“I think Jack has finally accomplished what even the wedding ring couldn’t do. Mandy acts like Jack is a no-trespassing sign hanging around Quinn’s neck. Hands off. Private property of Honor Blake.”

“Good. I trust Quinn.” Honor eased back down into the chair. “That still doesn’t mean I like some harlot looking at her like she’s a

side of beef.”

“Harlot?” Linda lowered her voice when several people looked in their direction. “Harlot?”

Honor shrugged. “That seemed more polite than some of the other things I was thinking.”

“Well, I’d say your beefcake is safe now.” Linda followed Mandy’s retreat, then muttered again. “Uh-oh.”

“What now?”

“I think Mandy’s just found fresh meat.”

Honor turned to look. “Isn’t that your pilot?”

Linda nodded as Mandy honed in on Jett, who leaned against one of the big oak trees, nursing a beer. “I hope Chief McNally can maneuver as well on the ground as she does in the air.”

“You promised you’d call me,” Mandy said, tapping Jett in the center of her chest with a perfectly sculpted nail.

“Did I?” Jett shook her head, smiling slightly. “Then I should apologize for being so forgetful.”

“You can make it up to me.” Mandy draped both arms on Jett’s shoulders and leaned against her, nestling her pelvis in Jett’s crotch.

Her breasts were heavy and warm against Jett’s chest. Jett wasn’t used to public displays of affection and glanced quickly around. No one was paying any attention to them, and more than one couple had cozied up on a lounge chair or sprawled on a blanket. Apparently everyone with children had taken them inside or gone home.

“I think you’d be disappointed.” Jett palmed Mandy’s hip and tried to put some space between them. Instead, Mandy rocked between Jett’s legs.

“You don’t know what I want.” Mandy ran her tongue along the edge of Jett’s jaw.

“More than I’ve got to offer.”

Mandy’s breath was hot against Jett’s neck as she undulated against her. “I want you to make me feel good. Really good. And I know you know how.”

Jett had been aroused since Tristan had touched her, and her body had been simmering for weeks with dream memories and daytime fantasies. Having Mandy climbing all over her was like tossing a match on gasoline. She kissed Mandy’s neck.

“I just might.”

“Show me,” Mandy whispered hotly in her ear.

Jett looped an arm around Mandy’s waist and pulled her around the other side of the tree into the shadows. Then she pushed her against the rough bark, wedged her thigh between her legs, and kissed her.

Mandy moaned low in her throat and grabbed Jett’s ass, grinding into her. Every single thought, image, memory fled from Jett’s mind and all she felt were hot ripples of pleasure and merciful oblivion. She wanted more. She needed to find the knife edge of pleasure and slice through the hard heart of her pain until she bled to empty.

“Let’s get out of here,” Jett rasped, dragging her mouth over Mandy’s neck.

“Mmm, yeah,” Mandy moaned.

Jett opened her eyes and through the haze saw Tristan staring at her from across the yard. She couldn’t read what was in Tristan’s face, and she didn’t want to know what was in her mind. What she wanted was right in her hands. She grabbed Mandy’s arm and dragged her away.

Chapter Twelve

“Look, Rick,” Tristan snapped, “if you want the patient to wake up as soon as you finish the case, you need to start estimating your time better. Don’t tell me it’s going to take three hours and then decide to quit after two.”

“If you were watching the case instead of reading the newspaper,” the trauma fellow shouted, his face contorted with contempt, “you’d know when we were finishing up. I don’t have time to do my job and yours too.”

Tristan yanked off her surgical mask, not even bothering to untie it, and threw it into the trash can outside the surgical intensive care unit where they had just delivered a forty-nine-year-old construction worker who’d fallen off a scaffold and broken his back. He’d probably never walk again. It wasn’t the kind of case that made anyone feel good, and Tristan wasn’t in the mood to take any crap from a resident. She got up in his face, and a look of surprise flashed across his as he backed up.

When she had him up against the wall, she said tightly, “I’m not a mind reader, even if that is irrelevant in your case, you brainless dipshit—”

“Your job is to make mine easier.” Rick’s chin shot out. “You’re nothing more than a glorified technician, and not a very good one at tha—”

“You’re a good one to talk. If you actually had a clue what you were doing—”

“Fuck you, you—”

Quinn barreled around the corner and headed for them. “Whoa. Whoa. Cool off, you two, I can hear you all the way down the hall.”

She surveyed first Tristan, then her trauma fellow, and finally fixed on Tristan. “What’s going on?”

“We just spent an extra thirty-five minutes with the patient on the table because your trauma fellow forgot to tell me he wasn’t doing the feeding tubes today and ended the case early.”

