The Lonely Hearts Club Read Free Page B

probing gaze. Nothing had happened—if she didn’t count being taken out by a femme in heels, which surely didn’t warrant mentioning at the moment. The rest of the day had been typical—an MVA with two patients requiring urgent fracture reduction in the OR, a delayed bone graft on another, and a few washouts on patients waiting for flap closure. It was true, she’d thought about Liz Ramsey every now and then, in between cases—waiting for the patient to come up in the elevator from the surgical ICU, waiting for a room to be cleaned, waiting for anesthesia to put her next patient under. Hurry up and wait was the order of the day in the OR. She’d had fleeting glimpses of Liz’s all too infrequent smiles, her melodic but oddly weary voice, and the brief glimmers of her sharp wit and bright mind. It had been a long time since a woman had occupied her thoughts, even for a few seconds. A long time since Annie.
    Involuntarily, Reilly shuddered. She knew Drew would see it and hurried on. “Nothing happened. But maybe I am tired. I missed that block, didn’t I?”
    “The one where I could have taken your head off?” Drew asked levelly. “Yes, you missed it completely. That’s a dangerous lapse, Master Danvers.”
    “Yes ma’am, I know.”
    Drew’s eyes flickered to the rest of the room, then she rested a hand on Reilly’s shoulder. She wouldn’t have done it if any of the students could have seen the personal gesture. She never even touched her own lover intimately within the walls of the dojang. “Are you okay, Reilly?”
    “I am, thanks. I had an interesting accident earlier. Nothing serious.” Reilly grinned. “I’ll tell you about it later, over a beer. Are we going out?”
    “I think Sean plans to. Why don’t you take the under-belts through their forms for the rest of the class.”
    Reilly snapped her arms to her sides and bowed. “Yes ma’am.”

    *

    “Let me get this straight,” Sean Gray said, leaning close to Reilly so that the students at the adjoining table wouldn’t overhear. Her deep hazel eyes sparkled with amusement. “You got taken off guard and dumped on your ass?”
    Reilly knew she would take some ribbing if she told her story, especially from her friend and friendly rival Sean, Drew Clark’s lover. When Reilly had started training at the dojang four years earlier, Sean had just earned her second degree black belt, putting Sean two levels below Reilly’s fourth dan. And even though Reilly’s rank automatically placed her in a senior position to Sean, that had not prevented them from becoming friends. She was especially grateful that both Sean and Drew never pushed her for personal details that she didn’t want to reveal. The dojang had become her refuge, and in those early, difficult years, she’d spent more time there than anywhere else except the hospital.
    “She came out of the stairwell like a torpedo,” Reilly said in her own defense. “It wasn’t just a question of being unprepared, she was right on top of me before I could blink. Splat.”
    “Splat,” Drew mused. “I can see how that offensive tactic would work.”
    “The splat attack,” Sean laughed while shifting her chair closer to Drew and curling one hand around the inside of her leg, just above her knee.
    Reilly noticed the familiar gesture and felt a pang of longing. Sean didn’t look anything like Annie—Annie had been small and blond, whereas Sean was dark-haired and solidly muscled from years of training, but Sean had the same ready smile, and she touched Drew with the same easy familiarity that Annie had used to touch her. She missed that connection, despite everything else. She wondered why she was thinking about Annie more today than she had in months. To her surprise, Reilly realized that she didn’t think about her every waking moment the way she had the first couple of years. A little disturbed, she wondered when that had changed.
    “Maybe you need some more time sparring,” Drew said