Wounds That Won’t Heal

by Calle J. Brookes

  It was a gamble, bringing up Jillian Beck deliberately.

  Jess sucked in a breath and waited.

  84

  "Her?" Allen let her work the buttons of his shirt. He’d needed to see her. To somehow find a way to get the sight of the five other people surrounding his best friends’ coffin out of his head.

  He’d been having nightmares; about Logan, about Lacy, about Jillian and Shelby. Nightmares he wasn’t quite ready to face.

  "Jillian Beck. The one everyone knows got away. You've been rather obvious in your drooling."

  "You jealous?" She shouldn’t be. He and Jillian weren’t going to happen. She wasn’t ready for a long-term relationship, and Jillian had told him just that months ago.

  He felt protective of her, but that was because she’d been through hell lately.

  He was with Jess now. He wouldn’t cheat. Even just in his head.

  His hands tangled in her dark brown hair. And he tilted her head back. Ran his lips over her neck. "You shouldn't be. I’m with you, not her."

  "Yeah because Little Red won't have you. Everyone knows you’re hot for her, Allen. And everyone knows she's hot for Dr. Holden-Deane. Who can blame her? The guy is gorgeous. Of course, you’re not so bad yourself. But if I were in Jillian’s shoes, I would have picked the man at the top, too. But if not him, then you..."

  Dr. Holden-Deane and Jillian together were a real possibility; Allen had noticed that when the COM had carried Jillian into the ER the night before. But he wasn’t about to discuss that with Jess.

  The thing with Jess was that he never knew when she was serious or not. She played things pretty close to her chest. And she liked to tease at times.

  Allen knew she was ambitious and intelligent and a hard worker. Willing to do whatever she had to do to help herself get to the top. She'd get there eventually, if she didn't piss off the wrong people. But Allen didn't want to think about that at the moment.

  He just wanted to hold her right now. She was several inches taller than Jillian and quite a bit curvier. He loved every curve she had. She was shaped the way a woman was supposed to be, and she knew how to use what she had.

  “Baby, I am a far better choice than Holden-Deane. Let me show you.”

  He stripped the blouse and skirt off of her, and tossed them to the floor, then scooped the woman up into his arms. He knew the way to her bedroom well. He carried her there and bounced her on the mattress.

  Allen followed her down. He just needed to forget everything for a while.

  Just needed to be with her.

  85

  Travis came through for Women for Hope After Violence.

  Jillian had suspected he would, there wasn't anything he wouldn't do for Lacy now. She just hadn’t expected Lacy’s man to work so hard on getting the office space ready. He’d originally mentioned the back end of the center building, but he’d changed his mind.

  W4HAV was now going to be located front and center in the main building, with a well-lit parking lot and a security company assigned to the building. Allen Jacobson and Cage Ralstone shared a private practice two floors above where Ari would be working.

  Travis was having another security system installed as soon as the company could get there—in four weeks.

  It was as safe as Travis could make it.

  But that didn't mean there wasn’t a lot of work to be done. They could've hired it out, but Ari and her partners wanted the charity to be fully self-sufficient from the beginning. It was bad enough they had to accept donated office space.

  Luc and Houghton had both offered to fund the charity, but Ari and her partner Margo needed to know that they were operating as out of debt as possible from the very beginning.

  That meant there was going to be a lot of elbow grease involved.

  Jillian's elbows, as Lacy—even though she didn't want to admit it—still tired easily from her injuries. Travis solved the problem by recruiting help.

  Jillian should've known exactly who that help would be.

  So there she was, dressed in baggy overalls and a bandana tied over her hair, perched on top of a six foot ladder like an idiot. She’d learned remodeling Lacy’s house that getting paint out of her hair was more than she wanted to mess with. She didn't want to have light gray paint spots all over her red head for the next four days or so.

  She didn’t like looking like a bum in front of the Deane brothers, either, though. Especially with them looking so male and gorgeous and perfect.

  The Deane brothers looked far too good in their faded jeans and old t-shirts for any woman's peace of mind.

  It was unfair that men should get to look like that with little effort.

  Jillian was halfway up the ladder when the three walked in together, like three perfect man gods.

  Rafe took a moment to check on her. It had been three days since he had carried her into her own home without her even being aware of it.

  Three days of her sisters teasing her unmercifully about getting involved with him.

  She wasn't going to get involved with him. Period.

  No matter what her family thought. She knew how tension could rise between people when someone was hurt. Rescued.

  And Rafe had rescued her, in a way. But so what? He was a doctor, he’d rescued hundreds, thousands, of people. It was kind of what he did. "How's the head?"

  "Still attached. I thought it was going to vibrate off for a few days, but it never did. So you have the day off today?" What was she supposed to say to him now? Hi, thanks for saving my brains?—She hadn’t forgotten how she’d cuddled up against that broad chest right there in the ER.

  Or that their last conversation had involved sharing more than either one of them had been too comfortable with.

  No one else had let her forget cuddling him, either. Annie had told Fin, who had told Lacy, who had told Ari, who had told Margo, who had told Mel—it was all so Junior High in the medical field sometimes.

