I feel my face reddening. “What did Daisy tell you?”
“So you have kissed before?” I look away and curse under my breath while JD snickers beside her.
“I didn’t need Daisy to tell me anything. I was working off a hunch, and apparently, I was right.”
My nostrils flare again. “People kiss all the time, Tenley. It’s not like they end up together, right?” I gesture toward the two of them, and she frowns.
“Only after they start kissing the right person,” she declares, and I don’t like the sympathetic look in her eyes.
Another partygoer bumps into me before I can reply, causing my drink to slosh up over the side of my glass and down the front of my shirt. I mutter another curse.
“Oh, Dr. Reed, I’m so sorry,” croons a gray-haired lady apologetically, and I immediately regret the four-letter word I just uttered.
“No worries,” I tell her. She looks familiar, but I can’t remember where I should know her from.
“Nurse Tenley, Coach JD, Merry Christmas to you,” she says.
“Merry Christmas to you, Mrs. Ardoin. How are things down there in the business offices?” Tenley asks politely.
The business offices? Wait, that’s where she’s from. She’s the human resources manager of the hospital group. She takes care of the intake paperwork, including the benefits applications. Which means she knows?—
“All alone, Dr. Reed?”
“Mm-hmm.” My heart begins beating faster, and my eyes dart around us, searching for an out.
“Where’s your wife tonight? I can’t imagine you newlyweds would want to?—”
“I’m sorry, I’ve gotta go get cleaned up,” I cut her off and make a beeline for the door. I don’t stop until I reach the safety of my Jeep.
After I slam the door behind me, I drop my head to the steering wheel for a second as I take a few deep breaths. I have to go so far as to picture Daisy beside me in the passenger seat offering some overly sweet affirmation and patting my back before I can calm myself enough to drive home.
“Well, you’re back early,” Daisy mutters when I walk into the house. She yanks her arm as if she’s pulling a needle through fabric, though I can’t tell if she’s sewing or cross stitching from here.
I press my lips together and nod, though the sight of her is enough to make me feel slightly better. “I saw my opportunity to sneak out after an unfortunate soda accident and took it. But it’s not like I wanted to go in the first place.”
“You said you didn’t want to go alone. Weren’t JD and Tenley there?” she asks, sounding only remotely interested in my answer.
“Yeah, but …”
She lifts a brow at my damp shirt when I come around to join her in the living room. “I thought you were friends now?”
“I still felt like a third wheel,” I tell her, and she makes room for me to sit beside her on the couch.
“I could see that,” she replies, smirking down at her work. My chest tightens when I realize it’s my lab coat. She’s stitching the pocket I ripped the other day. I hadn’t even told her about it, but she must have noticed the tear when she was doing our laundry.
“And I …” I swallow hard. “I realized I’d rather be here … with you.”
She stops, and her eyelashes flutter before she turns her big, green eyes to me. “You did?”
I nod, trying to ignore the urge to touch her in some way. I settle for letting my thigh rest against hers, and it instantly grounds me. “How’s your studying going?”
“Ugh, it’s not,” she groans and lets her head fall back against the couch. “Why am I taking this test again?”
“So you can get a raise and benefits, divorce my old ass and kick me out of your house, and become the best home ec teacher Camellia’s ever had, all own your own,” I say, unable to hold back a small smile.
“I’m not even sure I want any of that anymore,” she mumbles, closing her eyes.
My heart jumps up into my throat. “What?”
