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Christmas With Her Bodyguard
Charlotte Hawkes
From temporary protector…To love of a lifetime!Obstetrician Rae Rawlstone has worked hard to distance herself from her fame-seeking family and her scandalous past. Only now her past is catching up with her. Because she’s spending Christmas under the protection of ex-army surgeon and first love Major Myles Garrington! Behind the shadows of her bodyguard’s gorgeous eyes Rae sees they have more than chemistry in common. Could learning to trust one another lead to happy-ever-after?


From temporary protector...
To love of a lifetime!
Obstetrician Rae Rawlstone has worked hard to distance herself from her fame-seeking family and scandalous past. Only now her past is catching up with her—because she’s spending Christmas under the protection of ex-army surgeon and first love Major Myles Garrington! Behind the shadows of her bodyguard’s gorgeous eyes, Rae recognizes they have more than chemistry in common. Could learning to trust one another lead to happy-ever-after?
“Ms. Hawkes has delivered a fantastic read in this book where the chemistry between this couple was heady and convincing....”
—Harlequin Junkie on A Bride to Redeem Him
“...it was right at the end that had me smiling a lot, because of how far the hero and heroine have come in their relationship.”
—Harlequin Junkie on Tempted by Dr. Off-Limits
Born and raised on the Wirral Peninsula in England, CHARLOTTE HAWKES is mum to two intrepid boys who love her to play building block games with them and who object loudly to the amount of time she spends on the computer. When she isn’t writing—or building with blocks—she is company director for a small Anglo/French construction firm. Charlotte loves to hear from readers and you can contact her at her website: charlotte-hawkes.com (http://www.charlotte-hawkes.com).
Also by Charlotte Hawkes (#ueeeab427-4172-5225-adf9-a6c342c9f71d)
The Army Doc’s Secret Wife
The Surgeon’s Baby Surprise
A Bride to Redeem Him
The Surgeon’s One-Night Baby
Hot Army Docs miniseries
Encounter with a Commanding Officer
Tempted by Dr Off-Limits
Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk).
Christmas with Her Bodyguard
Charlotte Hawkes


www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ISBN: 978-1-474-07550-3
CHRISTMAS WITH HER BODYGUARD
© 2018 Charlotte Hawkes
Published in Great Britain 2018
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.
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www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
To Mum,
for all the hats you wore!
You’re my inspiration xxx
Contents
Cover (#ucd5d124b-0934-5da0-8e3c-6bf6c3a0dfa7)
Back Cover Text (#u32a6fcae-ad86-5316-b811-a64cd37c3046)
About the Author (#ud5617fb3-a96f-5bb0-bb48-7c9d45c4b573)
Booklist (#u1fab821d-1125-5899-ab9b-619973862173)
Title Page (#u0461d95a-36a5-5191-8664-e8e6342b39ea)
Copyright (#ubd957988-8210-550f-81f3-44d06cfcbb84)
Dedication (#ua4d4e612-346c-543d-88fd-57b84fb157e5)
CHAPTER ONE (#ue26a68d7-a098-5483-ad58-5061bf115787)
CHAPTER TWO (#u6fb23bf5-aa32-53eb-b47a-13dccf0139d8)
CHAPTER THREE (#u29eeff07-0032-5e7b-9b30-219df5d959c7)
CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#ueeeab427-4172-5225-adf9-a6c342c9f71d)
‘REALLY, RAFE.’ GRITTING her teeth to stay calm, Rae hurried behind her half-brother’s long strides as he burned through the Rawlstone Group’s UK headquarters. ‘I appreciate you’re only looking out for me, but I really don’t need a bodyguard. Especially around Christmas.’
Her stomach roiled at the mere thought of another bodyguard. Even after all these years.
‘I’m sorry, Rae.’ He sounded genuinely regretful. ‘If there were any other way...’
‘There has to be,’ she pleaded. ‘Please, Rafe, you know the press will take any excuse to rake up the past. They never believed in my innocence as it was, and I couldn’t bear it. Not again.’
Another stomach lurch. It was hard enough putting up with paparazzi dogging her daily life, pretending she didn’t care what lies they wrote about her, or how little the public thought of her. She certainly didn’t need to give them a reason to rerun all those stories of her utterly spectacular plummet into shame almost fourteen years ago.
No matter what she’d done to try to redeem herself, they had refused to believe that she’d known nothing about the sex tape, let alone leaked it. It had taken her ten years and a career in medicine to get them to finally stop linking her—usually scandalously—to every Hollywood A-lister, every rock musician, or every trust-fund kid in whose presence she was spotted.
It hadn’t mattered that she’d barely even exchanged a word with some of them, let alone dated them. Sex sold. Scandal sold. That was all that mattered to them for so, so long. Only in the last four years had they finally, reluctantly, begun to come around to her side.
A bodyguard would undo all that good work. She could just read the headlines now.
Scarlet woman Raevenne Rawlstone finally takes a new bodyguard. Will he be as undercover as the last one?
And that would be one of the tamer offerings.
Hot shame flooded her body as X-rated images, intimate moments that never had been anything but private, filled her brain.
‘I can’t have another bodyguard,’ she choked out. ‘I won’t.’
Abruptly, her legs gave out and she just about made it to the wall for support, the old stonework rough beneath her hands. She’d trailed her fingers over their cool surface many times in the past, but tonight they seemed colder than usual, sapping her body heat as unseen edges cut into her skin. Rae withdrew her hand abruptly.
She usually loved visiting Rafe here. The offices might be as super high-tech as every other square millimetre of real estate in the company’s portfolio, but Rafe’s flair for restoring vast, old buildings, with their inspiring architecture, always had her gasping with admiration.
Today, however, she barely noticed the glorious stonework or vaulted ceilings. December was in a matter of weeks and yet she couldn’t envisage the festive lights and decorations that would go transform this place into something infinitely magical. She didn’t even think about the fact that, when the offices closed their proverbial business doors for the Christmas shutdown, Rafe would open the physical doors to the house and feed the homeless, the way he always did for those ten days.
Her half-brother was moving back to her, reaching out to cup her shoulder, the closest he came to a hug. None of the Rawlstone clan found it easy to show emotion—an overhang from their mutual father, the cold and remote Ronald Rawlstone—but she and Rafe both knew they cared about each other.
‘We’ll deal with the press if we need to. You won’t be alone, Rae. But I told you, I received a death threat the other day.’
‘We always receive death threats.’ She waved her hands desperately. ‘We’re Rawlstones.’
Or at least her side of the Rawlstone family always received death threats. Her limelight-loving sisters and mother had made it their mission with their Life in the Rawl reality show.
By contrast their half-brother, Rafe, CEO of the Rawlstone Group and former British army officer, was generally universally adored. At least by the press and public.
‘This one is credible,’ he replied simply. ‘So, it’s precisely because it is Christmas that I need to know you’re safe. Especially with all the festive fundraisers and seasonal socials you’ll no doubt be compelled to attend. Your sisters already have bigger personal protection details than even they need, as does your mother. It’s you I worry about.’
She stared miserably at some fixed point on the stonework that her eyes didn’t even see. ‘They’ll bring it all back up...what happened with Justin.’
The images flashed up again and she squeezed her eyes shut. It didn’t help. She could still see it. The moment she’d lost her virginity played out on social media for the world to see.
