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Her voice was barely recognisable, its quiver seeming to mirror all the emotions he was trying to deny were jostling inside him, desperate to get out. He refused to let them, but then she flicked out a tongue to moisten her lips and he was powerless to stop his eyes momentarily dropping to track its progress.
‘I didn’t want to take this job protecting you. I admit it.’
Her expression flickered, like a flame on the verge of being extinguished. He felt even more of a cad.
‘Then why did you?’ she managed.
‘I needed the job,’ he stated flatly. ‘And Rafe asked me to.’
It was close enough to the truth. How could he tell her that a part of him had welcomed the offer when he’d been ashamed of such a reaction?
‘Well, you don’t need to worry about it for too much longer,’ she managed bitterly, before she could stop herself.
‘Which means what, precisely?’
‘Forget it. So that’s what you wanted to tell me?’ Disappointment crept into her voice. ‘An admission of something I already knew? That you never wanted to play bodyguard to me?’
He hesitated, assessing her. Evaluating. Or maybe he was evaluating himself. He couldn’t be sure. ‘Not entirely,’ he conceded after a long moment. ‘I wanted to apologise.’
‘You did?’
‘Rafe told me a long time ago that the stories...the stories about you...weren’t true, but I didn’t believe him. I just couldn’t understand why you wouldn’t go to the authorities.’
‘I told you why the other night.’ She was clearly trying not to sound bitter. ‘You didn’t want to hear it.’
‘Would you?’ The challenge burst out before he could swallow it. ‘Hearing that protecting my reputation and my career was the reason you allowed someone like that to use you?’
‘So...you believe me?’
Did he? Evidently he must do.
‘It isn’t easy to change what I thought to be true all this time,’ he hedged.
‘You’re not the only one. It’s hard to shatter people’s perceptions, especially a bad one they simply love to hate.’
Why did it feel like a victory that he’d swept that sad expression from her features and now a small smile toyed at the corners of her mouth?
Too late, he realised he was bending his neck, almost ready to claim that soft, inviting mouth with those perfectly pink, plump lips. Jerking his head back, he caught himself in time.
‘Your family taints everything they’re associated with, even a charity event. It’s time you distanced yourself from them, Rae, the way Rafe did.’
‘I’ve spent years distancing myself from them,’ she cried out.
‘Then you need more distance.’
‘Trust me, soon enough I won’t be able to get any more distance.’ She stopped abruptly, biting her lip.
As if she hadn’t intended to say anything, as though the admission had tumbled out b
efore she could stop herself.
‘Rae?’ he prompted, using the tone he’d perfected as an officer. The one that made his men talk to him even when they might have preferred to keep it all inside.
‘There’s a woman here—’ she wrinkled her nose awkwardly ‘—Angela Kaler, who helped me to organise this charity event. I’m joining her worldwide health programme abroad.’
‘Angela Kaler?’ he frowned. ‘I know her. A few years ago the army sent my unit, a logistics unit and some engineers to join her organisation on one of the hearts and minds missions in a former warzone.’
‘Yeah? Well, now she’s running humanitarian programmes sending doctors where they’re needed, whether conflict zones, or just a remote area in need of a school or a hospital or a well; or where there’s been a natural disaster, or maybe an epidemic. I volunteered.’
