CHAPTER FOUR

      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.