Because after the last breakup with Lara, Jared had unilaterally decided that he was going to throw a party and invite all the hotties he knew. The hottie from across the hall had been absolutely no exception. Quentin had had the befuddling experience of coming home from work and discovering no less than twenty-two beautiful women in his apartment.

A little overwhelmed, he’d been quite relieved to find himself in a friendly chat with his cute across-the-hall neighbor. “Just call me Cat. Catherine sounds like somebody who went down with the Titanic,” she’d told him.

Half an hour later, he’d been downright stoked to be chatting with her. She was whip-smart and funny. Her features were small, a ski-jump nose and a rosebud mouth, but she had this way of animating her entire body when she talked that made her presence expand and fill any space that she was occupying. She had lots of wild brown hair that had tumbled over her shoulders that night. She’d worn a big, slouchy sweater, tight jeans and mismatched socks.

They’d covered the basic subjects quickly. Where she was from—Ithaca—and where he was from—Sleepy Hollow. She’d briefly enacted headless-horseman-ing his head off when he’d told her that detail. And they’d quickly plunged on to more interesting topics. What she’d been for Halloween that year—Doc from Back to the Future—and the most ridiculous reason a kid ever gave for not turning in homework to her—apparently Santa took it as evidence for his “nice” file.

Quentin remembered every word of their conversation from that night.

When she’d asked to see his bedroom, his hands had started sweating.

Once, at a buddy’s bachelor party—the one after which Lara had briefly dumped Jared for attending—Quentin had placed a random bet at a roulette table. He’d watched in blank, stunned amazement as his number came up and he won $1,650. That moment with Cat had been exactly the same feeling.

He wasn’t altogether unfortunate when it came to women. But he was quiet and often a little shy and had only recently figured out that a short beard made his jaw look more defined. He’d gone on a few semi-successful dates over the last few months. But even so, he was plenty nervous escorting the cutest girl at the party toward his bedroom. It wasn’t something that happened very often to him.

He’d left the door open, stood to the side and shoved his hands in his pockets. Cat had come in to the room and immediately started touching stuff. She trailed a fingertip over his textbooks, bounced a few times on one corner of his bed, checked the view from his window. And then she’d turned and spotted the antique Lionel train set that was set up along the back edge of his dresser.

“You have a train set? That’s so cute.”

His stomach sank as she crossed the room to inspect it. Cute was a word with so many different connotations. When he’d inwardly labelled her as the cutest girl at the party, the connotation was that he’d very much like to make her breakfast after she slept over. When she looked at his train set and called him cute, he feared the connotation was that she’d like to watch a rom-com with him while they sat on opposite sides of the couch. Her version of cute had a distinctly nonsexual bent to it.