Wounds That Won’t Heal

by Calle J. Brookes

  Not everyone could read well; she couldn’t. But life went on. And it was best to not ever let the enemy know if they’d scored a hit or not.

  Jillian just smiled at him and blew him a kiss. Just for kicks. She’d learned in his first week that the unexpected would sometimes stop him in his tracks long enough for her to escape him.

  She darted around him when he shifted slightly and glowered. She had to duck only a little to slip under the arm he rested against the counter. Damned giant.

  Then Jillian ran.

  Before he even turned around she was at the pneumatic doors. She heard him curse at her, and Dr. Lanning say something to catch his attention.

  Wanda got in the COM’s face, all angry pseudo-mother. Jillian strongly suspected she knew what her supervisor was telling him. Jillian thought about starting back in there.

  Wanda didn’t need to fight her battles for her.

  Wanda saw her and waved her away meaningfully. Wanda was her direct supervisor, time she followed directions, right? Jillian took the coward’s way out and kept running.

  7

  Dr. Allen Jacobson took the long way down the hall, and was preoccupied when he made it to the pharmacy.

  The woman he wanted to see was already gone.

  He fought the rush of disappointment and pulled out his cell.

  He’d find her. Then maybe he’d take her to the Barratt for a nice dinner. They could rent a room and enjoy each other for a few hours.

  Forget FCGH and everything about it.

  Dr. Holden-Deane’s questions a few days earlier about Virat’s article had made Allen doubt his initial reactions to the theories the other surgeon had proposed.

  Solpalmitraln was a damned good pain killer and it had worked wonders in their department in the six months they’d been trialing the experimental medication at FCGH.

  Allen had worked closely with Claireson Pharm to get the drug brought to FCGH to begin with. He’d been rewarded with a nice incentive package, but it wasn’t about the money.

  Solpalmitraln had far less addictive side-effects. And it worked.

  Allen had seen the original tests from Claireson himself.

  That was how he and Jess had met originally. He’d stopped by the pharmacy himself to ensure the first delivery of Solpalmitraln had arrived safely.

  The liquid drug required careful storage and he’d wanted to make sure.

  She’d looked up at him with those big brown eyes of hers and he’d been a goner.

  Allen dialed her number quickly.

  He really needed to see her tonight.

  8

  How much had Jillian Beck heard? Jessica Ward mentally cursed herself for being an idiot, she’d thought the locker room was empty.

  Figured it would be Jillian Beck, of all people. She was the poster girl of Finley Creek Gen, after all.

  Literally. The marketing department had put out a poster with Lacy McGareth, Jillian Beck, Izzie McNamara and Annie Gaines on it out everywhere. To draw women to work at FCGH or something.

  Pretty and perfect. Everyone loved them. They didn’t have to scrounge for everything—especially Jillian, after her sister had married the richest man in the world or something.

  Even Allen wanted Jillian. He thought Jess didn’t know about his little crush. But she did.

  Allen Jacobson was Jess’s best chance at not being stuck on Boethe Street forever. Poverty made a hungry bedfellow, after all. Allen was handsome—but if he wasn’t, she could have dealt, after all—and successful. Almost as successful as the new Chief of Medicine.

  But girls from Boethe Street rarely got the hero, the wealthiest, sexiest, hottest, most successful men would never go for someone like her.

  No.

  They went for redheads like Jillian Beck, who had all the connections with the right people, who everyone loved. Who everyone noticed.

  She had plans for Allen. Nothing was going to stand in the way of what she wanted. Nothing.

  Not the man she’d just spoken with on her cell, and not that redheaded bitch, either.

  Jess was going to have to figure just what Jillian had heard, and just what to do about her.

  9

  Jillian paused just inside the dining room of her sister and brother-in-law’s ridiculously huge house. Mel was getting a kick out of living in the most ostentatious house in Finley Creek, at least. It was around thirty-thousand square feet of pure Houghton Barratt over-the-top style. She loved her brother-in-law—he was one of her top three favorite brothers-in-law of all time—but he definitely espoused bigger is better as his personal motto.

  He absolutely adored her sister. Her sister who had worked her tail off to help Jillian’s best friend Ariella organize this massive fundraiser for Women For Hope After Violence. W4HAV was a small charity that Ari had become involved with after a serial killer-slash-mass murderer had tried to have her abducted so he could kill her as revenge against a sister she had never met. Instead, her friend had been kidnapped by a kindly FBI agent who had wanted to protect her. And then the murderer had gone after Ari’s twelve-year-old brother for that revenge. Simon had barely survived.

  The trauma of it still influenced Ari’s life in a big way. Guilt that Simon had been second choice because Ari had been safe still haunted her.

  There wasn’t anything Ari wouldn’t do for one of her younger brothers. She was fierce where those four boys were concerned.

  W4HAV was Ari’s life now. Her passion.

  And this was her first official duty as president of the Finley Creek branch. Ari was more than capable of doing the job—if she didn’t toss her cookies before the event even started.

  Now was not going to be a good night for Ari to meet the jerk that was her half-brother Rafael Holden-Deane.

  Yet he was sitting right there, glaring at everyone.