She might have gagged, she couldn’t be sure, but suddenly she was wrapped in a tight, if awkward, embrace.
‘The guy was a piece of scum.’ Controlled fury laced his voice along with a thread of guilt, and she hated that her half-brother felt even slightly responsible for the mistakes she’d made so many years ago. ‘I’ll never let anything like that happen to you again.’
‘You can’t promise that.’ Her voice sounded more strained than she would have preferred.
‘I can.’ Releasing her slightly, Rafe took a step back. ‘I personally requested the guy I’ve chosen to be our bodyguard. I trust him. He’s a major from my army days.’
Her heart actually stopped beating for a moment.
And another.
It took everything she had to tell herself not to be so foolish. That it couldn’t possibly be. And still her throat was thick, constricted, her tongue too big for her mouth, when she replied.
‘He’s some major or other from your army days?’
‘Not some major,’ Rafe disapproved. ‘Myles is one of the best officers I had the pleasure to serve with.
Everything receded. Went black.
She had no idea how long she stood there but when she came back, squeezing her eyes closed, she was eternally grateful that Rafe was too busy marching along to have turned around to look at her.
There seemed little point in trying to soothe and corral her skittering heart but she made a valiant effort nonetheless.
‘Myles.’
As if, perhaps, it could possibly be a different Myles.
‘That’s right, Major Myles Garrington.’ She could practically hear Rafe’s eye-roll. ‘I mentioned it was him before. Keep up, Rae.’
‘You didn’t,’ she managed feebly.
Myles. Numbness crept over her, but she had to hold herself together. Especially in front of Rafe. Her half-brother’s opinion was the only one that mattered to her these days; she certainly couldn’t let him know how she’d thrown herself at his best friend all those years ago.
She managed to stumble after him.
‘Oh, well, no matter.’ Rafe was oblivious. ‘Myles is a decent bloke—you’ll like him. You might not remember but you even met him once. He came with me the one and only Christmas holiday I spent with your family...oh, probably fifteen years ago now.’
Actually, fifteen years and two months ago. Not that she was counting. Much.
It was the only Christmas that Rafe had come to his half-family’s home. It had been at their mutual father’s insistence. As though the shocking death of his first wife had made Ronald Rawlstone suddenly remember the son he’d had little contact with—other than sending monthly financial support—for the best part of two decades.
She still didn’t know why Rafe had agreed—duty, probably, her half-brother had a strong sense of duty—she only knew that he’d brought his best friend, a fellow junior army officer, with him.
Myles Garrington.
He had changed her life in so many ways. Not all of them good.
And how humiliating that the numbness was only now beginning to recede because her traitorous body was already tingling at the memories of Myles that began to lace their way into her brain. Memories she’d spent fifteen years trying to bury.
The attraction between her and Myles when he’d walked into the Rawlstone family home with Rafe had been instantaneous. Its intensity had side-swiped her, and at seventeen—barely a few months off eighteen—it had been long overdue. Myles had just turned twenty-one, a medical student at uni, and already a junior officer in the British army. He’d seemed so much wiser and more mature than the American boys from her high school, and she’d fallen so very hard, so very fast. She’d genuinely believed him to be her first love. With the benefit of hindsight, of course, she recognised it for what it had really been...her first intense crush. Nothing more.
But still, when she looked back over that Christmas holiday she knew she’d acted wantonly. Then again, he hadn’t exactly beaten her off him.
Except for that last night.
‘Anyway,’ the usually astute Rafe continued, his pace unrelenting, ‘Myles was one of the best officers the British army had.’
‘Had?’
A sense of foreboding crept over her. Being an army trauma doctor had been Myles’ sole focus in life. She couldn’t imagine him ever leaving of his own volition.
‘He left six months ago.’
‘Why?’
To most other people it would have been indiscernible, but Rae didn’t miss Rafe’s uncharacteristic beat of hesitation.
‘There was a village. A fire. One of the riflemen protecting Myles’ medical team...died. Myles was injured badly, too... His hand. He couldn’t operate for a while but he couldn’t stand the idea of getting stuck behind a desk. Possibly there was a degree of survivor’s guilt, too. He’d been going through the process of coming to the States anyway so taking a clinical observation post under your supervision means he can still do that whilst also protecting you around the clock.’
‘Round the clock?’ She gasped. ‘He can’t live with me.’
‘Do you want to stay safe, or would you prefer to pander to your sensibilities?’
‘Rafe—’
‘Relax.’ He cut her off with a half-smile. ‘I don’t mean to needle you. For the moment it seems this threat is UK-based, so he’ll accompany you to your lecture tonight and on the private jet back to the States tomorrow. But he won’t need to live with you... I’ve purchased the property next door.’
There was no reason for her to feel so panicked. No reason at all. And if there was, she told herself firmly, it was at the idea that people had been hurt. Not at the thought of being in Myles’ company twenty-four seven.
‘Wait, you said Myles was hurt?’
Clearly there was more to it than that but it was little comfort to know her instincts had been correct. Still, since Rafe hadn’t stopped pounding along the corridors leaving Rae’s legs burning as she tried to keep up, this wasn’t going to be the ideal time to press him on it.
‘Wind your neck in, Rae. I didn’t say that.’
It was so far from Rafe’s usual lexicon that there was no missing his agitation. Which perhaps helped to explain why he apparently hadn’t noticed she’d gone from pretending not to remember Myles to showing fear he had been hurt.
Ironically, that only stirred her up all the more. Still, she needed to be more careful. More blasé.
‘Wind my neck in?’ She fought back her agitation to teasing him, shedding her American accent in order to imitate his vaguely plummy English pitch. ‘My dear brother, I do believe you’re the one who had me practically frogmarched from my thirty-six-hour shift at the hospital onto your private jet and flown across the Atlantic. Yet I’m the one who needs to “wind my neck in”?’
‘Funny, Rae.’ She could almost hear him roll his eyes at her. ‘Your impersonation leaves a lot to be desired. You could take the Dick Van Dyke award for abysmal cockney accents. I’ll warn Myles.’
She forced a laugh and told herself she wasn’t getting anxious. She had to pretend that his existence meant absolutely nothing to her.
Which, of course, it did.
It was only galling that she didn’t find herself remotely convincing.
‘Fine.’ She forced a dazzling grin even though her half-brother couldn’t see her. ‘You try my accent. I bet you can’t sound like a New Yorker.’
‘Rae,’ he cautioned.
‘Seriously, give it a try.’
‘Raevenne.’ He stopped at last, turning around to face her, his hands on her shoulders. ‘Stop panicking.’
Her stomach somersaulted again. Her half-brother knew? Surely that was impossible.
She was only relieved she’d slept most of the plane journey and her shift at the hospital had been so busy that she hadn’t eaten more than a biscuit for the last eighteen hours. At least it meant there was nothing to regurgitate.
‘Who said I’m panicking?’ Her shrill voice didn’t help and she stopped abruptly.
The silence was practically pressing in on her as she nonetheless followed Rafe up the stairs to his office in the panoramic suite on the tenth floor. He never took an elevator if he could take the stairs. One of the few overhangs he couldn’t conceal from his years in conflict zones as a frontline officer in the British army. Thank goodness for her own daily cardio sessions at the exclusive gym uptown.
And for the fact that they weren’t in the Manhattan office with its sixty-five storeys.
