Bax shuffled his feet a little and tried not to fidget. Sometimes he wished he still had the social confidence of his youth. That was eons ago however, when there was far less pressure on him to focus and to do his job and everything else that went along with it. Now he ran an entire hospital, socializing was not exactly first thing on his list of things to do!

Nevertheless, he could very easily be persuaded into just about anything that wasn't a large social function like this; he was much better in small groups, or even one-on-one. "I'm sure Catherine will have some dinner parties in mind, which are frankly preferable to this." Anything with less than ten people was where Baxter was comfortable, even if he knew that Catherine had every intention of inviting her less-than-married friends to some of them.

"I rather enjoyed our picnic last spring." Though he had been constantly worrying if somebody was being nosy about it, everything had turned out alright in the end, even with the gnomes. "I prefer to socialize on the smaller or individual scale." There that was the gist of it really.