  Especially with something as juicy as a lowly ER nurse cuddling the King of FCGH.

  "I'm going to run across the street in a little bit, check on the place and my messages. Fin was supposed to have checked on something for me the past couple of days. And I haven't heard anything from her yet. That's not like her." His eyes flashed a moment of concern. Jillian had to agree. Fin was highly reliable. If she said she was going to do something, Fin made a point to do it. Almost obsessively so.

  "She texted me yesterday to see how I was. I replied back, and never received an answer. That's not like her."

  "No, it isn't. Why don't I do that right now? Before we get started here. See if I can track her down, then you and the other two can put us to work."

  "There's a lot to be done. I didn't realize how much until we arrived.” She took a quick look around. The building had been affiliated with the hospital for decades. There were five other buildings in the commercial complex. Travis was using them for businesses to service people utilizing Finley Creek's Medical Pavilion, which took up most of the block. Not just the hospital. FCGH was also a teaching hospital and there was a small branch of FCU in one of those complexes. She had no doubt that Travis received a significant rental income from it. He was a shrewd businessman beneath his ‘awe-shucks ma’am’ exterior.

  Half of the six-building complex was in need of repair though, and Travis had been seeing to that for the last year at least.

  Jillian had bitched about the construction crews blocking the entrance to the employee parking garage several times during the past year. Ari's new office was going to be located in the center of one of the two middle buildings. It faced into the guest parking lot of the hospital—the very parking lot where Benny Russell had shot at Mel and Gabby a little over six months ago. He may have even been hiding in the large overgrowth of landscaping that ran around the complex’s buildings.

  She shivered. Every day when she entered FCGH she was reminded of something that had happened, some way in which someone she loved could have been lost. It was goin
g to take a long time to get over that.

  The knock to the head she’d taken hadn’t helped with that.

  Rafe was gone for nearly fifteen minutes. During that time Lacy and Jillian and Travis tried to get Ari to articulate exactly what it was she wanted for the place.

  Margo was unable to be there today. She was going to head up the main office of the charity in Austin. Ari would be in charge of the one here in Finley Creek. So it was Ari's show completely.

  And she was determined to be there for every single minute of all of it.

  Heaven help them all.

  Home renovations were not Ari’s forte. Lacy was better at it than all of them, but she was still physically unable to do as much work as she no doubt wanted. She made a great master general, though.

  Travis was her right hand lackey. The rest of them—including the very handsome governor of their state, who looked quite yummy in his own worn jeans and FCU t-shirt—were just going to be grunt labor.

  Poor Ari, though; she looked completely overwhelmed. It didn't help that her brother had returned, and stood glowering at them all.

  If Jillian had thought the governor looked yummy, Dr. Rafael Holden-Deane put Marcus to shame. The guy should always wear soft red cotton t-shirts that clung. Thirty-foot shoulders looked beautiful in red cotton.

  Jillian’s hormones were total idiots, sometimes.

  There wasn't much else she saw around it. Jillian stepped in. She ordered the governor of Texas and her own boss to be grunt labor. They were to carry the old medical supplies that had once been stored in this room to the storage room that would eventually turn into Ari's private office. It was just two doors down, from what would be the waiting room and the reception hall. The office space wasn't overly large. Maybe a thousand feet at the most.

  They complied without arguing. That left Jillian and Lacy and Ari to move other pieces of equipment. 1970s medical equipment littered the place. "What was this?" Jillian asked Travis.

  "Medical supply company. They made quite a killing supplying stuff to FCGH. Then this place out of Indiana came along with better tech. At least that's what I was told. Our grandfather actually owned the complex. He didn’t do much with it at the time. I bought it off of him with my inheritance money from our grandmother about three years ago. Most of these offices have always been medical care related, I think.”

  "I think that if we had been forced to practice medicine with this stuff I would've gone into a different career field," Lacy said. She held up something that Jillian just could not identify.

  "You may want to box up the best of it. I think they still use some of these types of supplies in Africa. We may not have to use it here, but it is still functional; something to consider," Rafe said. Jillian looked at him quickly. There had been something in his tone. Something that told her he knew exactly what the thing Lacy was holding up was. That he had used it.

  Just what he had faced over there almost hurt her to think about.

  "We'll get someone to take a look, see what can be used. And then send it to where it can be useful," Ari said, gently. She eyed Rafe for just a moment, but Jillian doubted he'd seen. Ari was still very leery of speaking whenever Rafe was around.

  Did he realize just how painfully shy his younger sister was? Most of the time when they were together Lacy dominated the attention from others. And Jillian held her own. A lot of times, people tended to forget Ari was even there. It was because of her quiet ways, and her shyness.

  Jillian also knew that her friend liked it that way.

  That shyness made it doubly hard for Ari to connect with the brother who didn’t want her.

  Still, he hadn't said anything overtly rude to Ari. And he was there today. That had to count for something.

  Suddenly she was filled with the urge to help the two of them figure each other out. It would just benefit the both of them. They would run into each other often, probably for the rest of their lives. Lacy and Travis ensured that. She was certain that Ariella understood that, but did Rafe?