Then, all too soon, they were standing in the anteroom to Rafe’s office, her heart threatening to pound out of her chest at any moment.
Myles was on the other side of the door and she wasn’t ready for this. She wasn’t ready to face him. To see even a shadow of disgust or condemnation in his expression.
Rafe’s hand reached for the door handle.
‘I can’t...’ she choked out, stumbling backwards.
‘Well, if you can’t do it for yourself, or even for me, then do it for Myles, Rae. He’d never say it but I think he needs us. The firefight was bad, Rae, it took Myles out for months whilst he wasn’t able to operate.’
A surgeon who couldn’t operate? Myles unable to operate? It didn’t bear thinking about.
She’d been ready for Rafe’s cajoling, even for him to order her in. But she hadn’t been prepared for him to lay such a perfect trap. It was her Achilles heel. If someone needed her help, she could never deny them. Rafe had known it, and he’d baited her shamelessly.
‘What’s going on, Rafe?’ She glowered at him even as she was compelled to ask the question, but Rafe simply shook his head.
‘It isn’t my story to tell.’
Frustration rushed her, but she was determined to hold her nerve. At least, outwardly.
‘If you want me to agree to this—’ she was amazed she managed to make it sound as if she were actually in control—as though her body hadn’t been turning itself inside out, caught between longing and sheer terror, from the moment she’d discovered that Myles was even in the building ‘—then you’ll tell me exactly what’s going on. Now.’
* * *
Myles could hear them, out in the corridor. Talking quietly.
He couldn’t make out the words but the context was unmistakeable. The higher, female voice, clearly Rae’s, was demanding. Rafe’s deeper voice was firm but uncharacteristically urgent. Myles gripped the sides of the plush chair and shifted awkwardly.
Why the hell had he ever agreed to this?
An image of Raevenne hovered in the back of his mind but he pushed it easily aside.
Ridiculous.
He wasn’t here for her. He was here because he had no other choice. Because he needed a job that took him away from battlefields and death, and Rafe, his former best friend, had offered him exactly that. And because his painstakingly constructed life had unravelled so incalculably these past six months.
Almost seventeen years in the British army—where he’d thought he would stay his whole life—over. Just like that.
Guilt pressed in on him.
Heavy.
Suffocating.
He blocked out the images—the smell of burning flesh, the village burned to the ground, young Lance Corporal Mike McCoy—which threatened to overwhelm him. Blackness closed over him and for a dangerous moment he swayed on the spot.
Only his subconscious fighting to lock on the familiar, feminine voice, muffled as it was through the door, provided him an anchor to the present.
He grasped at it gratefully.
One day at a time. Wasn’t that the advice he’d given out, time and again over the years, to soldiers in his position? Never imagining that one day it would be him standing there, his life having imploded and now lying in tatters around him.
But this wasn’t the army. Or what had happened out there. This was simple, uncomplicated, repaying an old debt to a good friend. Playing bodyguard whilst Rafe tracked down exactly who was threatening his family.
And right now, being a bodyguard beat being a surgeon hands down. True, part of Rafe’s plan included clinical observation but he could handle that. Observation was one thing. It was staying an active surgeon right now that certainly wasn’t an option.
An operating room with a body on the table in front of him and a scalpel in his hand was no place for a man who suspected he was on the edge of mild PTSD. His heart hammered angrily at the mere thought of it. At such an obvious sign of his own weakness. But those tours of duty had taken so many men and women he knew, so many innocent kids, so many helpless civilians, particularly that last week. And especially that last mission.
When perhaps he could have...should have...made different choices.
All those women, those kids. Mikey. It had taken them all.
Did it have to have taken part of his soul, too?
The sounds in the hallway provided a sudden, welcome distraction from his uncharacteristic moment of self-pity.
Ten operational tours in the past twelve years alone, sometimes back-to-back, and never once had he allowed himself to look back and dwell. Everybody knew that was the road to self-destruction because it wouldn’t bring anybody back and it was a waste of time.
Galvanised, he pushed himself out of the seat and stalked across the floor just as the door swung open and the familiar form of his former army buddy strode in. But it was the figure slinking in behind Rafe—her head resolutely down—that arrested his gaze.
Raevenne Rawlstone.
He hadn’t thought about her in years.
Liar.
He ignored the silent accusation.
But he had shoved memories of her, of that one Christmas together, to the back of his mind. Yet now, having heard Rae’s muffled yet nevertheless unmistakeable voice through the door, he found he couldn’t stuff her back into whatever cold corner of his mind in which she’d been lurking all these years.
It was insane. Objectionable. Unacceptable. And yet, it seemed, here he was.
He wasn’t aware that he’d crossed the room towards her until she lifted her head—those unmistakeable laurel-green eyes with their perfect, moss-green edging that had haunted him far more than he had ever cared to admit—and finally met his stare full-on.
His breath lodged, as though he were winded, as though seeing her for the first time in fifteen years. Innocent and fragile. So far removed from those gossip columns, those entertainment channels, that awful Life in the Rawl reality show.
He’d tried to escape them but it hadn’t been easy. When you were out in a conflict zone it was amazing what light escapism soldiers found entertaining. And still, it made him grit his teeth so hard he was surprised his jaw didn’t break.
‘Ma’am,’ he ground out stiffly before his brain got into gear.
It was ridiculous given how they’d once known each other, and he wasn’t surprised she hesitated before sliding her smaller palm against his and managing a stiff handshake.
‘Major.’
Was that a jolt of...something...surging through him?
Impossible.
So why was he having to fight himself not to snatch his hand away?
Myles glanced back at her.
He had no words to articulate why he felt so upended. Or even what it was. Which was when she opened her mouth and bit out, ‘I don’t want you as my bodyguard.’
Not quite that fragile, then.
Something else tipped sideways within him and suddenly, bizarrely, he found himself fighting a faint smile that toyed on his lips.
He thrust the odd sensation aside, reaching instead for his more familiar cloak of dispassion and finding something slightly less reassuring. It was all he could do to school his features.
‘Something wrong?’
She cocked her head to the side as if actually contemplating it.
It occurred to him that he hadn’t had anyone evaluate him like this in a long, long time. Ever since he’d been a desperate recruit, prepared to leopard crawl from Fort William to Cape Wrath if it meant winning an army bursary to study medicine.
‘I think I might prefer someone who looks like they could handle a shoving, unruly crowd. Someone more...’
Belatedly, he realised she was deliberately trying to insult him.
‘More?’ He arched one eyebrow as though indulging a silly, petulant child, which, he reminded himself, was exactly how he saw her.
‘Yes, you know, more...’ She waved her hand airily. ‘Bigger, more intimidating.’
‘Is that so?’
‘That’s....so.’ She flicked out her tongue and the movement snagged his gaze. Inexplicably he couldn’t seem to draw his eyes away.
‘Indeed? Well, if you’re worried that you aren’t going to be...safe enough with me, I can assure you that I have no intention of letting anyone go near you.’
Including himself, he concluded haughtily, and it felt like an odd kind of triumph. Almost as if they were sparring again, the way they had done all those Christmases ago.
What the hell was going on, here?
‘That aside,’ she stated primly, ‘are you always this high-handed and condescending? Or is it just because it’s me?’
