Christmas with Her Bodyguard

by Charlotte Hawkes

  Which only made it all the more difficult for him to keep his distance. She was like some kind of breathtaking, beautiful angel. But a beauty, he had to remind himself, that only went skin-deep.

  ‘I still don’t understand why the clothes have to sit in this place under lock and key, when there are people out there who need them.’

  He told himself not to react to her sad expression.

  ‘Because there aren’t enough to go around,’ he answered simply. ‘If we hand them out now to some families and not to others, we’d have fighting on our hands. That’s why all this stuff stays here. Trousers, shoes, tees, whatever. Once we have enough for each family, we’ll distribute them.’

  ‘I guess.’ She chewed her lip. ‘But some families are clearly in greater need than others.’

  ‘Which is why the forward camp near the border gives a basic package to every family coming through their gates.’ He shrugged as he located the crate, taking out a couple of pairs of trousers. ‘It’s the best we can do. Certainly the fairest way we can do it. Which one is closest to his size?’

  ‘Probably that one.’ She pointed. ‘Have you got a belt?’

  He snorted.

  ‘You’re not shopping in one of your designer stores now. There’s some twine over there. Cut a length off, that will have to do.’

  He told himself he didn’t notice when she wrinkled her nose and offered him an involuntary sheepish smile. Nor did he notice when she shifted awkwardly from one foot to the other with that little finger-twist tell of hers.

  ‘Myles, I... I wanted to apologise for...you know...that night last week. I—’

  There was no reason whatsoever for anything to lance through him the way that it did.

  ‘Forget it,’ he cut her off briskly, deliberately focussing on the task in hand.

  He tracked across the warehouse.

  ‘Myles...’

  He thrust the blankets at her before getting her to sign the authorisation slip and giving her the bottom copy. Then he moved off, ostensibly to find a new bag of donations to sort through and filter into pallet boxes, but she shuffled along behind him.

  ‘I don’t want to hear it, Raevenne.’

  For a moment he thought she might have stopped. Turned away. And then she spoke again, quietly, urgently.

  ‘I need to apologise for that night, Myles. I wasn’t...it wasn’t...that wasn’t me, that night.’

  ‘Don’t you need to get those blankets and trousers to your patient?’

  She stared down, as if she couldn’t remember how the garment had got into her hand in the first place. Then she jerked her head in some semblance of a nod and, muttering something he couldn’t catch, hurried out of the repository as quickly as she could.

  Which was a good thing, he repeated. Over and over. As if somehow he thought that might make it all the more believable.

  He certainly wasn’t prepared for her to walk back into the place minutes later, trouser-free.

  ‘Raevenne,’ he cautioned, but this time there was no hesitation.

  She strode up to him, so close he could smell her unique scent. Whatever objections he’d been about to make erased themselves from his brain.

  ‘Everything is at the hospital where it needs to be, so now I’m back here and you have no more excuses to push me away.’

  ‘Then how about I’m more direct?’ he growled, but she stood her ground.

  ‘Please, Myles. I need you to know that I’m not the woman you think I am.’

  ‘You said that once before. I was even ready to believe you, even to believe that maybe your refusal to defend yourself all these years really was out of some kind of misguided loyalty. And then you turned around the other night with that...stunt, and proved to me you were exactly the woman I’d thought you were.’

  He tried to sound hostile. He hadn’t thought he’d succeeded but then she swallowed once, twice, squeezing her eyes closed as if to summon up all her courage.

  ‘What happened the other night...my reaction...was in part down to the mistake I made all those years ago, with Justin.’

  Some unidentifiable emotion surged through him.

  ‘We’ve already been through this, Rae. I don’t want to hear it again.’

  ‘And I don’t particularly want to have to say it.’ Anger flared in her unexpectedly. ‘But I can’t seem not to because, frankly, I’m sick of you treating me like I’m some kind of nineteenth-century fallen woman whilst you’re completely blame-free.’

  ‘I don’t believe either of those things,’ he said through what felt like a mouth full of gravel. ‘But need I remind you that you were the one who reacted to intimacy between us by telling me that you’d had better?’

  ‘Like I just admitted, I reacted badly, for which I’ve spent the last few days trying to apologise,’ she bit out. ‘Which you’d know if you stopped ignoring me for one moment. So I’m just going to keep making these ugly little scenes, which are embarrassing the both of us, until you shut up and listen.’

  He eyed her curiously, telling himself that it wasn’t hope that made his heart thud in his chest. It wasn’t desire that whispered down his spine.

  He believed in loyalty and principles, and discretion. She believed in living larger than life, and in letting every last detail of her life be played out in full view of the press and the public. There wasn’t a thing about her that the entire world didn’t already know.

  And yet he couldn’t help it. Despite every fibre of his being bellowing at him not to show any weakness, not to cave, the whisper of need infiltrated his head, scraping around in there, like metal on dry ice.

  A traitorous part of him wanted to listen to her.

  ‘Fine, you have my full attention.’

  She inclined her head a fraction, all elegant grace. Only the red stain creeping up her neck betrayed her.

