Christmas with Her Bodyguard

by Charlotte Hawkes

  It wasn’t really an answer. Certainly not the response she’d hoped for. Something tightened around her heart, like an invisible thread pulling it in, painful and constricting.

  ‘I think he thought maybe I could...talk to you. Help you get over it. I’m good at that...listening. Helping people talk.’

  Her voice was raw. It made her throat ache.

  She might have known he wouldn’t answer. Instead, he simply turned the tables on her as though he was the one who deserved answers, not her. The way he always did.

  ‘Is this a game to you?’ Without warning, Myles advanced on her. Too big, too powerful, too everything. ‘A typical Rawlstone Rabble stunt for your own twisted amusement?’

  His dark expression should have frightened her. It didn’t.

  ‘I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but I don’t want to talk to you about it.’

  It took everything she had to stamp down her instinct to object.

  She drew in a discreet breath. Then another.

  ‘I understand,’ she acknowledged quietly, when her voice was calmer. ‘And you don’t have to talk. I just wanted you to know that I’m here. If you ever want me.’

  ‘I don’t,’ he ground out.

  But, surprisingly, the rejection didn’t hurt her the way she might have expected. With a rush of something she couldn’t yet name, or maybe she just didn’t want to, Rae realised she trusted him. Perhaps it was because Rafe trusted him, but she didn’t think it was that simple. There was something inherently dependable about Myles. Something she believed in just as much as her brother did, or, at least, she wanted to.

  If only it weren’t for that cruel, taunting voice in the back of her head reminding her what had happened the last time she’d trusted a man who wasn’t her brother. How her most intimate moments had become public property all because Justin hadn’t wanted to give up his grasp on fame.

  Maybe if Myles could just give her something, anything to show that he needed her. There was more—she knew that...but this felt like a start, a real step forward. She could work on this.

  Not that she knew what it was she thought she was working on.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  ‘WHAT’S THAT FOR?’ Myles frowned at the kit bag Rae had just thrown into the back of his four-by-four.

  ‘What does it look like? I’m coming with you.’

  Light, breezy, airy. She clearly had no idea how dangerous it was closer to the border. He considered telling her, but then knowing Rae she would only use the information against him later.

  ‘Most of the work up there is sorting out displaced people, triaging medical cases, and administering basic injections that they’ve never had before, like polio. I can’t imagine this camp can spare your expertise.’

  ‘Now that’s where you’re wrong.’ She grinned. ‘There are several of us here at the moment, but apparently the forward camp only have two OBGYNs and one of them has just gone down with a vomiting bug. They asked me if I wanted to go up there for forty-eight hours and take up the slack.’

  He felt restless. Frustrated.

  ‘Forget it. They can get someone else.’

  ‘They have me, Myles.’

  ‘Not a chance,’ he bit back. ‘This camp is so far back it’s relatively safe, but the forward camp isn’t.’

  ‘Is that a note of concern I hear? I’m touched.’

  She was teasing him again. What was more, he liked it.

  ‘Don’t be,’ he growled, his voice far more loaded than he would have liked. ‘It’s just my job.’

  She arched an eyebrow and he wondered how, after last night, he could possibly expect her to believe such a blatant lie. He grunted and stalked around the vehicle and carried out his first parade.

  He should regret last night—his weakness in talking to her, in telling her all the things he’d never told anyone before. And yet he couldn’t regret it. He’d felt something like relief—he could barely tell, it was such an unfamiliar sensation these days—seeping out of him with every word he’d uttered. As if she were rescuing him from quicksand he’d thought he would be trapped in for ever. Or at least until it pulled him under.

  But wasn’t that part of the problem? He was supposed to be the strong one here. He always had been, all through his military and medical career. He should have been the one helping her. Saving her.

  What kind of a man was he that he couldn’t look after himself? What did he have to offer a woman like Raevenne?

  He glowered at the dusty, barren landscape beyond the compound and offered a bitter laugh. It couldn’t have been a more apt vista.

  ‘I want to be with you today.’ He startled as she touched his arm gently. He hadn’t even noticed her approaching him. ‘I thought you might appreciate it, especially when you’re talking the other surgeon through the second operation.’

  His jaw was so tightly locked he was shocked it didn’t crack or crumble under the pressure.

  ‘I’m not totally inept.’

  ‘I never thought you were,’ she cried quietly. ‘I just wanted to offer you a bit of support. The way you have for me so many times already.’

  ‘You mean, you think I might lose it, after spilling my guts to you last night. You think I might not be able to handle walking someone through this operation.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ she snapped. ‘I think you’ll switch into the same calm, professional mode you always do and talk them through it flawlessly.’

  ‘Which is why you think I need a chaperone,’ he bit out icily.

  ‘Which is why I think you need someone there who knows that you aren’t as calm inside as you appear to everyone else,’ she corrected. ‘You bottle it all up, Myles. That much is clear. And that’s what is making your PTSD worse.’

  ‘I don’t have PTSD.’

  Shame thundered through him at her words, at her assessment of him. He wasn’t that man. He wasn’t that weak. He refused to be.

