FOR MONEY, I'LL MARRY YOU.......

21

👉🏻👈🏻

So. It wasn't just an attraction.

It was officially a crush.

A week of trying to ignore it didn't ease anything. Long showers alone with her own hand didn't. Cold showers didn't. Trying to pretend she didn't actually care did nothing.

None of it helped.

Jade was, it turned out, a little besotted.

Even at work, watching Althea's brisk manner with patients didn't do anything. Jade purposefully stuck around when she needed Althea for a consult and couldn't even get overly annoyed by her terrible bedside manner. Now Jade saw her as efficient and just a bit, well, useless with patients.

An amazing surgeon.

Maybe that was why she managed to be such an amazing surgeon. She focused on the facts and the case and relied on the team to do the rest.

She operated with cold efficiency.

And saved more lives than most.

"You're staring at your wife with moon eyes."

Jade jumped, moving her chin off her hand and straightening up from the nurses' station desk. She rounded on Sally, who was looking utterly delighted, and managed to knock a piece of the tacky decorative tinsel off the desk. Picking it up gave her the perfect excuse to not look at her smirking friend.

"I am not."

"You really, really were. Like, I expected a breeze to waft through and wave your hair gently around while violins started up."

Bright red tinsel back in place, Jade jammed her hands in her pockets.

"Stop exaggerating. I have to set up some antibiotics. Come with?"

Sally followed her through to the treatment room. They both started getting their equipment together, syringes and needles and vials in hand. Sally spread out their medication chart and Jade started mixing an antibiotic.

"I'm really not mooning," she said after a while.

Well, only a bit.

Sally snorted like Jade was ridiculous.

"You're still so smitten with her."

Jade ducked her head.

Still?

Try newly.

But she couldn't talk to Sally about that. Which was insanely frustrating. And, also, sad. Their friendship had been suffering. In between work, new relationships, and Jade's guilt from all the lies about her said relationship, a small divide had grown.

Jade really was going to explode soon if she didn't get to talk about this. She was a talker. Not a keep-it-all-close-to-your-chest type at all. She wanted to sit over a coffee, or to sprawl over a bar top, and whine and have Sally pat her head a little.

But that wasn't an option, and it sucked.

All Jade could do was try not to let Althea catch her mooning. Because after the hug that had left Jade both swooning and aching for the woman, all she could conclude was that Althea was really, really not into her.

It wasn't that Jade thought she was only the way to screw over Althea's parents for Althea anymore. No way Althea would open up like that to just anyone.

Especially not someone she was doing business with. They were friends. They'd agreed on that, long ago in Jade's bed in her family home. And that had definitely grown over the last few months.