"Maybe she's making you uneasy."

Wynter's throat was so dry she could barely speak. "What...why do you say that?"

"Because she's got the hots for you."

Wynter shivered as if the wind had suddenly blown through the room, carrying slivers of ice that pricked at her skin. "That's ridiculous."

Mina laughed. "Oh, honey. You do need a vacation if you can't recognize when someone is looking at you like they want to lick every little drop of sweat from your--"

"Pearce is a lesbian. She's not going to be looking at me that way."

"Last time I looked, you were female."

"That's different. I'm not even her type."

"How do you know that?"

"Because I've seen the kind of women she goes for, and believe me...This is ridiculous. What difference does it make what kind of woman Pearce Rifkin is attracted to? It wouldn't be me."

"You sound like that might bother you," Mina said with a gentle question in her voice.

"That's not what I meant. I just meant..." Wynter had no idea what she meant. She emptied her wineglass in a long swallow and gathered the remnants of their late-night snack. "I promised Ronnie she could help me make pancakes tomorrow morning. Which means she's going to be up at five a.m. We'd better get some sleep."

"You can snuggle up right here," Mina said. "You know I don't snore."

"Thanks," Wynter said, leaning over to give Mina a quick hug.

"I'd better bunk in next to her so that I can divert her if she decides to go exploring when she wakes up."

"Well, if you want company, I'm here."

"I appreciate it. Night." Wynter made her way through the silent house to the kitchen. As she methodically rinsed the wineglass, put the bottle in the recycler, and tied up a bag of trash, she kept thinking about what Mina had said. That Pearce had looked at her with desire.

It shouldn't have meant anything to her, no more than if a man she was not attracted to had made an overture. But Pearce wasn't a man, and the only thing she knew for certain was that she liked the way Pearce looked at her.


CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Pearce watched the fire die. The room grew steadily darker and a numbing chill settled upon her. Finally, she roused herself enough to stand up and squint at the Seth Thomas clock on the mantel, one of the few keepsakes she had wanted from her grandmother's home after her death. She could have had anything she wanted from the Main Line estate, but the only other things she'd taken were the photograph albums. When she was young, she and her grandmother had spent hours poring through the albums that had seemed enormous to her then. They had been filled with treasures--photographs of her grandmother when she was a child Pearce's age, images of old-fashioned cars and young men and women dressed in 1920s clothes, mementos of her grandmother and grandfather's courtship, and faded pictures of her grandfather in uniform from World War II. She loved to look at the hospital tents and jeeps with white crosses painted on the side, imagining herself in one of those field hospitals under a sweltering sun with the backdrop of aircraft and mortars for company while she performed life-saving surgery. Each photograph had been a story, and she had always loved her grandmother's stories, no matter how many times she heard them.

Now she kept the albums in a sealed plastic container on the top shelf of her closet, where they would be safe.

The clock chimed once, twelve thirty. She slid the key beside it off the mantel, carefully opened the hinged faceplate, and wound the springs for the hands and the gong. It was a seven-day clock, and every Saturday night she wound it, just as she had seen her grandmother do throughout the years of her youth. It was a ritual that reminded her of the best years of her life. She closed the clock and repositioned it in its place in the center of the mantel. Then she flicked on a wall switch that lit the chandelier in the center of the room and crossed to the bathroom, where she turned on the shower and efficiently stripped off her clothes while waiting for the water to heat. She let the warm water sluice over her injured hand while lathering her hair with the other. She didn't linger in the soothing spray. She had places to go.

"Hey, Rifkin," Mark Perlman called to her. "How about a game of pool?"

Perlman was a second-year surgery resident, and his first rotation upon arriving at Penn had been on service with Pearce. He'd been green and arrogant, a rich boy from Brown who still wore Ralph Lauren polo shirts and fabric belts with ducks on them. Six weeks into his residency he had called her in the middle of the night on the verge of a nervous breakdown, literally weeping because he never got home before ten at night and didn't have time to work out and how was he supposed to study when he didn't have time to sleep? He had said he was going to walk out of the hospital and never come back.

She'd debated telling him to switch to anesthesia or, better yet, internal medicine, but she considered maybe it wasn't his fault that no one had prepared him for what a surgical residency was really going to be like. She'd gone to the hospital, helped him finish his night work, and pretty much held his hand for the next six weeks. He'd adjusted, like most did, and now his arrogance was tempered with a little humility.

And Pearce had earned his undying gratitude.

"Maybe later," Pearce replied, lifting her glass and indicating her beer. She didn't want to call attention to her hand by trying to play pool, and she doubted that she would be able to shoot with her usual proficiency. It was a rare night that she didn't win twenty bucks if she was playing seriously. "I just got here."

Here was O'Malley's, the neighborhood bar two blocks from the hospital and across from the high-rise dorms. Students, residents, and nurses congregated there after work during the week and most weekend nights. She usually made it by a couple of times a week, especially when, like tonight, she wanted casual company and a diversion from the relentless pace of her life. And, she admitted, she'd been too content just relaxing with Wynter to face her empty apartment quite so soon.

"If you change your mind, look me up," Mark said exuberantly. "I feel like winning a few rounds tonight."

Pearce laughed and leaned back against the bar. "Still dreaming, I see."