  That could be why he was there to begin with. She doubted he was helping out of the goodness of his heart, though he might be. He had gone to Africa for three years, taking a significant pay cut no doubt, to help those less fortunate. That wasn't something someone without compassion did. Someone without a kind heart.

  Or maybe it was just that he felt just as awkward as his sister?

  Damn it. It would take a woman a lifetime to figure out a man like Rafael Holden-Deane.

  86

  It took him a little while to realize the dynamics of the three women. Rafe worked silently while he studied them. Marcus was at his side, helping with everything that wasn’t a single man's job. When needed, the two of them would move whatever had to be moved when ordered to by the small generals directing them.

  Lacy and Jillian knew what they wanted—and what they wanted didn’t always match up. And they snipped and snarled at each other as much as they hugged and laughed. They were a bit dizzying at times. Two strong personalities most definitely.

  Ariella was the peace-maker of the little trio; sometimes she quieted the other two with a simple word—or look.

  It was Marcus that had Rafe’s focus sharpening.

  Rafe had a feeling something was on his brother's mind, but he didn't push. If Marcus needed to talk, Marcus would talk. When he was ready. They weren’t like Travis; their younger brother ran off at the mouth almost constantly.

  Rafe and Marcus tended to think first and speak last. It worked well for them that way.

  Jillian wasn't as loud as he would've expected. She constantly snipped and snapped at him, but with her friends she was somewhere in the middle. Lacy was accustomed to being in charge. That was easy to see, and was typical of most surgeons in his experience. They were used to making quick decisions and not being questioned.

  Jillian was calm competence. She was able to organize and orchestrate almost anything with barely any instruction at all. But she wasn’t a pushover, and she and Lacy seemed to enjoy squabbling a bit. Ariella would just roll her eyes at the two of them, occasionally.

  Ariella, on the other hand, was helpful, kind, encouraging and sweet. There were no other ways to describe her.

  She had general ideas of how she wanted things to be, but didn't seem to know how to execute them. Jillian did. And she guided, while Lacy took charge and implemented. All three were exceptionally bright women; that was more than apparent. Difficult to fathom at times, though. They were accomplished, intelligent, and on their way to being successes in their chosen fields.

  It took him a long while to realize that Ari wasn't just quiet, she was shy. Not quite awkward, she moved with a grace that was exceptionally beautiful, but socially she was just not as confident as her two friends. And those two jumped in to lessen any difficulties Ari might face.

  Part of it was his fault, and he knew it. He had come on too strong with his antagonism at the very beginning.

  No wonder Jillian had been so protective. He was the big bad wolf who had practically frightened Ariella away. Add in what he had been told about her history and he felt like a real ass. He probably owed the girl—she seemed more of a girl to him than Jillian did even though Jillian was technically younger—one hell of an apology.

  He wasn’t going to be her damned big brother. Hell, he wasn't even looking to be a friend. But it was hard not to let her get under his skin.

  Whenever he had to speak to her, or get in close contact with her, Rafe made a point of talking quietly and gently with her.

  She was still jumpy and awkward with him. She was most obviously comfortable with Travis. Understandable, since Travis was safe. He flirted with her occasionally, but no more so than he did with Jillian. Jillian joked back, but Ari just smiled quietly.

  Marcus only spoke with her gently as well, as if he sensed how easily frightened she was. Marcus also seemed to go out of his way to be kind to her, and to get her attention on him. Rafe wondered how much guilt his brothe
r felt toward her.

  Justin Albright had been his brother's second-in-command at the time that Albright had nearly killed Ari. Such a trauma to a woman like her had to have impacted her in ways Rafe didn’t want to contemplate. He refused to think about what emotional damage Albright had done to her. He knew the bastard had damaged Jillian. And Lacy. All of them.

  Rafe knew exactly how much damage a monster like that could do. He’d seen it so many times before.

  There had been far too many young girls and women no older than the three that he was with who had been harmed by men, by bullets, knives, explosions, while he'd been in Africa. He'd treated so many of them...lost far too many of them while he was there. He knew the ravages those wounds could bring.

  Wounds that just wouldn't heal.

  He had to push the anger at Albright aside. Now that he was right there with them, saw who they actually were, it seemed more real than it had before. Was that because he was not just getting involved, but was now closely connected to these women? Or was it because of the redhead currently ordering Travis to move bookshelves out of her way?

  It was a possibility.

  Rafe wanted, needed to know more. And that meant Marcus.

  Rafe bent down and grabbed two medium-sized oxygen tanks that were haphazardly rolled under an old desk; he sat them carefully against the far wall. When he straightened, his eyes met his oldest brother’s. "Why don’t you and I go grab lunch for everyone? Let Travis stay here and be their willing grunt. I think he’s enjoying it." Rafe looked at his younger brother. Travis was box-stepping Jillian around the now cleared center of the room while Lacy laughed. Rafe watched for a moment. Lacy had lost some weight, but at least the color was back in her cheeks. He’d been making a point of driving out to Travis’ every night to check on her. Just to make sure. Hiding that fact from her hadn’t been so easy, though.