A quick look at the overhead OR screen gave him a close-up of an open torso and disembodied gloved hands wielding stainless-steel instruments with skill and precision. And considering that WMS had some of the best trauma surgeons on the east coast, whoever was on the table was in good hands.
Tugging on one earphone, he tuned into the murmur of voices around him and discovered that someone called Dr. Chang was working on a young woman who had landed beneath a bus during rush hour traffic.
He replaced the earphone and watched the onscreen action for a few more minutes, admiring the dexterity of the leading surgeon’s hands, before letting his eyes drift over the observers.
They were painfully young and even if they hadn’t been dressed in light blue scrubs, he would have pegged them as residents. Their fresh, animated faces reminded him of his own resident days, which meant they were probably not discussing whatever was going on below. Most likely it was about a hot nurse, or complaints about their supervisors.
Hospitals were like small towns where everyone knew everyone else and no one’s personal business remained private for long. People gathered during quiet times to gossip about patients; nurses liked to complain about doctors and doctors liked to complain about everyone, especially Administration.
And Administration? Well, they were the common enemy because they hoarded funds like Scrooge, cutting costs and fighting every requisition from floor wax to MRI maintenance.
And, Gabe thought with a dry laugh, he hadn’t even realized until now just how much he’d missed it. Not so much the gossip but he’d missed the camaraderie of a large medical facility where the haves and have-nots were locked in a daily battle of survival. It wasn’t just a place where the rich and bored came to buy the latest style of face or body—or have a steamy affair with their attending surgeon. This was real.
Sighing, Gabe slid his gaze over the rest of the observation-room occupants before letting his eyes drift shut. He knew he should get up and return to his temporary digs, where a ton of boxes waited to be unpacked, but he just needed to—
Abruptly something he’d seen registered and his eyes snapped open to zero in on a familiar figure standing off to one side.
Dr. Holly Buchanan.
Mouth curving in appreciation, Gabe watched her focus on the overhead screen, her small white teeth nibbling on lush pink lips. A little frown of concentration marred the smooth skin of her forehead. Every so often her slender hands and long, elegant fingers would move in what he recognized was a replica of whatever was happening below—as though she was practicing or maybe committing the action to memory.
He’d spent enough time among the wealthy to recognize that Dr. Buchanan came from money, and lots of it. She even had that cool elegance that seemed to come naturally to the very wealthy. A cool elegance that sometimes hid an ugly belief that people they perceived as inferior were to be exploited and that their money and social status gave them that right.
He didn’t have far to look for examples either. His own gene pool, for one. An old ex, for another. A girl he’d honestly thought had loved him enough to overlook the fact that he had been a half-starving med student from a very modest background.
But instead of standing up to her powerful family, she’d laughed at his declarations of love and told him she’d been using him to get back at her father—and have one final hot fling before she married a man eminently more suitable to their social circle.
Okay, so he’d been a young, foolish hothead, out to prove himself worthy. Prove that his story, at least, would have a happy ending. It had just proved to him that people born into wealth weren’t interested in anything more than a hot fling with someone from the wrong side of town—especially someone they perceived as illegitimate.
But even though he knew Holly Buchanan was from a world whose vanity he’d happily exploited, he couldn’t help watching her. Her appearance was as coolly classy as it had been the last time he’d seen her, scowling across the boardroom table as though he was personally responsible for the national debt.
But that’s where the similarities ended. There was nothing cool about those large heavily fringed blue eyes. And knocked to her hands and knees, she’d muttered curses like someone tugging impatiently at the constraints of her upbringing.
Then there were those paper-thin scars that had been expertly covered with a light brush of foundation. Someone had either done a hatchet job on the stunning young surgeon or…or some horrific injuries had been expertly repaired. He wondered which it had been then decided it didn’t matter considering both would explain her interest in plastic surgery.
But it was her eyes—or rather the unguarded expression in them—that had caught his attention. Despite that outer sophistication, Holly Buchanan, it seemed, wasn’t as poised as she would like the world to believe, and he wondered what her story was.
He slid a hand to the bruise on his thigh where her briefcase had whacked him and spared a moment to be thankful that it hadn’t connected higher. Any higher and he would have been on the floor, having an up-close-and-personal view of her tampons.
He chuckled, recalling the way she’d snatched them up and shoved them to the bottom of her purse as though they had been contraband and she’d been afraid he was the secret police. But then he’d found the condom packet and despite the wild color blooming in her cheeks, the ruffled kitten had flexed her tiny claws by insinuating he used a medium.
Gabe closed his eyes to the sight of her nibbling on her thumbnail and frowning at the overhead screen while she ignored the little upstart twerp trying to chat her up. There was something about her that struck a chord of familiarity but he was sure he’d never met or seen her before.
He was just drifting off when something made him open his eyes to see her edging up the stairs, giving him a wide berth as though he was a slumbering tiger she didn’t want to disturb. Suddenly several pagers began beeping and she froze mid-tiptoe, her eyes snapping toward him, widening in alarm when she caught him watching her.
The residents crowded up the stairs, elbowing each other and muttering curses about slave-driver supervisors as they bolted for the door. In the ensuing scuffle, Dr. Buchanan was roughly jostled aside and Gabe had a brief glimpse of one sexy heel catching on the stair runner. Her arms windmilled in a frantic attempt at regaining her balance…and the next moment she was toppling onto Gabe with a muffled shriek.
His hands shot out to catch her but she landed with a startled “Oomph” right in Gabe’s lap—and hard enough to have him seeing stars. When his vision cleared he had an armful of curvy, fragrant female squirming around like she was giving him a lap dance to end all lap dances. And because he was a red-blooded guy who hadn’t been anywhere near a woman in way too long, his body instantly reacted, waking up to the fact that a beautiful, sexy woman was butt-planted over his groin. He gave a low groan and she whipped around to gape at him like he’d zapped her with his shock stick.
Hey, not his fault. Innocently minding my own business here, lady.
One look into her mortified blue eyes and he realized that she was trying to get away and not turn him on but, damn…sue him, it had been a long time since he’d had sex, let alone been close enough to a woman to catch the heady scent of her skin.
Their gazes connected and she froze; her eyes wide on his. As though realizing her mouth was barely an inch from his, she gave a distressed bleat and tried again to free herself, shoving at him at the same time as she tried to get her feet on the floor.
But the angle was wrong and the more she struggled, the more his eyes crossed and the more mortified she looked until he finally took pity on them both and rose to his feet in one swift move. She gasped at the abrupt change of elevation and clutched at him as though she anticipated being dumped on her ass.
It was probably that unflattering assumption that prompted his next action.
Instead of releasing her and stepping away like a gentleman would