‘I expect it to be a massive success if I’m putting my name to it,’ another sniffed.
As if it were their victory rather than Rae’s, Myles thought. As if they’d done more than simply show up having been made-up and coiffured to within an inch of their inconsequential lives.
‘It’s already a success,’ Rae tried to assert.
‘Front-page-news success?’ Her mother arched one condescending eyebrow. ‘I don’t think so. You need to do better, Raevenne.’
‘I am—’
‘Six-figure sums, child,’ the older woman snapped.
‘That only happens when someone gets the ball rolling. Like the Jenning family. And, after all, Mariella Jenning is one of your best friends, Mother.’
‘I lunch with that woman.’ The feigned shudder was purely for dramatic effect. ‘You can’t possibly ask me to stoop so low as to ask her for money.’
‘For charity,’ Rae cried before appearing to catch herself as her sisters laughed scornfully.
‘Don’t be absurd, pug.’
‘Fine, well, how about Rowena Kemp? You don’t lunch with her.’
‘Are you insane? You expect the first time I speak to a member of the illustrious Kemp family to be asking for handouts?’
‘Donations.’ Rae gritted her teeth.
‘I’m not talking to anyone about something as vulgar as money, Raevenne.’
The contempt was cutting enough to slice a person in two. It was credit to Rae that she managed to hold her ground, even if she did conceal a shaky exhale of frustration.
‘It’s a charity gala. You do understand that asking for money is exactly what we’re supposed to be doing?’
‘We’re not doing anything so humiliating,’ her mother snapped. ‘So you’d better pull your finger out and sort it out yourself. I will not allow you to associate us with a failure.’
‘I didn’t ask you to associate yourself with it at all,’ Raevenne bit out. ‘In fact, I don’t remember talking to you about it even once. You just decided to throw your names in when Rafe set up the gala and you realised anyone who’s anyone in Manhattan was going to be here.’
‘Don’t whinge, Raevenne. It doesn’t suit you. And for that matter, neither does that hideous get-up you’re wearing.’
‘Oh, I don’t know if that’s fair, Mummy,’ her other sister cut in with the kind of saccharine smile that set Myles’ teeth on edge. ‘Maybe she’s deliberately trying to remind the world that she’s still that whore from the sex tape.’
He could feel the strength drain out of Rae in the way she sagged against his body, her grip dropping from his arm. He didn’t think, didn’t hesitate, he simply turned around and wrapped his arm around her to keep her upright.
‘I think we’re done here, Rae. Let’s dance.’
Then, without waiting for a response, he propelled her through the crowd and away from her jealous, vindictive family.
‘Put your arm on my shoulder,’ he muttered as soon as they were a safe distance away.
It made no sense that her pinched white face should make him feel quite so murderous.
‘Raevenne,’ he commanded, his voice low and direct. ‘Put your hand in mine and your other on my shoulder and dance. Or do you want those witches to win?’
She hesitated, then, as if on autopilot, obeyed his command.
‘Good,’ he murmured approvingly. ‘Now, dance. And smile.’
She managed the first but not the latter.
‘Is that what I look like?’ her voice finally came out, strangled and quiet. ‘Like some kind of...tart.’
‘You look beautiful,’ he growled before he could even think twice. ‘Sophisticated, smart, elegant. All the things your grotesque family can only dream of being.’
The twist of her lips could hardly be described as a smile.
‘That’s the most hypocritical compliment I’ve heard all night, and, trust me, I’ve heard a lot of them tonight. I know you hate me, but of course you’d say that. Rafe is paying your salary.’
‘That’s not why I said it.’
‘Of course it is.’
‘Look at me, Raevenne. I don’t like games and I’ve no time for people feeling sorry for themselves, so I’m only going to tell you this once. Look at me.’
And then she did.
It was like a punch to his lower gut. He wanted to erase every ugly thought she had in her head right at this moment. He wanted to make her see her hideous family for what they were and realise that she was no longer the eighteen-year-old who had made that life-changing video.
He knew his reaction made no sense. He couldn’t explain it; worse, he didn’t want to. He wasn’t sure exactly who this Raevenne Rawlstone was, or even if she could really be trusted. All he knew was that he no longer felt as though he was talking to the girl who had humiliated Rafe all those years ago.
‘Tell me what, Myles?’
Her voice was barely recognisable, its quiver seeming to mirror all the emotions he was trying to deny were jostling inside him, desperate to get out. He refused to let them, but then she flicked out a tongue to moisten her lips and he was powerless to stop his eyes momentarily dropping to track its progress.
‘I didn’t want to take this job protecting you. I admit it.’
Her expression flickered, like a flame on the verge of being extinguished. He felt even more of a cad.
‘Then why did you?’ she managed.
‘I needed the job,’ he stated flatly. ‘And Rafe asked me to.’
It was close enough to the truth. How could he tell her that a part of him had welcomed the offer when he’d been ashamed of such a reaction?
‘Well, you don’t need to worry about it for too much longer,’ she managed bitterly, before she could stop herself.