  And then she placed her hands on his chest, palms flat, rooting him to the ground. He tried to move but he was incapable.

  ‘You have PTSD, Myles. And there’s no shame in it. God knows it’s understandable after all you’ve been through. What you had to deal with out there is unimaginable to most people, including me, but you can deal with it. I really believe that. And I believe in you enough to know you can overcome it. But you have to stop feeling as though you’re alone in all of this, because you aren’t alone.’

  He lifted his hands to remove hers. To push her away. Instead, he found himself covering her delicate fists with his own bear claws. She glanced at them, then back up at him, and he would have sworn he saw her eyes glistening.

  For him.

  As though she really did care.

  ‘There are people you can talk to, Myles. I’m here and I’ll always listen but of course I realise you might not want me. Besides, there are those who will understand this better than me. But please, talk to someone. The longer you try to ignore it, pretending you’re fine, pretending you don’t need anyone, the worse it’s going to get.’

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

  But his words lacked any real bite. The truth was, she made it sound so easy. So appealing. Almost more convincing than the voice in his head telling him to keep quiet. To deal with it himself.

  He was out of his depth. Floundering. No one had ever slipped under his skin the way that Rae had. She made him want her; made him feel things he hadn’t felt in a long time, possibly ever. At least about women. His career had devoured all his time and energy, with the few relationships he’d had sinking because the female in question hadn’t understood it. He’d been perfectly okay with that. But now, this one woman made him wonder what he might be missing.

  Which was madness.

  ‘We had sex, Rae. It doesn’t mean we know each other. It doesn’t me
an we’re suddenly in some kind of a relationship. It was just sex.’

  She blanched, just as he’d known she would. Just as he’d intended. But it didn’t make him triumphant that he’d made her back off. It just made him guilty. And sad.

  Probably because he knew it wasn’t true. Sex was one thing. It was a physical, chemical reaction to each other. But what he felt for Rae went beyond that, as ludicrous as it sounded in his own head.

  Still, a relationship? Raevenne Rawlstone was the last person in the world with whom he could imagine having a relationship.

  Except that he was.

  Even if he pushed her out of his thoughts time and again, she crept back into his subconscious. She dominated his dreams. He could still feel the slickness of her skin against his, hear her soft laugh, taste her need. She was wholly intoxicating and he still wanted her.

  Right now she was staring at him as though she could see right through him, right into his soul, and she was gathering herself up, squaring her shoulders and readying herself for a fight.

  With a start, he realised that she was near livid.

  ‘You think being strong means never leaning on anyone else, always being there for them. You think talking to me about what happened to you out there is a sign of weakness. Well, let me tell you this, Major Myles Garrington, you couldn’t be more wrong.’

  ‘Raevenne—’

  ‘I bet you you’ve told this to men time and again. I bet you’ve even encouraged them to go and speak to someone, a therapist or something. But I bet right now you believe that if you do that, it’s you admitting you can’t cope.’

  ‘It is admitting you can’t cope,’ he bit out, suddenly.

  She snorted scornfully. And loudly. Not even attempting to supress it.

  ‘Of course it isn’t. Stuffing it all down and letting it eat at you like some kind of acid from the inside out is weak. Refusing to talk about it when it’s clearly killing you is weak. Deliberately putting yourself through night after night of hellish nightmares is weak.’

  ‘You think I want to have those nightmares?’

  ‘I think you hate them. I can’t imagine anyone would want to live their life in such pain. I think you’re a good person who deserved better. But I can’t stand by and watch you tough it out as though that’s a sign of strength. Please listen to me, Myles, a truly strong man would acknowledge his limitations. A truly strong man wouldn’t take the easy way out, stuffing things down, he would make the incredible step of facing his problems, of voicing them.’

  He couldn’t answer her. Couldn’t even begin to get his head around the jumble of emotions crowding him in this moment.

  A part of him recognised what she was saying, the same part that so desperately wanted to grab her and hold her and let her ease his pain. But then there was the other part, the monster inside him that taunted and sniped in his ear. Who told him that he had nothing to complain about, given that he had survived when so many of his friends hadn’t.

  That he’d got off lightly.

  That the least he deserved was to suffer a little.

  And so he finally found the strength to break free of Rae’s touch, and he climbed into the vehicle, started the engine and drove in silence, whilst neither one of them said another word.

  But, for the first time he felt cowardly and alone. As though she was somehow slipping from his grasp and, whatever he tried to do, he couldn’t tighten his grip.

  How was it possible to lose someone he’d never had?

  * * *

  Rae awoke with a start.

  ‘We’ve been driving all day?’ She glanced at her watch.

  ‘Pretty much.’

  Another day down and she was already a fortnight into her month-long mission. It was flying by and she had the oddest sensation that every time she slept she was squandering this incredible experience.

  ‘You should have woken me.’

  He didn’t deserve the accusation in her tone, but it was out before she could stop it. But Myles, in true form, barely even had to shrug it off.

  ‘You’ve been on call pretty much twenty-four-seven, since you arrived—all of you OBGYNs have been—so I figured if this was your once chance for some uninterrupted sleep then I was damned well going to let you get it.’

