9
Cat’s posture subtly changed — her chin went up and her shoulders squared, and she made a too-casual flip of her braid over one shoulder. Loc followed her gaze and saw a tall, handsome man walking through the crowd, clearly intent on coming up to talk to her. The stranger’s gaze slid toward Loc and paused there for a second or two, taking his measure, and then he stopped a few feet away from where the two of them stood.
“Hi, Cat,” the man said.
“Hi, Channing,” she replied coolly. “I’m glad you could make it.”
Obviously, this was Channing Ellis, the man Cat had had a relationship with a year after they’d graduated from high school. Loc did his best not to dislike the stranger on sight, mostly because he realized it was foolish to show antipathy toward a person who’d been out of Cat’s