"Maybe. And maybe not." The thin, sandy-haired man, whom most women considered very handsome with his sharply carved features and brilliant blue eyes, sidled closer to Pearce. "So what's the inside story on the new resident on your service?"

"Story?" Pearce sipped her beer, her fingers tightening around the handle of the glass mug.

"You know--with Thompson. First I heard she's married, but then one of the nurses told me she's divorced."

"Do I look like I'm the newsroom?"

"I just figured you'd know. A couple guys already tried to feel her out, but she kind of blew them off. So I thought I'd give her a--"

"Look," Pearce said so abruptly Mark jumped, "she's a surgery resident. What more do you need to know? She probably doesn't have time for a social life. Go sniff around one of the nurses."

"Some of us don't have your luck," he said good-naturedly.

"Maybe if you tried not to drool quite so much, you'd get somewhere." Pearce wanted him off the subject of Wynter. She'd seen the attention Wynter got from the male residents when they all hung out together in the surgeons' lounge between cases. If they weren't blatantly staring at her, they were striking up a conversation. Circling her, like a pack of dogs around a new bitch in the park. Feeling her out, trying to get a sense of whether she was interested. Pearce hadn't seen any sign of Wynter returning the interest, but she wasn't entirely certain she would recognize the subtle signs between women and men. It wasn't something she usually paid any attention to. Most of the time the men's attention to Wynter made her so antsy, she had to leave the room. She kept having fantasies of stuffing their heads in the freezer.

"Can I ask you something?" Mark asked.

Pearce regarded him suspiciously. He swayed, even though he had an elbow on the bar, and his gestures were expansive, as if he were an actor on a stage playing to the audience seated in the back row of the balcony. He'd clearly had one too many beers. "Are you driving somewhere tonight?"

"Nah. I'm staying at José's over at Forty-second and Spruce."

Pearce made a mental note to make sure that José, another resident, was actually riding herd on Mark. "Where are your car keys?"

"He took him...them." Mark smiled beneficently and bumped Pearce's shoulder. "How did you know you were...you know."

"You mean, like, gay?" Pearce stared at him in astonishment. All the guys pretty much knew her story, because she was certain it was one of the first things they told the new residents when they started. The fact that the chairman's daughter was a fellow resident and a lesbian was too good a topic of conversation not to share. But it was rare for one of them to really ask her about it, other than the occasional joke or innuendo.

"Yeah. That."

"When did you first start thinking about girls like they were different than boys?"

Mark's brow creased as he considered the question. "I don't know.

When I was six, maybe?"

"Me too."

"No shit." Mark grinned. "Cool."

"Yeah." Pearce didn't see any point in disillusioning him. Instead, when Mark ambled away in search of more loquacious company, she watched the crowd, listening to the sound level increase as the night wore on and the liquor flowed. She was nursing her second beer when Tammy walked in. The small, tight-bodied blond cut a path straight through the crowd toward her.

"Hey there," Tammy said, turning sideways against the bar so her inside thigh slipped behind Pearce's leg.

"You're kind of late getting started, aren't you?" Pearce said, aware of Tammy's crotch pressed against her hip.

"Oh no. I've been partying, but it broke up early. We ran out of coke."

Pearce glanced around quickly, but it was already going on two and everyone was pretty well lubricated. No one was listening to their conversation. "You might not want to advertise that." She took a closer look at Tammy's face and saw the pinpoint pupils and the flush that suffused her neck. "How much have you been doing?"

"Enough to get me really jazzed." Tammy snaked a hand around Pearce's leg and cupped her crotch. She squeezed, her thumb working the lower edge of Pearce's fly over her clit. "I'm so horny."

"Chee-rist," Pearce muttered, slamming her beer down on the bar.

She peeled Tammy's fingers from between her legs and kept a grip on her wrist to prevent another grope. "Who did you come with?"

"Alice. I think. Or maybe she left before we got here. We hit a few other places on the way."

Pearce started off into the crowd, Tammy in tow. "We're getting out of here."

"That's exactly what I was hoping."

"José," Pearce called in passing.

"Yo."

"Watch Perlman."

"Yo, boss."

Pearce flagged a cab and they piled into the backseat. She would have walked had she been alone, but there was no way that Tammy was going to make it on foot. As it was, Pearce had all she could do to keep Tammy's hands out of her pants and her tongue out of her mouth. She kept up a steady defense all the way back to her apartment. She tossed the amused cabbie a ten when he pulled up in front of her apartment.

"Thanks."

She pulled Tammy out of the backseat.

"Good luck," the cabbie called.

Pearce could hear him laughing as she slammed the door. She took Tammy's hand again. "Come on. Let's get inside."

Tammy continued her assault all the way upstairs, and when Pearce finally managed to get her apartment door open, Tammy picked up the pace. The instant Pearce closed the door, she was on her, her hands in Pearce's hair, her teeth on Pearce's neck. She thrust her pelvis between Pearce's legs, grinding into her, her breath rasping. "I'm so hot. Mmm, I'm gonna come so hard for you."

"Tam, let's take this over to the couch," Pearce said, jerking her neck out of range and twisting away. She could feel Tammy's pulse hammering beneath her fingers as she continued to hold her wrist. She was willing to bet her blood pressure was through the roof, and the last thing she wanted was to precipitate a confrontation. What Tammy needed was to settle down, not get more excited. "Come on."