“You don’t really want me to stop.”

Tristan didn’t, but she felt the press of time at their backs, and she didn’t want this—whatever this was—to end right here, right now. She couldn’t think when she was this turned on. “I have to stop.”

Jett pulled away. She wanted Tristan again right now, would want her for hours, and the need frayed her temper. Her need, always too much. Jett managed to sit up and put some distance between them.

One of the nice things about not waking up with a woman was that she didn’t have to say good-bye, and neither of them had to pretend that they’d done anything other than use each other for a few hours.

“Wait.” Tristan grabbed Jett’s hand, not knowing quite what to say, because she didn’t have any practice at what they were doing. She didn’t even know exactly what she wanted. “Look, about last night…”

“There’s nothing to say, Tristan. Last night was what it was.” This was a talk Jett didn’t want to have, especially not with Tristan. She got to her knees, then unsteadily to her feet, and zipped up her pants. Her hands were shaking and she tried to hide it by jamming in her shirttails.

“We’ve both been here before. Let’s not complicate it, okay? I had a great time. I hope you did too.”

“You know I did.” Still sitting with her back to the door, Tristan studied Jett, trying to read below the surface of her cool, closed gaze. She couldn’t, but she sensed yet again that if she pushed, Jett would retreat. “I had a lot more than a good time.”

“Yeah.” Jett stepped back.

Tristan stood, conscious of being naked with Jett fully clothed.

She felt naked in a lot more ways than just being without clothes. Jett was much better at keeping what she was feeling, if she felt anything at all, hidden. Suddenly, Tristan didn’t like being the one completely exposed. She might like being controlled in bed, but she didn’t like being out of control in any other part of her life. She turned and walked toward the bedroom. “I’m going to grab a quick shower, and then it’s all yours if you want it. Then we should go.”

“Right,” Jett said. “We should go.”

“Quinn!” Honor called from the back porch.

“Watch your follow-through, Arly.” Quinn crouched to catch Arly’s pitch. When the softball landed in her glove with a resounding smack, she nodded in approval and stood, shading her eyes with her gloved hand. “Yeah?”

“Phone. It’s the hospital.”

“I’m not on call,” Quinn replied.

“It’s Dave Barnes from emergency management. He said he has to talk to you.”

“On my way.” Arly stood ten yards away, a worried look on her face, and Quinn walked over to her. “Shoulder feeling okay? You put a lot of speed on that ball, kiddo.”

“Feels great. Are you going to have to go to work?”

“I don’t know.” Quinn cupped the back of Arly’s head and stroked her hair. “Let me go find out.”

Honor met Quinn on the porch with the portable phone.

“Maguire.” Quinn listened for a minute or two, then responded. “Call the OR supervisor next and alert all the backup teams. Then have the head of nursing start calling in the evening shift. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

As soon as Quinn disconnected, Honor asked, “What is it?”

“A section of the I-95 overpass collapsed. All the hospitals are going to mass casualty alert.”

The phone rang again and Honor answered. “Dr. Blake. Yes, I just heard. Get me a status report from the blood bank and round up as many off-duty ER staff as you can. Also, call the chief of medicine and tell them we need to pull residents from the floors down to the ER. What? No, it’s covered under the mass casualty protocols. I’ll be there soon.”

“Honor,” Quinn said quietly. “You—”

“I’ll supervise. I won’t see patients.”

“Promise.”

“I do.” Honor took Arly’s hand and carefully bent over. “I’m sorry, honey. There’s been a big accident and there might be a lot of people who are hurt. We both need to go.”

“When will you be back?”

“Probably not until tomorrow. We’ll get Robin to take you to practice, and you and your brother will stay with your grandmom tonight.”

“Will you call me?”

Honor smiled and kissed Arly’s forehead. “I will.”

“Okay.”

“Good girl.” Honor headed into the house. “I’ll call Phyllis.”

Quinn wrapped her arm around Arly’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, Arly. I wouldn’t miss practice if I didn’t absolutely have to. I know you’re disappointed. Me too.”

Arly shrugged and leaned her head against Quinn’s side. “I know you’d be there if you could.”

“You can count on that.” Quinn and Arly followed Honor into the house. Every chief of staff and on-call personnel would be getting the same phone call she just did. Quinn wasn’t happy about Honor going to work, but she knew there was no way she could stop her. They were all in for a very long weekend.

