From temporary protector...

To love of a lifetime!

Obstetrician Rae Rawlstone has worked hard to distance herself from her fame-seeking family and scandalous past. Only now her past is catching up with her—because she’s spending Christmas under the protection of ex-army surgeon and first love Major Myles Garrington! Behind the shadows of her bodyguard’s gorgeous eyes, Rae recognizes they have more than chemistry in common. Could learning to trust one another lead to happy-ever-after?

“Ms. Hawkes has delivered a fantastic read in this book where the chemistry between this couple was heady and convincing....”

—Harlequin Junkie on A Bride to Redeem Him

“...it was right at the end that had me smiling a lot, because of how far the hero and heroine have come in their relationship.”

—Harlequin Junkie on Tempted by Dr. Off-Limits

Born and raised on the Wirral Peninsula in England, CHARLOTTE HAWKES is mum to two intrepid boys who love her to play building block games with them and who object loudly to the amount of time she spends on the computer. When she isn’t writing—or building with blocks—she is company director for a small Anglo/French construction firm. Charlotte loves to hear from readers and you can contact her at her website: charlotte-hawkes.com.

Also by Charlotte Hawkes

The Army Doc’s Secret Wife

The Surgeon’s Baby Surprise

A Bride to Redeem Him

The Surgeon’s One-Night Baby

Hot Army Docs miniseries

Encounter with a Commanding Officer

Tempted by Dr Off-Limits

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.

Christmas with Her Bodyguard

Charlotte Hawkes

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-07550-3

CHRISTMAS WITH HER BODYGUARD

© 2018 Charlotte Hawkes

Published in Great Britain 2018

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

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Version: 2020-03-02

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To Mum,

for all the hats you wore!

You’re my inspiration xxx

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Extract

About the Publisher

CHAPTER ONE

‘REALLY, RAFE.’ GRITTING her teeth to stay calm, Rae hurried behind her half-brother’s long strides as he burned through the Rawlstone Group’s UK headquarters. ‘I appreciate you’re only looking out for me, but I really don’t need a bodyguard. Especially around Christmas.’

Her stomach roiled at the mere thought of another bodyguard. Even after all these years.

‘I’m sorry, Rae.’ He sounded genuinely regretful. ‘If there were any other way...’

‘There has to be,’ she pleaded. ‘Please, Rafe, you know the press will take any excuse to rake up the past. They never believed in my innocence as it was, and I couldn’t bear it. Not again.’

Another stomach lurch. It was hard enough putting up with paparazzi dogging her daily life, pretending she didn’t care what lies they wrote about her, or how little the public thought of her. She certainly didn’t need to give them a reason to rerun all those stories of her utterly spectacular plummet into shame almost fourteen years ago.

No matter what she’d done to try to redeem herself, they had refused to believe that she’d known nothing about the sex tape, let alone leaked it. It had taken her ten years and a career in medicine to get them to finally stop linking her—usually scandalously—to every Hollywood A-lister, every rock musician, or every trust-fund kid in whose presence she was spotted.

It hadn’t mattered that she’d barely even exchanged a word with some of them, let alone dated them. Sex sold. Scandal sold. That was all that mattered to them for so, so long. Only in the last four years had they finally, reluctantly, begun to come around to her side.

A bodyguard would undo all that good work. She could just read the headlines now.

Scarlet woman Raevenne Rawlstone finally takes a new bodyguard. Will he be as undercover as the last one?

And that would be one of the tamer offerings.

Hot shame flooded her body as X-rated images, intimate moments that never had been anything but private, filled her brain.

‘I can’t have another bodyguard,’ she choked out. ‘I won’t.’

Abruptly, her legs gave out and she just about made it to the wall for support, the old stonework rough beneath her hands. She’d trailed her fingers over their cool surface many times in the past, but tonight they seemed colder than usual, sapping her body heat as unseen edges cut into her skin. Rae withdrew her hand abruptly.

She usually loved visiting Rafe here. The offices might be as super high-tech as every other square millimetre of real estate in the company’s portfolio, but Rafe’s flair for restoring vast, old buildings, with their inspiring architecture, always had her gasping with admiration.

