A Touch of Notoriety(64)

‘I do not understand...’ Raphael looked pained as he stood beside her chair looking down at her.

Beth gave a choked laugh as the happiness welled up inside her and threatened to totally overwhelm her. Raphael loved her. He wanted to marry her. All this time she had been suffering in misery, believing he would never feel the same way about her, and Raphael had been in love with her the whole time, too. To the point that he hadn’t felt able to protect her in the way he felt she needed to be protected. To a degree that he had decided to settle the long feud with his father, to resolve the rift between the two of them, before he asked Beth to marry him.

Raphael loved her and wanted to marry her!

She moved to stand up, needing to be in Raphael’s arms, only to sit back down again with a wince. ‘Ouch.’ She made a pained face. ‘Raphael, will you get down here and kiss me before I rip my stitches open trying to get to you?’

‘But—’

‘Now, please!’ she cried frustratedly.

‘You are a very demanding woman,’ he reproved as he moved to sit on the arm of her chair.

‘No, you stubborn arrogant man, I’m a woman in love,’ she corrected happily as she raised her face to his. ‘Very, very much in love. With you. And my ridiculous comments just now were because I have no intention of waiting for any of those things to happen before becoming your wife—my answer is yes now, Raphael,’ she assured him softly as he lowered his head towards hers.

He paused with his lips only centimetres away from hers as he looked down at her searchingly. ‘I have yet to ask the question...’ he murmured softly.

‘But you will. And when you do my answer will be yes,’ she assured him as she raised her hand and cupped his nape. ‘I love you, Raphael. So very much.’

‘And I love you, too, my Beth,’ he answered gruffly before his lips at last claimed hers.

And a long, long time later Raphael did ask her to marry him, and she said yes...

* * *

All of the Navarro and Cordoba families attended the wedding three months later.

Beth walked down the aisle on Carlos’s arm, and behind her walked her sister, Grace, as matron of honour, and beside her was Raphael’s sister Rosa, as bridesmaid. Esther sat on one side of the aisle, and beamed proudly at the same time as the tears of happiness streamed unashamedly down her cheeks. And on the other side of the aisle sat Raphael Cordoba senior, Raphael’s father, his dark eyes gleaming with pride for his son, and affection for the woman he already loved like another daughter.

When Beth emerged from the church an hour later on Raphael’s arm she was no longer Beth Lawrence, or Beth Blake, or even Gabriela Navarro, but Beth Cordoba, wife of Raphael Cordoba, the man she loved, and would continue to love with all of her heart for the rest of her life, and the man who vowed he would love and cherish her with that same total commitment for the rest of his life.

She was, and always would be, Beth, Raphael Cordoba’s wife.

* * * * *