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.

And why Rafe frightened her so badly.