Quinn gave Rick a questioning look. He glanced away, his jaw muscles working silently. Finally, he said, “Ortho wants to bring him back in three days for a washout of his tibia, so I figured we could do it then if he needs it.”

“Sounds reasonable. Did you tell Tris?”

“Well, I, uh—”

Quinn blew out a breath. “Okay. Rick, I’ll meet you for rounds in thirty. We’ll start in the SICU.”

“Right,” Rick mumbled, and hurried into the surgical intensive care unit.

“Jerk,” Tristan muttered.

“I’ll teach him the error of his ways later. So, what’s going on with you?” Quinn slung an arm around Tristan’s shoulders and walked her down the hall away from the surgical waiting room filled with families and visitors huddled in uneasy knots, alternately terrified and anxious.

They stopped at the far end of the corridor where a bank of windows overlooked the expressway and the river beyond. “Rick fucked up, but it wasn’t that big of a deal. I’ve never seen you go off like that before.”

“He’s a pain in the ass. He thinks he’s a goddamned king and treats everyone else like peasants.”

“Sure he does,” Quinn said easily. “He’s a surgeon, after all.”

“Bunch of assholes, all of you.”

“But we’re so good, you have to love us.”

Tristan laughed despite the press of anger in her chest. She wanted to lash out at someone, for something, even now. She braced both hands on the windowsill, her forehead nearly touching the glass. Outside the sun shone brightly beneath a crystal clear blue sky dabbed with white clouds. It was so beautiful, it was painful. “Sorry. Bad day.”

“You sick?”

“No. I’m fine.”

“Family?” Quinn asked gently.

Tristan shook her head. “It’s nothing.”

“Something’s got you twisted around.”

“Nah. I’m okay.” Tristan lied because she had no explanation that made sense. Even to her. She’d been twisted around for two weeks, ever since the party. She’d made good on her promise to Darla and given her the semipublic thrill she’d wanted, fucking her in the bathroom next to the kitchen while a dozen people talked and laughed a few feet away.

She’d even managed to keep her head in the game and not think about Jett while she’d been inside Darla, but she’d lost the battle after that.

Darla had wanted to go down on her in the tiny, cramped room, and she’d resisted at first. But making Darla come hadn’t blunted her arousal the way it usually did, and Darla kept teasing her, sucking her tongue while she squeezed her crotch, promising to do all kinds of things to her clit. Finally, when Tristan couldn’t take it anymore, she’d ripped open her fly, shoved her pants halfway down her thighs, and pushed Darla down to her knees. Darla moved in, and she kept her promises. Tristan lasted twenty seconds before she’d flashed on the fierce expression on Jett’s face when she plunged her tongue into Mandy’s mouth, and she exploded into Darla’s, barely managing not to shout, she came so hard.

Darla loved it, laughing as they pulled their clothes on. Tristan had been confused and humiliated and embarrassed, even though she was willing to bet Darla wouldn’t care who she was thinking about while she was coming. But Tristan cared. She didn’t think about one woman while she was coming with another, but she couldn’t keep Jett out of her head.

And she still couldn’t.

Morning, noon, and night, waking or sleeping, she kept seeing Jett drag Mandy behind the tree in a move so explosive Tristan was breathless just remembering. She could only imagine how it would feel to have Jett take her that way. She was certain no one ever had, and she wanted it. Wanted Jett to be the one making her explode. God damn it, this didn’t happen to her.

“Tris.”

The kindness in Quinn’s voice broke her. She leaned her forehead against the window and closed her eyes. “I’m sort of fucked up over a woman.”

“Well, that could definitely make it easy to lose your cool.”

Tristan grimaced. “I’ll say. In more ways than one.”

“Anything you want to talk about?”

“Not really.” Tristan spun around and tilted her head back, staring at the ceiling. “I don’t usually get into women enough to get fucked up. Not since I was too young to know better.”

“But now you have?”

Tristan shrugged. “Not exactly. I’m not sure what’s going on, really. Nothing, actually.”

“But you want there to be something.”

Tristan thought about that, trying to sort through her tangled emotions. She went out with women all the time who were smart and capable and interesting and sexy, all the things she sensed Jett was.

But Jett was something else too. She held herself back, away from other people. Tristan had watched Jett talk to Quinn at the party, seen her acknowledge people as she moved through the crowd, had caught glimpses of her chatting with Linda. Despite the interactions, Jett still seemed alone—until she’d kissed Mandy with such force and fury Tristan had felt the passion yards away. She could only imagine what might follow a kiss like that, and that was her problem. Imagining wasn’t enough. She hungered to be the one who held the key to all that restless, seething energy, and the need went beyond simple desire. She wanted to know Jett’s secrets.