Falling At The Surgeon's Feet. Lucy Ryder

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.