Christmas with Her Bodyguard

by Charlotte Hawkes

  There was no easy way to tell him so she just plunged in.

  ‘I—I’ve been doing some research into your case,’ she announced, trying to ignore the shake in her voice.

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘It is.’ She swallowed hard. ‘And I’ve found out that they think that village was attacked by the local forces in retaliation for the villagers selling some of their harvest that year, instead of saving it all for the rebel soldiers.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Which means it wasn’t about you or your team. It wasn’t because you were there helping people.’

  She’d never heard of it at first, but it turned out it was pretty commonplace—farming villages whose crops should have easily provided enough food for themselves and for sale at market, but who were on the brink of starvation because each season almost all their crop was taken by the warlords.

  But she knew that didn’t mean Myles was about to accept her word for it.

  ‘I have letters, research, if you want it.’

  ‘I’ve already heard about it. It was a theory.’ His clipped tone was clearly intended to end the conversation.

  She couldn’t give up that easily.

  ‘Whose theory?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘It does to me.’

  A month ago his glower would have cut into her. Instead, she found herself sitting up straighter, maintaining eye contact. She had started this. She had to see it through.

  ‘Myles, please... I want to understand.’

  ‘An army theory.’

  ‘You don’t believe it?’

  Disappointment shot through her but she wasn’t prepared for his answer.

  ‘I...don’t know. I didn’t back then. It felt as though it was an easy answer to salve my conscience. But now, with the benefit of time, of distance, of you, then maybe.’

  It was like a church full of perfectly pitched choirboys all singing beautifully in her head all at once.

  It didn’t mean Myles accepted what had happened. But it did at least mean that he was open to possibilities.

  ‘So what does that mean?’ she breathed, scarcely willing to break whatever spell they were under.

  His fingers laced through hers, his perfect turquoise-sea eyes not leaving her face.

  ‘I can’t make you any promises, Rae, but maybe we can just try to enjoy these last few days together—not that work will give us much chance—and see how it goes from there.’

  It wasn’t declarations of love, but it was better than anything she could have hoped for.

  ‘I wish I had bought you a Christmas present.’

  ‘The only Christmas present I want is you, in my bed,’ he murmured, his body tightening as her gaze grew hotter, more intense.

  She lifted herself up onto her toes, her breath tickling his ear as she leaned in to whisper to him.

  ‘That’s a Christmas present I can give very freely.’

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  ‘RAE, OVER HERE.’

  ‘Raevenne, sweetie, this way.’

  ‘Give us a quick smile, Rae.’

  Rae flinched as the photojournalists crowded in on them even as she stepped around the arrivals gate at JFK airport.

  Relief warred with regret when Myles slipped instantly out of the intimate atmosphere that had enhanced their last few days together, working hard and playing harder, and back into bodyguard mode.

  ‘Your fame?’ he asked grimly.

  She pulled a face.

  ‘It has to be. Nothing is private, not even going out there to do charity work.’

  It made her all the more grateful that she’d already accepted another medical mission—a three-month stint, this time—and would be headed back out before Easter. She couldn’t get away from this circus fast enough.

  Sticking as close as she could to Myles’ impressive body, with which she’d finally become more than familiar, and with which she intended to reacquaint herself as soon as they got to her home, she allowed him to plough a path through the melee, and out of the main doors. The car waiting for them was mercifully in sight, although the press weren’t letting her go without a chase.

  ‘Can you tell your fans how it was at Camp Sceralenar?’

  ‘Did you save any lives, Rae?’

  ‘Were you aware that your bodyguard is a British army hero? That he risked his life climbing down a hillside in enemy territory to retrieve the corpse of a Lance Corporal Michael McCoy, who had taken his own life?’

  Rae froze, dropping back for a moment as she turned to try to see who had made the last comment. She wasn’t prepared for Myles to practically drag her off her feet and to the car.

  ‘Keep moving,’ he bit out. ‘And don’t engage.’

  ‘Did you know that when McCoy defied orders and instigated a firefight with the enemy, resulting in his own death and the injury of several of his squad, Major Garrington told his commanding officers that he was culpable just so that McCoy’s young daughter Kelly wouldn’t find out that her father died dishonourably?’

  She could practically feel the fury rolling off Myles’ body, his muscles tense and bunched. She prayed no reporters came too close. But Myles restrained himself, his focus on getting them both to the vehicle.

  In a daze, she allowed herself to be bundled inside, pushed across the soft leather seats, her bergens taken off her and the door slammed on the baying pack outside. In slow motion she turned around, watching Myles throw the luggage into the boot of the car and stalk around to climb in the other side.

  And then the car was pulling away and the silence might as well have been hemming her in.

  She ran her tongue around her mouth. My God, she was so stupid.

  ‘Myles—’

  ‘Forget it.’

  It was an icy warning, which she should have heeded. But she couldn’t. Desperation clawed inside her.

  ‘You can’t really be blaming me for this?’

