Wounds That Won’t Heal

by Calle J. Brookes

  He might look like the friends she knew on that letter, but that didn’t mean he was good at heart like they were. “Mister—I’m sorry. I’m afraid I’ve forgotten your name. My sister works for an organization that helps locate missing loved ones. The people in that letter are friends of mine. I doubt they want anything more from you than to meet. I can assure you they are all more than capable of paying their own way through life. They are kind, generous, loving people who won’t want a damned thing from you. Now, if that’s all you need, I need to get back to my flowers. I’d really like to finish this.”

  “It’s doctor. Dr. Holden-Deane. So where can I find this sister? I’d like to discuss this with her personally.”

  A doctor, figured. She’d met more than her fair share of those. Arrogant, better-than-everyone-else doctors who thought they were God’s gift to the world—and to women. Not all, of course, but there were enough just like that. Jillian had learned to pick and choose her work friends carefully. The hospital where she worked could be a bit stressful. “Mel is off with her husband, in Mexico, right now. He had some sort of technological summit that he was hosting. You may have heard of him—Houghton Barratt? She won’t be back until next week. I’ll gladly tell her that you stopped by.” And tell Mel to keep a distance from this creep. Warn Ariella, her best friend and apparently this creature’s younger sister—if the letter was correct—that Dr. Rafael Holden-Deane was just another mean jerk.

  Ari would be so much better off never having found this creep.

  “Is there some way I can speak with her now? This is a little matter I want to have closed and forgotten about as soon as possible. I don’t want to meet these people.”

  And they are better off without you, you big jerk. Jillian kept her thoughts to herself. Like it or not, it wasn’t her place to tell him that. Even if she thought it. And Jillian wasn’t stupid—she wasn’t about to poke the big bear in front of her. Not with her being so alone.

  Those security guards of Houghton’s sucked big time. “Fine. Then don’t meet them. There’s nothing in Mel’s letter to say they expect you to. You’re the one who’ll be missing out. Ariella is one of my best friends.”

  “Then you can deliver the message to her for me. Stay the hell away from me.”

  Asshat. Jillian put her muddied hands on her hips and glared the long way up at him. He glared back. She winced when she realized that he had the same eyes as his sister. How was that for bad karma? “I’m not getting involved any more than you’ve made me, Doctor Holden-Deane. It’s a private family matter. They hired Mel to find you. But it’s up to you how far it goes. Get off your high horse. They’re just looking for their family. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. Now, like I asked before, please close the gate when you leave. Good day.”

  She turned around and bent back over. She had some roses she wanted to get in the ground today, before the storms hit. Jillian wasn’t about to let a man like him keep her from it.

  The house was her father’s—Jillian had grown up there, along with three of her four sisters—but the gardens were hers.

  They had once been her mother’s. After they’d lost her over five years ago to cancer, Jillian had found solace in the garden beds her mother had so painstakingly tended.

  She’d needed that solace more often than not in the last few months or so.

  Nearly being murdered would do that to a woman, after all.

  * * *

  She’d turned her back on him. He couldn’t remember the last time a woman had done that to him. Rafe was used to people deferring to his wishes. He had spent four years in Africa having everyone around him jumping to obey his commands. Lives had depended on it.

  He was used to obedience—and people not second-guessing him. That this woman would do it with barely a thought irritated him. It shouldn’t. She wasn’t anyone important to his life. He could barely remember her first name.

  It shouldn’t matter that she ignored him. But it did.

  He reached out and touched her shoulder, wanting her to look at him again. He hadn’t been finished making his point. She jerked around, pruning shears in her hands.

  He backed up quickly.

  Not because of the shears, but because of the fear and vulnerability in her pretty golden brown eyes. She might hiss and shoot fire at him, but she was still afraid. Of him.

  Some of the anger left him, and he took another step backward. He didn’t need to be looming over her. Rafe hadn’t realized he was.

  No wonder she looked like a frightened little rabbit. He held his hands up between them. “Cool down. I’m not going to hurt you.”

