“Save it,” Nola said with a massive roll of her eyes. “I met him a couple weeks ago at some work fund-raiser; he was there with one of my colleagues.”

“So you did hook up with him.”

“No! I may have hooked up with my colleague—”

Brooke groaned and covered her eyes.

“—but that’s not important. I remember his friend was cute and single. A med student, I think, but honestly, you’re not really at a point to be discriminatory about such things. So long as he’s breathing . . .”

“Thanks, friend.”

“So you’ll go”

Brooke grabbed for the clicker back again. “If it will make you shut up right now, I’ll consider it,” she said.

Four days later Brooke found herself sitting at an outdoor Italian café on MacDougal Street. Trent was, as Nola promised, a perfectly sweet guy. Reasonably cute, extremely polite, nicely dressed, and boring as hell. Their conversation was more bland than the linguini with tomato and basil he ordered for them both, and his earnestness left her with the overwhelming desire to plunge a fork into her eyes. Yet for