldly remote man. ‘Frightened I might tell Grace what a bad boy Cesar was before he met her?’

He looked down at her reprovingly. ‘Beth—’

‘I’m just joking, Raphael!’ She chuckled throatily. ‘Grace loves Cesar so much she’s only interested in their future together, not his past.’

‘Which is exactly as it should be.’ He nodded tersely. ‘Did you have somewhere specific in mind for lunch or are we just going to keep walking about aimlessly for the next hour?’ he added impatiently.

‘I’ve booked a table for us at Ronaldo’s. I chose an Italian restaurant because I don’t know of any Argentinian ones,’ she added dismissively.

‘Italian is fine.’

‘It’s a very good restaurant,’ Beth assured him. ‘Quite a lot of the editors use it when they take authors out for lunch.’