‘I did a year with the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine in the UK.’ He held her tighter, and he couldn’t work out who was holding whom upright. ‘You can’t get rid of me, Rae. I’m coming with you and that’s decided.’
‘But...’
It was done. He couldn’t afford to second-guess. He’d made a commitment to Rafe and he was seeing it through. He wasn’t about to let his buddy down. Not even if that meant going back out to hellholes like those with which he was all too familiar. And there was no other reason for his change of heart.
None at all.
‘Now, shall we see about getting those donations for you? Let’s make this event the best fundraiser these social climbers have ever had the privilege of attending. And as for the rest of your family, they can go and jump in their new handmade rock pool.’
CHAPTER FIVE
HOURS LATER RAE still hadn’t processed what Myles had said.
He was coming with her?
It had sounded surreal. But she’d decided that if she just clung to Myles, if she simply stared into those eyes that were so hot, so searing that they seemed to cauterise each lash and wound from the tongues of every single person in this room tonight, then maybe she could emerge from this gala miraculously unscathed, after all.
And so she’d clutched him, physically and mentally, as she worked her way around the room, inch by inch, making sure the night was an unequivocal success. Whether her family tried to take credit for it or not, this night had to be a triumph by securing eye-watering donations from even the Jennings and the Kemps and telling her that the charity deserved nothing less.
Enough to buy container loads of medical supplies, clothing, and heaving toy boxes for the kids. Christmas several times over.
So why did it continue to needle her that he’d shut her out so abruptly back there?
And why did it thrill her when they worked together as though they were some kind of team? Her and Myles against everyone else. Certainly against her family. Gravitating towards each other as they had done a decade earlier. As though it was the most natural thing in the world. As though it was more than just a situation engineered by her half-brother. As though she and Myles were the kind of real couple that everyone who had seen them had assumed them to be. And so she was still clinging onto Myles when he walked her through her door several hours later—the first time she’d returned since the break-in, more relieved than she would ever admit that he and her brother had agreed it wasn’t safe enough to leave her alone. Not until they could identify the reason for the break-in.
* * *
Still, it didn’t stop her from grumbling as she walked along the corridor half an hour later only for Myles to step out of the bathroom. Her nerves were jangling in an effort not to let her eyes drift down the naked, solid, mouth-watering chest. Or to linger on the soft white towel that teasingly just about went around his hips but stopped halfway down his thighs.
She tried to shift. The air seemed to have closed in on her, almost stealing the breath from her lungs. The strange magnetic draw that she’d spent the last few d
ays denying was impossible to ignore now they were stuck in a room...well, a corridor...together. Alone.
All of a sudden her clothes felt too tight for her body and she was sure her tight nipples were visible through the soft tee.
‘I still don’t understand why this particular death threat has Rafe so rattled. It isn’t like we aren’t always getting them. He’s head of a global company where, no matter how environmentally friendly the design is, new construction is always angering some group or another. My two sisters—not the nicest of people to start with, I’m afraid—live off income from their substantial shares and flaunt it in people’s faces via their reality show Life in the Rawl, and, as you’ve reminded me on multiple occasions already, I’ve got a sex tape out there, which won’t go away no matter how many babies I deliver or how many lives I save.’
Something flashed across his features—too fast for her to put a label on it, and less muted than that first day, but she might have guessed it was disdain.
She told herself it didn’t cut through her. That his opinion of her didn’t matter any more than that of hundreds, even thousands, of other people out there.
‘And is your brother always getting into cars where the brakes have been tampered with?’ he asked bluntly.
She reached out for the handrail to steady herself.
‘They tampered with Rafe’s brakes? He never said.’
‘He didn’t want to scare you.’
‘Whilst you, of course, don’t care about that.’
* * *
He shrugged, and peered at her and she had the oddest sensation he was trying to see right down to her soul.
Her body and her mind were spiking with desire, and for a moment they stood there, watching each other, not moving. She was desperate to say something, anything, to fill the silence. To give him and his ridiculously tantalising towel a reason not to leave. It made no sense.
Or more worryingly, it made perfect sense.