“What are you thinking about?” Tristan murmured, aware that Jett had drifted away.

“The ocean,” Jett answered as truthfully as she could.

“No, you weren’t.” Tristan leaned closer. “You were thinking about flying, weren’t you?”

Tristan was inches away. Jett tried not to look at her mouth, and failed. The last time they’d been this close, they’d nearly kissed. Two weeks and an exhausting night with another woman hadn’t diminished the memory. Or the desire. “How could you tell?”

“Because you looked happy.” Tristan remained completely still, afraid to break their tenuous connection. She doubted that Jett had any idea how revealing her expression was when she wasn’t carefully guarding her feelings. Right now, her lips were parted slightly, her lids heavy and shuttered. She looked completely desirable and completely unaware of the naked need in her eyes. Tristan sensed that if Jett realized how much she was revealing, she would instantly retreat. Tristan wanted to kiss her and knew that she couldn’t. Because if she kissed her, Jett would know what Tristan had seen in her face. That need was part of Jett’s secret, and one did not steal secrets from a woman like Jett. “Am I right?”

“About what?” Jett asked, sounding confused.

Tristan laughed. “About flying.”

“No. Well, partly.” Jett wanted to tell her, because Tristan so carefully hadn’t asked. Unlike the last time they’d been together, when Tristan had pushed and needled her into nearly succumbing to Tristan’s charm and her own hungers, tonight Tristan held back. Waiting, maybe.

Waiting for Jett to own what pulsed and breathed between them. Jett never shied away from taking calculated risks when she was flying, but she’d learned her lesson with Gail. She couldn’t trust herself with women. If she’d been thinking, if she’d been in control of herself, she never would have touched her. Next to her, Tristan waited. Maybe, maybe she could risk a little of the truth. “I was thinking that your eyes are the color of the Mediterranean at dawn.”

“Jesus,” Tristan whispered, completely blindsided. She was instantly, totally, mind-dazzlingly turned on. “This is the first time in a couple of weeks I haven’t felt completely nuts. It would be good if you don’t make me crazy now. Not when we’re standing on a rooftop, and any moment we have to go to work.”

“Bad week?” Jett eased back, giving herself space. Giving Tristan space. She needed it, and she had a feeling Tristan did too. Desire she understood. Sex she understood. These tentative touches to places far deeper she didn’t, and wasn’t at all sure she wanted to. When she was in control, she was safe.

“You could say that.”

“Work?” Jett asked.

“Partly. The governor’s son is understandably upset about his wife. Unfortunately, he’s also a Class-A asshole.”

Jett frowned. “He’s still making trouble about the loose tooth in the airway?”

“Maybe not lawsuit kind of trouble, but he’s been vocal about his unhappiness. She’s out of the ICU but still on a respirator.” Tristan turned her back to the sky and canted her hips against the wall. “The people in risk management don’t think anything is going to come of it, because the media fallout would be bad. The governor isn’t going to want an immediate family member suing one of the state medical school hospitals. But the son has everyone walking on eggshells just the same.”

“Sorry. You don’t deserve to be in the middle of that.”

“Ah, hell,” Tristan sighed. “It comes with the territory.”

“It shouldn’t,” Jett said vehemently. “You do a job that not many can, and you deserve to be supported for doing it.”

“Sounds like you have some experience with that.”

“No system is perfect,” Jett said evasively. “I should check out the aircraft.”

“You never answered my question,” Tristan called as Jett started away.

Jett looked back. “What question?”

“About women. Do you date women?”

“No. Not really.” Jett grinned ruefully. “The military wasn’t exactly a great place for it.”

“I’ll bet.” Tristan stayed where she was because Jett looked like she was about to flee. Just like she always did when the conversation veered into the personal. Trying to get close to her was like trying to sneak up on a wild animal. Jett’s senses were sharp and completely honed to guard against being taken by surprise. She expected Tristan to put some kind of move on her. To kiss her maybe, the way Tristan almost had at the party when she’d stopped thinking and given in to the crushing urge to touch her. But Tristan was thinking now, and she had a good hard hold on the desire that had her aching inside. She wasn’t making any kind of move, sudden or otherwise, because she’d decided the only way she was ever going to get close to Jett was to keep surprising her. “You’re not in the military now. So what do you say we get out of the city on Saturday. Take a ride up into the mountains. Hike a little bit.”