The flashes of the Raevenne he used to know weren’t doing much to help his sense of self-control. Oddly, it was as if a light were suddenly glinting through him, casting tiny spots of illumination and colour on a darkness that had been growing for too long.
A part of him wanted to lean towards that light.
A bigger part of him wanted to extinguish it.
‘Not usually. Then again, I don’t often come across someone so infamously flippant and disparaging.’
She glowered at him, and instead of it confirming every last, negative rumour he’d ever heard, he found himself oddly drawn to her. Still, he held his ground.
He wasn’t sure who was more startled when Rafe cut in, clearly amused.
‘Glad you still remember how to handle my sister’s prickly side.’
It was testament to how much his old friend thought of his half-sister that he dispensed with the half part of the title.
Interesting.
‘Seems so.’ Myles forced a lightness into his tone. He wasn’t sure why, but he couldn’t allow Rafe to see there was any issue between him and Rae.
‘Good, then there’s an urgent business call I really need to make. I’ll see you both tonight at the conference. Good luck, Rae. I know your lecture will be incredible.’
Then Rafe was gone, leaving the two of them alone in the plush office suite.
For several long moments neither of them spoke.
‘So,’ Myles finally broke the silence, fighting the urge to clear his throat, ‘you’re a doctor now?’
CHAPTER TWO (#ueeeab427-4172-5225-adf9-a6c342c9f71d)
HE HADN’T INTENDED the emphasis on now. Hadn’t meant to sound so disparaging. But the storm raging in his head wasn’t letting him think straight.
‘I am. Obstetrics and gynaecology.’ She lifted her head proudly and something kicked in his chest. ‘And I’m a good one, too. I’m also a maternal and foetal medicine specialist.’
She was actually sparkling. That moss-green edging in her eyes seemed more like a deeper navy blue right now, which had always meant her emotions were running high. He’d learned to read Rae through her eyes long, long ago.
‘So Rafe said.’ He wrenched himself back to the present.
‘Right.’ She bit her lip and it did something to his gut that it had no business doing.
‘He also told me you were giving a keynote speech at the World Precision Medicine Conference tonight.’
Her cheeks flushed again.
‘I am. And I heard you gave a brilliant lecture there a few years ago. I was meant to attend but...there was a medical emergency and I missed my plane.’
She offered a rueful grin and suddenly it occurred to him that whatever stories the media told—however they touched on her medical career but focussed on her personal life—Rae was utterly invested in her career as a doctor.
This, Myles realised with a start, was more like the Raevenne he remembered from all those years ago.
The rest of the world might know her as the girl who had catapulted her despicable side of the Rawlstone family onto the reality scene with a sex tape of her eighteen-year-old self and her twenty-eight-year-old bodyguard.
But that wasn’t the girl that he’d known. At least, not back then.
It wasn’t the sweet, blushing seventeen-year-old with whom he’d felt an attraction from the moment Rafe had introduced them. He’d tried to fight it, of course—Rafe had been his best mate, but even at seventeen she’d seemed far older, far more mature, than her years. The three years between them had melted away and, cooped up in that house trying to stay away from the rest of Rafe’s god-awful half-family—from the self-serving mother to the callous father so wretchedly similar to his own—he and Rae had forged a bond.
And then, despite his best intentions, the heady glances had evolved to fleeting touches, stolen kisses, and something so much more intense. He’d wanted her with such a ferocity, as he’d wanted no other woman before.
Probably as he’d wanted no other woman since, either.
It had taken a supreme effort to eject her from his room that night, even as he’d been physically aching to do something altogether different. It might have been legally acceptable, but it was still wrong in Myles’ mind. She’d been too young besides being Rafe’s sister. Neither argument had gone down well with Rae that night.
And all the while she’d been standing there in the flimsiest scraps of lace and his body had been under no illusions about how much he’d wanted her.
Even now, at the mere memory, his body tensed, coiled, like steel bands cinched tight on machinery, barely harnessing hundreds of pounds of pressure. The chemistry between him and Rae had been instantaneous. He’d tried to fight it, but it had been like nothing he’d ever experienced before. Its intensity had rocked him and it had only been the fact that she was his best friend’s half-sister that had enabled Myles to walk away from her that last night when she’d offered herself to him completely. When she’d offered him the precious gift of her virginity.
That and the fact that he’d thought she deserved better than someone like him who might sleep with her once or twice and then would be gone. He’d thought she thought more of herself than to want someone like that.
And then she’d gone and not only thrown her virginity away on some wide boy like that bouncer, but she’d filmed it and leaked it to the press, as well.
Instantly he shut down the quiet doubt that had always nagged in the back of his mind.
Rafe had always claimed his half-sister had been innocent, but if that were true Rae herself would have told her side of it a long time ago.
He’d fallen for that innocent act once before. Surely he wasn’t stupid enough to let himself be taken in by it a second time?
‘I’m here because your brother asked for my help.’ He injected a deliberately harder tone into his voice, reminding himself that nowadays he was immune to that look of hurt that skittered across her face. ‘Not to blow smoke up each other’s backsides.’
She blanched, but he had to admire the way she jutted her chin out that little bit more.
‘I was merely complimenting a colleague. I had no idea it was so offensive to you.’
Her self-assurance was heady. He hadn’t been prepared for quite how much of a woman Rae had grown into. But he could resist her, he’d proven it that night when the temptation had been immense.
So why, after all these years, did something still scrape away inside him making him feel raw and...edgy?
‘I’m not here for you.’ Was he repeating it for her benefit, or for his own? ‘I’m here because Rafe asked me to be.’
‘The same way you came to our home all those Christmases ago, because Rafe hadn’t wanted to spend the holidays alone with his new stepfamily after his mother had just died?’ she challenged.
‘Rafe and I were recruits together. We did officers’ training together.’ Myles shrugged. ‘They break down the individual and build up a team.’
‘Is that why you tried to talk Rafe out of leaving when the stipulations in my father’s will forced him to leave the British army and move to America to take over the Rawlstone Group instead?’
‘Being an officer in the army was the one thing your old man knew Rafe truly loved. It was a power play from the grave.’
‘Obviously.’ She let out a humourless laugh. ‘But why did you care so much?’
For a moment, Myles almost didn’t answer.
‘Because when I was on a medical mission that went south, Rafe’s infantry unit was there. I owe my life to your brother.’
‘Which is why you couldn’t refuse his request to play at being my bodyguard.’
Something skittered over her features, too fast for him to read.
‘Yes,’ he bit out, instead.
He just hadn’t banked on that old attraction roaring into life at the mere sound of her voice through a door. A chemistry like a volcano that had lain dormant for so long that it had fooled even himself into thinking it was extinct, but which now rumbled and heated and swelled within him.
And she was looking at him as though she felt exactly the same way.
‘I’m glad it’s you,’ she whispered suddenly. ‘I don’t think I could have gone through with this if Rafe had found anyone else to play the part.’
Dammit, she was creeping under his skin and he didn’t think she even knew it.
He couldn’t allow her to know he still looked at her like that. That he still thought of her the way he had done fifteen years ago. That he still thought of her at all.
He tried reminding himself that his career as an army surgeon was all he’d ever needed.
But then he remembered that was gone, now—blown apart in an instant—and he had nothing.
Nothing to be proud of any more. Nothing to offer. Not to any woman, but certainly not to Rae. So, if he couldn’t keep his tone even, controlled, neutral, then he was going to have to go the other way.