Chapter Twenty-one

“What’s the longest relationship you’ve ever had?” Tristan said out of the blue, while shifting into fifth to pass an eighteen-wheeler on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. She knew she was headed down a dangerous road, but since the very first instant she’d seen Jett, she hadn’t been able to take the safe or smart path. Somehow, she always veered into unknown territory, both in terms of how she felt and what she knew was likely to push Jett away. Just the same, she could tolerate anger a lot better than she could stand the silence. No, it wasn’t really the silence that bothered her. It was the distance that separated them at this moment. Even though she could have reached out and touched Jett, the chasm seemed insurmountable. And she knew if she did touch her, it would be like touching a marble statue, cold and unyielding. After the consuming heat of what they’d shared, she couldn’t bear the cold.

Jett watched the slower traffic flicker by as they flew past. She didn’t fear speed, and a big part of her wanted nothing more than to get back to the city so that she could get out of the car and away from Tristan. Tristan held the key to things she preferred to keep locked inside—her physical needs, her emotional uncertainty, her fear. Her fear that she would come to want what until this point in her life she had only needed. Needs were so much easier to control than wants. And when she looked at Tristan, when she thought of Tristan, she wanted.

She wanted with a hunger that hollowed her out and left her shaking.

She wanted to touch her, hold her, be held by her. She wanted to tell her the things she had never even dared to dream of. Wanting was dangerous and only led to disappointment.

“I’ve never had a relationship,” Jett finally said.

Tristan looked over at her, then back at the road. “Never had a girlfriend?”

“No.”

“Why not? Because of the military?”

“Mostly.” Jett had plenty of practice staying relaxed under fire, and she kept her body still and her voice even, despite the fact that her stomach was in knots. Tristan was upset and she hated that she had been the cause. The night before she had feared hurting her physically, or pushing her to do something she wouldn’t enjoy or would later regret.

Nothing had been further from the truth. Tristan had not only welcomed her, she’d read her body and mind so clearly she’d been able to give Jett exactly what she craved—passion without restraint. Jett had never once considered that Tristan might be wounded by the emotional gulf that Jett had no idea how to bridge.

“What was the other part of mostly?” Tristan gripped the wheel, not because the vehicle demanded it, but because she wanted to touch Jett so badly she could barely breathe. When they made love, and she realized that’s how she thought of it—not had sex, made love—nothing stood between them. She felt stripped bare, exposed to her core, adored and desired. She felt owned in the most fundamental of ways, and she was shocked to discover she liked it. The sense of belonging was more acute than anything she’d ever experienced, and now she felt adrift, disconnected, lost. The sensation was nearly unbearable.

“I never met anyone who I trusted enough, I guess.” Jett thought fleetingly of Gail. “Or who trusted me.”

Tristan knew she had to be thinking of a woman. “Who was she? What did she do?”

Jett clenched her jaws and turned to look out the open passenger side of the car. Tristan saw too much.

“Did she break your heart?”

“No,” Jett said sharply. “I never gave her my heart.”

“Why not?”

Jett whipped her head around. “Because she didn’t want it.”

The pain in Jett’s eyes hurt, because Tristan hated to see her hurting and because whoever this woman was, Jett had cared for her. Jett had cared in a way she didn’t for her. Even knowing that the answer was going to hurt even more, Tristan whispered, “But you wanted to give it to her, didn’t you.”

“Like I said,” Jett said flatly, her face expressionless again. “My mistake.”

“I’m sorry.”

Jett shook her head. “Nothing to be sorry about. What about you? You’ve got at least one girlfriend.”

Tristan’s heart leapt, then she chided herself for being foolish for the second time that morning. “You mean Darla?”

“That’s the redhead, right?”

“Darla is a friend.” Tristan laughed. “And before you ask me if I fuck all my friends, the answer’s no. She’s a special friend.”

Jett raised an eyebrow. “Do you have a lot of special friends?”

“Not a lot. Not currently.”

“So why friends and not…” Jett wasn’t even certain of the term, since such things were beyond her realm of experience.

“Lovers?” Tristan shrugged. “It’s weird. My parents love me—I know that in my head. But my sisters were always the perfect ones, and I never measured up. I never felt special. Hell, I never even felt adequate.”