“Yup.”

“Nice to meet you, man.”

“You too. I’m just gonna deliver the lunch she forgot this morning.”

They nodded goodbye and Quentin looked back just in time to see Sebastian taking one last peek into the classroom, checking to see his son safe and happy at his seat.

And then Cat was bounding up to Quentin, going up onto her tiptoes to kiss his cheek. “Q! What are you doing here?”

She looked beautiful today, as she always did. Something about her just really rang Quentin’s bell. Her hair was just as wild as when they’d first met, though now there were silvery threads running through it. It was a premature gray, as she was still in her mid-thirties, but instead of freaking out, she’d started naming each new silver hair, delighted with each and every one. “They’re my badges of honor, Quentin,” she’d insisted.

Had he mentioned that he really dug his wife? Because he pretty much thought she was the greatest of all time. The number one.

He held up her sack lunch to answer her question and the brilliant smile he got in return was definitely worth the schlep over to school.

“Thanks!”

Something over Cat’s shoulder caught Quentin’s eye and he couldn’t help but chuckle as he watched Matty do a pretty spot-on chipmunk impression that had Joy laughing hard. He thought of the rapport between Matty and his dad. The obvious ease. The obvious love.

Quentin and Cat had kicked the having-children can down the road a few times. But Quentin was starting to see it on the horizon again, waiting for them in the middle of the road. And this time? It didn’t seem so scary. This time it actually sounded pretty good.

“What’s got you smiling like that?” Cat asked him, nudging him in the side with that poky little elbow he’d come to love so much.

“Nothing,” he said, pulling her into a hug. “Possibility.”

“What kind of possibility?” she asked through comically suspicious eyes.

He shrugged. “Family possibility.”

Her eyes widened and then she broke into her signature grin. She knew how complicated his family situation was. She knew every in and out of what it had taken to get him here, to this moment. All the work, all the emotion, all the love. It would be scary for a man like him to stare down the barrel of a family of his own.

But it wasn’t. Not with Cat.

Whatever route he took, all train tracks led back to her.

Don’t miss Just a Heartbeat Away, Cara Bastone’s
full-length debut, available July 2020 wherever
HQN Books and ebooks are sold.

www.HQNBooks.com

ISBN: 9780369700308

When We First Met

Copyright © 2020 by Cara Bastone

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.