She wasn’t even sure if she remembered to keep breathing.
And then, finally, Myles spoke.
‘This was a mistake.’
She opened her mouth to reply but he silenced her again.
‘You don’t want a bodyguard and I sure as hell don’t want to play one.’
Somehow, incredibly, given the maelstrom raging inside her chest, she stayed standing. Stayed...impassive.
‘I’ll tell Rafe this isn’t going to work.’
She should be pleased. Relieved. Wasn’t this what she’d told her half-brother less than twelve hours ago? That she didn’t want a bodyguard again, reminding the press of her past.
So why was a part of her silently screaming out to Myles not to do this?
‘I thought you said you owed him.’ She had no idea how she kept her voice from breaking.
‘I’ll find some other way to repay him,’ Myles bit out.
She opened her mouth, then closed it again.
She had no idea how long they stood there after that. It felt like a lifetime but it was probably no more than thirty seconds. Until the shrill sound of a mobile cut through the air, making Rae jump.
Was it her imagination or did Myles hesitate for a fraction of a moment before answering it?
‘Garrington.’ As his eyes lifted back to hers, his expression utterly impassive, something Rae couldn’t identify snaked through her. ‘When? How? Understood. Follow the SOPs, keep me apprised.’
He terminated the call, his focus still locked onto Rae. She ran a tongue over suddenly inexplicably dry lips.
‘What is it?’
‘Change of plan.’ His voice still gave nothing away, although for a brief moment something skittered across his features before it was gone. If she hadn’t known better she might have thought it was concern. ‘I’ll be your bodyguard for the foreseeable.’
She tried to control the panic rising inside her.
‘What’s going on, Myles?’
He paused for a moment before dipping his head in a ghost of a nod.
‘Your Manhattan home has been broken into. There’s a fair amount of damage.’
She was going to be sick.
‘Opportunists?’ she managed to get out.
‘At this point I don’t know. It could be coincidence, but I can’t rule out the possibility that it’s related to these death threats.’
‘Myles—’
‘Rafe has the company jet ready. You’ll need to get home to confirm as soon as possible if anything is missing so we have a better idea if it was a directed attack.’
‘I can’t.’ She shook her head frantically. ‘I can’t do this alone.’
Vaguely, she was aware of Myles taking her hand.
‘You won’t be alone, Rae.’ His voice sounded gritty, lower, but her head was spinning too much to be sure. ‘I’m not going anywhere. I won’t let anything happen to you.’
And with that he erased the confrontation of the last twelve hours as if it had never existed.
The tears came without warning, silent and hot, but suddenly she was stepping towards him, a part of her desperately needing his warmth and strength. And then his arms were around her and she was drawing comfort from him.
‘I can’t stay in the house,’ she muttered against the solid wall of his chest.
‘We’ll go to a hotel. I won’t leave your side.’
‘Promise me?’
He paused, and when he spoke again his grave voice rumbled deep inside her.
‘I promise, Rae.’
* * *
Later, much later, when she was alone in the company jet bedroom, she would remember that moment. The way he hadn’t exactly enfolded her in his arms willingly, but he hadn’t exactly pushed her away, either.
She would wonder at the sanity of staying in a hotel with him whilst her emotions seemed to be so scattered, so fluttery, and she would conclude that sleeping in the hospital’s on-call rooms would be infinitely safer, both mentally and physically.
And yet she would wonder if, after all, she might finally be able to convince him that she wasn’t the woman the world all too often made her out to be, but more like the girl he remembered from that Christmas all those years ago.
CHAPTER FOUR
‘COME ON. EMERGENCY C-SECTION.’ Rae spoke crisply as she hurried down the stairs to the operating rooms, taking the steps two at a time.
They’d barely spoken since that night she’d given the lecture back in the UK. The night when he’d come so close to letting her see just how easily she could wrap him around her little finger. Still.
The night he’d hit back the only way he’d known how, but which had given him no pleasure and had, if anything, made him feel like a complete bastard. Since then, he’d accompanied her to her home to check what had been stolen, all of which had confirmed his suspicion that the break-in wasn’t opportunists but was somehow connected to the death threats.
He’d stayed with her at the hospital whilst a team cleared up her home, but otherwise they’d only conversed on a medical basis.
He should be pleased. He should feel victorious. They had sidestepped the inappropriate attraction that, as ludicrous as it was, lurked between them even after all these years, and put things on a purely professional footing.
Instead he felt oddly deflated. Oddly...at sea.
It wasn’t just concern for her personal safety and the knowledge that Rafe’s fears weren’t entirely unfounded. Although he had to admit, both of these facts had affected him far more than they had any business doing.
It felt somehow more personal than it should do.
‘Veronica is a thirty-six-year-old parturient,’ Rae hurried on, forcing him to pull his head back into the game. ‘She arrived on the labour ward a few hours ago, five centimetres dilated and progressing nicely. However, she’s subsequently developed heavy bleeding and the baby’s heart rate began to drop dangerously low. Suspected placental abruption, which an ultrasound has appeared to confirm.’