Today, however, she barely noticed the glorious stonework or vaulted ceilings. December was in a matter of weeks and yet she couldn’t envisage the festive lights and decorations that would go transform this place into something infinitely magical. She didn’t even think about the fact that, when the offices closed their proverbial business doors for the Christmas shutdown, Rafe would open the physical doors to the house and feed the homeless, the way he always did for those ten days.

Her half-brother was moving back to her, reaching out to cup her shoulder, the closest he came to a hug. None of the Rawlstone clan found it easy to show emotion—an overhang from their mutual father, the cold and remote Ronald Rawlstone—but she and Rafe both knew they cared about each other.

‘We’ll deal with the press if we need to. You won’t be alone, Rae. But I told you, I received a death threat the other day.’

‘We always receive death threats.’ She waved her hands desperately. ‘We’re Rawlstones.’

Or at least her side of the Rawlstone family always received death threats. Her limelight-loving sisters and mother had made it their mission with their Life in the Rawl reality show.

By contrast their half-brother, Rafe, CEO of the Rawlstone Group and former British army officer, was generally universally adored. At least by the press and public.

‘This one is credible,’ he replied simply. ‘So, it’s precisely because it is Christmas that I need to know you’re safe. Especially with all the festive fundraisers and seasonal socials you’ll no doubt be compelled to attend. Your sisters already have bigger personal protection details than even they need, as does your mother. It’s you I worry about.’

She stared miserably at some fixed point on the stonework that her eyes didn’t even see. ‘They’ll bring it all back up...what happened with Justin.’

The images flashed up again and she squeezed her eyes shut. It didn’t help. She could still see it. The moment she’d lost her virginity played out on social media for the world to see.

She might have gagged, she couldn’t be sure, but suddenly she was wrapped in a tight, if awkward, embrace.

‘The guy was a piece of scum.’ Controlled fury laced his voice along with a thread of guilt, and she hated that her half-brother felt even slightly responsible for the mistakes she’d made so many years ago. ‘I’ll never let anything like that happen to you again.’

‘You can’t promise that.’ Her voice sounded more strained than she would have preferred.

‘I can.’ Releasing her slightly, Rafe took a step back. ‘I personally requested the guy I’ve chosen to be our bodyguard. I trust him. He’s a major from my army days.’

Her heart actually stopped beating for a moment.

And another.

It took everything she had to tell herself not to be so foolish. That it couldn’t possibly be. And still her throat was thick, constricted, her tongue too big for her mouth, when she replied.

‘He’s some major or other from your army days?’

‘Not some major,’ Rafe disapproved. ‘Myles is one of the best officers I had the pleasure to serve with.

Everything receded. Went black.

She had no idea how long she stood there but when she came back, squeezing her eyes closed, she was eternally grateful that Rafe was too busy marching along to have turned around to look at her.

There seemed little point in trying to soothe and corral her skittering heart but she made a valiant effort nonetheless.

‘Myles.’

As if, perhaps, it could possibly be a different Myles.

‘That’s right, Major Myles Garrington.’ She could practically hear Rafe’s eye-roll. ‘I mentioned it was him before. Keep up, Rae.’

‘You didn’t,’ she managed feebly.

Myles. Numbness crept over her, but she had to hold herself together. Especially in front of Rafe. Her half-brother’s opinion was the only one that mattered to her these days; she certainly couldn’t let him know how she’d thrown herself at his best friend all those years ago.

She managed to stumble after him.

‘Oh, well, no matter.’ Rafe was oblivious. ‘Myles is a decent bloke—you’ll like him. You might not remember but you even met him once. He came with me the one and only Christmas holiday I spent with your family...oh, probably fifteen years ago now.’

Actually, fifteen years and two months ago. Not that she was counting. Much.

It was the only Christmas that Rafe had come to his half-family’s home. It had been at their mutual father’s insistence. As though the shocking death of his first wife had made Ronald Rawlstone suddenly remember the son he’d had little contact with—other than sending monthly financial support—for the best part of two decades.

She still didn’t know why Rafe had agreed—duty, probably, her half-brother had a strong sense of duty—she only knew that he’d brought his best friend, a fellow junior army officer, with him.

Myles Garrington.

He 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, 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 making 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.