“And that would be a date?” Jett bounced the clipboard against her thigh.

“Well, I figured we’ve already done the dinner date routine. Twice.” When Jett frowned, Tristan added, “Hospital cafeteria.”

Jett laughed. “Sorry. And they were memorable moments too.” She was suddenly serious. “What about the redhead?”

Tristan tried not to let her discomfort show. She hadn’t been certain if Jett had seen Darla move in on her, but now she knew. She wasn’t about to apologize for something there was no need to apologize for, but she also wanted Jett to know…what? That her interest in Jett wasn’t the same as it was with Darla? Was that really the truth? She’d been fascinated by Jett from the moment she’d seen her, even though Jett was nothing like the women she usually went out with. She thought about her. Dreamed about her. Christ, she fantasized about her. Fantasized about her taking her the way women never did, hard and fast and in charge. Okay, so that was different. But it wasn’t like she was looking for a relationship with anyone. Still, it felt important to clear the record.

“Darla is a friend.”

“No promises there?”

Tristan shook her head.

“All right. Saturday.” Jett nodded, turning the idea around in her mind. “Let’s do that.”

“Yeah,” Tristan said, letting out a sigh and trying to ignore the way her heart jumped around in her chest. “Let’s.”

When they arrived at Atlantic City Medical Center to pick up the baby, the neonatal intensivists informed them that the surgeons had gone back in to stop some unexpected bleeding. The last update from the OR nurses was that the surgeons were closing. Linda checked with PMC for clearance to wait. With luck, they’d be airborne within the hour.

In the meantime, the flight team hung out in the lounge, picking at food left on a tray from someone’s abandoned dinner, watching an old Vincent Price movie on the TV affixed high in one corner, and leafing through three-month-old magazines. It was Tristan, Linda, and Jett, and the conversation ranged from hospital gossip to politics and back to the casually personal.

“So, Jett,” Linda said, “what made you decide to leave the military?”

Tristan stiffened and glanced quickly at Jett, who slouched on a sofa. Tristan didn’t think this was a casual question for Jett. Seeing Jett’s expression shutter closed, Tristan had a completely foreign urge to protect her, to prevent whatever bad memories the question stirred from hurting her.

“Probably the same reason you left the ER,” Jett said smoothly. “It was time. I liked the Army. I always liked it. But…” She shrugged. “I wanted something else. Different experiences, I guess.”

“Makes sense,” Linda said, appearing not to have noticed the cool, detached tone of Jett’s voice.

But Tristan noticed. Before she could change the subject, Linda continued on in her usual indomitable fashion.

“It must have been hard having a personal life. Did you worry much about it—you know, the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ thing?”

Tristan’s insides quivered, and she wanted to jump up and wave her arms, as if warding off a freight train barreling down on a car stuck on the tracks at a railroad crossing. She felt about as helpless to stop the conversation as she would have been to divert the locomotive.

Jett rose suddenly and walked to the soda machine. As she dropped change into the slot, she said with her back to the room, “I didn’t have much reason to worry about it. A lot of other people did.” She popped the top on the soda as she turned, the fine lines around her eyes deeper than they had been. “They had reason to worry. Even over there, where everybody was needed and people tended to look the other way when rules got broken, that one could still take you down.” She lifted the can and sipped, then headed toward the door. “It’s hot in here. I think I’ll be hot outside where there might be a breeze. Page me when I need to warm up the bird.”

In the next instant she was gone. Linda stared after her. “Uh-oh. I stepped in something, didn’t I?”

“I don’t know. She doesn’t say much about over there.”

Linda rested her head on her hand and regarded Tristan contemplatively. “She is interesting. I like women with a lot of passion.”

“Is that what you think it is?” Tristan asked, drumming her fingers on the tabletop.

“What do you think it is?”

“Pain. I think it’s pain.” Tristan stood abruptly and went after her.

The landing pad at ACMC was not on the roof, like at PMC, but adjacent to the emergency room. Several emergency vehicles, angled to disgorge passengers, crowded around the emergency bay on the far side of Jett’s chopper. Otherwise, the area was deserted. At three in the morning, only the dead and the dying and those who stood as the last barrier to inevitable fate moved through the silent hallways inside. Jett leaned against a pole beneath the short overhang in front of the ER entrance and smoked a cigarette she’d scored from a police officer as he’d been climbing into his patrol car.