He was going to have to ensure that the last thing Rae wanted to do was revisit old haunts best left to rest.
‘I owe Rafe. And if that means taking on the role of discreet bodyguard to his half-sister—’ the words were deliberate, as if to wedge even more distance between them ‘—then I will. But believe me, Rae, as soon as it’s over I’ll be back out of your life faster than you can even turn around.’
* * *
Rae couldn’t move, could barely even breathe, and she had no idea how she’d managed to answer him. Caught in a fist so tight that it felt as though it was crushing her soul right out of her chest.
She swallowed hard and plunged in.
‘Fine. Then...we keep it strictly professional.’
‘That would be best.’
He didn’t blink, didn’t even move. There was no trace at all that he even remembered the kisses they’d shared. The way he’d made her body come to life as no man ever had before.
Or since.
‘Rafe mentioned that you’ve already completed the necessary qualifications and that you and he have been discussing a clinical observation role for some months already?’
‘I’m weighing my options,’ Myles confirmed curtly.
A coldness crept over her skin; the sense that he was trying to shut her out as much as possible. It shouldn’t hurt. But it did.
She fought to peel her eyes off the man who stood, more imposing and mouth-watering than ever, in front of her. She failed.
He looked well.
Actually, he looked more than well. She wasn’t sure when they’d closed the gap between them again, but he was so close now she had to tilt her head right up to maintain eye contact. To prove she wasn’t really as intimidated as she felt. To pretend her heart wasn’t doing odd...flippy things.
Myles was tall. She’d forgotten quite how tall. She wasn’t exactly short to start with, but even wearing heels as she was, he still towered above her. Six feet three with shoulders wide enough to block out the view from even the expansive picture window behind him, but then a V-shaped chest tapered to a narrower waist, more athletic-fit than body-builder-fit, and powerful thighs encased in dark trousers. Familiar, and yet at the same time different.
His body itself looked like a weapon—precisely honed and utterly lethal, but it was more than that. He’d grown up, she realised with a start, and now he was more honed, more powerful, more...dangerous.
He positively exuded dominance, strength, control. As they stood there glowering at each other it was as though the last decade and a half toppled away without warning.
‘I’m sorry.’
The apology was out before she even knew the words were on her tongue. But his scowl only deepened.
‘What for?’
Rae hesitated. What had she meant? That night? Justin? Whatever had happened to Myles’ distinguished army career?
Ultimately she shook her head, unable to articulate the thoughts that lurked in the fog of her mind, and the fringe that she’d been growing out, which was too long to be bangs but too short to tie back into her trademark ponytail, fell forward from behind her ear.
For a split second she thought his hand moved, as though about to tuck the hair back into place. And then she realised he was merely lifting his arms to fold across his chest, even as he took a step back. Putting more space between them, leaving her inexplicably bereft.
Had she imagined that instinctive, smouldering gaze from Myles? She must have, because the look he was casting her right now was, at best, one of distaste. At worst...
God, she still wanted him.
Realisation crashed over her like an icy wave on a scorching day. Because if she still wanted him, after everything, then she was as much in danger of making a fool of herself in front of the man as she had ever been.
And that simply couldn’t happen.
Heat scorched her cheeks as Rae remembered the way she’d crept into Myles’ room practically naked that last night and offered herself to him in the most intimate way she possibly could. He’d responded so urgently, so demandingly, so loaded with intent, she’d been lost in the moment and totally unprepared when he’d wrenched himself away, bundled her up into the quilt from the end of his guest suite bed, and pushed her unceremoniously back out into the corridor, slamming his bedroom door in her face.
He’d rejected her. Without a word of explanation. And she’d felt as though her world had crashed around her. The fact that he and Rafe had left the next day for some army exercise had meant that there had been no chance for her to get answers, and so for months she’d shut herself away wondering what was wrong with her. If she wasn’t pretty enough, or sexy enough, or experienced enough.
Nonetheless, a bruised self-confidence didn’t excuse the fact that she’d been stupid enough to fall for lies from a piece of trash like Justin. How had she ever thought that he could make her feel like an attractive woman again?
‘You’re sorry for what, Rae?’ he repeated, his voice harsher than ever.
But if she couldn’t explain it to herself, how could she explain it to Myles?
In all these years she’d never once explained herself to the press. Never once tried to put forward her side of that story. Not least because she knew no one would listen. Or if they did, they would spin it so that somehow she ended up coming out even worse.
Stupid, as well as scandalous.
More than that, if she’d told the truth, said that she’d known nothing about the camera, then it would have been a criminal offence and there would have had to have been a legal case.
Inevitably there would have been a character assassination of her, and even back then Rae had known that if the police and press had delved into her, then they might have found out about Myles.
She would have ruined his friendship with her half-brother, dragged his reputation through the mud, and even harmed his army career. All because she hadn’t seen Justin for what he really was...a lying, scheming lowlife who just thought he could use her connection to Life in the Rawl to get his own fifteen minutes of fame.
Plus, she’d figured the less drama, the quicker it would all die down.
She’d been wrong. It had been too juicy for the press to let go of. It was only in the last few years of her becoming a fully-fledged doctor and OBGYN that they had finally begun to leave her alone and stop trying to connect her to any decent-looking male with a healthy pulse.
The silver lining, if she could call it that, was that she’d long since learned to own her mistakes. Own the woman those awful experiences had moulded her into. It had become her armour, her best emotional defence. And right now, with her head swirling wildly and thoughts jostling impatiently, she needed some way to buy herself time before she blurted everything out to him without first preparing the ground, and inevitably ruining her one opportunity to make him understand.
She needed something familiar. She needed some kind of anchor.
Even if a part of her knew that anchor was actually a tub of cement shoes ready to drown her at any moment.
She tipped her head almost coquettishly and pulled her shoulders back in the kind of deliberately provocative move her sisters executed to devastating effect on practically a daily basis, but which she hadn’t used in years.
‘Forget it.’ She even managed to force the beginnings of a wicked little smile, even if her cheeks did feel tight and unwilling. ‘I wasn’t really thinking.’
Myles locked his jaw and she could practically see the tiny pulse flickering away.
‘Of course not,’ he ground out. ‘Because why change the habit of a lifetime?’
‘Why indeed?’
She didn’t care that he was staring at her as though she were a fleck of contemptible mud on the toe of one of his polished army boots. Really she didn’t.
Not, she imagined, that he would ever tolerate any form of dirt on his parade boots.
And it didn’t twist inside her to know that he, like pretty much the rest of the world, actually believed that she had ever had any part in that vile sex tape. There was no reason for this shameful heat that spread over her cheeks. She’d long since mastered the art of pretending that it didn’t get to her. If she could fool the press, the public, then she could certainly fool Myles.
Tilting her head that little bit higher, Rae forced herself—however many knives stabbed into the dark hollow where her soul had once been—to meet his glower.
As if she were simply playing the game he evidently thought she was playing, although her voice damn near cracked when she answered him.
Myles narrowed his eyes but she ignored it.
‘Well, now we have those pleasantries out of the way—’ she rolled her eyes to make her point ‘—I think it’s time for me to go. I have a lecture to get ready for. Doctor or not, I find the press prefer glamorous photos to dowdy shots.’
‘Is that so?’ Myles pursed his lips and she knew he was thinking of the sex tape.