He might have been an army surgeon for his whole career, but he could remember back to his training enough to know that when the placenta detached from the uterus wall prematurely, it could be life-threatening for the baby, who could be deprived of nutrients and oxygen. Not to mention the bleeding. But Rae had said the baby still had a heart rate.
‘Partial abruption?’ he verified.
‘Yes, but it could turn severe at any time, which is why we’re going in for the baby.’
‘Understood.’
Dr Raevenne Rawlstone, his mind wandered again as they moved swiftly through the corridor.
She wasn’t at all what he’d been expecting and, as galling as it was to admit it, over these last couple of days, she’d thrown him. Perhaps even more than she had back in the UK less than a week ago.
And it had been one thing reading about her success and skill as a doctor from afar, but it was quite another experiencing it first-hand. She was also a surprisingly generous teacher.
And he could only admire the fact that she’d pushed some society gala—due to start in an hour—in order to extend her thirty-six-hour shift into something even more inhuman.
She was more like the army surgeons he’d worked with, shoulder to shoulder, for so many years, and it was beginning to make him...homesick? Homesick for operating.
It was entirely unsettling.
And that was without the added complication that he’d been pretending hadn’t existed ever since that first meeting in Rafe’s offices, of that ridiculous attraction that still smouldered between them.
Wholly incongruous and utterly inappropriate.
Yet, there it was. Still sizzling in every unguarded look, hastily smothered into a deep scowl, every careless brush against the other, which was instantly replaced by a deliberate step away, ever
y time they came to the same medical conclusion only for the moment of connection to be immediately severed by some imaginary scalpel.
He could recall with all too startling clarity the occasion her hair had grazed his forearm at some point when they’d been examining the same chart, and a jolt of electricity had snaked its way up his biceps, across his shoulder and right through his chest. Or the deep shiver that had run through Rae’s body when she’d reached across him for the ultrasound machine and his breath had lifted the hairs slightly on the back of her neck.
She’d lingered just that fraction too long and he, foolishly, hadn’t been able to help himself repeating the action.
He caught himself shortly after that; tried to remind himself of exactly who Raevenne was, and precisely why Rafe had employed him.
These moments of weakness wouldn’t be happening again. He refused to let them.
‘Which is why we need to deliver the baby by C-section before the abruption is complete.’ Rae shouldered the door open as they hurried to scrub in. ‘I’m guessing you didn’t do many C-sections in your time as an army trauma surgeon?’
‘It wasn’t really a common procedure, no,’ he demurred. ‘Although I have assisted in a couple. All of the field hospitals I worked in treated civilians as well as allied and enemy soldiers, although usually for injuries. But some of the civilians were pregnant women and sometimes the injury meant the baby was coming out whether we liked it or not.’
‘Okay, well, now you get to see it day in and day out. Then it’s up to you to decide whether changing speciality to OBGYN is for you.’
Something unexpectedly hot wound through him at her clipped tone.
How much of his recent events did she know?
Tucking the question to the back of his mind, Myles scrubbed up and followed her into her operating room. He knew that, even after this, she still wouldn’t go to the ball until she’d checked on her last patient, the seven-months-pregnant woman who had been admitted with significant bleeding after falling off a ladder while trying to decorate a Christmas tree for her three-year-old daughter.
* * *
Exquisite.
Her fitted dress showcased every delectable curve to perfection without being too revealing, her dark hair swept off her neck and piled artfully on her head like the rich, chocolate mirror coating of the dessert he already knew was her favourite indulgence after a long, gruelling shift.
It was only one of a multitude of insignificant facts he should not have taken the time to learn about her at all. He’d told himself that moving into her house with her was a sensible precaution after the break-in. That it was his job, that Rafe was paying him to be as vigilant with his sister as they’d always been out there.
Deep down he suspected there was something far less noble—and something far more primal—behind his decision.
He had never understood Rafe’s misplaced sense of protectiveness towards Rae after the tape had come out. Yet now, here he was, watching Rae circulate the ballroom, with something reeling and circling his chest that he feared was all too close to that same protectiveness.
Her passion for the charity shone out of her like a glorious, golden light, buoying the guests and instilling them with the pre-Christmas spirit on what was otherwise a dreary November night.
A night which was all about raising enough money to buy Christmas gifts for displaced and refugee children, and ship them worldwide in time for the special celebrations.
Though why Rae needed anyone else to help her was beyond him—surely her enthusiasm alone could have filled up this ballroom ten times over.
She was charming guest after guest as though she didn’t know that they would delight in making vicious, cruel comments behind her back as soon as she’d left. He watched them do it.
Could practically hear their ugly, bitter laughter from across the room.
His hands clenched in the pockets of his tuxedo. Forget two-faced, most of these people were more like forty-faced. They didn’t deserve so much as the time of day from a woman who had, up until an hour ago, been delivering triplets in the most complicated birth he’d seen to date.