But then he remembered that was gone, now—blown apart in an instant—and he had nothing.

Nothing to be proud of any more. Nothing to offer. Not to any woman, but certainly not to Rae. So, if he couldn’t keep his tone even, controlled, neutral, then he was going to have to go the other way.

He was going to have to ensure that the last thing Rae wanted to do was revisit old haunts best left to rest.

‘I owe Rafe. And if that means taking on the role of discreet bodyguard to his half-sister—’ the words were deliberate, as if to wedge even more distance between them ‘—then I will. But believe me, Rae, as soon as it’s over I’ll be back out of your life faster than you can even turn around.’

* * *

Rae couldn’t move, could barely even breathe, and she had no idea how she’d managed to answer him. Caught in a fist so tight that it felt as though it was crushing her soul right out of her chest.

She swallowed hard and plunged in.

‘Fine. Then...we keep it strictly professional.’

‘That would be best.’

He didn’t blink, didn’t even move. There was no trace at all that he even remembered the kisses they’d shared. The way he’d made her body come to life as no man ever had before.

Or since.

‘Rafe mentioned that you’ve already completed the necessary qualifications and that you and he have been discussing a clinical observation role for some months already?’

‘I’m weighing my options,’ Myles confirmed curtly.

A coldness crept over her skin; the sense that he was trying to shut her out as much as possible. It shouldn’t hurt. But it did.

She fought to peel her eyes off the man who stood, more imposing and mouth-watering than ever, in front of her. She failed.

He looked well.

Actually, he looked more than well. She wasn’t sure when they’d closed the gap between them again, but he was so close now she had to tilt her head right up to maintain eye contact. To prove she wasn’t really as intimidated as she felt. To pretend her heart wasn’t doing odd...flippy things.

Myles was tall. She’d forgotten quite how tall. She wasn’t exactly short to start with, but even wearing heels as she was, he still towered above her. Six feet three with shoulders wide enough to block out the view from even the expansive picture window behind him, but then a V-shaped chest tapered to a narrower waist, more athletic-fit than body-builder-fit, and powerful thighs encased in dark trousers. Familiar, and yet at the same time different.

His body itself looked like a weapon—precisely honed and utterly lethal, but it was more than that. He’d grown up, she realised with a start, and now he was more honed, more powerful, more...dangerous.

He positively exuded dominance, strength, control. As they stood there glowering at each other it was as though the last decade and a half toppled away without warning.

‘I’m sorry.’

The apology was out before she even knew the words were on her tongue. But his scowl only deepened.

‘What for?’

Rae hesitated. What had she meant? That night? Justin? Whatever had happened to Myles’ distinguished army career?

Ultimately she shook her head, unable to articulate the thoughts that lurked in the fog of her mind, and the fringe that she’d been growing out, which was too long to be bangs but too short to tie back into her trademark ponytail, fell forward from behind her ear.

For a split second she thought his hand moved, as though about to tuck the hair back into place. And then she realised he was merely lifting his arms to fold across his chest, even as he took a step back. Putting more space between them, leaving her inexplicably bereft.

Had she imagined that instinctive, smouldering gaze from Myles? She must have, because the look he was casting her right now was, at best, one of distaste. At worst...

God, she still wanted him.

Realisation crashed over her like an icy wave on a scorching day. Because if she still wanted him, after everything, then she was as much in danger of making a fool of herself in front of the man as she had ever been.

And that simply couldn’t happen.

Heat scorched her cheeks as Rae remembered the way she’d crept into Myles’ room practically naked that last night and offered herself to him in the most intimate way she possibly could. He’d responded so urgently, so demandingly, so loaded with intent, she’d been lost in the moment and totally unprepared when he’d wrenched himself away, bundled her up into the quilt from the end of his guest suite bed, and pushed her unceremoniously back out into the corridor, slamming his bedroom door in her face.

He’d rejected her. Without a word of explanation. And she’d felt as though her world had crashed around her. The fact that he and Rafe had left the next day for some army exercise had meant that there had been no chance for her to get answers, and so for months she’d shut herself away wondering what was wrong with her. If she wasn’t pretty enough, or sexy enough, or experienced enough.