Just as she’d intended, she told herself.
It was the only way.
Other than Rafe, Myles was the only other man alive who she’d ever wanted to impress. She couldn’t explain it, but in some perverse way she would prefer he hated her for the choices he thought she had made, than know she was so pathetic that she’d let someone like Justin play her.
She scowled at him, and in that moment something crossed his face, pulling his features and making her look again.
She realised abruptly that he didn’t look as well as she’d initially thought. Or, more accurately, he looked physically incredible, but non-physically...?
Her heart kicked before she could stop it and it was all she could do not to reach out and touch his tense, strained face. His eyes were darker than she remembered. Bleaker. Grim and laced with pain.
Her head swam with echoes of her half-brother’s words outside the doors just before they’d entered the room. That Myles needed their help.
She had known that Myles had spent most of his career as a battlefield trauma surgeon with a specialty in plastic surgery—specifically with burns from bombs, IEDs and mines. But hearing that Myles had been caught up in it, injured so badly that he’d chosen to leave the army altogether rather than fly a desk, was sickening.
It had been awful hearing Rafe tell her that Myles, having been authorised to return to operating, had turned down lucrative job offers with hospitals up and down the UK, as well as opportunities in multiple top US hospitals.
It had taken her a while to understand what Rafe had been suggesting.
‘I think that right now Myles needs to see other specialties of medicine.’ Rafe’s caginess had snagged her attention. ‘I need you to help him, Rae.’
It was the closest she’d ever heard her half-brother get to a plea.
‘Let him see a different side to being a surgeon. One which doesn’t involve suicide bombers, and maimed kids, and putting your closest buddies in a body bag.’
She’d felt sick on Myles’ behalf.
She could have told her brother that being an OBGYN wasn’t all hearts and flowers; that death touched this area of medicine, too. But somehow it didn’t seem the same. Especially when she remembered the look on Rafe’s face when he’d told her that a lance corporal, a mere kid, had taken his own life that day, and that he feared Myles blamed himself.
‘Is he right to?’ Rae had asked abruptly.
She hadn’t meant to, but she’d suddenly found that she was shaking and this was the only way she could stop it.
‘Of course not.’ Rafe had looked momentarily annoyed, before making a clear effort to soften his tone. ‘Please, Rae? You’d be solving two problems for me. You would be getting a bodyguard we can both trust. And you would potentially be helping the man who showed me how to be the best leader and soldier I could possibly be.’
The pain on his face had got to her. But it was nothing like the expression she was looking at right now on Myles’ face. Fifteen years ago she would have ached to steal that pain away for him. But not now, she told herself firmly. Not now.
Rae wasn’t sure she believed herself or why the words sounded so hollow in her head.
But still, she would do what Rafe had asked her to do. Not just because it was her half-brother asking, but because, deep down, they both knew she liked to fix people. She couldn’t fix her own life so she concentrated on others’. It was probably one of the reasons why being an OBGYN suited her so well. There were always dark moments but in this field the outcome was more often positive, especially when it entailed bringing a new life into the world, and into the arms of an ecstatic mother.
If that couldn’t shine some light into whatever dark pit Myles was in, then surely nothing could?
And the fact that she was the one helping him—that maybe she could prove to him she was a skilled, professional OBGYN and that the incident with Justin, for which she’d become infamous, was nothing more than a brief, shameful moment in her past—had nothing to do with it.
‘You know you can talk to me, Myles,’ she began impulsively. ‘I’m a good listener...whatever you’re going through.’
She knew immediately it had been the wrong thing to say.
‘Did you manage to sleep on the flight?’ he asked abruptly.
How she wished she could take her words back. Swallow them. Instead, she tried to regulate her breathing enough to answer.
‘Yes.’
Seven hours of blissful, uninterrupted sleep in the company jet’s bedroom suite had inarguably been more comfortable than the doctor’s accommodation at the New York clinic where she’d snatched the odd hour or so whilst pulling her second thirty-six-hour shift of the week.
‘Clearly it wasn’t enough—you still look tired.’ He peered at her, concerned.
It was hard to ooze the nonchalance for which she was so ironically well known when her whole body was going into overdrive at the mere suggestion of solicitude from him.
‘Gosh, thanks for the compliment.’
She even managed to keep her voice from shaking, but Myles ignored her dry tone.
‘You should look after yourself more.’ He apparently felt the need to hammer home the point.
Rae chastised herself for hoping for something more praiseworthy from him.
‘Says the man who, if you’re anything like my brother, exists on four hours’ sleep a night.’ She kept her laugh deliberately light.
He shrugged as though it was okay for him.
Her chest cracked.
So much for Myles being her bodyguard, meant to protect her, to ensure she didn’t get hurt. As far as Rae was concerned, he was the one person who could wound her more deeply than anyone else ever could.
Just as he had done before.
Clearly fifteen years had taught her absolutely nothing.
CHAPTER THREE (#ueeeab427-4172-5225-adf9-a6c342c9f71d)
‘CASE C CONCERNS emergency foetal intervention at twenty-five weeks and four days into the pregnancy, for a sacrococcygeal teratoma. That is, a congenital tumour growing at the base of the foetus’ spine. It is one of the most common tumours amongst neonatals, occurring in approximately one in every forty thousand babies. But because it arises from stem cells it can be made up of any kind of tissue from anywhere around the body.’
It took a while for Myles to realise that he was as caught up in her lecture, her enthusiasm for her subject matter, as everyone else in the ballroom.
She looked magnificent up there on the stage and holding the entire conference in silent rapture. He had hugely underestimated her. Underestimated the residual feelings that still ran between them, and now he was here. Paying the price.
He tuned back in, unable to help himself.
‘Ultrasound. And because the teratoma has a blood supply, the baby’s heart was pumping much harder. It was as if they were in competition and the tumour was winning, resulting in a significant risk of the baby going into cardiac arrest.’
Myles shifted his position.
He’d been a battlefield trauma surgeon for so long. He’d never imagined doing anything else. Never wanted to.
But that was before.
In seventeen years, nothing had quite got to him like that day with Mikey, and what had happened in that village. And, suddenly, he’d found himself never wanting to pick up another scalpel for the rest of his life. Not because he was afraid of what he might do. But more he was afraid of what he might no longer be able to do.
Ever.
PTSD. Not uncommon after so many back-to-back tours, and so many atrocities, but that didn’t make it any easier to accept. It didn’t make the idea of going back to operating any more appealing. Which was why accepting Rafe’s suggestion of clinical observation—a sort of halfway house—had made sense, even if he hadn’t actually liked the idea.
He had his qualifications. And it wasn’t as though he was doing anything else. The death threats to Rafe’s family had been the proverbial added bonus. The tie-in with Rae almost like fate. He focussed back on Rae.
‘The de-bulking of the tumour on the actual foetus usually takes less than half an hour,’ she was telling them. ‘The majority of the five-hour operation is spent opening up the uterus in the first instance, and then stitching it closed again. Our biggest concern is to avoid compromising the health of the mother, and we have to make sure the uterus is sealed and watertight.’
Fascinated, he allowed himself to be absorbed by her presentation. Her care for her patients shone through her excitement for the skilled procedure. She handled the questions well, informing without patronising, always happy to elaborate or explain.
