‘I wasn’t going to tell you this until we had everything squared away and everything accounted for, but we think we’ve caught the company responsible for the death threats, Rafe’s brakes, and your break-in. They’re a rival company who lost out on a bid to your brother about a year ago.’
She didn’t even blink.
‘I know.’
‘You do?’
‘Rafe emailed a few days ago.’
She was giving nothing away.
‘I see.’ Myles dipped his head, fighting back some alien emotion pushing within him.
‘Rafe also said you’d been working flat out on the investigation even from out here.’
He shrugged.
‘I did what I could.’
‘Why?’ He hated that her voice was so brittle. ‘For me? Because you owed Rafe? To appease your own conscience?’
And then he looked at her, and it finally hit him. He understood what it was that had made her fight so hard to distance herself from Life in the Rawl, why she’d been so averse to having another bodyguard, why she’d felt compelled to volunteer for a mission like this.
‘They really did a number on you, didn’t they?’
Rae stopped. Her attempt at nonchalance betrayed by the way her breath had caught in her throat.
‘Who did?’
‘Your sisters.’ He lifted his shoulders. ‘Justin. The press.’
‘I can handle them.’
She jutted her chin out a fraction, her voice apparently as airy as ever. She looked magnificent and proud, and...something else besides. Something quite different. He’d been watching her closely long enough now to begin to be able to read her, from the way the pretty flush deepened slightly and crept down her neck, to the way she was shifting, almost imperceptibly, from one foot to the other.
And so he knew magnificent and proud were only a part of it. There was another side to her, and it was fragile, vulnerable.
It was amazing that he hadn’t spotted it before. That no one else had spotted it before. Or perhaps people just didn’t want to. They preferred the more heinous version of Raevenne Rawlstone, so that was what they believed.
The question was, why had she let them?
‘I know you can handle them, but the point is that you don’t want to keep having to, do you? It won’t matter to them how many good deeds you do, they’re going to want to write the lies, because juicy scandal sells papers, not charity work.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ She flashed a smile, which he now recognised to be too practised, too tight to be real. That realisation gave him a kick. ‘I don’t care what they write, anyway.’
‘Up until a month ago, I used to believe that.’ He didn’t deliberately soften his voice, it seemed to just...happen.
‘And now you believe differently?’ The question was almost off-hand, as though his answer didn’t matter to her either way.
But she’d hesitated a fraction too long.
‘You truly love being out here, don’t you?’
She didn’t meet his gaze immediately, and when she did look at his face, he got the impression she was staring at a point just on his ear, rather than looking at him directly. As if a part of her was guilty for her answer.
‘I find it very...rewarding.’
Surely it didn’t actually hurt him that she felt she couldn’t be honest?