Christmas with Her Bodyguard

He paused, and when he spoke again his grave voice rumbled deep inside her.

‘I promise, Rae.’

* * *

Later, much later, when she was alone in the company jet bedroom, she would remember that moment. The way he hadn’t exactly enfolded her in his arms willingly, but he hadn’t exactly pushed her away, either.

She would wonder at the sanity of staying in a hotel with him whilst her emotions seemed to be so scattered, so fluttery, and she would conclude that sleeping in the hospital’s on-call rooms would be infinitely safer, both mentally and physically.

And yet she would wonder if, after all, she might finally be able to convince him that she wasn’t the woman the world all too often made her out to be, but more like the girl he remembered from that Christmas all those years ago.

CHAPTER FOUR

‘COME ON. EMERGENCY C-SECTION.’ Rae spoke crisply as she hurried down the stairs to the operating rooms, taking the steps two at a time.

They’d barely spoken since that night she’d given the lecture back in the UK. The night when he’d come so close to letting her see just how easily she could wrap him around her little finger. Still.

The night he’d hit back the only way he’d known how, but which had given him no pleasure and had, if anything, made him feel like a complete bastard. Since then, he’d accompanied her to her home to check what had been stolen, all of which had confirmed his suspicion that the break-in wasn’t opportunists but was somehow connected to the death threats.

He’d stayed with her at the hospital whilst a team cleared up her home, but otherwise they’d only conversed on a medical basis.

He should be pleased. He should feel victorious. They had sidestepped the inappropriate attraction that, as ludicrous as it was, lurked between them even after all these years, and put things on a purely professional footing.

Instead he felt oddly deflated. Oddly...at sea.

It wasn’t just concern for her personal safety and the knowledge that Rafe’s fears weren’t entirely unfounded. Although he had to admit, both of these facts had affected him far more than they had any business doing.

It felt somehow more personal than it should do.

‘Veronica is a thirty-six-year-old parturient,’ Rae hurried on, forcing him to pull his head back into the game. ‘She arrived on the labour ward a few hours ago, five centimetres dilated and progressing nicely. However, she’s subsequently developed heavy bleeding and the baby’s heart rate began to drop dangerously low. Suspected placental abruption, which an ultrasound has appeared to confirm.’

He might have been an army surgeon for his whole career, but he could remember back to his training enough to know that when the placenta detached from the uterus wall prematurely, it could be life-threatening for the baby, who could be deprived of nutrients and oxygen. Not to mention the bleeding. But Rae had said the baby still had a heart rate.

‘Partial abruption?’ he verified.

‘Yes, but it could turn severe at any time, which is why we’re going in for the baby.’

‘Understood.’

Dr Raevenne Rawlstone, his mind wandered again as they moved swiftly through the corridor.

She wasn’t at all what he’d been expecting and, as galling as it was to admit it, over these last couple of days, she’d thrown him. Perhaps even more than she had back in the UK less than a week ago.

And it had been one thing reading about her success and skill as a doctor from afar, but it was quite another experiencing it first-hand. She was also a surprisingly generous teacher.

And he could only admire the fact that she’d pushed some society gala—due to start in an hour—in order to extend her thirty-six-hour shift into something even more inhuman.

She was more like the army surgeons he’d worked with, shoulder to shoulder, for so many years, and it was beginning to make him...homesick? Homesick for operating.

It was entirely unsettling.

And that was without the added complication that he’d been pretending hadn’t existed ever since that first meeting in Rafe’s offices, of that ridiculous attraction that still smouldered between them.

Wholly incongruous and utterly inappropriate.

Yet, there it was. Still sizzling in every unguarded look, hastily smothered into a deep scowl, every careless brush against the other, which was instantly replaced by a deliberate step away, ever

y time they came to the same medical conclusion only for the moment of connection to be immediately severed by some imaginary scalpel.