  For the first time, he took a really good look at her.

  He liked what he saw; she was about five-five or five-six. The hair was an unusual shade of darker red, and he suspected it was long. The face had that classic beautiful appeal, but it was the eyes that were so unusual. At first glance they appeared washed out brown, but when he looked closer there was more gold than should have been possible.

  A very beautiful woman.

  Either she’d hit the jackpot of genetics, or she’d had a hell of a plastic surgeon. From the dirt on her hands, the flowers surrounding her, the worn flannel shirt, and cutoff jeans—that revealed some damned nice legs—he doubted this woman had been augmented at all. No, she was real.

  “I think you’d better leave now. I’m sorry Mel and Blessed Reunions bothered you. I’ll pass along the message that you’re not interested to my sister for you. And to yours, though you’re really missing out on knowing her.” She clutched the shears to her chest—which he noticed was a very nice, if not a bit small, one—and nodded toward the gate. “Good day, Dr. Holden-Deane. I’m sure some hospital somewhere is waiting for a man as important as you.”

  She was right about that, he had to admit. “I’m sorry to have disturbed you, Ms. Beck.”

  He headed back toward the quaint metal gate that separated the front yard from the garden. He opened it just as another redhead appeared around the corner. Waddled around the corner. One look at her and he could confirm the previous Ms. Beck had probably just lucked into some seriously decent genetics. As had this carrot-topped Ms. Beck.

  From the bright bauble on her finger, he suspected this one wasn’t a Beck any longer.

  She looked at him from eyes the same color and shape as her sister’s and frowned, with suspicion and a touch of fear. “Who are you? You’re not supposed to be back here. Where’s my sister?”

  “She’s around back. And I was just leaving.” He held open the gate for her and she waddled by him. He wasn’t an obstetrician, but he estimated her to be approximately thirty-six or thirty-seven weeks pregnant. “Careful on the stepping stones. You can’t afford a fall right now.”

  “Ok. I don’t know you.”

  He frowned at her. Was this the sister who’d sent the letter? She hadn’t looked away from him. “And I don’t know you.”

  “I’m Brynna. Then why are you coming out of my family’s back gate? Are you Jilly’s new boyfriend? You don’t look like her type.”

  “And what is her type? I’m Dr. Holden-Deane.”

  The woman smiled, her whole face lighting up. Rafe studied her again— young, loved, healthy. Unlike most of the women he’d seen in Africa over the last four years. Did she realize how lucky she was? And did her husband understand the gift he’d been given? Rafe shook off the bad memories and refocused on the Beck in front of him.

  “Then you’re definitely not Jilly’s type. She doesn’t date doctors. At least not anymore. She did once. So why are you here?”

  He wasn’t used to the direct approach, either, although he did appreciate it. “That’s between me and your sister. Good day.”

  “I’m sorry if you think I’m rude. Sometimes communication is difficult for me. Have a nice day.” He felt her staring at him as he finished walking around the house. Rafe headed for his car. This place, these women, were just too difficult for him to understand.
/>   The hospital waited.

  2

  “He was pretty. Not as pretty as Houghton or Sebastian, but still very pretty. And big. He’s taller than Houghton and Mick and Luc and Sebastian, too.”

  Jillian looked up at her sister as Brynna came up behind her. Brynna was the cutest pregnant woman Jillian had ever seen. She had a big blue t-shirt covering her belly. It was probably her husband’s. Brynna liked to wear his shirts when he wasn’t home. Carrot red hair was pulled up in a loose ponytail and her ever-present sunglasses were on top of her head and she was missing her usual sunglasses. “Men don’t like to be called pretty, Bryn. It wounds their delicate little egos.”

  “Chance and Sebastian and Houghton don’t have egos like that.”

  Jillian had to admit, Brynna was right. None of her brothers-in-law had the kind of ego that she suspected the great Dr. Holden-Deane did. Figured. “No, they don’t. Thank goodness. Speaking of your husband, where is Chance? I thought he wasn’t letting you out of his sight for the next three weeks?”