  ‘I panicked, pure and simple. What happened between us the other night happened so fast and I was embarrassed, because the truth is that I haven’t actually slept with anyone since Justin.’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  HE WASN’T SURE how long they stood in silence. He only knew that he could barely get a word out for the jumble of questions tripping over themselves on his tongue, and that his heart seemed to hang in his chest. Whether it had forgotten how to beat, or simply didn’t have the strength to in that moment, Myles couldn’t be sure.

  ‘Say that again?’ he managed at last.

  ‘I think you heard me the first time.’

  Her soft voice electrified him. He had to take another few moments to get his head around what she was saying.

  ‘You’re telling me,’ he began huskily, ‘that aside from the other night, the only time you’ve been...intimate with a man was the night you made the sex tape with your sleaze of a bodyguard.’

  His needling was deliberate. He couldn’t seem to help himself. But when she flinched he felt like a heel. Still, she held her head up.

  ‘That’s exactly what I’m saying, yes.’

  ‘And you expect me to believe that?’

  Something flashed through her eyes for a split second before she shut it down. It shocked Myles to realise that he recognised it as regret.

  ‘I expect that you probably won’t. But I didn’t ask you to. I simply asked you to listen to me.’

  ‘So you could make out that I was no better than that pervert bodyguard of yours?’

  But what really rattled him was the realisation that, if what she was saying were true, then it was all too accurate a description.

  Her face might as well have been on fire but to her credit she didn’t drop her gaze. If anything, she tilted her head a little higher.

  ‘That’s not at all what I’m saying. You’re nothing like him. I knew exactly what was happening between you and me, but I didn’t have a clue what he was doing.’ />
  ‘He was making a name for himself,’ Myles snarled. ‘That’s what he was doing.’

  ‘Yes, thank you. Well, that became clear after the fact.’

  She threw her hands up in the air, her composure slipping, and to Myles’ shock he realised that his fury was aimed more at the slimy Justin than at Rae.

  ‘Did you love him?’ He didn’t know why he even asked.

  It didn’t matter. He didn’t care. It was just some morbid curiosity, surely?

  ‘I... I wanted to love him.’ For the first time she allowed her eyes to slide away. ‘He told me he loved me and I believed him.’

  ‘Why?’

  She snapped her gaze back up to glare at him, making Myles feel as though he was missing something obvious.

  ‘Why do you think, Myles? Because I wanted to believe him. The idea of someone loving me, me, was so thrilling. For years the boys I’d known had only ever been able to talk about my sisters, how glamourous, or sexy, or hot they were. And then here was Justin paying attention to me, and I fell for it.’

  He wanted to tell her that not everyone she’d known had been so taken with her superficial sisters that they’d overlooked the real thing standing right in front of them. To point out to her how close he’d come to being with her that New Year’s Eve.

  But voicing something like that would be tantamount to knowingly walking out onto quicksand. The consequences were inevitable. So instead he bit back the words and stayed silent.

  ‘I suppose I found it flattering,’ Rae continued with a self-deprecating laugh. ‘And hearing someone tell me they loved me was like balm to my battered ego. Not least after I’d humiliated myself the night I offered myself to you only for you to throw me out of your bedroom.’

  ‘Christ, Rae, you blame me for humiliating you simply because I had enough respect for you not to sleep with you when you were my best mate’s seventeen-year-old kid sister?’

  ‘That wasn’t what you said, though, was it?’ she fired back. ‘You said that I was insane if I thought you were ever going to sleep with me.’

  Instantly, shamefully, he recalled his harsh words and the way he’d thrown that handmade quilt from his guest bed over her practically naked form and bundled her out into the corridor in wholly ungentlemanly fashion.

  Ironic then, that he’d thought he was being gentlemanly by not sleeping with her.

  ‘You were seventeen. I was twenty-one.’

  ‘So? That’s perfectly legal. Plus, I was a few months off being eighteen and you were only just twenty-one. There’s barely three years between us.’

  ‘It might not have been illegal but it still wouldn’t have been a good idea,’ he bit out stiffly.

  Which made it sound logical, and well thought-out. But the truth was that his decision back then had been less about logic and more about convincing himself to keep his hands off her than anything else.

  At twenty-one, he’d never before experienced such a heady, all-consuming attraction before. His teenage years had been too focussed on dragging himself out of the hellhole of his childhood, trying to build some kind of real future for himself. He’d had a couple of girlfriends but nothing that had amounted to anything much.

  And then he’d met Rae and their attraction, their chemistry, had been instantaneous. Overwhelming. Even despite the handful of women with whom he’d been in relationships over the years since then, none of them had equalled the same intense heat he felt with Rae.

  Not that he was about to tell her that now. He could already feel that familiar desire stoking up his senses. But he was here under her half-brother’s employ to look out for her. He wasn’t here to revisit old temptations.

  ‘And you think I’ll buy into all this?’ He let out a bitter laugh.

  Anything to cover the fact that he pretty much already had.

  ‘I know how it sounds, but it’s true. I swear it.’ She stepped towards him, her hands reaching out instinctively to lie flat on his chest before she caught herself, no doubt expecting him to back away.

