A Touch of Notoriety(30)

Boyfriend or not, the fact that he now had a raging erection just thinking of making love to Beth told Raphael that, from a practical perspective, he wasn’t the right person to be in charge of Beth’s protection, that his emotions weren’t detached enough for his reactions to be as cool and precise as they needed to be. Although how Raphael would go about explaining that lack of detachment to Cesar, without revealing the extent of last night’s lapse, he had no idea—

‘Have you spoken to Cesar today?’

Raphael looked sharply across the table at Beth as she seemed to guess some of his thoughts, the frown easing from his brow as he knew by the blandness of her expression that she was merely attempting to make polite conversation. ‘Late last night,’ he answered tersely.

‘And?’ Beth picked one of the bread sticks out of the tall glass in the middle of the table and began to chew on it.

‘And he sent you his regards and Grace’s love,’ Raphael drawled dryly even as his gaze was drawn to watching those tiny white teeth as they nibbled delicately on the bread stick. The same delectably delicate nibbles he could all too easily imagine her making on his cock before she took him deep—

‘Which you obviously forgot to pass on to me this morning?’

Raphael gave a shrug as he forced himself to relax back against the chair. Not so easy to do when Bath was now sucking on that bread stick! And being deliberately provocative? No, the distracted expression on her face, and the frown between her eyes, told him that Beth had absolutely no idea how sensually provocative she was being at this moment.

‘You were not exactly talkative on the drive into London earlier,’ he rasped hoarsely. ‘And our conversation this past few minutes has been on other things.’

‘You weren’t exactly Mr Chatterbox yourself. Besides, I’m not a morning person.’ Beth shrugged.

‘I will try to remember that.’

Beth could think of only one circumstance under which Raphael would need to remember that—and after hearing him describe kissing her as being a ‘mistake’, she very much doubted that particular situation was ever going to arise! ‘Grace and I have always had an agreement, in that she doesn’t talk to me in the morning, and in return I don’t growl at her.’

Raphael continued to look at her for several moments, as if he had something on his mind, something he wanted to say to her, before obviously deciding otherwise as he scowled darkly before giving a dismissive shake of his head and glancing down at the menu. ‘What do you recommend?’

Beth breathed easily for the first time in several minutes. ‘It’s all good,’ she dismissed lightly before turning her attention to studying her own menu. Anything was better than sitting here ogling this ‘dark and broodingly gorgeous’ man, moreover a man who had made it patently obvious that her company irritated him at best and outright annoyed him at worst!

* * *

Raphael couldn’t remember ever having had lunch alone with a woman before. The occasional dinner with a woman, prior to going to bed with her, but he had always considered that lunch was for conversation and couples who were something more to one another than temporary bed-partners.

Consequently eating lunch with a woman was a novel experience for him. Eating lunch with the outspoken Beth Blake was, he very quickly learnt, a uniquely entertaining one. She conversed—and predictably had strong opinions!—on a variety of subjects: world politics, new fashions, the wave of eBooks currently taking the publishing world by storm, holidays they had both taken, the quality or otherwise of the latest film releases...and in return Raphael found himself comfortable giving his own opinion on those same subjects.

The food was, as Beth had claimed, also of a very high standard, although they had both preferred, as they had to return to work within the hour, to drink sparkling water with their food rather than wine.

‘My treat,’ Beth assured Raphael as the waiter placed the bill on their table at the end of the meal.

He frowned his displeasure with that arrangement. ‘It is the man who usually pays.’

She gave him a teasing glance as she placed the money on the table beside the bill. ‘For the bill, or emotionally?’

‘In my experience, both.’

She smiled derisively. ‘Did someone forget to tell you that this is the twenty-first century, and that consequently women now consider it their right to invite a man out to lunch, and pay for it, if they want to?’

‘And a lot of those men are far from comfortable with twenty-first-century...customs.’