“Honor, I’ll hurt you,” Quinn said, her voice raspy.

“You could never hurt me. And I need you. Just for a minute. Please.”

Quinn stretched out on her side on top of the covers. Honor stroked her face as Quinn buried her face in the curve of Honor’s neck. “I love you so much. I was afraid…”

“It’s all right,” Honor soothed. She knew firsthand the agony of having love wrenched from her grasp. She didn’t want Quinn to feel one moment of that pain. “I’m right here, and everything is all right.”

“I can’t even imagine being without you,” Quinn gasped. “I don’t know how you…”

Honor knew what Quinn didn’t want to say. They had talked about Terry, the love Honor had lost, many times, and each time they talked about her, Honor’s pain lessened. She would never get over the pain of losing her, but the agony of living without her diminished with each day she spent loving and being loved by Quinn. Honor loved Quinn even more because Quinn suffered for her loss, even though Honor didn’t want her to. “You don’t have to think about it, baby, because I’m here with you. And I hope you never have to think about it.” She kissed the top of Quinn’s head. “But you would have Arly, like I did, and for a while that would be enough reason to go on. And now you’ll have…what’s-his-name too.”

Quinn laughed and sat up, rubbing her tears away with the bottom of her scrub shirt.

“If you think I’m too weak to notice that you don’t have anything on underneath that shirt, pull it up again and see what happens to you,” Honor said. When Quinn wasn’t coaching softball or soccer or some other sport, she was working out at the gym, and her body was beautiful. Honor constantly found herself turning around in the morning and catching a glimpse of Quinn naked, and being suddenly overcome by a wave of unmitigated lust. It was a wonderful thing to experience after countless mornings of waking beside her.

“Maybe I should take my shirt off altogether before I tell you what I did,” Quinn said.

“Trying to distract me?”

Quinn nodded.

Honor shook her head. “It won’t work. I can do two things at once, and even though it’s hard for me to think when I’m looking at you naked, I’ll manage.”

“I let Arly pick the baby’s name.”

“Say that again.”

“She was really excited, and I could tell that she felt left out, and…”

“Oh my God,” Honor whispered, imagining calling her son Beavis or SpongeBob or something equally horrifying for the rest of his days. Of course, they hadn’t signed a birth certificate yet, so there was still time to change things. But Arly would be so upset.

“She picked Jack.”

“Jack?” Honor asked quietly.

Quinn nodded.

“Jack was Terry’s father’s name.”

“I know. When Arly picked her grandfather’s name, Phyllis cried.”

“Oh, Quinn,” Honor said. “We talked about naming him after your father if it was a boy.”

“Phyllis is Arly’s grandmother and a big part of the family,” Quinn said. “We wouldn’t make it a week without her. I think naming our son Jack is just fine. If my father is upset, which he won’t be, we can just have another one.”

Honor started to cry, something she never did. But she didn’t mind the tears, because all she felt was happy. “That’s easy for you to say.”

Quinn leaned down and kissed her. “I love you. What do you say I go get Jack?”

“Yes, but hurry back. I already miss you.”

Jett watched Tristan out of the corner of her eye as Tristan drove, trying to figure out what it was about her that had made her say yes to an offer from a virtual stranger. It wasn’t as if she longed for company. She didn’t. She had an apartment in a sprawling complex on Lincoln

Drive, where she could go for days, even weeks, without speaking to anyone and not minding. When she arrived home after her shift, she was usually too wound up to sleep right away, but she’d gotten used to that after spending months in the desert where sleep was something to be squeezed in between flights, if the heat wasn’t too bad and she could actually stay inside a tent for an hour or two. She’d learned to stay awake, running on adrenaline and caffeine and nerves. Unlike some of her fellow soldiers, she avoided drugs except for a drink now and then, and even that she monitored. Her father had been a mean drunk, and she’d often borne the brunt of his discontent. She wasn’t going to be like him, even if she did sometimes have to ride the whirlwind of her own wild temperament with nothing to blunt its force. If she was careful, if she kept tight control, she’d be fine.

In the Army there was always more work. Now when she had to take time off and she couldn’t sleep and she couldn’t shut off the pictures in her head, she restored antique timepieces. She preferred watches because the mechanisms were so small that she had to focus all her energy on manipulating the tiny parts. She couldn’t think about anything else then—not about where she’d been, or where she was going, or what she’d lost.

