He blinked at her for a second and Cat realized that she was grinning at him like a crazy person. He was so easy to talk to. She could have stood on that corner and chatted with him for another hour. But he was putting his helmet on, straightening his bag over his shoulder.

“Well, I don’t want to make you late for your, uh, class,” he said after a second.

“Right. Those poles won’t slide around themselves.”

He was decidedly pink again. “Uh-huh.”

“It was nice to run into you, Quentin,” she said. “Twice in one week.”

He suddenly looked uncomfortable. “Right.”

Was it her or was he backing away from her?

“Maybe we should do it again,” she suggested. “On purpose? Hang out, I mean. I don’t have many friends in the building.”

“Right,” he repeated. “Sure. Okay. See you later.” He waved at her and hopped on his bike.

For someone who claimed to hate being on a bike, he certainly looked natural on one. He’d done that one-leg-swing thing to get on and now merged smoothly with traffic.

It was the second time in a week that he’d pretty much run away from her. Maybe she’d have to do something about that.

Chapter Three

THE FOLLOWING SATURDAY night Quentin was sniffing at a container of questionably old Chinese food when someone knocked on his door. He chucked the food into the trash on his way past and tugged his door open.

“Hey, Quent—Mamma mia.” Cat was standing on the other side of the door in tight jeans and a shirt roughly the size of a handkerchief. Her brown hair was wild around her shoulders the way it had been the night of the party at his house. Her big brown eyes were popping with some sort of magical makeup trick and Quentin couldn’t help but notice that she was looking him up and down.

“What?” he asked, looking down at himself, checking for spills of some kind.

“I’ve never seen you in jeans and a T-shirt before,” she said, her face melting into an expression he wasn’t sure how to interpret. “You’re always in your work clothes.”

“Saturday,” he said by way of explanation.

“Yes. Exactly,” she replied, a smile splitting her face. “It is Saturday. Which is exactly why I’m knocking on your door right now.”

“What’s up?”

“Well, you know Clare from two floors down?”

He didn’t but she didn’t seem to register the shake of his head. She barreled on.

“She and I were gonna head out to the Jarhouse tonight to see that storytelling show they do there, but she just bailed and I’m already all dolled up.”

Dancing eyebrows accompanied her big smile and he just stared back at her until it dawned on him. “Oh. Are you asking me to go with you?”

“I don’t wanna walk by myself. I’ll buy you a drink if you play my bodyguard on the walk there?”

He inwardly sighed. He should have known better than to think, even for a second, that she was asking him on a date. He was the “cute” guy who still kept toys in his bedroom. Not exactly date material. But he didn’t blame her for wanting someone to walk her to the bar. They lived in a slightly skeevy part of the Gowanus neighborhood of Brooklyn. Half a mile over and you were in ritzy Park Slope. But in this area, the blocks were long and dark at night; most of the buildings were warehouses, not residences. The Jarhouse was the place to be on a Saturday night, but walking there alone could definitely be nerve-racking.