Once again, the choice seemed clear. Jett climbed the steps and went through the door into a long hallway carpeted in a faded, dark floral print, with a staircase at the far end. She climbed up one floor and waited for Tristan on the landing.

“Where did you learn to fly?” Tristan asked as she extracted her keys.

“The Army.”

“No kidding. How long have you been out?”

Jett didn’t answer and Tristan decided it wasn’t the time to push.

She slipped past Jett to open the door to her apartment. When she did, their bodies briefly touched. Instantly, her system went on full alert.

All the pent-up urgency and excitement of the previous night coalesced into a simmering knot of arousal in the pit of her stomach. She’d been thinking about sex since she left the hospital, and this pilot was one attractive woman. Of course, she had no idea what Jett’s interests were, and why she was even thinking about it, she wasn’t sure. Jett hadn’t given off a single vibe in that direction, but telling her body that was pointless. Mentally sighing, Tristan opened her door and stepped inside.

She smiled at Jett. “Come on in.”

“I’m awake,” Honor called at the soft knocking on her door. She smothered a smile when she saw her best friend Linda and frowned at the small, trim blonde instead. “Oh sure, now you show up. When all the hard work is done.”

Linda, in jeans and a sleeveless yellow blouse, glanced around the room. “Where’s Quinn?”

“I finally got her to leave. She promised to take a nap in the trauma call room until the next feeding. Did you hear?”

“Uh-huh. A boy.” Linda perched carefully on the foot of Honor’s bed. “That’s wonderful, honey.”

“I wish you could’ve been here.”

“I’m sorry. I would have been, but this flu or whatever is going around has knocked out half the staff and I got called to work last night. Then it was a zoo. We spent all night in the air.”

“Right, and we all know how much you hate flying around in that helicopter.” Honor wasn’t really angry, or even hurt, but it still bothered her a little bit that Linda had left the emergency room after years of being one of the senior charge nurses to join the medevac crew when the hospital had been approved as a flight base. She missed Linda. Not just her competence, but her friendship. Even though they lived right around the corner from each other, their schedules often didn’t match, and even when they did, Linda had a toddler of her own at home, which made impromptu socializing difficult.

“Well, the scenery is nice,” Linda said, grinning.

Honor groaned. “Do you still have the hots for that new pilot?”

“Only metaphorically. You know I’m completely faithful in mind and body.”

“I know you can’t walk past a good-looking butch without feeling a tingle.”

“Wait just a second.” Linda lifted her wrist and pretended to feel for her pulse. “Yep. Still got one, so I guess you’re right.”

“You are so full of it. So, are you still flying with her?”

“The mysterious, and yummy, Jett McNally?” Linda gave a satisfied smirk. “Not only am I still flying with her, I got her to eat pizza with the gang last night.”

“Why are you so bound and determined to get her to socialize?”

Linda suddenly looked serious. “She seems sad. I hate that.”

“I love you, you know that? But you can’t fix everyone.”

“Maybe, maybe not. Sometimes it’s just a matter of giving fate a helping hand.”

“Oh no.” Honor knew Linda’s penchant for matchmaking and thought ahead to the pre-playoff softball bash Linda and Robin always hosted. “Don’t tell me you invited her to the party?”

“I didn’t,” Linda said with a note of excitement. “But it’s a really good idea. After all, it worked with you and Quinn.”

“And just exactly who do you plan on fixing her up with?”

“I haven’t worked that out yet. Mandy?”

At the thought of the much younger, incredibly well-built, seductive blonde, Honor felt her temperature climbing. “If you bring her within five miles of my lover, there will be bloodshed.”

Linda laughed. “Like Quinn would even notice.”

“The problem is, Quinn doesn’t notice. Even when Mandy is practically molesting her. And God, she just won’t quit.”

“Well, it hasn’t even been two years. Obviously, Mandy is slow.”

“One thing she isn’t is slow,” Honor snarled.

“All right. Don’t get worked up. It’s not good for the baby when you’re breastfeeding.”

“That’s an old wives’ tale,” Honor muttered, fussing with her covers and feeling decidedly fat and frumpy all of a sudden. “And now with this damn incision, it’s going to take twice as long before we can have sex.”

Linda leaned over and whispered dramatically, “For you to have sex. Not for Quinn. Even right after the babies are born, Robin always manages to take care of m—”

“All right,” Honor interrupted sharply. “I get the picture.”