Nonetheless, a bruised self-confidence didn’t excuse the fact that she’d been stupid enough to fall for lies from a piece of trash like Justin. How had she ever thought that he could make her feel like an attractive woman again?

‘You’re sorry for what, Rae?’ he repeated, his voice harsher than ever.

But if she couldn’t explain it to herself, how could she explain it to Myles?

In all these years she’d never once explained herself to the press. Never once tried to put forward her side of that story. Not least because she knew no one would listen. Or if they did, they would spin it so that somehow she ended up coming out even worse.

Stupid, as well as scandalous.

More than that, if she’d told the truth, said that she’d known nothing about the camera, then it would have been a criminal offence and there would have had to have been a legal case.

Inevitably there would have been a character assassination of her, and even back then Rae had known that if the police and press had delved into her, then they might have found out about Myles.

She would have ruined his friendship with her half-brother, dragged his reputation through the mud, and even harmed his army career. All because she hadn’t seen Justin for what he really was...a lying, scheming lowlife who just thought he could use her connection to Life in the Rawl to get his own fifteen minutes of fame.

Plus, she’d figured the less drama, the quicker it would all die down.

She’d been wrong. It had been too juicy for the press to let go of. It was only in the last few years of her becoming a fully-fledged doctor and OBGYN that they had finally begun to leave her alone and stop trying to connect her to any decent-looking male with a healthy pulse.

The silver lining, if she could call it that, was that she’d long since learned to own her mistakes. Own the woman those awful experiences had moulded her into. It had become her armour, her best emotional defence. And right now, with her head swirling wildly and thoughts jostling impatiently, she needed some way to buy herself time before she blurted everything out to him without first preparing the ground, and inevitably ruining her one opportunity to make him understand.

She needed something familiar. She needed some kind of anchor.

Even if a part of her knew that anchor was actually a tub of cement shoes ready to drown her at any moment.

She tipped her head almost coquettishly and pulled her shoulders back in the kind of deliberately provocative move her sisters executed to devastating effect on practically a daily basis, but which she hadn’t used in years.

‘Forget it.’ She even managed to force the beginnings of a wicked little smile, even if her cheeks did feel tight and unwilling. ‘I wasn’t really thinking.’

Myles locked his jaw and she could practically see the tiny pulse flickering away.

‘Of course not,’ he ground out. ‘Because why change the habit of a lifetime?’

‘Why indeed?’

She didn’t care that he was staring at her as though she were a fleck of contemptible mud on the toe of one of his polished army boots. Really she didn’t.

Not, she imagined, that he would ever tolerate any form of dirt on his parade boots.

And it didn’t twist inside her to know that he, like pretty much the rest of the world, actually believed that she had ever had any part in that vile sex tape. There was no reason for this shameful heat that spread over her cheeks. She’d long since mastered the art of pretending that it didn’t get to her. If she could fool the press, the public, then she could certainly fool Myles.

Tilting her head that little bit higher, Rae forced herself—however many knives stabbed into the dark hollow where her soul had once been—to meet his glower.

As if she were simply playing the game he evidently thought she was playing, although her voice damn near cracked when she answered him.

Myles narrowed his eyes but she ignored it.

‘Well, now we have those pleasantries out of the way—’ she rolled her eyes to make her point ‘—I think it’s time for me to go. I have a lecture to get ready for. Doctor or not, I find the press prefer glamorous photos to dowdy shots.’

‘Is that so?’ Myles pursed his lips and she knew he was thinking of the sex tape.

Just as she’d intended, she told herself.

It was the only way.

Other than Rafe, Myles was the only other man alive who she’d ever wanted to impress. She couldn’t explain it, but in some perverse way she would prefer he hated her for the choices he thought she had made, than know she was so pathetic that she’d let someone like Justin play her.

She scowled at him, and in that moment something crossed his face, pulling his features and making her look again.

She realised abruptly that he didn’t look as well as she’d initially thought. Or, more accurately, he looked physically incredible, but non-physically...?

Her heart kicked before she could stop it and it was all she could do not to reach out and touch his tense, strained face. His eyes were darker than she remembered. Bleaker. Grim and laced with pain.

