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 going 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.