Christmas with Her Bodyguard Read online

  ‘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

  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 ma
king 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.