Her head swam with echoes of her half-brother’s words outside the doors just before they’d entered the room. That Myles needed their help.

She had known that Myles had spent most of his career as a battlefield trauma surgeon with a specialty in plastic surgery—specifically with burns from bombs, IEDs and mines. But hearing that Myles had been caught up in it, injured so badly that he’d chosen to leave the army altogether rather than fly a desk, was sickening.

It had been awful hearing Rafe tell her that Myles, having been authorised to return to operating, had turned down lucrative job offers with hospitals up and down the UK, as well as opportunities in multiple top US hospitals.

It had taken her a while to understand what Rafe had been suggesting.

‘I think that right now Myles needs to see other specialties of medicine.’ Rafe’s caginess had snagged her attention. ‘I need you to help him, Rae.’

It was the closest she’d ever heard her half-brother get to a plea.

‘Let him see a different side to being a surgeon. One which doesn’t involve suicide bombers, and maimed kids, and putting your closest buddies in a body bag.’

She’d felt sick on Myles’ behalf.

She could have told her brother that being an OBGYN wasn’t all hearts and flowers; that death touched this area of medicine, too. But somehow it didn’t seem the same. Especially when she remembered the look on Rafe’s face when he’d told her that a lance corporal, a mere kid, had taken his own life that day, and that he feared Myles blamed himself.

‘Is he right to?’ Rae had asked abruptly.

She hadn’t meant to, but she’d suddenly found that she was shaking and this was the only way she could stop it.

‘Of course not.’ Rafe had looked momentarily annoyed, before making a clear effort to soften his tone. ‘Please, Rae? You’d be solving two problems for me. You would be getting a bodyguard we can both trust. And you would potentially be helping the man who showed me how to be the best leader and soldier I could possibly be.’

The pain on his face had got to her. But it was nothing like the expression she was looking at right now on Myles’ face. Fifteen years ago she would have ached to steal that pain away for him. But not now, she told herself firmly. Not now.

Rae wasn’t sure she believed herself or why the words sounded so hollow in her head.

But still, she would do what Rafe had asked her to do. Not just because it was her half-brother asking, but because, deep down, they both knew she liked to fix people. She couldn’t fix her own life so she concentrated on others’. It was probably one of the reasons why being an OBGYN suited her so well. There were always dark moments but in this field the outcome was more often positive, especially when it entailed bringing a new life into the world, and into the arms of an ecstatic mother.

If that couldn’t shine some light into whatever dark pit Myles was in, then surely nothing could?

And the fact that she was the one helping him—that maybe she could prove to him she was a skilled, professional OBGYN and that the incident with Justin, for which she’d become infamous, was nothing more than a brief, shameful moment in her past—had nothing to do with it.

‘You know you can talk to me, Myles,’ she began impulsively. ‘I’m a good listener...whatever you’re going through.’

She knew immediately it had been the wrong thing to say.

‘Did you manage to sleep on the flight?’ he asked abruptly.

How she wished she could take her words back. Swallow them. Instead, she tried to regulate her breathing enough to answer.

‘Yes.’

Seven hours of blissful, uninterrupted sleep in the company jet’s bedroom suite had inarguably been more comfortable than the doctor’s accommodation at the New York clinic where she’d snatched the odd hour or so whilst pulling her second thirty-six-hour shift of the week.

‘Clearly it wasn’t enough—you still look tired.’ He peered at her, concerned.

It was hard to ooze the nonchalance for which she was so ironically well known when her whole body was going into overdrive at the mere suggestion of solicitude from him.

‘Gosh, thanks for the compliment.’

She even managed to keep her voice from shaking, but Myles ignored her dry tone.

‘You should look after yourself more.’ He apparently felt the need to hammer home the point.

Rae chastised herself for hoping for something more praiseworthy from him.

‘Says the man who, if you’re anything like my brother, exists on four hours’ sleep a night.’ She kept her laugh deliberately light.

He shrugged as though it was okay for him.

Her chest cracked.

So much for Myles being her bodyguard, meant to protect her, to ensure she didn’t get hurt. As far as Rae was concerned, he was the one person who could wound her more deeply than anyone else ever could.

Just as he had done before.

Clearly fifteen years had taught her absolutely nothing.

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