  ‘I’ve never told anyone else that information about Mikey’s family. Only you.’

  ‘This is the press.’ She flung her hands up. ‘They unearth all kinds of stuff if they’re so inclined.’

  His stark look was excruciating.

  ‘No, Rae. You did this.’

  ‘No.’

  Her shoulders slumped but she refused to look away from that glare; she would not let him think she was guilty.

  ‘Yes. You engineered it.’

  ‘You can’t really believe that.’ Pain and disappointment lanced through her.

  ‘You wanted the press to know. All this time you’ve been acting like you moved away from your reality life, but what was the truth, Raevenne? That you got pushed out for not repeating that bit of TV gold and you’ve been looking for a way back in ever since?’

  ‘Of course not.’ Horror spread through her like wildfire. ‘I don’t care what they think. Not any more. I only cared what Rafe knew. What I knew. What you knew.’

  ‘And yet you couldn’t let it go. You had to release the story. And now they’re running stories about my career, about my missions, about Mikey.’

  He didn’t mention little Kelly. He didn’t need to. She felt sick with the knowledge.

  ‘I didn’t say anything, Myles. I never would.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  Every word, every accusation, was like a lashing to her already broken soul. But still, she made herself lift her chin. She forced herself to meet his eye.

  ‘I can’t make you believe me. But I know the truth. Just as I know that part of the reason you want to hate me now is because you don’t know what else to do with the emotions you stuff inside you and never allow to come out. Emotions which are eating you from the inside, Myles.’

  ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’

 
‘I do. And I didn’t do this, but I can’t say I’m unhappy the press have found out. Because it’s time you stopped blaming yourself for what happened. Being an army trauma surgeon has been your life for so long that somewhere along the line it became what defined you, and when you lost that part of who you were, you lost yourself.’

  The words shouldn’t have penetrated his fury or his misery. Nothing should have.

  And yet they did.

  Suddenly, he saw the hurt and misery in her expression. He realised he was the one who had put them there. Even as the knowledge snatched his breath away, it wasn’t enough to change what she’d done.

  The signs for the railway station couldn’t have come at a more fortuitous moment.

  ‘I can’t do this with you, Raevenne. Or, more to the point, I won’t. Everything is always drama with your lot and I’ve seen enough drama to last me several lifetimes.’

  ‘No, Myles—’

  ‘Stop the car, please,’ he ordered the driver, before turning to his side and taking one last look at her. ‘I’m sorry, Rae. We’re done.’

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  RAE PULLED THE baby out, blue, floppy and covered in thick meconium-stained amniotic fluid. If she was going to help it transition to life outside the room she was going to have to work quickly. But, as ever, resources were limited and she had to act fast.

  Picking the baby up, she transferred it quickly to the resus table using an Ambu bag to push air into the limp baby’s lungs, but the meconium was filling the mouth and lungs, stopping the chest from rising. She checked the pulse.

  Decelerating—just as she’d feared.

  ‘Cath, can you grab an aspirator and start getting this meconium out? And just ask someone to see if Janine is still free? The mother is haemorrhaging.’

  She didn’t wait for an answer, watching instead as her colleague began to clear the baby’s airways.

  ‘Okay, that might do it.’ Rae nodded after what felt like a lifetime. For the baby, it so easily could be. ‘Let’s try again.’

  She didn’t realise she’d been holding her breath until she pushed more air into the baby’s lungs and finally, finally, heard the faintest of whispers. It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing.

  Still, when she turned to the new mother to see her staring over and, despite her own pain, tears of relief spilling freely out at the miraculous sound, Rae felt her own heart swell with pride.

  She really did have the best job in the world, she realised, handing the baby over to the mother whose arms were already outstretched. Even out here, where resources were scarce, and maternal and infant mortality was so high, there was still the pure joy of hearing a baby cry for the first time.

  It almost made up for the fact that, in order to have this life, this career, she’d lost Myles.

  Less than a week after she’d watched him go, a ringing sound had already built up in her ears. Part of her had been desperate to run after him, a bigger part of her had been too paralysed to move. She had almost welcomed the numbness that had been beginning to settle over her, because at least that acted as something of an anaesthetic against the pain she recalled all too vividly from the last time Myles had rejected her.

  The ringing had grown louder and more insistent. With a start, Rae had realised it wasn’t in her head after all, but her mobile, and she’d heard Angela on the line telling her the next replacement medic had dropped out, and inviting her to jump on a return flight.

  She’d opened her mouth to decline, to say that she couldn’t possibly return without Myles. But the words hadn’t come out. They’d lodged in her throat. And then she’d caught herself.

  Myles had gone. She’d had nothing to lose. And besides, she’d loved operating out there, and feeling she was making a real difference. At least she would have that, even if he wasn’t with her to share it.

  The next thing she’d heard was her own voice accepting Angela’s offer.

  Could it really only have been five days ago?

  It felt like an eternity.