‘Which means what, precisely?’
‘Forget it. So that’s what you wanted to tell me?’ Disappointment crept into her voice. ‘An admission of something I already knew? That you never wanted to play bodyguard to me?’
He hesitated, assessing her. Evaluating. Or maybe he was evaluating himself. He couldn’t be sure. ‘Not entirely,’ he conceded after a long moment. ‘I wanted to apologise.’
‘You did?’
‘Rafe told me a long time ago that the stories...the stories about you...weren’t true, but I didn’t believe him. I just couldn’t understand why you wouldn’t go to the authorities.’
‘I told you why the other night.’ She was clearly trying not to sound bitter. ‘You didn’t want to hear it.’
‘Would you?’ The challenge burst out before he could swallow it. ‘Hearing that protecting my reputation and my career was the reason you allowed someone like that to use you?’
‘So...you believe me?’
Did he? Evidently he must do.
‘It isn’t easy to change what I thought to be true all this time,’ he hedged.
‘You’re not the only one. It’s hard to shatter people’s perceptions, especially a bad one they simply love to hate.’
Why did it feel like a victory that he’d swept that sad expression from her features and now a small smile toyed at the corners of her mouth?
Too late, he realised he was bending his neck, almost ready to claim that soft, inviting mouth with those perfectly pink, plump lips. Jerking his head back, he caught himself in time.
‘Your family taints everything they’re associated with, even a charity event. It’s time you distanced yourself from them, Rae, the way Rafe did.’
‘I’ve spent years distancing myself from them,’ she cried out.
‘Then you need more distance.’
‘Trust me, soon enough I won’t be able to get any more distance.’ She stopped abruptly, biting her lip.
As if she hadn’t intended to say anything, as though the admission had tumbled out b
efore she could stop herself.
‘Rae?’ he prompted, using the tone he’d perfected as an officer. The one that made his men talk to him even when they might have preferred to keep it all inside.
‘There’s a woman here—’ she wrinkled her nose awkwardly ‘—Angela Kaler, who helped me to organise this charity event. I’m joining her worldwide health programme abroad.’
‘Angela Kaler?’ he frowned. ‘I know her. A few years ago the army sent my unit, a logistics unit and some engineers to join her organisation on one of the hearts and minds missions in a former warzone.’
‘Yeah? Well, now she’s running humanitarian programmes sending doctors where they’re needed, whether conflict zones, or just a remote area in need of a school or a hospital or a well; or where there’s been a natural disaster, or maybe an epidemic. I volunteered.’
‘You’re going? What does Rafe say about it?’
‘Rafe doesn’t know.’ She jutted her chin out defiantly, voicing the one thing he didn’t want to hear.
‘Rae—’
‘No.’ This time, she refused to cow to him. ‘This is something I want to do. I’ve done all the courses, all the tests, all the evaluations. I passed them all. I got my mission a while ago. Myles, I’ve been planning it for months...long before he made you shadow me, and long before this latest death threat.’
‘Yet you must see that’s exactly why you can’t now go,’ Myles pointed out.
She shook her head wildly, her eyes suddenly dancing with the same kind of light as when she saved a baby. Only now, it was even brighter, even more mesmerising.
‘Surely that’s even more of a reason to go? If that break-in wasn’t opportunistic, and if my life is in danger here, they definitely won’t be able to get to me where I’m going. I’ll be safe, Rafe will be happy, and you’ll be free of babysitting me. Everybody wins.’
Only, for a moment, he wasn’t sure it felt like a win for him. And he couldn’t help feeling Rae felt the same. This...thing...still shimmered and rippled between them, however much they pretended to ignore it.
But what was the alternative? That he joined her out there? An invisible band tightened around his chest, making it painful even to draw breath. Images of that village, those bodies, flashed in his brain like flicking through a photo album too quickly to dwell on any single photo, but recognising the images all the same.
His heart picked up its beat, and he fought off the urge to stick a finger between his stiff white collar and his skin. He wasn’t ready to go back to a conflict zone. He still hadn’t processed what had happened that last mission. The people he’d been laughing with only hours before...
Not to mention the decision he’d made to ignore his gut when he’d discovered that Lance Corporal McCoy—Mikey—was part of the squad that final, fatal time.
It was all he could do to keep looking at Rae, to keep dancing, to keep upright. If he could get through tonight, buy himself enough time, experience told him it would be a lot easier to work things through in the light of the morning. Maybe Rafe was right. Maybe he should have talked to someone.
He just had to get through one night.
Just tonight.
Abruptly, he stopped dancing.
‘Where’s Angela now?’ he demanded.
‘Why?’ She was understandably guarded and nervous. ‘Myles...we’ve stopped dancing. People are watching.’
‘Let them watch.’ He didn’t care. ‘And I’m coming with you.’
Sliding his arm around her, he whisked her around, a weave and a turn and they were back into a decent space.
‘That’s insane.’ She was trying to stay light in his arms, following his lead and floating like a feather. He could tell she felt anything but. ‘You can’t come. You don’t have clearance.’