Flying was the same. Her aircraft, her crew, and her passengers required every bit of her concentration, and while she was flying, she had no past and no future. Only the now. No memories to expunge, no dreams to discard. In between flights, she waited for those moments to come again.

Maybe she’d said yes to this adventure because Tristan hadn’t been put off by her shields. Even now, Tristan seemed content to drive and allow silence to fall between them. Jett was grateful for that. She wasn’t any good at small talk. She had never understood the point of discussing things that had no meaning, and now, other than her job, nothing much had meaning for her. She wondered what would happen when the silence no longer protected her.

Tristan turned right onto School House Lane. She rented the second floor of an old Victorian, half a block down the street from Honor and Quinn. Quinn had actually found the listing for her right after Tristan had accepted the position at PMC. She hadn’t had time to take Quinn up on her offer of dinner at Quinn and Honor’s home, even though they were practically next-door neighbors. But she had agreed to help Quinn coach a soccer team. That seemed like the least she could do to say thanks for all Quinn’s help. The fields where she was due to start coaching soccer in another week were a quarter of a mile in the other direction. Despite being within the city limits, the residential area had an old-fashioned neighborhood feel to it. She recognized the cars parked on her street, and the kids who ran up and down the sidewalk in the late afternoon, and the women carrying shopping bags back from the Super Fresh, and the guys with six-packs tucked under their arms.

The working-class neighborhood was nothing like the enclave where she’d been raised, with manicured lawns and circular drives guarded by stone animals. She liked it much better where she was now.

“This is it,” Tristan said as she pulled into the curb in front of the sprawling three-story white structure with a wide front porch at the end of a flagstone walkway.

Jett looked out her window and frowned. “This looks like your house.”

“Yes.” Tristan turned off the engine and pulled her keys from the ignition. “I’ve got coffee and some frozen coffee cake. Hungry?”

“You didn’t say you were going to cook.”

Tristan grinned. “I was afraid to scare you away. Besides, I’m not cooking. I’m microwaving.”

Jett hesitated but Tristan was already out of the car and headed around to the sidewalk. At the very least, Jett had to get out of the vehicle, and when she did, she couldn’t just walk away. Wasn’t really sure she wanted to. Despite Tristan’s super-confident, take-charge manner, Jett didn’t feel manipulated. Tristan pushed, but she was so casually open about it, Jett was more curious than wary.

“I don’t want you to go to any trouble,” Jett said, climbing out and closing the door behind her. She glanced up the street, pretty certain she knew where she was. Probably no more than a mile or two from her apartment complex. She could easily walk. She could say she was more tired than she’d realized, thank this woman for the ride, and just walk away. That would be the smart thing to do. She didn’t move.

Tristan tilted her head and regarded Jett thoughtfully. She seemed ready to bolt. Tristan couldn’t tell if it was simple shyness, or something else. Jett didn’t look like the shy type. Women who flew medevac helicopters weren’t usually shy and retiring, any more than surgeons or anesthesiologists were. When you measured life or death in seconds, there wasn’t much room for uncertainty. “It’s no trouble. As I recall, I invited you.”

“Just the same.”

“Just the same, let’s go get some coffee.” Tristan turned and walked away.

Left with no choice, Jett followed her up the sidewalk, noting her long, powerful strides. Her hair shimmered like black gold in the sunlight, and her broad shoulders, narrow waist, and muscular hips and legs made Jett wonder if she was a swimmer. She had the body for it. The thought was disconcerting because Jett wasn’t accustomed to noticing women’s bodies. In the service, she’d trained herself not to.

She slowed as she approached the white stone steps that led up to the porch, thinking about all the times in her life she’d been faced with the choice between stepping into the unknown, or retreating into safety.

She almost always chose the riskier path because the excitement of challenge, the rush of danger, satisfied her in a visceral way. The only other thing that came close to the intensity of that feeling was sex, and she hadn’t allowed herself that in a long time. There was danger, and then there was foolhardiness.

“So,” Tristan said, already across the porch and holding open the door for Jett, “I’m on the second floor.”