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?