Something deep in his chest thudded with apprehension. Old fears slowly resurrecting themselves, but he stamped them down.
They had no business in the here and now.
‘I was a trauma surgeon in the field six months ago—I have clearance.’
He’d just hoped to never use it again. And yet...
‘You can’t go into the field within twelve months of being in the forces.’ She sounded panicked.
‘Some organisations say that,’ he acknowledged. ‘But not Angela’s. Her criteria are different and I fit it. I know that for a fact.’
‘You need evaluations.’
‘Shall I say it again?’ He had no idea why a part of him actually seemed to be thrilling to the concept whilst another part balked. Loudly. ‘They’re all covered.’
She stared at him, her green eyes wide and shooting sparks.
‘This is nonsense, Myles. You have to have a special training for contagious diseases and tropical medicine.’
‘I did a year with the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine in the UK.’ He held her tighter, and he couldn’t work out who was holding whom upright. ‘You can’t get rid of me, Rae. I’m coming with you and that’s decided.’
‘But...’
It was done. He couldn’t afford to second-guess. He’d made a commitment to Rafe and he was seeing it through. He wasn’t about to let his buddy down. Not even if that meant going back out to hellholes like those with which he was all too familiar. And there was no other reason for his change of heart.
None at all.
‘Now, shall we see about getting those donations for you? Let’s make this event the best fundraiser these social climbers have ever had the privilege of attending. And as for the rest of your family, they can go and jump in their new handmade rock pool.’
CHAPTER FIVE
HOURS LATER RAE still hadn’t processed what Myles had said.
He was coming with her?
It had sounded surreal. But she’d decided that if she just clung to Myles, if she simply stared into those eyes that were so hot, so searing that they seemed to cauterise each lash and wound from the tongues of every single person in this room tonight, then maybe she could emerge from this gala miraculously unscathed, after all.
And so she’d clutched him, physically and mentally, as she worked her way around the room, inch by inch, making sure the night was an unequivocal success. Whether her family tried to take credit for it or not, this night had to be a triumph by securing eye-watering donations from even the Jennings and the Kemps and telling her that the charity deserved nothing less.
Enough to buy container loads of medical supplies, clothing, and heaving toy boxes for the kids. Christmas several times over.
So why did it continue to needle her that he’d shut her out so abruptly back there?
And why did it thrill her when they worked together as though they were some kind of team? Her and Myles against everyone else. Certainly against her family. Gravitating towards each other as they had done a decade earlier. As though it was the most natural thing in the world. As though it was more than just a situation engineered by her half-brother. As though she and Myles were the kind of real couple that everyone who had seen them had assumed them to be. And so she was still clinging onto Myles when he walked her through her door several hours later—the first time she’d returned since the break-in, more relieved than she would ever admit that he and her brother had agreed it wasn’t safe enough to leave her alone. Not until they could identify the reason for the break-in.
* * *
Still, it didn’t stop her from grumbling as she walked along the corridor half an hour later only for Myles to step out of the bathroom. Her nerves were jangling in an effort not to let her eyes drift down the naked, solid, mouth-watering chest. Or to linger on the soft white towel that teasingly just about went around his hips but stopped halfway down his thighs.
She tried to shift. The air seemed to have closed in on her, almost stealing the breath from her lungs. The strange magnetic draw that she’d spent the last few d
ays denying was impossible to ignore now they were stuck in a room...well, a corridor...together. Alone.
All of a sudden her clothes felt too tight for her body and she was sure her tight nipples were visible through the soft tee.
‘I still don’t understand why this particular death threat has Rafe so rattled. It isn’t like we aren’t always getting them. He’s head of a global company where, no matter how environmentally friendly the design is, new construction is always angering some group or another. My two sisters—not the nicest of people to start with, I’m afraid—live off income from their substantial shares and flaunt it in people’s faces via their reality show Life in the Rawl, and, as you’ve reminded me on multiple occasions already, I’ve got a sex tape out there, which won’t go away no matter how many babies I deliver or how many lives I save.’
Something flashed across his features—too fast for her to put a label on it, and less muted than that first day, but she might have guessed it was disdain.
She told herself it didn’t cut through her. That his opinion of her didn’t matter any more than that of hundreds, even thousands, of other people out there.
‘And is your brother always getting into cars where the brakes have been tampered with?’ he asked bluntly.
She reached out for the handrail to steady herself.
‘They tampered with Rafe’s brakes? He never said.’
‘He didn’t want to scare you.’
‘Whilst you, of course, don’t care about that.’
* * *
He shrugged, and peered at her and she had the oddest sensation he was trying to see right down to her soul.
Her body and her mind were spiking with desire, and for a moment they stood there, watching each other, not moving. She was desperate to say something, anything, to fill the silence. To give him and his ridiculously tantalising towel a reason not to leave. It made no sense.
Or more worryingly, it made perfect sense.
‘You didn’t have to do that, tonight,’ she managed. ‘Help me get donations, I mean. I know I’m not your favourite person.’
Christmas with Her Bodyguard Page 6