Diagnosis: Daddy (Doctors in Training 1)

His slight five o’clock shadow was pleasantly rough against her face when he tilted his head to adjust the angle of the kiss. Masculine and appealing. A tug of response came from deep inside her, bringing with it heat and hunger. Even as she wonderingly catalogued all those reactions, all those observations, her body moved without conscious direction, fitting itself more snugly to his, burrowing into his heat and his strength.

Her lips parted. His tongue plunged. Her heart stuttered. His arms tightened.

Their gasps sounded in unison when he tore his mouth from hers. Feeling her cheeks burning, her chest heaving, she stared up at him in shock and uncertainty, having no idea what to say next. How she should handle this development.

He looked as lost as she felt. His eyes were narrowed, navy darkened to near-black, and there was a faint flush of heat on his cheeks and throat. His hair, rumpled by her hands, fell onto his forehead. He looked…

He looked so damned sexy that it was all she could do not to drag him to the nearest horizontal surface, she realized with another jolt of startled hunger.

Something had definitely changed between them during the past ten minutes. And she wondered on a wave of nerves if they would ever be able to go back to where they’d been before. If not…then where did that leave them?

He cleared his throat. “That was…”

Amazing? A mistake? A momentary lapse of insanity? She waited for him to fill in the pause.

“Unexpected,” he said with a wry quirk of his lips. “I didn’t plan it.”

“Neither did I.” Her voice was just faintly hoarse to her ears; she wondered if he heard it, too.

“I think I’ve been wanting to do that for a long time.”

She lifted an eyebrow in response to his rather sheepish confession. “You think?”

“I know I have. Are you mad at me?”

“I could hardly be mad when I was as much a participant as you were. But still…“

“Still.” He pushed his hand through his hair, settling it back into place. “Probably not a good idea.”

“Not if we want to keep things the way they have been between us,” she agreed evenly.

“Platonic. Friendly. Easy.”

She wasn’t so sure about the easy part, but she nodded. “Something along those lines.”

Pushing his fingertips into the pockets of his jeans, he studied her face, his own expression hard to read. “Did you ever think about it? Us, I mean? Maybe being more than just friends.”

Moistening her lips, she glanced down at her hands, which were linked in front of her as a means of hiding their trembling. “The thought has crossed my mind on occasion.”

“And…?”

“And it scares the stuffing out of me,” she admitted on a rush.

“Because…?”

“Because neither of us has a very good record with relationships. Because I’ve never been able to maintain a casual friendship after a breakup. And because you mean far too much to me to risk losing you by giving in to curiosity or proximity or whatever other excuse we might use.”

He seemed struck by her candidness. Squeezing the back of his neck, he exhaled slowly. “All very good points.”

“I thought so.”

“And yet…”

“And yet…” They’d still kissed. And the heat of that kiss still burned inside her, banked but ready to ignite again with the slightest touch.

“The odds are definitely stacked against us,” he murmured with what might have been a touch of regret.

She nodded glumly. “You have years of medical training ahead. You barely have time to breathe, much less concentrate on an experimental relationship. I have career goals of my own. And we have to think about Alexis—she’s been through enough upheaval. Our arrangement has been working pretty well so far. I don’t think this is the time to change it.”