  Plus it meant he didn’t have to listen to her badger him again. She wrinkled her nose in frustration, but this time kept her mouth firmly shut.

  ‘If you want something to eat, there’s something which passes for a lunch in that container over there.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Not that she was really very hungry. ‘We must be close. Isn’t that the Kurkshirgar River? Janine said once the road, such as it is, runs alongside it—we just follow it down to the border camp.’

  ‘Yeah, should be a few clicks further downstream.’

  Rae reached for the map, trying to work out where they were in relation to the landscape when the young kid seemed to come out of nowhere, frantically trying to flag down their solitary vehicle.

  Her heart thudded as Myles began to slow down.

  ‘You’re not supposed to stop anywhere,’ she reminded him nervously, glancing surreptitiously around for any signs that they were about to be attacked.

  She might have known Myles wouldn’t miss what she was doing.

  ‘I’ve already checked, Raevenne. The ground around is too low, too flat, there’s nowhere anyone could be waiting to ambush us here. But would you prefer me to play by the rules and leave the boy here alone?’

  She scowled at him, but she could still feel the flush creeping up her neck. She waited impatiently as Myles listened to the boy for what seemed like for ever.

  ‘What’s he saying?’

  ‘I think it’s his mother. Possibly pregnant, collapsed on the other side of the river.’

  Rae’s head jerked up.

  ‘Well, how did he get here?’

  ‘I’m guessing the bridge. He mentioned that no one at the camp could help unless his mother got to the bridge herself.’

  ‘If she has collapsed then surely she won’t make it.’

  Half a statement, half a question. Myles simply shook his head curtly.

  ‘Probably not.’

  Rae already knew the answer to her next question, so it was pointless to ask it. Still, she couldn’t keep it in.

  ‘There’s no way we can drive up there? Cross the bridge?’

  ‘Not a chance. Not going against all those people. It’s like a swarm. That’s why no one at the forwards camp could. Besides, anyone crossing in that direction risks getting shot by border patrols.’

  ‘We can’t leave her.’

  ‘No,’ he agreed grimly.

  ‘What are you doing?’ She hurried after him as he vaulted into the back of the four-by-four and methodically began to open supply boxes.

  ‘Looking for a rope.’

  ‘Why?’

  When he didn’t answer, she peered around, her mind spinning. The dirty, wide river frothed angrily as it raced across the land.

  Her heart lurched sickeningly.

  ‘Oh...no. You can’t possibly be thinking of that.’

  ‘It’s the only way.’

  She mustn’t panic. She mustn’t.

  ‘That current is far too dangerous.’

  ‘Which is why I’m going to tie the rope around my waist and then attach it to the truck.’

  ‘Myles.’

  What else was she to say? How could she possibly convince him that this whole idea was insane? That he was risking his life. That she didn’t want him to risk his life. Not now. Not ever again.

  Because the possibility of losing him hurt too much.

  Which was insane, because she didn’t even have him to lose. And she never would have.

  ‘Do you want me to help this woman, or not?’

 
; She shot him a look that was anger mixed with pure fear.

  ‘That’s not a fair question.’

  ‘Perhaps not, but it’s the only question there is.’

  Rae stared helplessly, her mind raging as out of control as the torrent in front of her.

  ‘Fine,’ she snapped at length. ‘But if you’re going then I’m coming with you.’

  She had no idea how the hell she was supposed to do it. All she knew was that she wouldn’t, couldn’t, let Myles go alone.

  She was reaching up and grabbing a second rope for herself when his fingers locked tightly against her wrist, stilling her movement.

  ‘I can’t let you do that, Raevenne.’

  She pursed her lips, if only to keep them from shaking.

  ‘If you can, then I can.’

  He leapt down in one easy movement, coming to stand in front of her, his fingers beneath her chin to tilt her head up. Forcing her to meet his eyes.

  ‘You aren’t coming, Rae,’ he repeated softly.

  She blinked back the hot, prickling sensation behind her eyes, which had no business being there.

  ‘You can’t go on your own.’

  ‘I can. Besides, we can’t both leave the truck.’

  ‘Myles.’

  ‘Stop, Rae. Just listen to me. This is what’s going to happen. I’m going to tie up and get into the back whilst you drive back upstream until I say to stop. Then I’m going to get out and start to cross the river. As the current pulls me downstream the truck will hold me fast. But you keep the engine running and if anyone, anyone, approaches you, I’ll untie my end of the rope and you’ll drive as fast as you can to camp.’

  ‘No!’ She wasn’t sure if she actually shrieked. ‘I won’t leave you.’

  Was it really possible for a heart to race and hang simultaneously? What Myles was saying was preposterous. If he wasn’t tied up, that current would pull him under and smash him against whatever rocks lay on the river bed. His body could end up so far downstream they would never find him.

  ‘Yes, you will. You have to.’

  ‘Myles—’

  He cut her off.

  ‘This woman needs our help, Rae. This kid needs our help. So I’m going to cross and you’re going to stay with the truck.’