Falling At The Surgeon's Feet

And succeeded. Darn it.

“As long as the patient is satisfied with her new size,” she said, stretching out cramped back and shoulder muscles as she moved toward the doors. She knew that she would have to perform cosmetic procedures but in this case it helped knowing she could restore someone’s self-confidence while alleviating their pain.

Dr. Syu followed, stripping off her gloves. “You just saved her from a lifetime of pain and discomfort, Holly. That she wants to wear a bikini on her honeymoon doesn’t make cosmetic procedures wrong.”

Holly stifled a yawn. “I know,” she mumbled, feeling somewhat chastened. “Besides being the object of curiosity and ridicule, Kerry Gilmore said she was tired of men making lewd comments about her breasts.”

“Well, that’s just juvenile and typical,” Lin said in disgust. “Anyway, as long as she follows medical advice and wears the support garment, she’ll be wearing her string bikini on her honeymoon come summer.”

She untied Holly’s surgical gown and waited while Holly returned the favor before saying over her shoulder, “You don’t have to like them but you also shouldn’t forget that cosmetics procedures—especially the big-bucks ones—help fund the reconstructions.”

Holly sighed. Dr. Syu was right. Besides, she had first-hand experience of the emotional trauma caused by others’ perceptions to be reminded of why she’d chosen to specialize in plastic and reconstruction surgery.

She’d spent her entire childhood struggling against the stereotype of beauty-versus-brains and was tired of people judging her by her looks or her family’s accomplishments.

As a child she’d often thought she’d been adopted, switched at birth or maybe dumped on their doorstep by a wicked witch. It was only much later that she had accepted she was dark like her father and brother. At the time, though, she’d felt like an alien—a thin, scrawny, ugly duckling that her father couldn’t possibly love.

She’d been clumsy, awkward and—she’d be the first to admit—cripplingly shy, geeky and snotty as hell. She’d hated being compared to her incredibly beautiful, blonde outgoing mother and her famous photographic model sister. And because she couldn’t compete with her brother or sister for their father’s attention, she’d tried to be the smartest so he could be proud of her too. And just when she’d begun filling out and growing into her large eyes, big mouth and long legs, she’d fallen a couple of stories when the cable on a glass elevator had snapped.

She’d been forced to undergo countless surgeries to repair the damage caused by flying glass, once again becoming the object of ridicule and pity. Boys who hadn’t known about her accident had even called her The Scar, like she was some kind of comic-book villain or something.

“So,” Lin Syu said casually, jolting Holly out of disturbing memories of her past. “What do you think of the new guy?”

Holly froze. “The new guy?”

“Yep.” Dr. Syu dropped her soiled surgical gown into the hamper. “Our new celebrity hunk. I hear the nurses are all fighting to get on the surgical roster with him.”

Holly rolled her eyes as heat crept up her neck. “I really hadn’t noticed.” Lin eyed her levelly, expression wry as though she could see right through Holly’s lie. “What?” Holly asked, trying to look innocent. “I’ve been busy.”

“So the looks that day at the meeting were my imagination?”

“What looks?”

“Everyone paying attention saw the looks, Dr. Buchanan.” She grinned and waggled her eyebrows. “I just wondered if you two already knew each other or if it was lust at first sight.”

Holly’s head shot up, eyes wide with shock. “Wha-at? I don’t…Ohmigod!” she spluttered, feeling her face burn with mortification as she thought back to those oddly intimate moments in the elevator and then again when their eyes had met across the boardroom. She hadn’t thought anyone had seen. Clearly she hadn’t been as discreet as she’d thought.

Her body instantly reacted to the memory of that weird sensation of the earth wobbling off its axis and she shivered and huffed out a breath.

“That’s…um…” She gulped and cast around for something intelligent to say but all that emerged from her mouth was a strangled gurgling sound that Dr. Syu seemed to find hilarious.

Struggling to get her emotions under control and stall for time, Holly busied herself by carefully folding her soiled surgical gown and placing it neatly in the hamper.

“It’s n-not what you think,” she finally murmured, huffing out a couple of breaths like she was about to give birth. “But we…um, did meet in the elevator on the way up.”

The surgeon pulled off her mask and cap and waited patiently for Holly to elaborate. When she didn’t, Lin’s brows rose up her forehead. “That must have been some meeting,” she drawled, snorting out a laugh when Holly uttered a sound of distress. “I think he likes you.”