For a moment, Myles forgot everything. Who he was. Where. Why. And just let his old enthusiasm for medicine begin to slowly unfurl. Then the ballroom erupted into applause, and Myles made his way backstage to meet her.
It hit him even before he turned around. The shift in the atmosphere, the way the air seemed to close in on him. When he turned around, she almost stole the breath from his lungs.
It wasn’t Rae’s looks that struck him, although she was certainly attractive. She’d always been attractive, and that hadn’t changed. But this was something more. A presence, an aura, for want of a better term. She carried herself better than she once had, but with none of the arrogant hauteur he’d been expecting.
Unsettled, he could only stare in silence for what was a split second but felt more like a minute; fighting the sensation that he was actually drowning in his own lungs.
When had they closed the gap between the two of them? And why did the unexpected proximity send a slew of memories cascading through his brain, all of which centred on the chemistry that had arced between them that Christmas, the hot glances and the bodies brushing against each other in the long corridors of that old house?
And now those shrewd eyes were assessing him. Judging him.
‘Good lecture. I’m glad to see that you’ve finally found something for which it’s worth being well known.’
It was a low, cruel blow, and he loathed himself for it. As though he was deliberately trying to goad her. To remind her of the girl who had leaked a sex tape, which Rafe had only found out about when some of his men had been watching it online, in the middle of a tour of duty.
To remind her of the girl who had offered him her virginity first.
What was he angrier about? That she hadn’t waited for him? Or that she’d rubbed his face in it by doing it for a sex tape for the world to see?
Or maybe he was trying to remind himself of that girl, since his body appeared to be reacting to her in a way of which his brain unquestionably disapproved.
She blinked, a faint stain spreading across her cheeks, and if he hadn’t known it to be impossible he’d have thought he saw a flash of shame and regret in those forest depths. But then it was gone and she eyed him with distaste.
‘Which is fortunate for you, since you’re to be shadowing me.’
He tried to pretend her voice didn’t tremble a little at the end. That she was still as strong as she was clearly pretending to be. Because otherwise it might make him soften all the more towards her.
And that wouldn’t be acceptable. There was clearly more wrong with his state of mind than he had feared.
Then she crossed her arms over her chest as if it could somehow provide her with some degree of armour, when all it really did was highlight the generous breasts Myles was unexpectedly having to fight to pretend he didn’t notice.
Lust barrelled through him. As shocking and unwelcome as it was unstoppable. Making his body fire up like a mark five thunder flash.
In some perverse way, he almost welcomed it. Ever since that last mission he’d been numb. Unable to feel, to want, anything. In the six months since he’d left the army he’d been existing, not living.
At least this—whatever this was—made a change from the hollow, empty nothingness that had swirled around his chest for so long now, like the dark waters moving perniciously beneath the blue marble of an ice road, ready to claim a life the moment that sheet barrier grew too thin. Ready to erupt in a blowout at the first opportunity.
It was time to open the memories on the girl he’d once known. To finally acknowledge that he might have been mistaken in what he’d thought about her all these years.
Almost against his better judgement, he found himself employing one of the skills he’d perfected so well throughout his career.
The ability to re-evaluate.
Her hair, as long, thick, and glossy brown as he remembered, was pulled back into an attractive yet practical ponytail thing. Her clothes were professional yet subtly sexy and she wore no false nails, or eyelashes, or caked-on make-up. In fact, he couldn’t be sure she was wearing any make-up at all, her face was so clear, so soft.
Horrified, he realised his fingers were actually itching to touch her, to see if she was as smooth as she looked. He balled them quickly and resisted the urge to shove them in his pockets. Yet her eyes flickered, as though she somehow knew.
His head was already a mess without the complication of attraction. He felt like that angry, desperate twenty-one-year-old all over again, not knowing where his life was heading but knowing he needed to take the only chance he had to get away from the nightmare childhood that had made nasty Ronald Rawlstone look like Father of the Year.
That Christmas with Rae had been the only time he’d ever stopped, and wondered, and wanted. Even if she’d never known it.
He needed to understand if he really had been a gullible idiot to have lain there that night and wondered if he should just walk out of his room, down that hallway, and risk it all to be with her.
‘I was with Rafe on his last tour of duty when your father died. When you leaked that ignominious sex tape,’ he said quietly. ‘I was with him when we walked in on men, soldiers under his command, watching you...frolic...on-screen.’
She blanched but he forced himself to go on. Pretending it hadn’t seared him as much as it had seared Rafe, if for very different reasons. Pretending he hadn’t harboured secret fantasies of returning to the US after his tour of duty and making good on the offer she’d presented him with on that crazy night.
If he pretended it was just about the way she’d let down Rafe, and not about his own hurt pride, then maybe it could be true.
‘Your brother...half-brother, had to command those men. Up until that moment, he’d been respected by those men. After that, things changed.’
‘I didn’t...’ She faltered, then stopped.
‘You didn’t what?’ Myles echoed.
But she didn’t answer. She simply shook her head.
And what galled him the most was that suddenly there was a small, hitherto non-existent part of him that desperately wanted to hear her say something, anything, to make it less unpalatable.
It made absolutely no sense. And yet he ached.
They were standing close. Too close. He could feel her breath on his chest, rapid and shallow. The temptation to step forward, to lift his hands to her face, to...what? Kiss her? That couldn’t happen.
He had no idea how he managed it, but, abruptly, he took a step backwards. Was the distance a blessing or a curse?
* * *
Rae stood motionless, silently willing Myles to stop moving away from her, though she couldn’t explain why.
Her eyes were still locked with his, which were the same intense colour as the most turquoise-blue waters that lapped at her favourite Caribbean island. Eyes that had plagued her darkest dreams for the last decade. He might as well have weaved some kind of spell over her at that first encounter all those years ago.
But, more than that, she’d seen the respect when he and her brother had approached each other, she’d heard the fondness, and suddenly she found herself craving it, too.
To be on the receiving end of a warm look from Major Myles Garrington, instead of a look that suggested he considered her on a par with the dirt on the sole of his shoe.
He’d changed so much in the last fifteen years. He was now so solid, so unyielding, so authoritative. And yet, in some way she couldn’t put her finger on, he hadn’t changed a bit.
It left her feeling strangely rattled. Undone.
‘You didn’t what?’ Myles pressed again.
She wanted to tell him that she wasn’t the woman the press made her out to be. That the only man she’d ever been intimate with had been Justin. That she’d thought herself in love. That he’d assured her he had been in love.
She could almost taste the words on her tongue, sweet syllables that could free her.
Or condemn her.
Because she knew what her reputation with the salivating press was. Knew what the public thought of her. And even if none of that were true, hadn’t she thrown herself at Myles that New Year’s Eve? Of course he was going to believe she was capable of doing exactly the same thing with Justin only months later.
He would never believe that wasn’t at all how it had happened that night.
The best thing she could do would be to forget any history with Myles. But surely it was impossible not to notice the man now looming in front of her? The man who had always been good-looking but who now made that term seem flimsy and two-dimensional.
His handsome qualities had long since segued into something more brooding, more weathered. His strong features now had character. They told a story. She was already spellbound, and it frightened her. Just like the lines etched softly onto his skin, which suggested he’d been places, seen things, done things. He was a hard, autocratic, lethal kind of handsome.
‘I didn’t frolic,’ she bit out abruptly.
