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.