Special Thanks to the wonderful Teanni for reading through several drafts of this little piece before I finally told myself it was publish-worthy! Can't wait to see what you all think!

The fire alarm blared, causing everyone in the hotel to awaken abruptly and stagger in the darkness, searching for wallets, phones, card keys and shoes before heading toward the nearest exit.

Kat Tyler was no different. She tossed off her blankets, grabbed her phone off the charger, along with her wallet, slipped into her nearest pair of shoes and headed out the door. She had just laid down and tried to go to sleep, but to no avail. She found herself in a crowd of people gathered into the parking lot. A lot of them were male, ridiculously muscled and shirtless. Under normal circumstances, she would have been staring and possibly salivating, but it was two o'clock in the morning and she was tired, so the salivating over the attractive males was going to have to wait. She shivered in the cool October air, her royal blue camisole and plaid pajama pants not really providing much warmth. Kat had a flashback to her college days, and late-night studying interrupted by someone forgetting to put water in their Easy-Mac. This was scarily familiar. Kat appreciated the slight bit of nostalgia, but was still not impressed. She had to give her presentation in a few hours and it would not be good if she was unable to give said presentation due to sleep deprivation.

A few feet away, Jon Good was pissed off and still slightly drunk from the earlier escapades of the evening. Fortunately, he had his friends and coworkers Joe and Colby to look after him. Of all the hotels they had to be staying in, theirs had to be the one with the two a.m. fire alarm.

"This is some bullshit," he complained, his eyes scanning the herd of people, fixating on a pretty girl with long, wavy, chocolate colored hair that went to the middle of her back. He could see a tattoo inked on her left shoulder blade, but was too far away to see what it was. She shivered, the cool air raising goosebumps on her skin. He unzipped his sweatshirt and walked over to her, placing it over her shoulders. "Here," he said.

Kat turned around abruptly when the fabric fell over her shoulders, she found herself looking into blue-grey eyes. "That's really not necessary," she said, trying to be grateful while still giving the man his sweatshirt back. He shook his head.

"Call it my good deed for the year, dollface."

"Thanks," she said, looking down at her cell phone. She opened up her Twitter and quickly typed in an update. Two A.M. fire alarm #undergradnostalgia Though apparently chivalry lives. #impressed. She snapped a quick picture to attach to the tweet, pulling a thoroughly unamused face. She locked her phone and pulled the mystery man's sweatshirt tighter around her shoulders, actually thankful for its warmth.

Before long, the hotel staff informed them that they could return to their rooms, apologizing for the inconvenience, blah blah blah. Kat shrugged off the sweatshirt and handed it back to the moderately attractive man who had given it to her.

"Thanks again," she said with a smile before disappearing into the massive throng of people. Jon stood there, sweatshirt in hand, wishing he had caught her name.

"Did you guys see that girl?" he asked his friends as they headed back into the hotel.

"The brunette?" Colby asked. "The one you gave your sweatshirt to- what the hell was up with that, by the way? You're never that chivalrous. That's usually my thing."

"Yeah, her. She was cold, I was being nice. Is that a crime?"

"Coming from you it is," Joe answered. "Nice is not usually your game, unless you see some reward at the end of it."

Jon shrugged. "Maybe I do, maybe I don't. We'll see."

When she got back to her room, Kat tried to go back to sleep, but her mind wouldn't let her. She kept thinking about the guy who had given her his sweatshirt. There wasn't anything that remarkable about him, he had a nice face and very nice eyes and from what she could tell he seemed pretty well built. There was just something that wouldn't let her rest. The realist in her brain thought to make it perfectly clear to her that the odds of seeing him ever again were relatively slim, but she couldn't help but wonder… what if she did? About a half hour later she was finally able to shut her eyes and get some sleep.

Kat woke up the next morning, after a surprisingly restful post-fire alarm sleep and jumped in the shower, intending to relax with her laptop and some Starbucks. She blow-dried her long hair and curled it slightly, added natural-looking makeup and got dressed. She grabbed her laptop bag, phone, wallet and room key and headed down the hall to the elevator so she could go to the hotel Starbucks. If she was going to make it through the presentation, she definitely needed caffeine. She ordered her drink and found herself a table in the quickly-filling coffee shop, opening her laptop and looking over her presentation notes.

Jon, Colby and Joe all met up outside their adjoining hotel rooms so they could head down to get coffee before hitting the gym. The three men were in surprisingly good moods, despite the early morning fire alarm.

Jon walked into the hotel Starbucks and noticed the girl from earlier that morning, sitting alone at one of the tables and typing away on her laptop. He noticed that purple was a good color on her. Her tunic was see-through, revealing a tank top underneath. He could see her shoulder tattoo more clearly now, it was a feather with the words "one day I'll fly away" across it. He told Colby what he wanted and the younger man went to go order their drinks. Jon was about to approach her when a teenager, probably about eighteen or nineteen quickly rushed up to the table.

"Excuse me Doctor Tyler," the young woman said, appearing quite flustered. "The board was wondering if you would consent to giving your presentation later this afternoon than originally scheduled. It seems the hotel is having space issues."

The woman, who only appeared to be about twenty-six or twenty-seven at the oldest, smiled graciously and nodded. "Of course."

"Thank you so much," the girl, who appeared to be an intern of some kind, said with obvious relief. "Someone will contact you with the time change." She then hurried off as quickly as she had appeared.