  “Gabby called. Elliot dropped something on his hand when he was fixing the truck and he doesn’t want to call a mechanic. Says it’s a matter of male pride, whatever that means. I’d think calling the mechanic would be a lot faster—and easier. But Elliot said Chance would help him. And Chance was getting on my nerves. He watches me every time I move, Jilly. So I said I’d come over here with you. If anything happens, you can deliver the baby. That seemed to work for some reason.”

  “I’m sure it did.” Did Brynna realize how lucky she was to have found a man like Chance Marshall? He idolized her sister, and there wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do to keep her safe. “He loves you so much.”

  Her sister smiled. “I know. I love him, too. That guy wasn’t your boyfriend, was he? He said he was a doctor, and that I had to be careful of the stepping stones in case I fell. He was really, really pretty.”

  “He had business with Blessed Reunions. He was looking for Mel. I told him she’d be back next week. He was a total jerk, pretty or not.” Jillian didn’t mention what that business was. That was for Mel to do. “Like almost every other doctor I’ve ever met.”

  “Dr. Jacobson is nice.”

  Allen Jacobson had saved her sister’s life—twice. She would always be grateful for him and what he’d done for Brynna. And she genuinely liked him as a person. “Allen is an exception.”

  “I think he’d probably sleep with you if you wanted him to.”

  “Brynna, that’s not really something you should talk about. That might embarrass Allen—and me.” She felt her cheeks heat; Allen had made a few hints in that direction. Before everything else had happened. It had been eight weeks since she’d spoken to him, though.

  “Why? We’re alone right now.”

  Brynna’s autism made social norms hard for her to always understand. Jillian had been explaining things to her since forever. Brynna was only eleven months older than Jillian, and they’d been in the same grade in school. Everyone had just assumed they were twins they had been together all the time. Jillian hadn’t minded. She genuinely liked her sisters; they were friends, as well as family. “Because whether he wanted to or not, that is private information. How would you feel about people speculating about you and Chance?”

  Brynna smiled again. She did quite a bit of that lately. “You mean like they did before?”

  “Yes. Just like that.” Brynna and the man she’d eventually married had been on the run from a band of killers. The media outlets had gotten ahold of the story and ran wild with it. The leader of those killers had almost gotten Jillian. Hard to forget that—or the fact that Brynna deserved every moment of happiness she could get. “And that speculation got Mel and Houghton together.”

  Sometimes you couldn’t argue with Brynna’s logic. Her brother-in-law Houghton had abducted Mel in response to the media attention—because his father had been one of the ones after Brynna. He’d hoped to distract the media from his father with his own exploits, and rekindle the affair between him and Mel a year and a half earlier.

  It had worked. Probably better than he’d ever imagined. He and Mel were wild about each other still, though it had been a very iffy time just two months ago.

  She touched her throat where the three-inch scar remained.

  She’d never forget the fear of having a cold-blooded killer press a knife against her throat and demand her older sister hit her knees.

  She closed her eyes and reminded herself that that time was over. Mel was alive. She was alive. Brynna and Syd and Carrie and Ari and Lacy were all safe.

  Safe. The people she cared about were safe now.

  She was in her backyard, surrounded by her mother’s precious yellow roses, with her ready-to-pop sister right next to her. Syd would be home from whatever it was she was doing within a few hours.

  Her father was probably down at the old cop bar ten minutes away, eating ice cream—he rarely touched alcohol—and swapping stories of his days with the Texas State Police.

  She was fine. It was just his ass-holiness that had scared her. Brought it all back to the surface.

  Tomorrow she went back to work after a fifteen-week absence. After the attacks, she’d taken the time off to find her feet again after everything that had happened to her family. To try to heal.

  She’d had really understanding supervisors at Finley Creek General Hospital.

  That, and Houghton had made a generous donation in her family’s name to the hospital that had saved his—and Brynna’s—lives right after it had happened. The hospital Board of Directors probably didn’t want to risk alienating her brother-in-law.

