Page 18

Rachel was having a blast hanging out with Ainsley tonight. What was great about it was that not only was Ainsley proving to be as fun and chill as Rachel first picked up on back in Carlsbad at the showing, but they really were connecting as friends. Rachel honestly felt as if she found another woman she could have a strong bond with.

She kind of needed it, if she was honest with herself. Amy was still in her life, of course; and they still saw each other frequently. But ever since Amy and Sally had gotten together, Rachel had discovered that there was less of Amy to go around.

“What are you doing tomorrow?” Ainsley asked.

“Let’s see…” Rachel closed her eyes and pictured her calendar. “I have a showing at ten a.m. and then nothing.”

“Meet me and the gang for volleyball,” Ainsley said.

“Ooh, that sounds fun! Where? Do I have to drive all the way back down here to San Diego again?”

“Nope; just to Solana Beach. We play at a volleyball club that has private sand courts. It’s awesome.”

“Wait a minute,” Rachel said. “Clear something up for me. How is it that you have all this time to hang out with me tonight and play volleyball tomorrow? Do you actually have a job?”

Ainsley laughed.

“What?”

“Well, in the time that we’ve known each other—”

“Which totals up to about eight hours,” Ainsley interrupted, looking at her watch.

“Right,” Rachel said. “In all that time, you’ve actually seen me do real estate stuff but I’ve not seen you do one medical thing. Are you really a doctor?”

“Mm, you’re right,” Ainsley said, looking around. Eventually, she pointed. “Do you see that guy in the orange shirt?”

Rachel did. He was middle-aged, walking along Fifth Avenue with a woman and weighed at least three-hundred pounds if he weighed an ounce.

“Yes,” she told her companion.

“Well,” Ainsley began, “as a doctor, I can tell you that he really needs to lose some weight. There! I just did some medical stuff.”

Laughing, Rachel playfully kicked Ainsley’s leg under the table and did not fail to notice the little electric thrill which shot through her at the contact.

“Great thing about choosing surgery as a discipline,” Ainsley went on, “and being so good at it that you’re made an assistant department chief, is that in most cases, you get to determine when to do your procedures. This means, unlike, say, an ER doc or an obstetrician, I can actually manage to have a real weekend. Most times.”

“Ah, I see,” Rachel said.

“Are you a religious person, Rachel?”

“Only when I’m orgasming.”

Ainsley cocked her eyebrow.

“God, I love your sense of humor,” Ainsley said.

“Why did you ask that?” Rachel inquired, hoping Ainsley wasn’t one of those three-days-a-week church-going people.

“Because one of my patients—let’s just call him Mr. Smith, because of privacy regulations—is expected on my table first thing Monday morning because I’m performing a carotid endarterectomy on him. Unless he has a stroke between now and then in which case I’ll have to operate immediately and thus miss out on playing volleyball tomorrow.”

“And you’re telling me this because…” Rachel prodded.

“If the only way to get you to pray that Mr. Smith doesn’t have a stroke between now and Monday is to make you come, perhaps we should go back to my place.”

***

Rachel did end up going back to Ainsley’s place but only to retrieve her Tesla and to use the restroom. After reassuring the doctor that she was fit to drive even after the drinks she’d had, she drove back to Carlsbad with a date to play volleyball the next day with Ainsley and her friends.