She was seized with sudden inspiration. Maybe the hotel wasn't out of the question after all. "Then, I'll take you across the street to din--"

"Sorry," Wynter said as her cell phone rang. She looked at the caller ID. "I have to take this. Hang on."

"Sure."

"Hi. Everything okay?" Wynter caught Pearce's arm in one hand as she started to move away, stopping her motion. Then she held up one finger to indicate she would only be a minute. "Listen, I'm going to be later tonight than I thought. I know, I'm sorry. I should've thought.

I don't know, probably at least midnight. I know...no, I'm fine." She laughed softly. "You sure? Okay. Thanks." She smiled, listening. "Hey, I owe you...whatever you want. Uh-huh, sure. I'll call you later, then."

As Wynter talked, Pearce tried to ignore the intimacy in her voice.

All day, she'd managed to forget that Wynter was straight and married.

They'd worked together so well, and being around her had been so easy, that she'd forgotten how much stood between them. She remained motionless, but inside, she drew away. She'd let her guard down, and that was foolish. She'd made it a point never to get seriously involved with anyone she worked with. Casual suited her just fine--she was too busy for anything else and wasn't looking for complications. Sure, some of the women she'd had flings with had been straight, but that had never mattered--to either of them. With Wynter, it mattered. Not good.

So not good.

"Sorry, sorry," Wynter said as she terminated her call. "What were you just saying about sign-out rounds?"

Pearce stepped over the low bench that ran down the center of the aisle between the facing rows of lockers, suddenly needing to put distance between herself and Wynter. "Nothing. I'll page the guys and we'll meet in the cafeteria in half an hour."

"How about I get you a Coke, then? We can hang out in the surgeons' lounge until--"

"I'll pass, thanks."

"But I thought--" Wynter looked after her in surprise as Pearce walked out of the locker room without a backward glance. She seemed angry, but Wynter had no clue as to why. The day had seemed to be going so well, and they'd moved like clockwork together in the operating room, each anticipating the other with no need for words.

"What the hell?"

Irritated now herself, feeling abandoned even when she knew it was irrational, she yanked her lab coat out of her locker and shoved her arms into the sleeves. She double-checked the breast pocket of her scrub shirt to be sure that she had her list and decided she'd take a quick walk through the wards before the end of the day. If Pearce is in a mood, fine. Let her be. I couldn't care less.


CHAPTER SEVEN

"Yo, Phil. Can I borrow a smoke?" Pearce gave the gray-haired, stocky security guard a light punch in the arm.

He frowned. "You're about hitting your limit this month, Sport. A couple more and you're gonna owe me a pack."

"I'll see that you're appropriately recompensed." She grinned.

"You know my credit's good."

"Don't give me that," he said good-naturedly, shaking a filtered Marlboro from the pack he kept out of sight in the desk at his station near the Spruce Street entrance to the hospital. A bank of video monitors lined up behind him on a counter showed real-time images of passersby on the street and visitors and staff making their way through the hallways leading from the auxiliary entrance into the main areas of the hospital. "I've been feeding you these things since you were fifteen, and you haven't paid me back yet."

"Sixteen," Pearce corrected. "And I bet in all these years, it's only added up to a few cartons."

"Let me check my tally," he said, making a show of moving some papers around on his desk.

Pearce laughed, rolling the firm white cylinder between her fingers.

"Thanks. You want to key the freight elevator for me?"

"Is there anything else I can do for you, your highness?"

"Coffee?"

"Don't push," he said, wagging a finger at her. He preceded her down a short corridor to the elevator adjacent to the corrugated metal roll-up doors that opened onto a loading dock. He inserted a key from a ring he pulled off his wide leather belt into the control panel and the oversized doors slid open. "Been a while since you took this ride."

"Just looking for a little air," Pearce said, knowing that Phil had caught on years ago that she escaped to the roof when something was bugging her. Phil Matucci had befriended her when she was just a child, allowing her to sit beside him on a tall stool while she waited for her father on endless Saturday afternoons. She'd watched the World Series with him on his tiny portable television, they'd discussed politics when she'd gotten older, and on rare occasions when she'd been more lonely than usual, she'd told him about her dreams. Maybe it was because he had five children of his own that he never seemed to mind her company.