There were women here he could well imagine had been primping and preening all day, at least, just to be seen at this supposedly philanthropic event. Rae, however, had shucked off her operating garb, dashed in and out of the shower and dried her hair courtesy of a quick blast crouched under the hand-dryers, and had been in the car ten minutes later applying her make-up and dictating medical notes.
Yet she eclipsed every single person in the room.
She shimmered amongst them, delicate and breathtaking. Like the most glorious butterfly flitting amongst a deadly cluster of predatory dragonflies.
The army had honed his observation skills to perfection over the years, yet it had felt as fascinating, as game changing, as it did right now. He took in everything, his mind processing it and trying to make sense of it all. From the close-knit team back in the hospital who, to his surprise, clearly adored their hard-working Dr Rawlstone, to the guests who barely retracted their claws as they fawned over Rae at this ball.
Only one thing stopped them from being rude to Rae’s face. They might feed off her long-time bad-girl reputation, but she was still a Rawlstone and these people knew the value of that. Which was why they laughed and fawned over her, and pledged hundreds, thousands, even tens of thousands in some cases, of dollars to the charity that Rae so earnestly promoted.
And all those vainglorious men, who laughed so uproariously when their jealous partners sniped about Rae, all the while not so secretly coveting her. Men who took every excuse to touch her, who undressed her with their eyes, who would sleep with her in a heartbeat only to, he was sure, turn around and plead they had been involuntarily seduced by her.
There was no reason whatsoever for him to feel aggrieved on Rae’s behalf.
Certainly not for the shards of possessiveness that lanced through him when he was least expecting them. The way his hands itched to run over her unequivocally sexy, feminine form. Or the way he felt altogether too hot, too wired, too greedy, as he struggled to drag his eyes from the way she sashayed around the floor.
But he didn’t try too hard. Myles reminded himself that it was his job to watch her, to ensure she was safe. It was what Rafe had brought him in to do. He firmly quashed any other thoughts in his head.
Abruptly Rae stiffened, her expression becoming that little bit frozen, her movements less fluid. He followed her line of sight, ready to move, although he knew from the silence in his earpiece that she was in no physical danger.
It wasn’t hard to spot what had unsettled her.
Her sisters were making their way towards Rae, along with the matriarch of the Rawlstone Rabble, their tight expressions and false smiles evident even from this distance. From the way they were bearing down on her, they weren’t intending to merely compliment her on a successful charity gala. Or at least, any compliments would most certainly be like roses. Beautiful on the surface but with well-placed barbs designed to draw blood if one was foolish enough to forget to look out for them.
He started forward, only to stop himself. Rae’s family was her problem. He was here to protect her from any maniac stalker, he wasn’t here to protect her from her tiger shark relatives. If her sisters ganged up to feast on the weaker one, then surely that was for Rae to deal with herself. Wasn’t he forgetting that at one time they’d all been as bad as each other?
Yet since when had he thought her the vulnerable one? Only a week ago he’d thought of her as a highly skilled predator herself.
What was the matter with him?
And then she looked up, her gaze snagging his, the frantic glimmer in her eyes tugging at him even across the vast ballroom. He knew it wasn’t his situation to resolve—he should stand his ground, continue observing the guests. But suddenly he was moving again, parting the b
uzzing throngs with the same ease with which he had parted villagers in the crowded towns when on patrol. Gaps opened up for him and closed behind him without him having to say a word, without him even having to look twice, so that before he had time to talk himself out of it he was there.
Standing next to her. Pretending his body hadn’t just gone up in flames the second her arm had slipped around his in a grip that was too tight to even attempt to conceal her anxiety; the second she’d edged closer to him as though she thought he was some kind of protector.
‘Who would have thought that you would object so vociferously to a bodyguard when your life might be in danger from a stranger,’ he murmured darkly, ‘yet leap at the chance to have one when you’re in the sights of mere family.’
‘Given that you’ve done little to hide your opinion that my side of the Rawlstone family is trashy, I can’t imagine you’re really all that surprised.’
Her response might have been pitched only for his ears, but its unexpected feistiness rippled through him. Something he might have mistaken for pride, if he hadn’t known better, swirled around the two of them.
‘Clearly I was mistaken in thinking your look from across this immense room was a plea for help. You can obviously look after yourself.’
Her grip tightened on him.
‘Of course I can, I’ve been doing it long enough. But, since you’re here, you might as well stay.’
A week ago he might not have recognised the faintest of tremors in her tone. What did it say that he recognised it, now? That it made him nudge that little bit further forward with his body, as though to shield her that fraction better?
And then her family were there, and her grip on him loosened only long enough to accept their greeting.
‘I hope you’re working the room properly, pug.’ The fake air kisses set his teeth on edge almost as much as the deliberate slur. ‘This is quite an event we’re championing here tonight.’
Pug. How had he forgotten the cruel nickname her sisters had given her? Because she’d followed him around that Christmas holiday just like their neighbour’s ugly old pug.
Christmas with Her Bodyguard Page 5