  No surprise.

  He glared at Jillian at least once a day. Not a day went by when she worked that she didn’t have some sort of run-in with him. He’d even gotten on her case about recording a verbal text to Lacy while on her first break. Said personal business belonged outside of the hospital.

  She had been on break, and Lacy hadn’t even been in the building. He’d just wanted to rant at her, and Jillian knew it. Seemed like every time he got stressed over anything, if she was in range, she was toast.

  Either her or Lacy, anyway.

  She kept walking, until she and Lacy got Ari settled into the three chairs left empty. Three chairs. Right across from the Deane brothers. Those three men who looked far too good for a weak woman’s peace of mind.

  Not her. She was completely immune. He could look all beautiful in his tailored tux, but that didn’t mean the beauty didn’t hide a dark and cantankerous soul.

  Even if Lacy was most definitely not immune. The youngest Deane brother, Travis, had a real thing for Lacy. And Jillian knew it. Had known it from the moment she’d met him on Lacy’s porch just the other day.

  When Lacy’s barn had caught fire five days earlier, Travis had ridden to the rescue with a water truck. He’d practically wrapped himself around Lacy, as if he could physically fix the entire world for her.

  Jillian half suspected Lacy had it bad for him, too.

  Damn it. They didn’t need Deanes tonight. She should have figured Marcus would be there—he and Houghton were becoming good friends—but the other two brothers?

  The last thing they needed were Deanes around here tonight distracting everyone.

  She mostly focused on Ari—her friend hated public appearances with a passion—and mentally preparing for what she, Lacy, and Ari had to do tonight.

  Mel had pressured them relentlessly—she shot a glare at her most evilest sister—into performing for the uppity snot set who would crowd Houghton’s ball room in just about ninety minutes or so. Jillian had wanted to refuse, but they couldn’t.

  Mel smiled and waved. Jillian just took a page out of Rafael Holden-Deane’s book. She glared.

  Tonight’s success me
ant far too much to all of them.

  But they didn’t need Holden-Deane glowering at Ari right now.

  10

  The last thing he’d wanted to do tonight had been attend a fundraiser in the home of Houghton Barratt. But the man had issued the invitation personally the last time he’d been at the hospital. Barratt regularly donated—in person—to the hospital and all of the seven members of the Board of Directors pandered up to the man.

  That meant Rafe’s ass was currently warming a chair in the man’s dining room. The wife was right there. She’d made a point of bluntly telling him that Blessed Reunions had accepted his response to her initial letter, and that the Daviess family would not be contacting him again.

  Then she’d dropped a bomb right on his head. She’d smiled sweetly, not hiding her shark exterior much like her little sister’s at all, and told him that both her younger sister and his would be there tonight.

  And that was Rafe was expected behave himself. To play nice.

  She had the same damned eyes and smile as the little she-devil.

  He’d sat next to his cousins Elliot and Chance and their wives and wondered just exactly how long he had to stay there. Once his brothers had walked in, he knew his evening had just gotten a lot longer. If he left early, Travis would bug the piss out of him to find out why.

  Rafe grunted at something Travis said, then looked up.

  Just as a trio of beautiful women walked in behind Barratt.

  The blonde pain-in-his-ass from the surgical department at FCGH, a slim dark-haired woman who would draw eyes everywhere she went, and her.

  His least favorite redhead.

  Every time they got within fifty feet of each other there was trouble. It had been three weeks since they’d met in her garden—and they must have argued a dozen times already. Just this last week.

  She was dressed in white silk that hugged curves that made a man forget to breathe with just one look. He ruthlessly ignored the tightening of his body that she always brought.

  Jillian.

  The last time he had seen her she’d been wearing hot pink scrubs and shaving a homeless man’s back to clean him of the lice he’d been infested with. Rafe had needed to speak with the nurse in charge of the ER at the moment. The nurse should have been at the nurse’s station. And hadn’t.

  It had been her.

  That conversation had not gone well.

  None of their conversations ever went well. Jillian Beck had a temper—and a problem with men in authority. Whenever they got together, the two of them ended up saying things Rafe had no doubt that they shouldn’t.

  His list of things he’d said that he’d need to apologize for eventually had continued to get longer and longer.

  He couldn’t be near her without sticking his foot in his mouth.

  The rest of the dinner went too slowly for his taste. Rafe got lost in his own thoughts until Barratt’s wife stood. He listened as she explained to the table-at-large what the real purpose was for them being there.

  Jillian stood, put her hand on Dr. McGareth’s shoulder. And on the other woman’s.

  The woman who had refused to even look in Rafe’s direction.

  He studied this half-sister that he didn’t want quickly. She was younger than he’d expected her to be. She was slimmer than Jillian, but was at least three inches taller. And very pale, far lighter than Rafe’s own skin. She looked almost like porcelain. Her hair was dark and straight and long.

  But the eyes and the smile were what got to him.

  They were the same as his own. He hadn’t expected that.

  “We were victims.”

  Rafe’s attention jerked back to the devil when she started speaking. There was pain in her words. Fear. Did anyone else hear it? He wasn’t used to that from her any longer. She was always so fierce whenever he saw her. “If we don’t do something, we will always be. I still have the nightmares about this. I probably always will, but I’m starting to accept that. Life can be full of nightmares sometimes.”

