Chapter Fifteen
Gabriel
I was losing control.
Not in any obvious way—my patients still received excellent care, my diagnoses remained accurate, my surgical precision hadn’t wavered. But the control I’d maintained for years, the careful compartmentalization that had gotten me through my divorce and single parenthood and building a practice—that was crumbling.
Because of her.
Because of Cate.
Because I couldn’t stop thinking about that goddamn dinner.
It had been a week since she’d cooked for us. Seven days. One hundred and sixty-eight hours. And I’d spent approximately one hundred and sixty-seven of them replaying that evening in my head.
The candlelight catching in her hair. The way her lips had closed around her fork. Those soft sounds of pleasure she’d made with each bite. The flush on her cheeks when our eyes met across the table.
The electric shock when our fingers touched.
I’d been hard at my own dinner table with my daughter present, for Christ’s sake. That alone should have been enoughto shock me back to sanity. Or at least have Child Services banging on my door!
It wasn’t.
If anything, it had made things worse.
Because now I knew. Now I’d seen her in that light—literally and figuratively—and I couldn’t unsee it. Couldn’t unknow what it felt like to want someone that badly while being completely unable to act on it.
“Gabriel?”
I looked up from the patient chart I’d been staring at without reading for the last five minutes.
Hayden stood in the doorway of my office, eyebrow raised. “You okay? I’ve called your name three times.”
“Fine,” I said. “Just reviewing McDaniel’s labs.”
“McDaniel’s appointment was last Monday.”
Fuck.
I closed the chart. “What do you need?”
“Staff meeting in ten minutes. You coming?”
“Yes.”
Hayden didn’t move. Just stood there, studying me with that analytical expression he got when he was trying to diagnose something.
“You’ve been distracted all week,” he said finally.
“I’m fine.”
“You called Mrs. Patterson ‘Mrs. Anderson’ the other day. You never mix up patient names.”
“Everyone makes mistakes.”
“Not you.” He stepped into my office, closing the door behind him. “What’s going on?”
Nothing I could explain without sounding like a complete disaster.
