Chapter 1

Cat sat in her spinning desk chair with her knees pulled up to her chest and her elbows propped on her knees. People told her she never looked comfortable sitting like that, but she didn't see why. Her name said a lot about her nature. While "Cat" was short for Catherine, Catherine Williams, she had the natural grace and light-footedness of felines. She was also standoffish and a little prickly at times, as well as well-groomed, adorable, and fun to watch.

She was thinking. And she was somewhat depressed; nothing major, she just had the blues. That happened to her sometimes. She was an artist, after all. Is something wrong with me? Do I repel men I would actually get along with? It certainly seems that way. Why do I only meet guys who only want to sleep with me? It's like they all just want sex; none of them want me too. It was driving her crazy. All her friends from high school were married already and all but a few of her college friends were at least in serious relationships.

It wasn't that she wanted to get married. She just wanted to fall in love. Could that really be possible? She had a reputation for being a cold-hearted bitch, but she'd earned that by exclusively dating jackass guys, most of them frat-brats, for the first three years of college. She refused to take the crap the guys dealt out and they, in turn, said some less than lovely things about her. She didn't really care what people thought of her though. The rumors didn't matter. It wasn't like they were really even rumors. She had actually done most of what people were saying about her, things just had a tendency to get dramatized.

She was twenty-one and had never had a serious relationship. She used to joke about her two date limit on guys. That wasn't far from the truth. There had been two guys who had ever made it past two dates and neither made it past number four. She admitted she was picky. That was a good thing, in her opinion. And she didn't mind seeming rude for dropping dates so quickly. Why keep them on the line if she knew it was never going to go anywhere? She thought that was rude. Her problem wasn't that she couldn't get along with the male gender. In fact, she usually got along with them quite well. They liked her. They just didn't want to fall in love with her. She had always kept several close male friends. That's just how she was.

She didn't think it was her appearance. While she didn't think she was model material, she always got enough looks, whistles, and unsolicited racy comments to annoy her. Her healthy level of self-confidence told her that she was, if not a ten, at least a seven. That always made her laugh. Her body was lean, but curvy. She was barely 5'6" and her height was all in her legs. She loved her eyes. She didn't care if her face wrinkled of if she went back to being chubby, she would still have her eyes. They were almond shaped and vivid blue-green; unless she was angry, in which case they were stormy steel blue and they were set off by dark naturally arched eyebrows. Her eyes did not need makeup, but she played them up with eyeliner and mascara in a dramatic fashion that would have looked trashy on a lot of people. It was not trashy on her. It was her signature. Her hair was the color of chocolate with sun streaks the color or caramel or honey.

Cat's mind wandered a lot. She sometimes wondered if she should take medicine for attention deficit disorder, but she feared the medication would screw with her artistic inspiration.

She was sitting in the chair trying to simultaneously think of a topic for her senior thesis, something to write in the essay to the law school she planned to attend the next fall, and something she could paint to take her mind off the other two. While those were all practical applications of her mind, and it would have been fantastic if she could have even gotten one of the three, her head had run off with her heart and was stuck on the topic of love.

Everyone told her to just wait it out, she'd find someone. No one really understood her problem though. She always seems to have some guy with her, surely she isn't lonely, her friends thought. She had all but left the dating scene during the previous spring. She always knew the guy she was with was nothing but a filler. It wasn't even like she was hoping they would turn out to mean more. She had an incredible ability to read people nearly as soon as she met them, and it rarely, if ever, failed her.

"Fuck it," she said and stood up from the desk chair. She padded across the room and flipped on the stereo. Some hard rock instrumental was in the CD deck. It fit her mood. She tried to relax and went through the motions of a few yoga poses. She did feel a little better when she was finished. She knew she really just needed a run. Or sex. But sex never meant anything and she knew it was because she never cared about the guy she was with. She was wound tight and that wasn't her nature. It was driving her crazy.

"Cat! Where are you? Are you ready?" Ande's voice made Cat jump. Ande shared an apartment with Cat and was also her best friend.

"Yeah, I'm finishing up right now. Two more minutes, seriously."

"It's not like you really need the makeup, doll" Ande said as she leaned against the bathroom doorjamb. "You look hot. The guys will be all over you."

"Haha, we'll see about that. I suppose you will too?"

Ande was bi and Cat was so free spirited she might as well have been. They joked about being lovers, but they both knew that would never happen. They loved one another as sisters and sex would just feel wrong between them.

"Sweetie, if you want to make it to that club tonight, don't tempt me now."

"Oh, come on. The club will be fun. Probably."

Ande laughed. "Hun, don't kid yourself. You're not going out of style anytime soon. Especially not while you dress like that."

Cat was wearing tight stone-washed low-rise jeans with a bit of a rip on one thigh, a black silk camisole that made her pale skin look even creamier than usual, and open toed black stilettos. Her hair was cut in layers a bit below her shoulders and was full and shiny, parted just to the right of the middle. Ande shook her head and muttered something about her looking like a magazine cover girl.

Ande wasn't about to let Cat steal the spotlight. Her hair was long and chestnut, cut in a similar style to Cat's. Her eyes were so brown they looked black in dim light. She also lined her eyes and played up her lashes. She dressed for the evening in a short black skirt with a slit up one thigh, an emerald green halter top, and strappy black sandals. She was taller than Cat and a little curvier, but they were often mistaken for sisters. Both had the same full lips and twinkling mischievous eyes.

Not even two minutes after walking through the door of the club, Ande had already gotten caught up in the mix on the dance floor. Cat preferred the bar, though she did dance occasionally. The music was mostly hard rock and was fun to listen to even when she was just sitting. She took a stool toward one end of the bar, noticing how amazingly gorgeous the bartender was. He had dark hair that was a little long and hung shaggily in his face. His eyes were the same shade of brown as Ande's. He wore jeans and a t-shirt, but couldn't have looked better. She ordered a tequila sunrise and turned to face the dance floor. The bar was too busy tonight to even try to pick him up.