  “Let’s go inside, Bryn. It’s too hot for you and Junior out here.”

  “I think it’s a girl.”

  “Still not showing up on ultrasound?”

  “No. The baby is always moving too much to see.” Brynna rested her hand over the bubble of her stomach where her baby rested. Jillian looked at her sister for a moment—how quickly life had changed for all of them. If someone had told her last summer that one of the Beck sisters would be married with a baby on the way, Jillian would have half expected it to be Mel. Even herself, on the slimmest, smallest possibility. Not Brynna.

  She wouldn’t have thought it would be Brynna. Brynna had always been the slow and steady relationship type. Not the flash and burn and eternal flame type. But that’s what her sister had with Chance.

  At one time Jillian would have been a bit envious. But not now.

  Not since Justin Albright had made her terrified of everything. Damn him for what he’d done to her and her family.

  “And Chance; has he said what he wants yet?”

  “He just wants healthy. Both of us.”

  She understood. He wanted a healthy wife and baby. And was getting scared, as Brynna’s date got closer. Chance was fanatic about protecting Brynna. Brynna had been through so much, including being impaled by debris when someone had blown up the computer lab she worked in. And then attempted to kill her and her best friend before they could be rescued. It was hard for Chance, a man whose parents and two siblings had been ruthlessly murdered, to overcome the fear of losing the wife he adored. “I’ll check your blood pressure and we’ll get out the heart monitor. I need to practice with it again. I’m afraid I may be a bit rusty.”

  “I love listening to the heartbeat. I have a baby in here, Jilly. I can’t find the words to tell you how that feels.”

  “You’ll be a beautiful mother. Just like Carrie.” Their sister Carrie had a toddler and had just delivered her son Malcolm in April.

  She had a family and they were all safe. So why did she feel this overwhelming sense of panic? Like something was about to happen?

  Something that was going to change her world, right on its axis? She couldn’t explain it—it had to be him messing up everything.

  Jillian shivered, despite the nearly ninety-degree temperature.

  “Let’s just get inside, Bryn, ok?”

  3r />
  Finley Creek General Hospital was a decent, mid-sized hospital on the north side of Finley Creek. Rafe had approved of it the moment he’d first walked into it as a med student.

  And then he’d realized how completely inefficient it was at times.

  He liked the challenge such an appointment would bring him; liked knowing he was going to fix the school and the hospital that would always be dear to him. It needed fixed. The hospital was floundering badly and he had to find out why—and correct it. Quickly. FCGH used to be the best in Finley Creek.

  Now it wasn’t.

  In the two weeks since he’d returned from Djibouti, Africa to be closer to his brothers, he’d made quite a few changes in policies and procedures.

  A woman near the intake desk looked up when he walked in. Finley Coulter was his closest thing to an assistant, a role he’d pushed her into as soon as he realized how gifted she was. Her new official title was hospital administrator. She called herself the ‘go-to’ girl of Finley Creek General Hospital. She was around thirty, pixie-petite, blonde, dimpled, beautiful, and too damned perky for his liking.

  She was damned good at what she did. She smiled at him—one of the few who smiled when they saw him coming—and handed him a stack of files for review. “Have you heard? Our Jilly’s back.”

  “Who?” One thing he prided himself on was avoiding hospital gossip like it was the plague. He paid very little attention to who his staff actually was, to some degree. It was more efficient that way.

  Better not to get involved in the inevitable hospital drama that existed everywhere. And if FCGH continued as it was, he was going to fire a good portion of the people he met. Better not to let himself care too much. Rafe had learned his lesson about getting attached to the people he worked with. “And why is that so significant?”

  “One of our graduate nurses had a bit of family trouble. Not of her own making, but she was almost killed. Anyway...people are glad to see her back. Very pretty redhead a few inches taller than me. About twenty-five or so. She works the ER. Jilly’s a particular favorite around here. And a damned hard worker. She’ll take over the nurses one day. She could probably lead them to a coupe now, for that matter. Make a point of saying hi. It might get you some brownie points with the nurses.”