Holly averted her head and wished she could sink through the floor. “That’s…that’s ridiculous,” she denied a little too hastily. “Guys like him aren’t…well…interested in people like um…” She gestured vaguely to her face. “Like me.”

“You’re a beautiful—yes, Holly,” Lin insisted when Holly opened her mouth to argue, “beautiful and graceful woman. Not to mention a skilled and talented surgeon. Why wouldn’t he be interested? He’s a man, isn’t he?”

“I wasn’t always graceful,” Holly admitted dryly, recalling how elegant she must have looked on her hands and knees. “It took a lot of hard work on my mother’s part. Even now when I’m flustered… I, um…” She broke off, flushing when she realized what she was about to reveal.

“You what?

Holly sighed. “My…inner klutz emerges,” she mumbled, then grimaced when Lin snorted. “It’s like I’m fifteen again and have no control over my feet or my mouth.”

“And he flusters you? Hmm.” Lin’s mouth curved and her eyes twinkled with wicked humor. “I sense a story there,” she said, just as her pager went off. “Which will unfortunately have to wait. Damn. Just when I thought I could finally get to know my kids again. They probably think I’m just the woman that comes in at night to sleep with their father before disappearing again in the morning.” She sighed and threw “Great job in there, by the way,” over her shoulder as she hurried off.

Holly took a moment to savor the senior surgeon’s praise and went off in the direction of the locker rooms to change before heading home. She knew she should go to her office and catch up on paperwork but she’d promised her housemates that she’d be home for dinner.

It had been kind of weird since Kimberlyn Davis had moved in after her cousin Caren had left and then Tessa Camara, another surgical resident at WMS, had moved out, leaving Holly in a house of strangers. Okay, Sam Napier wasn’t exactly a stranger but, then, the hot brooding Scot wasn’t all that easy to get to know.

He mostly kept to himself but in a house filled with women she couldn’t really blame him. She’d kind of had a little crush on him when he’d first moved in but he was a bit intimidating and didn’t share himself with others. Thanks to her scars and her incredibly geeky adolescence, she still felt shy and awkward around him.

Tessa, who’d basically moved in with her fiancé, Clay, since she’d dropped the baby bombshell a couple months ago, had promised to join them for dinner. After the week Holly had had she was ready to talk about babies and forget about big bad celebrity doctors who could make women scream.

CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_b5ceebf5-dc17-5146-b664-c1597a3540ec)

GABE SLID INTO the back of a cab and gave the cabbie his Brooklyn address as he sank back against the seat. He’d been invited to join a few colleagues at a nearby bar but he’d been on call for over two weeks straight and he was exhausted. Besides, he still hadn’t finished unpacking his boxes and he was sick of living out of suitcases and eating out of cardboard cartons.

He wanted real food that he’d cooked himself and he hadn’t even had time to unpack his kitchen stuff.

When he couldn’t swim or surf, cooking relaxed him. He didn’t know if it was growing up in California, where everyone was a health nut or alternative lifestyle guru, but he liked eating freshly prepared food.

What he hated was eating alone. But that was something that couldn’t be helped, especially after the telephone conversation he’d had earlier that day with his grandfather. Talking—if the cold, stilted exchange could be termed talking—with the old man always left him restless and angry.

He wondered how the old man had found out he was in New York then decided he didn’t want to know. The less he knew about Caspar Alexander’s business, the better. Besides, the only thing he had in common with his grandfather—or with his father, for that matter—was their last name and a few bad genes. Everything else he’d got was from his mom. Thank God.

The cabbie turned a corner and hooted at some poor pedestrian who’d had the bad judgment to cross at a green light, jolting Gabe out of his disturbing thoughts. This was a new chapter in his life and he didn’t intend to ruin it by thinking about the sharks in his paternal gene pool. That was about as productive as standing in an observation room, watching a woman do a breast reduction plasty when he had rounds and a ton of paperwork waiting.

He may have been watching the skilled movements of Holly Buchanan’s hands but he’d been thinking about those long, slender fingers on his skin. And when he’d realized that he’d been getting turned on, he’d left before someone in the OR had looked up and noticed his jeans had been a tight fit.

The cabbie pulled up in front of a neatly refurbished brownstone and Gabe got out, bending to glare at the guy through the open passenger window when he called out an outrageous fare.