His mouth curled ever so slightly, his antipathy surely evident. Yet inexplicably it only made her traitorous fingers twitch to reach out and touch those unusually bow-shaped lips; the dimple gave him the most glorious cleft chin.
Would it still feel the same as it once did beneath her fingertips?
Before, when she’d said she’d been expecting someone...more, it struck her that what she’d really meant was someone less. Someone who didn’t affect her anywhere near the way this one man affected her. Someone who didn’t make her feel as though she were searing from the inside out. Cauterised by his every mocking look, desiccating from his indifferent tone.
Just as she always had been.
‘Of course not,’ he replied silkily. ‘Because you’re the steadfast, quiet Rawlstone sister, with no press reputation at all. Forgive me but I forgot.’
She flashed her brightest smile.
The one that she had long ago learned best concealed all the hurt inside her.
She knew exactly what the press said about her, every line, every lie. Which made it a hard reputation to shake. Although, by God, she’d tried.
But whilst Rafe might appreciate how she’d struggled to distance herself from her mother and sisters all this time, the press weren’t always as understanding; the public not completely forgiving.
Neither was Myles, standing there, judging her as he was. She felt weighed and she felt measured, but what bothered her more was the shame flooding through her body at the realisation that this man...this man...found her deplorably wanting.
How was it that his opinion of her mattered so much more than that of hundreds, even thousands, of other people? The way he’d got under her skin with barely a word was shocking. Frightening. Not least because of last time. What was the matter with her? She wrinkled her nose in self-castigation, blurting words out before her brain had the chance to engage.
‘Why are you doing this, Myles? Just so you can taunt me?’ Her pitch was rising but she couldn’t seem to control it. ‘Just so you can remind me of the fool I made of myself when I crept into your room practically naked, stupidly—so stupidly—imagining that the kiss we’d shared earlier that evening meant you wanted me?’
‘This isn’t about that night,’ he rasped, his voice so unrecognisable that it took a moment for her to realise it really was him.
‘It isn’t?’ she whispered.
‘No, Raevenne, it’s definitely not about that night.’ There was no mistaking the look of utter disgust that contorted his features now.
She tried to rearm herself but it was too late, and his loathing smashed over her with deadly force.
‘I try not to remember that night. It isn’t difficult. It isn’t something I ever care to think about. I thought you were different, Rae, I thought you were someone else, someone worth being honourable for.’
‘Yeah, well, having a door slammed in my face certainly didn’t feel honourable.’
She didn’t know why she was fighting back. What she was hoping to achieve.
‘You offered me your virginity.’
‘I know what I did.’ Her whole body felt as though it were on fire. ‘And I know you practically laughed me out your room.’
‘I believed I was doing the right thing. I thought...’ He paused as if having to catch himself. ‘I thought your innocence meant more to you than it obviously did. I was leaving, as soon as that Christmas break was up and Rafe felt as though he’d done his duty. I felt you deserved more than someone who slept with you once or twice and then cut out, never to be seen again.’
‘It did mean something to me—’ she began.
A brash, humourless laugh, which she barely even recognised, cut her off.
‘Of course it did. So much so, in fact, that you not only slept with the next guy you dated-and I use that term very loosely-but you filmed the whole thing and leaked it on the Internet all in the name of fame.’
Nausea crashed over her and it was all she could do to fight it back. Still, she couldn’t stop herself from crying out.
‘I didn’t know anything about it. I didn’t know he was filming me. I certainly didn’t leak it. My God, is that really how little you think of me?’
‘That’s bull,’ Myles growled, ignoring her question. ‘If you hadn’t known anything about it then he would have been filming a sex act without consent. That’s a criminal offence. You would have said something. He would have been convicted. He should have been convicted. But instead you stayed quiet. You protected him. Why do that unless you were in on it, too?’
She wanted to tell him. She’d imagined this moment so very many times over the years. But the words wouldn’t come. Something seemed to be stopping her.
‘I was pathetic, naïve, desperate and I didn’t want to look any more of an idiot than I already did.’ The words tumbled out inelegantly.
The harsh bark was about as far from a laugh as it was possible to get.
‘Oh, come on, Rae. You can’t seriously expect anyone to believe that. You weren’t protecting yourself, you were protecting him.’
She shook her head, hating the very idea of that.
‘I wasn’t. I never protected him. I hate him. I...’ She bit her lip and then decided she had nothing left to lose. ‘I was protecting you.’
The silence that descended on them was so instant, so heavy, that for a moment she thought her eardrums had burst and all she could sense was a ringing in her head. For long, long moments they stood, eyes locked, perfectly still, and then Myles spoke.
‘Say again?’ Dark, forbidding. It wasn’t exactly the response she’d been hoping for.
Rae drew in a deep breath, her voice quaking unrecognisably.
‘I was protecting you,’ she practically whispered. ‘Just like you protected me that night when we were kids. You were so principled even though you were only three years older than me. Telling me I was too innocent, too young emotionally, that I might hate myself when you left, that I was Rafe’s sister.’
Not that it had made her feel any better, and less rejected, at the time. Even now she couldn’t shake the knowledge that if she’d been sexy and worldly like her sisters, even at seventeen, he couldn’t have walked away from her however principled he was.
But that was a truth she would always hug to herself. A truth too embarrassing to voice aloud to anyone. Ever.
He didn’t answer, but the locked jaw told her that he was barely containing his fury. She hurried on before he could say any words she didn’t want to hear.
‘If I had told people that I hadn’t consented then there would have had to have been an investigation. It would have been my word against his. They would have looked at my sexual history. And they might have found out about you.’
‘We didn’t do anything,’ Myles growled, his obvious contempt slicing through her more deeply than she could have thought imaginable.
In all her scenarios over the years, she’d never once considered that he wouldn’t believe her. How foolish that seemed now.
‘But they might not have believed we didn’t do anything,’ she cried. ‘And you know what they say about mud sticking. Your name would have been dragged into it whether we liked it or not. The press would have loved any whiff of scandal concerning a supposedly principled British army officer. The truth wouldn’t have mattered. Your reputation would have been tainted for ever.’
‘You really want me to believe you let people think and say everything they did about you to protect me?’
Disgust, and what looked terrifyingly like hatred, clouded his face. It was all Rae could do not to shrink away, even as something tore at her heart.
‘It’s the truth.’ She had no idea how she held her ground. ‘But it wasn’t just about you. Like I said, it was about me, too. Whatever I said wouldn’t have undone what had happened. That video would always be out there...will always be out there. And there would have been no guarantee they’d have believed me over Justin. So I tried to make the best out of it. I figured it would die down when the next scandal came along.’
She could never have imagined what a miscalculation that would be.
Probably about as gigantic a blunder as blurting out the truth now and allowing herself to think, even for a moment, that Myles would believe her.
Even forgive her.
Instead she found herself staring into the glacial depths.
‘Myles—’
‘I don’t want to hear any more.’ He cut her pleading off abruptly.
‘I really—’
‘I said enough, Raevenne.’
She bit her tongue. She could refuse to be cowed by him but what good would it do to force the issue? It would only make him shut down all the more.
If that was even possible.
So instead she stood still, too afraid even to shift her weight from one foot to the other, as if they were teetering on the edge of some abyss and the slightest movement could send them plummeting down.
She wasn’t even sure if she remembered to keep breathing.

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