  Either way it was time to get over any secret hopes she’d harboured that Myles might step back into her life. Time to accept that he was now well and truly gone. Since he and Rafe had uncovered the source of the death threats there was no reason for Myles to return. She didn’t need him now.

  At least, not as her bodyguard.

  But in the emotional sense?

  If these past few days had taught her anything it had reinforced the fact that she loved him. She always would. He had her heart in a way no other man would ever have. Because no other man came close to matching Major Myles Garrington. And that was okay. Some people went through their whole lives without meeting their soulmate. But she had.

  And that month she’d had with Myles was hers for ever. She could hug it to herself and no one would ever be able to take it away from her.

  ‘You’re done?’ Janine barely lifted her head from attending to the haemorrhaging.

  ‘You need some help?’

  ‘No, but the new general surgeon arrived this morning. I was going to walk them through a procedure out here when you called.’

  ‘Shall I take over here so you can get back to her?’

  She still couldn’t see Janine’s face, but she could hear something colouring her expression. If Rae hadn’t known better, she might have thought it was excitement mingled with amusement.

  ‘No, I’m happy with this. Besides, might be fun for you to do the walk-through.’

  Rae wrinkled her nose, wondering what she could possibly be missing. But there was no time to dwell. Leaving the bay, she quickly scrubbed up and darted around the curtain to the operating area, a bright, welcoming smile on her lips.

  ‘I’m Rae, sorry we have to meet under these circumstances, but hopefully we’ll get some time later. How can I help?’

  ‘Apparently you’re going to help me identify the uterine arteries.’ A pair of all too familiar eyes met hers.

  Her heart hung, time seemingly slowing around her. He couldn’t be healed, not in a week. And yet he was out here, and apparently the new general surgeon.

  ‘Myles...?’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘General Surgeon?’

  ‘I wanted to move away from what I did before. And it isn’t as though I didn’t do lots of other trauma cases over the years. But maybe we can discuss it later. Before my patient bleeds out internally,’ Myles prompted, but there was no mistaking the expression in his gaze.

  It promised her all the explanations she could want. Afterwards.

  The one that told her everything was going to be okay. He’d healed himself, and he’d come back for her.

  Everything else could wait.

  Twenty hours, six C-sections, and a slew of both complicated and non-complicated deliveries later and they were in his tiny room, each with a fresh, hot coffee.

  She waited for him to start the conversation, afraid to speak first.

  ‘I love you.’

  She froze. Her body might as well have stopped working. She stopped swallowing, stopped blinking, stopped breathing.

  Something welled inside her and she had the sudden, frightening suspicion that it was the urge to say the words back to him.

  But she mustn’t.

  A much as hearing him say he loved her was like the most beautiful song in the world piped straight into her chest, she needed more than that. She needed to understand.

  ‘I admit to a level of combat PTSD. You were right. I already knew it but I couldn’t bring myself to admit it aloud before now. Perhaps a fear of looking weak, or maybe a fear of losing respect. I certainly lost my self-respect. I didn’t know who I was, caught between the army soldier I’d been and this new, terrifying life on Civvy Street.’

  ‘But you’re still the same strong, responsible man you always were,’ she man
aged. ‘Anyone can see that.’

  ‘I couldn’t. Not until I met you. You helped me to see that I had a problem, and that I needed to talk about it.’

  ‘And did you?’ she whispered.

  ‘Did I talk to someone? Yes. I went to see my old brigadier.’

  She stared at him, winded.

  ‘When?’

  ‘After I left you in the car, outside the railway station. When I went into the station there was already a train ready to leave so I bought a ticket and I jumped on board. To this day I don’t know where it was headed to. I realised my mistake a couple of hours in, disembarked at the next station and made that phone call to my old unit.’

  His wry smile tugged at her. ‘You didn’t make the entire journey?’

  * * *

  Myles shook his head.

  Guilt scraped away inside him. He’d been so caught up in his own internal battles that he’d wilfully ignored the war that Rae, too, had been waging. She loved him. Just as, he realised with a heavy thud, he loved her.

  He was in love with her.

  He had been pulling the whole macho soldier routine and toughing it out, but even though it had fooled almost everybody else, it hadn’t fooled her.

  He loved her. A deep, fierce, strong love, which he’d never known he had the capacity to feel, before now. But that also meant recognising that he had nothing to offer her, that he was a shell of a human, and a fraction of the man he used to be. He’d been an army trauma surgeon for so long that he didn’t know how to be anything else. Which meant that he was nothing. He was damaged and broken, and Raevenne deserved so much better than that.

  And something had begun to untwist inside him.

  He’d been existing. But he hadn’t been living. And then he’d met up with Rae after all those years.

  A woman who seemed to turn the lights back on in his life. She poured warmth—life—into even the bleakest, coldest corner.

  ‘Bit by bit, these past couple of months, you helped me deal with a pain I’d been pretending I wasn’t wallowing in. You began to save me that month we spent out here last time. But it was time for me to start saving myself.’