Christmas With Her Bodyguard. Charlotte Hawkes
had changed her life in so many ways. Not all of them good.
And how humiliating that the numbness was only now beginning to recede because her traitorous body was already tingling at the memories of Myles that began to lace their way into her brain. Memories she’d spent fifteen years trying to bury.
The attraction between her and Myles when he’d walked into the Rawlstone family home with Rafe had been instantaneous. Its intensity had side-swiped her, and at seventeen—barely a few months off eighteen—it had been long overdue. Myles had just turned twenty-one, a medical student at uni, and already a junior officer in the British army. He’d seemed so much wiser and more mature than the American boys from her high school, and she’d fallen so very hard, so very fast. She’d genuinely believed him to be her first love. With the benefit of hindsight, of course, she recognised it for what it had really been...her first intense crush. Nothing more.
But still, when she looked back over that Christmas holiday she knew she’d acted wantonly. Then again, he hadn’t exactly beaten her off him.
Except for that last night.
‘Anyway,’ the usually astute Rafe continued, his pace unrelenting, ‘Myles was one of the best officers the British army had.’
‘Had?’
A sense of foreboding crept over her. Being an army trauma doctor had been Myles’ sole focus in life. She couldn’t imagine him ever leaving of his own volition.
‘He left six months ago.’
‘Why?’
To most other people it would have been indiscernible, but Rae didn’t miss Rafe’s uncharacteristic beat of hesitation.
‘There was a village. A fire. One of the riflemen protecting Myles’ medical team...died. Myles was injured badly, too... His hand. He couldn’t operate for a while but he couldn’t stand the idea of getting stuck behind a desk. Possibly there was a degree of survivor’s guilt, too. He’d been going through the process of coming to the States anyway so taking a clinical observation post under your supervision means he can still do that whilst also protecting you around the clock.’
‘Round the clock?’ She gasped. ‘He can’t live with me.’
‘Do you want to stay safe, or would you prefer to pander to your sensibilities?’
‘Rafe—’
‘Relax.’ He cut her off with a half-smile. ‘I don’t mean to needle you. For the moment it seems this threat is UK-based, so he’ll accompany you to your lecture tonight and on the private jet back to the States tomorrow. But he won’t need to live with you... I’ve purchased the property next door.’
There was no reason for her to feel so panicked. No reason at all. And if there was, she told herself firmly, it was at the idea that people had been hurt. Not at the thought of being in Myles’ company twenty-four seven.
‘Wait, you said Myles was hurt?’
Clearly there was more to it than that but it was little comfort to know her instincts had been correct. Still, since Rafe hadn’t stopped pounding along the corridors leaving Rae’s legs burning as she tried to keep up, this wasn’t going to be the ideal time to press him on it.
‘Wind your neck in, Rae. I didn’t say that.’
It was so far from Rafe’s usual lexicon that there was no missing his agitation. Which perhaps helped to explain why he apparently hadn’t noticed she’d gone from pretending not to remember Myles to showing fear he had been hurt.
Ironically, that only stirred her up all the more. Still, she needed to be more careful. More blasé.
‘Wind my neck in?’ She fought back her agitation to teasing him, shedding her American accent in order to imitate his vaguely plummy English pitch. ‘My dear brother, I do believe you’re the one who had me practically frogmarched from my thirty-six-hour shift at the hospital onto your private jet and flown across the Atlantic. Yet I’m the one who needs to “wind my neck in”?’
‘Funny, Rae.’ She could almost hear him roll his eyes at her. ‘Your impersonation leaves a lot to be desired. You could take the Dick Van Dyke award for abysmal cockney accents. I’ll warn Myles.’
She forced a laugh and told herself she wasn’t getting anxious. She had to pretend that his existence meant absolutely nothing to her.
Which, of course, it did.
It was only galling that she didn’t find herself remotely convincing.
‘Fine.’ She forced a dazzling grin even though her half-brother couldn’t see her. ‘You try my accent. I bet you can’t sound like a New Yorker.’
‘Rae,’ he cautioned.
‘Seriously, give it a try.’
‘Raevenne.’ He stopped at last, turning around to face her, his hands on her shoulders. ‘Stop panicking.’
Her stomach somersaulted again. Her half-brother knew? Surely that was impossible.
She was only relieved she’d slept most of the plane journey and her shift at the hospital had been so busy that she hadn’t eaten more than a biscuit for the last eighteen hours. At least it meant there was nothing to regurgitate.
‘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,