  He probably should.

  He didn’t.

  And when she tentatively made contact, it was like throwing a match on a pile of dry, petrol-doused leaves. His whole body ignited in an instant. He remembered everything with startling vividness. Her scent, her taste, the way she’d come apart so perfectly with him. He wanted to make her lose herself all over again. To take back every lie that had slipped from her lips. To make her admit she was as hungry for him as he was for her.

  He wanted to bury himself inside her, so deep that neither of them would know where one ended and the other began, and he wanted to make her climax all around him. His name the only thing in her head.

  But he couldn’t do any of that. He couldn’t allow himself such a weakness. And it was all he could do not to let her see his reaction.

  ‘What about the not living up to expectations?’ he growled, trying to remind himself as much as remind her.

  She flushed, a deep, scarlet stain spreading over her skin.

  ‘I was embarrassed, Myles. You’d just made me...you know...’

  ‘Orgasm?’ he supplied.

  If it was possible she flushed an even richer hue. It didn’t help his self-control one bit.

  ‘From just a touch,’ she muttered.

  Awareness rippled through him. He shut it down.

  ‘Which you’re now telling me was the only time you’ve been intimate with a man since you made that vile tape?’ he stated flatly, belying the uproar in his head. His chest.

  She jerked her head up and down.

  ‘Really? Raevenne Rawlstone, the woman who changes her man along with her always up-to-date seasonal wardrobe.’

  Sarcasm was etched into every syllable of the well-bandied media quote.

  Rae stared at him for a moment, her eyes dulling.

  ‘You don’t believe me.’

  He wanted to believe her. With an urgent, primal drive he’d only ever felt with this one woman; with a voice that roared that she was his. That she’d always been his.

  Ever since he’d made her come apart in his arms barely a week ago. Even then hadn’t he wondered at her sweetness, her naivety, her lack of experience? Right up until the moment she’d pulled her ‘is that it?’ charade and it had been easier to despise her for that than to consider she might have been saving herself all these years? For him?

  ‘You surely can’t believe for a second that I’ll buy into this prim act of yours?’ he bit out icily, hating himself for the less than proper thoughts racing through his body.

  Taking up residence in his sex as surely as if she’d skimmed her hand over him.

  ‘Why not? Because you know me so well?’ Her boldness was a delicious challenge. ‘Are you really so entrenched that you can’t begin to even consider that there might be some truth in what I’m saying? Or is there a part of you that can’t allow yourself to believe me because then you might have to finally acknowledge that we’re attracted to each other? Still.’

  ‘This conversation is pointless, Rae,’ he warned, but she ignored him.

  ‘Just as we were attracted to each other over a decade ago. Only back then I was gullible enough to believe you when you said you didn’t want me. This time, I think we both know the truth.’

  He stood immobile, rooted to the spot and unable to move even if he’d tried. Never mind his legs, though, it was all he could do to get his mouth moving.

  ‘I’m your bodyguard, Rae.’

  ‘That didn’t stop you the other night,’ she whispered. ‘Besides, did you really need to come to this with me? We still don’t know if that break-in at my house was merely opportunistic, but even if it wasn’t, surely no one is going to reach me thousands of miles away?’

  ‘Actually, we do know about the break-in.’ He hadn’t known whether to tell her or not before she’d br
ought it up herself. ‘From their investigation at the house and everything that you confirmed was taken, they’ve concluded there is more than likely a connection between the break-in at your home and the tampering of Rafe’s brakes.’

  ‘Which means whoever it is is operating on both sides of the Atlantic?’

  She paled, her scratchy voice worming into him and making him wish he could do something, anything, to take away her fear.

  ‘There is an upside.’ He would never know how he sounded so detached, so in control, when every word felt clunky and awkward, as though his brain was trying to work out how to piece words together. How to make a sentence. ‘In that it also narrows the field considerably. Not many individuals have that kind of reach.’

  ‘You’re thinking competitors to Rawlstone Group? Were they trying to get to Rafe through me?’

  The idea of Rae being in danger, of him having to voice it aloud, filled him with something he didn’t care to evaluate too closely.

  ‘It’s too early to say for certain, but that’s certainly one line of investigation we’re currently following.’

  She swallowed.

  ‘Which means they could reach me here. If they really wanted to.’

  ‘It’s unlikely.’ He forced his voice to become lighter than he really felt. ‘But it can’t be ruled out.’

  ‘We have three more weeks here. Together,’ she managed. As if she could somehow pretend that the last half-hour hadn’t happened. ‘So we have to get past this. Get along with each other.’

  ‘You do know I will protect you, Rae?’

  ‘From any external dangers, yes.’ She looked as though she wanted to say something else, something more, but eventually she offered a resigned shrug.

  ‘We’ve managed to keep our distance up until now. Perhaps we can just carry on like that?’

  ‘It won’t work. The last few days have been hectic but as the new teams settle in we’re going to have to spend more time together. It would look odd if we didn’t.’

  Her body slumped as though suddenly leaden.

  ‘What are you suggesting?’