A Touch of Notoriety(56)
‘I don’t want to hear what is or isn’t normal “in these circumstances”.’ Beth continued to glare at him. ‘Or how you happen to know what’s normal,’ she muttered irritably. ‘I’m a little sore from last night, and slightly hot from sleeping under the bedcovers, but that’s it.’
‘If you are sure?’
‘I’m so sure that if you don’t soon leave then I swear I’m going to start screaming,’ she threatened.
Raphael stood up abruptly. ‘Your bad-temperedness in the mornings obviously extends to whatever time of day you wake up.’
Beth gave a reluctant smile. ‘Nice to know you were listening to me.’
‘Oh, I always listen to you, Beth,’ he murmured huskily. ‘Even when what you are saying is not pleasant.’
She gave him a sharp look. Did Raphael know how she felt about him, after all? And was his answer, to realising she was in love with him, to immediately put Rodney in his place as her bodyguard? God, was the humiliation never going to end?
‘Fine,’ she bit out abruptly. ‘Well, what I’m saying now is that I’m perfectly okay, and that I just need a couple of minutes’ privacy to freshen myself up, and then I’ll join you and Rodney in the main cabin.’
‘Very well.’ He gave a terse inclination of his head. ‘But if you are not improved by the time we get to Cesar’s— Do not scream!’ he bit out harshly as Beth opened her mouth to do exactly that.
She gave an unrepentant shrug. ‘Can’t say I haven’t warned you.’
No, Raphael could not claim that at all; Beth was a woman who always did what she said she was going to do. Including screaming, if he didn’t leave immediately and give her the privacy she asked for.
Which in no way changed the fact that, whether Beth liked it or not, Raphael had every intention of talking to Cesar if she seemed no better by the time they reached her brother’s apartment.
A conversation that would no doubt for ever damn him in Cesar’s eyes, as well as Beth’s...
* * *
‘Beth...! Oh, my God, Beth!’ Esther pulled her into a fierce and emotional hug the moment Beth stepped into the hallway of Cesar’s apartment, the other woman’s body shaking slightly as she burst into unashamed tears.
Beth hesitated for only a fraction of a second before she wrapped her own arms about Esther, tears blurring her vision as she clung to the woman who was her mother, wanting, somehow needing, that comfort at this moment. ‘I’m sorry. So sorry that I wouldn’t believe you before—’
‘And I’m sorry you had to go through the trauma of yesterday alone.’ Esther groaned as her arms tightened. ‘I should have been there for you...!’
‘I wasn’t alone, Raphael was there,’ Beth soothed, knowing, no matter how strained their relationship might be now, that without the strength of Raphael’s quiet support visiting Elizabeth Lawrence’s graveside yesterday would have been every bit as traumatic as Esther thought it was. ‘And it seems to me,’ she continued huskily, ‘that you’ve been there for me, waiting for me to return, for the past twenty-one years.’ She glanced over Esther’s shoulder and saw Carlos standing in the doorway of the sitting room, tears of happiness glistening in his dark eyes so like her own. ‘Both of you have,’ she added emotionally as she removed one of her arms from about Esther’s waist to hold her hand out to Carlos.
Carlos didn’t hesitate as he stepped forward to tightly grasp her hand in his. ‘Brela...!’
Beth gave him a tearful smile. ‘Papa.’ She used the same term of address she had heard Cesar use with their parents, surprised—overjoyed—at how right it sounded, and without feeling in the least a betrayal of the love the Lawrences and the Blakes had shown her for so many years. She had called the Lawrences ‘Mummy and Daddy’ and the Blakes ‘Mum and Dad’. She smiled tremulously at Esther. ‘Mama.’
Esther gave another choked sob as Carlos gathered both women in his arms and hugged them tightly to his chest. As if he never wanted, or intended, to let them go ever again.
How long the three of them remained that way Beth had no idea, clinging tightly to Esther and Carlos as she felt something inside her give way, collapse completely—a door opening into her heart?—to allow these two wonderful people inside.
These were her parents. The mother who had carried her in her womb for nine months, the two wonderful people who had loved and nurtured her for the first two years of her life, who had continued to love, to mourn, the daughter they had lost so many years ago. As Cesar was her brother—