  She touched the scar. He hadn’t asked the rest of the story. But he could imagine. “I watched him point a gun at Lacy and Ari and pull the trigger. And I knew...chances were high one of them would be dead when the bullets stopped.”

  Rafe caught the way the dark-haired woman started shaking. Ari. His damned half-sister. The horror of what she’d faced was right there for anyone to see.

  Rafe refused to let himself feel the compassion threatening to rise up. He didn’t need another woman in his life to care about. Especially a sister.

  “I bit him,” Jillian said, fiercely. “And he dropped the gun before he could shoot at them again. If he had, he would have killed them both right in front of me. Lucky that we all survived.”

  Rafe’s hands tightened in his lap beneath the table. He understood that kind of luck, and that kind of pain. All of his own nightmares threatened to rise up as he listened to the she-devil speak.

  He wanted to hold her. Damn it. To keep her from feeling the same pain he felt every time he closed his damned eyes at night.

  “If Lacy hadn’t jumped when she had, Ari would have been killed. If Ari hadn’t arrived when she had, Lacy might have been. Then it was Mel—or Marcus.”

  Rafe jerked his head toward his brother, meeting Marcus’ green eyes. Marcus nodded slightly.

  Rafe hadn’t realized his brother and Jillian Beck were that connected. What the hell had happened?

  11

  Jillian touched the guitar with hands that shook. Performing in front of others was something she was used to. She’d spent time in the high school drama club and had even spent eighteen episodes on a children’s show when she had been nineteen. She’d danced and sang her way through her first year of college the year after that. When at FCU she’d debated performing arts or nursing. Nursing had won.

  But she still had the skills to entertain.

  So why were her hands shaking so badly?

  The crowd hushed. It was much more muted than she was used to, for one thing. Most of the people she and Lacy and Ari sang for were the back yard barbecue types. Their friends, mostly.

  Not the silk designer gowns and the perfectly coiffed designer hair—on the men, even. She hadn’t seen such perfectly groomed men in her entire lifetime.

  Maybe that was it?

  Or was it that everyone staring at them would see and judge exactly what had happened to her and her family, thanks to those damned videos Mel had had Houghton’s cousin’s production company create to show the world what her family had faced?

  They’d used actual security footage for some of the videos. Mel hadn’t warned her of that.

  It brought it all right back up.

  She took her cue from Lacy for the first song and then looked over the crowd.

  Her eyes met his. And Jillian’s fingers falter on that first chord.

  * * *

  It was the videos that seared right through him. The first showed his cousins’ family. His aunt and uncle had been killed. Tonight was the first night the video of that day had been released.

  Elliot’s wife had watched as her best friend had been murdered. God, Rafe had loved his cousins Sara and Slade, and his aunt and uncle. They’d loved him, let him live with them when he’d been no more than thirteen. He’d stayed there for an entire year, sharing a room with Chance and fighting like crazy. He’d loved it.

  They’d made a place for him.

  To lose them had devastated him, even though he’d been a man in his twenties at the time. They had been his real parents and he’d never forget that. He’d wished he could stay with them forever, but his adoptive parents had eventually wanted him back.

  Because his adoptive grandfather had insisted on it.

  The videos went on. Showed Elliot’s and Chance’s wives nearly dying.

  The one that had his breath catching was the third one.

  He watched Lacy McGareth and Jillian fly through the air when Houghton Barratt’s limo exploded.


  They had been far too close.

  It was a miracle they’d all survived.

  If they hadn’t been there that day, the driver would have never made it to the hospital. Rafe had watched along with the crowd as Lacy and Jillian, though obviously injured, held that man together long enough for help to arrive. Had they not been as well trained as they were…He’d seen hardened soldiers hold up poorer than those two women had that day.

  Car bombs were something he’d thought he’d left behind him in Djibouti. He’d treated thirty-eight kids from car bomb injuries in four years. It was something he would never forget.

  Some of the stories in Jillian’s eyes, and McGareth’s, were starting to make a bit more sense to him.

  He watched the video of Lacy McGareth getting beaten in that damned back parking garage and felt sick to his stomach.

  Damn, she had fought. But how could a woman her size defend herself against a ruthless bastard like that?

  Rafe knew the truth—she couldn’t.

  Only Logan Lanning’s arrival in the parking garage had saved her. Nearly at the cost of Lanning’s own life.

  Rafe would be informing the Board first chance he got that the parking garage was about to become more secured.

  The final video gave him the answers about how closely involved his brother had been when the damned lieutenant governor had almost killed Jillian. When he’d pointed a gun at Marcus when Marcus had gotten too close. When he’d tried to help Jillian.

  She’d worn a white dress then, too. Had tonight’s gown been chosen deliberately?

  His half-sister had been there. Shot point blank by that sonofabitch. She was lucky to be alive.

  Everyone could see that.

  The hell those three and the rest of the Becks had been through, the hell that had touched his own family, absolutely sickened him.

  And answered so many questions about why Jillian always fought when she was afraid.