Christmas with Her Bodyguard

This month out here couldn’t end soon enough.

‘What are you doing in here, Rae?’ He deliberately made his voice unwelcoming, forbidding even, brutally calling to mind every scurrilous thing he’d ever heard or read about her. He couldn’t fall for her act again. He wouldn’t. ‘The warehouse is off-limits.’

‘I need a couple of blankets, and a pair of trousers for a patient.’

‘Authorisation slip?’ He held out his hand, taking care not to let their fingers come into contact as she handed it over.

Rae looked exhausted...but elated. He peered at her whilst appearing to be focussed on the paper in his hand.

He’d spent the last week overseeing her from afar, making sure she was safe just as he’d assured Rafe he would do, but he’d kept away. Waiting for her to finally admit that this latest stunt was a step too far; that she was out of her league with the game she was playing with the media; that she’d overestimated her hand in trying to improve her image by coming out to a place like this to volunteer.

Because a place like this ate into your soul. The poverty, the sickness, the pain. He recognised it only too well from his years of operational tours. Indeed, this was tame compared to some of the horrific places he’d visited; missions he’d been a part of.

But it was still eating him alive.

For someone as pampered as Raevenne Rawlstone, it should certainly have been enough to send her screaming back to New York, and the best, cushiest, private practice posting that Rafe’s contacts could buy her.

Instead, she was fitting into life out here in a way he’d never anticipated. She hadn’t folded, crumbled, or run to contact her brother to get her a way out of here because she couldn’t cope, but rather she’d taken a deep breath, rolled her sleeves up, and thrown herself into chaotic camp life.

Which only made it all the more difficult for him to keep his distance. She was like some kind of breathtaking, beautiful angel. But a beauty, he had to remind himself, that only went skin-deep.

‘I still don’t understand why the clothes have to sit in this place under lock and key, when there are people out there who need them.’

He told himself not to react to her sad expression.

‘Because there aren’t enough to go around,’ he answered simply. ‘If we hand them out now to some families and not to others, we’d have fighting on our hands. That’s why all this stuff stays here. Trousers, shoes, tees, whatever. Once we have enough for each family, we’ll distribute them.’

‘I guess.’ She chewed her lip. ‘But some families are clearly in greater need than others.’

‘Which is why the forward camp near the border gives a basic package to every family coming through their gates.’ He shrugged as he located the crate, taking out a couple of pairs of trousers. ‘It’s the best we can do. Certainly the fairest way we can do it. Which one is closest to his size?’

‘Probably that one.’ She pointed. ‘Have you got a belt?’

He snorted.

‘You’re not shopping in one of your designer stores now. There’s some twine over there. Cut a length off, that will have to do.’

He told himself he didn’t notice when she wrinkled her nose and offered him an involuntary sheepish smile. Nor did he notice when she shifted awkwardly from one foot to the other with that little finger-twist tell of hers.

‘Myles, I... I wanted to apologise for...you know...that night last week. I—’

There was no reason whatsoever for anything to lance through him the way that it did.

‘Forget it,’ he cut her off briskly, deliberately focussing on the task in hand.

He tracked across the warehouse.

‘Myles...’

He thrust the blankets at her before getting her to sign the authorisation slip and giving her the bottom copy. Then he moved off, ostensibly to find a new bag of donations to sort through and filter into pallet boxes, but she shuffled along behind him.

‘I don’t want to hear it, Raevenne.’

For a moment he thought she might have stopped. Turned away. And then she spoke again, quietly, urgently.

‘I need to apologise for that night, Myles. I wasn’t...it wasn’t...that wasn’t me, that night.’

‘Don’t you need to get those blankets and trousers to your patient?’