Jon just stood there, completely floored. So the woman was a doctor of some kind; that definitely made things more interesting. Colby came up behind him and handed him his drink.

"Aren't you gonna go talk to her?" he asked. Jon said nothing. "Seriously? Dude, you wouldn't shut up about her this morning."

Joe looked around, noticing that every other table in the coffee shop was taken, but there were three seats left open at Jon's mystery woman's table. The Samoan looked at his fools of friends and walked over.

"Excuse me," he said, causing the woman to look up from what she was typing. "Would you mind if my friends and I shared this table? Everywhere else is full."

"Of course not," she said, gesturing to the empty chairs. "Be my guests."

At her invitation, Colby took the seat on her right, Joe the seat on her left, and Jon the seat right across from her. She closed the laptop, sliding it into the black leather satchel that was near her feet and looked up, her eyes meeting with the same blue-gray eyes of the man that had given her his sweatshirt earlier that morning.

"Well this is unexpected," she said with a teasing smile. "I never did catch your name, sweatshirt man."

"Jonathan- Jon- Good," he said, giving her a smirk. "And that's Colby Lopez and Joe Anoa'i."

"Pleasure," she said. "I'm Katharine- Kat- Tyler." She didn't add the 'Ph.D,' mostly because she wasn't that used to having it yet, and titles made her uncomfortable. "So are you guys traveling for business or pleasure?"

"Business," Jon replied, as the apparent leader of the trio of men sitting in front of her. "What about you?"

"Same," she said. "But, as soon as this conference wraps up, I get to go home for a bit. Presenting over and over can get pretty exhausting."

"Presenting?"

Kat nodded, resisting the urge to wax eloquent on her presentation. Her enthusiasm tended to scare people. "I'm presenting at the conference that's being held here in the hotel. It's basically a rehashing of my dissertation."

"Dissertation?" It was Joe who spoke up this time.

"Yeah, it's really not that interesting, I promise." She fibbed, making a last-ditch effort to save face and not scare away the three men. "I'm just looking forward to going home for a bit and working on some of my side projects. Interesting tattoo, by the way. Samoan tribal?"

He nodded. "How could you tell?"

"I'm an anthropologist. I have a colleague who specializes in a lot of those kinds of things. We proofread each other's articles." She explained along with a charming smile. "What about you guys? What brings you out here?"

"We're professional wrestlers," Colby said. "Traveling is kind of what we do."

"That is brilliant," she said with a bright smile. "So I take it you guys are kind of a big deal."

"Kinda," Jon said with a smirk and a wink, which caused Kat's cheeks to blush a becoming shade of pink. "So, anthropologist, huh?"

Kat nodded. "Guilty as charged," she added an equally mischievous smirk in Jon's direction. "I focus mostly on languages. It's always something I've been good at." She bit her lip. For some reason, she found herself unwittingly flirting with this admittedly handsome stranger. It was refreshing, they were both strangers and there were no strings. Flirt away, girlfriend, flirt away.

It had been eons since Kat had really flirted with anyone. Being a Ph.D at twenty-seven kind of limited her time for any meaningful relationships or a huge amount of socialization. Despite that fact, flirting appeared to be something akin to riding a bike.

"So I guess that means you speak a lot of languages then," Jon stated, only making eye contact with Kat, giving her the impression they were the only two people at the table.

"A few," she replied coyly.

"Which ones?"

"Well," she started. "I have a Bachelor's degree in German, and I speak passable Russian, Spanish, and French as well as a few really obscure languages that are really only for academic purposes."

"Damn."

She blushed and looked down at her manicured nails, somewhat embarrassed. She had this unfortunate habit of talking way more than she needed to. She reached for her drink and took a sip before turning the conversation back on the man in front of her.

"So you guys said you were kind of a big deal, anything I might have heard of?" her teeth found their way to her lip again, biting it unconsciously.

Jon shrugged. "Just the WWE."

Kat's eyes widened a little bit, her fingers pushing back some of her hair off her forehead. "Wow, I used to watch back when I was a little kid. Ages ago, though. That's still really amazing."

Her cell phone buzzed on the table, next to her elbow, alerting her that her presentation was due to start in less than 45 minutes.

"Well, that's my signal that I need to run. It was really great meeting you guys, and thanks again for the sweatshirt this morning Jon."

"Anytime," he replied, the three men standing as well. They were overdue for their workouts, but they weren't overly distressed about it.

Jon casually slipped a piece of paper into her satchel as they walked away. Now it was her move. He was interested to know what else the sassy anthropologist had up her sleeve, and if their flirty banter was any indication, she was interested as well.

"Dude, did I seriously just see you do that?" Colby asked as they walked away.

"What did he do?" Joe asked, having missed Jon's sleight of hand.

"He slipped her his room number. I knew you had some other ulterior motive!"

"I don't know, man," Joe said. "I'd bet you anything she doesn't show up."

"How much are we talking?" Colby asked.

"Will you guys stop?" Jon exclaimed. "Whether or not she shows up is between me and her."

The other two men looked at him and busted out laughing. Nothing was ever just between Jon and whichever woman he took to bed that night. He always had a tendency to brag. And being as the other two members of the Shield had just witnessed the interactions between the two people, it would be interesting indeed to see what would happen.

Kat walked back up to her room with a smile on her face. That hadn't been the most productive time she had ever spent at Starbucks, at least from a work perspective. From a personal perspective, the fun was just getting started.