The Doctor's Undoing (Doctors in Training 3)

“You and I should go while it’s in town. That’s something we haven’t done together yet.”

It wasn’t so much the words as the tone that took her back. He smiled as he spoke, showing a lot of teeth—apparently aimed directly at Drew, whose own smile had faded.

Drew took a step backward. “Excuse me, I think my son is signaling for me.”

Haley spun on one heel. “Ron—”

“Haley, Ron, come on.” Alexis skidded to a stop beside them, nearly crashing right into Ron, who caught her with a laugh. “She’s going to open her presents now.”

“I’ll talk to you later,” Haley said beneath her voice to Ron as they moved toward the table where Mia had been seated behind a stack of gifts.

He grimaced, but stayed close by her side when they rejoined the others.

“Okay, let’s have it.”

Ron stood in the center of her living room, visibly braced for whatever was to come. Haley didn’t bother with prevarications, nor did she have to ask him to clarify what he meant by the demand. She had deliberately kept the conversation neutral on the way from the birthday party, not wanting to get into a serious discussion in the car. She’d known Ron was aware she was only procrastinating.

“What was that performance you put on in front of Drew this afternoon?” she asked, planting her hands on her hips as she faced him.

He shoved a hand through his breeze-tossed sandy hair. “It wasn’t a performance. He was making an obvious play for you, and I blocked it. That’s all.”

She huffed. “I am not a football.”

His lips quirked, but she was sure he knew better than to laugh. “No.”

“And I am perfectly capable of deflecting passes, myself,” she went on, unintentionally continuing the metaphor. “I didn’t need you stepping in to make both me and Drew feel awkward.”

The hints of amusement left Ron’s face then. “He should have felt awkward. It was damned rude of him to corner you like that at a party for a friend. Especially considering you’d come with a date.”

“I guess he knew I’d ridden to the party with you, but I doubt he or anyone else was aware that we were there…well, together. Not until you decided to act like you were marking your territory, anyway.”

His brows drew together. “Maybe we should have made it clearer from the start—to everyone—that we weren’t just carpooling.”

“Like a general announcement, you mean?” she asked with more than a touch of sarcasm.

He responded more seriously than she’d expected. “Yeah. Something like that.”

She took a tiny step backward, a physical enactment of her emotional response. “We’re nowhere close to being ready for that step.”

His frown deepened. “What? Letting people know we’re seeing each other? That we enjoy doing more together than just studying? That we’re attracted to each other?”

“I just think it’s best if we don’t mention to the others that anything is different from the way it’s always been between us. It’s all still too new. Too…well, experimental.”

“Experimental.” He repeated her ill-chosen word with a tone of distaste.

Flushing a little, she shook her head. “That’s not exactly the word I meant. What I’m trying to say is that I don’t want to make things uncomfortable with our friends when we get together in the future.”

“If things don’t work out between us, you mean.”

“For any reason.”

Tired of being on the defensive when he was the one who’d gotten out of line that day, she lifted her chin. “We haven’t even talked, ourselves, about what’s changing between us. All we’ve done so far is share a few dinners and a few kisses. That’s hardly enough to change everything.”

Nor for him to start acting like she was now off the market when it came to other men, she added silently. True, she’d had no interest in responding to Drew’s flirting, but still…

“You’re right,” Ron surprised her by saying a bit too evenly.

“I am?”