Having panic disorder meant she could have an attack at any time. Sometimes anxiety or her PTSD triggered it. Sometimes she couldn’t tell exactly what pushed her bodyinto it. Between years of therapy and meds, she’d learned how to occasionally catch a warning.
Katrina often felt like she had a perpetual scanner checking her vital signs. Heart rate, breathing, headache, adrenaline surges. It ran in the background like a sleeping computer program.
Jas started to rise, and she gave a barely perceptible shake of her head. He paused, then sat down, though he kept his attention on them. “Sure, no problem,” she said to the man.
She continued her internal check as the man sat down, the same way another person might check their pulse.
No alarms going off. Was there anything else, though?
She searched for anything other than appreciation of his beauty, but there was... nothing. No interest, no zing. Only the same detached interest she felt when she swiped through hundreds of men’s profiles on her app.
This could be your meet-cute, though. Give it a chance.
Her romantic side perked up a little as she envisioned this story playing out on a movie screen, like it was happening to someone else. Sharing a table in a crowded café was the cutest of meet-cutes! Maybe only matched by bumping into a man in a grocery store and having him pick up the peaches knocked out of her basket.
Or the croissant knocked into his lap.
Nope, she was not thinking about the croissant.
The man gave her a smile so perfect, even she, a smile expert, was impressed. “Hey, new seatmate,” he said.
“Um, hello.”
He scooted his seat closer to the table. “I’m Ross.”
She angled her baseball cap down. “Hi,” she repeated.
“What’s your name?” he prompted, which was an utterly reasonable thing to ask.
“Kat.” Only her inner circle of friends and staff knew her full name.
“Pretty name.” His grin widened. He produced a paperback from his sweatshirt pocket. A sci-fi novel, if the cover was anything to go by.
“Thanks.” She tugged on her T-shirt. If this was a meet-cute, she wished she’d worn something a little more attractive and form-fitting today.
“Thank you for letting me share your table.” He shifted, and before their knees could bump under the small table, she pulled her legs back instinctively.
Fool! You were supposed to let them bump.
“No big deal.” Since she’d lost the bump opportunity—the bumportunity—she ought to say something clever. Damn it. She shouldn’t have gone down the meet-cute alley in her brain. She was feeling too much pressure now.
You’re good at talking to people, at evaluating them. She’d never been a shy person, even if life had made her wary.
She slid her hand into her pocket and caressed her fidget stone. “Do you live around here?”
Ross put his book on the table. The spine was cracked.
That’s not a deal-breaker for a meet-cute. Still, she protectively cupped her own carefully intact book spine.
“No, it’s my first time in Santa Barbara.”
“Oh, you’re a tourist.” Her shoulders lowered, some of thepressure relieved. Meet-cutes didn’t happen when someone was on vacation.
Her inner romantic, that bitch, squinted at her, and quickly filled her brain with the fifty-seven and a half romantic comedies that started exactly that way.
“Kind of. My mom just moved here. Thought I would make sure she and her golden retriever are settling in well.”
Most people might be more touched at the man’s care for his mom, but she perked up for another reason. “Golden retriever?”
