The main floor offered a two-room operating suite, a large recovery room with six cubicles, a private V.I.P recovery room, an examination/consultation room, and Duncan's office. The records room, lounge, and Oliver's lab took up the basement.

Gin rushed into the scrub room, shucked her white coat, tucked her unruly black hair under a disposable cap, and joined Duncan at the sink.

His forearms were already coated with tan lather.

"Morning, Duncan." Since her first day here he'd insisted that since she was now a full-fledged physician, she must call him by his first name, "Call me Doctor Lathram' once more and you're fired." But she had to make a conscious effort to say Duncan. He'd been her hero since she was ten.

He grunted and nodded absently as he continued working the Betadine into his skin with the disposable brush.

Hmmm. Preoccupied this morning.

Gin watched him out of the corner of her eye as she adjusted the water temperature with the foot controls and began her own scrub. Assisting Duncan Lathram at surgery, still hard to believe it was true. Simply being alongside him like this never failed to give her a warm tingle.

She'd been working with him for months now and still marveled at how good he looked for a man of sixty-two. Neat as the proverbial pin, with dark, glossy, perfectly combed hair graying at the temples, piercing blue eyes over a generous nose set in a longish, rugged face that creased deeply when he smiled, which wasn't all that often. Six feet, maybe six-one, with a weathered Gary Cooper-Randolph Scott look, more like a saddle hand than a plastic surgeon. Long, lean, and close to the bone, a rack of baby-back ribs.

The image made her smile and took her back to her childhood when she worked in the family's Italian deli and meat market.