“You can’t really think Quinn minds?”

Honor glowered. “I mind. Do you have any idea what it’s like watching her walk around in the morning and not being able to do anything about it?”

“Oh God. I wish.” Linda patted Honor’s leg. “Let me go check with the nurses and see if it’s time for Jack’s feeding. I want to watch.”

“Pervert.” Honor relaxed as Linda started for the door. “You’re the best medicine I could possibly have, next to burning up the sheets with Quinn, that is.”

Linda turned from the door and waggled her eyebrows. “Always glad to take care of a woman in need.”

Chapter Five

“Here you go.” Tristan handed Jett a cup of coffee, set the coffee cake she’d nuked on a side table, and stretched out on a lounge chair next to the one Jett occupied on the small porch off her kitchen. The second-story porch overlooked a grassy backyard. A large old oak grew beside the house, its massive branches shading the area where they sat.

“Thanks.”

Tristan leaned her head back and sighed. The sky, visible through the canopy of green, was robin’s egg blue and crystal clear. In two hours, the day would have surrendered to the July heat, but right now, she felt the slightest hint of a breeze. She was almost too tired to think, and her mind wandered in the midst of her pleasant torpor. She remembered all those carefree, lazy summer days of her youth, when the greatest crisis in her life was whether a particular girl might be interested in her “that way.” Now, what seemed like a lifetime later, she lay next to a woman still wondering the same thing. All that had changed was her—she still asked the question, but somewhere along the way she’d stopped looking for anything beyond the simple answer. If it was yes, they’d share a few hours’ pleasure. If no, she’d move on. And right now she was too damn tired to wonder why that was.

She turned her head and regarded Jett’s face in profile. Her hair was a mix of dark blond verging on golden brown, but she bet when she was younger it was corn silk yellow. Up close she could make out the fine lines around her deep blue eyes. Those and her dark tan indicated a lot of time in the sun. “Where are you from?”

If the seeming non sequitur bothered Jett, she didn’t give any indication. She answered, “New York.”

“City?”

“State. Up near the Vermont border.”

“Farmers?”

Jett shook her head and sipped her coffee. “In a way. My family has an upland apple orchard. Been in the family for a couple of generations.”

“But you didn’t want to be a farmer?”

“No,” Jett said softly. “I wanted to fly.”

Tristan drew her leg up onto the lounge chair and turned on her side, curling one arm under her head. The bones beneath Jett’s smooth, bronzed skin were sharply carved, the hollows beneath her cheekbones shadowed even in sunlight. Her nose was strong and straight, the bridge high, nearly Roman. She wasn’t beautiful, or handsome, but her face was captivating. “How did you know that? That you wanted to fly?”

“I went up in a crop duster with one of the neighbors when I was seven. She—”

“She?”

Jett nodded, a faint smile breaking the straight line of her mouth.

“She worked for herself out of a barn and a tiny airstrip down the road from us. She let me take the rudder the first time we went up.”

When Jett didn’t continue, Tristan said, “And that’s all it took?”

Jett sipped her coffee. “Yeah.”

“What did you like about it?”

“Why are you asking?”

Tristan wasn’t put off by the question, because Jett sounded more confused than put out. “I was just thinking about how oblivious I was when I was young, and how all the things I thought were important weren’t really.”

Jett laughed. “Are you feeling mellow post call?”

“Yes,” Tristan murmured. “How could you tell?”

“Sometimes when you get stripped down to the bone, you look around and everything feels different, doesn’t it?”

Tristan recognized the wistful edge of pain in Jett’s voice and knew it came from having seen too much tragedy. “You were in the war, weren’t you?”

“Two tours.”

“How long have you been back?”

“A couple of months.” Jett placed her coffee cup on the table and her expression became remote.

The movement had an edge of finality to it, and Tristan recognized once again that the subject was off-limits. “You didn’t tell me what hooked you on flying.”

Jett didn’t think anyone had ever asked her that before. When her brothers realized how much she loved to go up in the rickety single engine plane with Elenor Brundidge, skimming low over miles of green while spraying the cornfields, they’d tried to convince her father not to let her go. That had been one of the few times she could ever remember her mother taking up for her in the face of the angry, sullen men in the family. Then in the Army everyone was too busy making her prove she could do the job to care why she wanted to. Other pilots had their own reasons for loving to fly and rarely discussed it.