He'd chastised her when she'd started to smoke and made a deal with her that if she didn't buy her own, he'd give her one whenever she wanted. She'd broken their agreement on a few occasions when she'd been a teenager, and then felt guilty about it, tossing the illicit packs into the trash so he wouldn't see them.

"Let me know when you come down, so I know you didn't freeze to death up there."

"Thanks," Pearce said quietly. "I will."

The elevator stopped on the top floor, and she went down the hall and out the fire door to the roof. Before the Rhoads Pavilion had been erected with its state-of-the-art heliport, Penn Star--the medical helicopter--had landed here. She crossed to the concrete barricade surrounding the tarmac, hunched down against the wind, and lit the cigarette from a paper matchbook she kept in her back pocket along with other essentials. Taking a deep breath of cold air and smoke, she straightened and looked out over the city. There'd been a time when she'd been too short to see the Schuylkill River that separated West Philadelphia from the downtown area without jumping up and down, her hands pressed to the top of the wall for leverage. Now, she could lean her elbows on it, and she did, contemplating her strange day.

She couldn't figure out why Wynter got under her skin so badly. It had to be more than that Wynter was hot. Instant attraction was nothing new--hell, she got turned on by good-looking women all the time.

Sometimes they connected and sometimes they didn't, and either way, it never mattered enough for her to lose sleep over. When she thought back to their encounter that afternoon in the quad on Match Day, she could easily chalk up her reaction to Wynter to the fact that she'd been high on the excitement of the day, knowing that med school was almost over and she was finally about to start the journey she'd been preparing for her entire life--or so it felt. Wynter had literally walked into her, and for a few brief moments, they'd shared a pivotal point in their lives.

They'd been alone, and Wynter was beautiful, and so damn sexy, and she'd had the overwhelming desire to kiss her. It wouldn't have been the first woman she hadn't known whom she'd kissed.

But she still wanted to kiss her.

"Fuck," Pearce muttered, crushing out the cigarette beneath her foot. The wind lashed her shirt around her body as if it were a windsock, plastering it to her chest. Her nipples tensed in the cold beneath the thin cotton. The sensation was too close to sexual, the memory of wanting to feel Wynter's mouth beneath hers still vivid, and she hummed with another swell of desire. Perfect. I come up here to settle down, and all I do is make it worse than ever. I should've spent the time in my on-call room taking the edge off.

She wished for another cigarette, but Phil would rag on her if she asked for one.

"I just need to keep my distance until I can find a woman to spend some time with."

Armed with a plan, she headed back to work. That was her panacea--loneliness, arousal, anger--she could lose it all in work.

v Wynter noted with satisfaction that she was the first to reach the cafeteria. She couldn't put her finger on exactly why it mattered to her that Pearce was not there first, but it did. She was used to feeling competitive with her fellow residents; it was part of the world she had chosen to inhabit. From the time she had been in high school, she'd understood that if medicine was to be her choice, she would have to be the best at everything she did. Even though the field was not as competitive as it had once been, medical school slots were still at a premium, and once she'd decided on surgery, the field had narrowed even more. There were often hundreds of applicants for a handful of residency positions in the most sought-after programs. It was only because they depended upon one another for mutual survival, banding together against the pressure of long hours and constant stress, that the competition between residents usually remained friendly as opposed to cutthroat. There were exceptions, but she had never had any desire to win at the cost of others. Hers were personal goals. She wanted to be the best, because this was what she had chosen to do with her life and anything less was not acceptable.

She grabbed a cup of coffee and staked out one of the larger tables for their team. As she ran her list again, checking to see that she hadn't overlooked anything during her walk-through, she thought back to the case she had just done with Pearce. It wasn't the most difficult case she'd ever done, or all that unusual. It always felt good to operate--a personal challenge, a problem to solve, a wrong to set right with her own hands.