Fire And Ice

Mona’s brows lifted above her large-framed wire glasses. “Did I say anything?”

“No, but I know that look.”

“I was just going to ask if everything was okay. Lately, you seem to be, well…I guess distracted is the word I’m looking for.”

Oh, she was distracted all right. But she wasn’t about to share the reason for that unfortunate state with Mona. Not that she thought the secretary couldn’t keep a secret. Rather she was having a hard time coming to terms with her borderline adolescent musings. She did, not fantasized about doing it.

Jena eyed the now even larger pile of papers regarding the Patsy Glendale murder case taking up the better half of her desk. “Have you given any thought to what I said yesterday?”

Mona’s spine snapped slightly straighter—if that were possible. “You mean about my hair color?”

Jena knew her best friend and partner would absolutely kill her for saying something like this to the older woman. Dulcy Ferris would tell her she was being callous and controlling. The thing of it was Jena thought she was being helpful.

So, okay, the suggestion that Mona might want to reconsider her decision to age naturally and instead look into a good colorist—had even given the secretary the name of her own hairdresser—had come on the heels of an incident just like the one they were experiencing now. Jena had been daydreaming about Tommy, Mona had come in on some urgent business matter or another, and Jena had made the comment on her hair.

And now she was following up on it.

“It was just a thought, Mona.” She sighed, briefly propping her head on her hand, then shoving her fingers through the fine, jet-black strands of her shoulder-length hair. “I can only imagine what you think of the comment.”

“Is that an apology?”

Jena smiled. “No. It’s a statement of fact.”

“I see.”

Jena noted the glimmer of amusement in the other woman’s eyes, although there was no way that Mona could know that much of Jena’s state was due to one singular night of passion with a man she hadn’t seen since…well, that night.

Her. Jena. A woman unafraid of her own sexuality who changed men as often as she changed her bed sheets, preoccupied with a man who had so clearly been a one-night stand. In fact, he not only wasn’t in her life…he wasn’t even in the same city.

Which hockey team had he played on? Oh, yes. The L.A. Aces. Fitting, since Tommy was the highest scoring card in her black book. Not only did he live up to all the things she’d said about hockey players having, um, big sticks and being smooth, he’d surpassed them. And then some.

Mona cleared her throat. “I’ll be at my desk if you need anything.”

Jena waved her hand. “Thanks, Mona.”

The instant the secretary exited the office, Jena wanted to groan aloud.

She made an attempt at continuing the notes she was making on a secondary case but the words refused to make sense. A latent case of dyslexia? Hardly.

Okay, so the sex with Tommy had been good. Great. Mind-blowingly fantastic. But it wasn’t like her to revisit one-night stands, even in her daydreams. And, for cripes’ sake, the night had been in September and now it was late November. She glanced out her office-wide window. She supposed part of the reason for her overheated, sappy condition was that things had been quiet on the dating front as of late.

Well, actually, things had been nonexistent ever since…

Ever since three months ago.

She nearly choked at the revelation. No, that wasn’t possible. She’d dated since then, hadn’t she? She swiveled her chair to the bureau behind her desk and took her purse out of a drawer, rifling through it for her Day-Timer. Surely she’d gone out since then? Had some sort of midnight encounter?

Yes, yes. There was that John Pollero she’d met at a gallery opening.

She flipped through the pages of her personal calendar, but aside from the notations of her monthly menstrual cycle, white paper stared back at her.

But she was sure…

There was the notation. She’d gone out to dinner with John a week before Dulcy’s bachelorette party and Jena’s night with Tommy.

She pulled a face, refusing to admit it.

So she’d grown lax in keeping her Day-Timer up to date. She slapped it back into her bag then the bureau. That was all. She’d never gone three months without some sort of interaction with the opposite sex. She adored men and loved sex. Especially great sex with adorable men. She’d merely forgotten to note the dates, that’s all. After all, as Dulcy and Marie constantly told her, others found it impossible to keep up with her. It was understandable that she was having trouble keeping up with herself.

“Knock, knock,” Dulcy Ferris said from her open doorway.

Jena blinked at her incredibly blond, incredibly beautiful friend, then frowned. Something she seemed to be doing a lot of lately whenever she ran into one of her two best friends.

“Who’s there?” she said wryly.

Dulcy laughed quietly then stepped into the room. “Well, obviously no one worth mentioning given the expression on your face.”

“Never mind me. It’s this Glendale murder case, that’s all.”

“Are you sure?”

“How do you mean?”

Dulcy sat down in one of the two high-back leather chairs in front of Jena’s desk. Chairs she’d bought when she was on the track to partnership at Scott, Dickey and Jolson, one of Albuquerque’s premier law offices. The long hours, the cutthroat competition, the high-profile cases, the drive to succeed seemed to have all happened long ago, although barely nine months had passed since she and Dulcy and Marie had resigned from their respective jobs as attorneys and signed on with Bartholomew Lomax, fulfilling a lifelong dream of running their own firm. With Lomax’s help and weight in the legal community, they did so without having to build from the ground up. Barry came with a long list of established and well-paying clients and a reputation that would have taken the three women years to shape.

Dulcy and Barry went way back, but Jena was still a bit fuzzy on the full extent of their relationship. No, there was nothing sexual between the sixty-something Lomax and her thirty-year-old friend, but the two shared a close connection Jena couldn’t figure out.

“And here I thought I was the one having trouble concentrating,” Dulcy said, tugging Jena from her reverie.

“Hmm?” She watched as Dulcy smoothed her hand over her flat stomach, reminding her that her friend was nearly three months pregnant and had good reason to be distracted, what with that American Indian stud of a husband of hers waiting for her at home. Of course, a dusty old horse ranch a good three hours outside of town wasn’t Jena’s idea of a good time, but she had the feeling Dulcy’s husband Quinn Landis could make anyplace seem like a sexual playground built for two.

“It’s been awhile since we’ve had a chance to talk,” Dulcy said, “what with my commuting to the ranch every Wednesday night and returning Sunday.” She caught herself rubbing her stomach and smiled. She put her hand on the armrest. “So who’s the man of the hour?”

Jena was still staring at her friend’s stomach.

“Hmm?”

“You know, who’s the hottie you’re dating now?”

Now that was the question of the hour, wasn’t it?

“Okay. Let me try to narrow the parameters of my question a bit. Last night, who did you go to the McClellan reception with?”

Jena shrugged, attempting nonchalance although she was a little irked by the reminder. “No one.”

“No one as in no one worth mentioning?”

“No one as in…well, no one.”