tumblers before deftly shaking and straining the drink into the glasses.
He handed one to her, not meeting her eyes when their fingers brushed.
She glanced at the cocktail in surprise. “A Manhattan?”
He didn’t answer her unspoken question. She could buy that he knew her favorite
drink. He’d fetched her enough over the years when their social lives overlapped.
But why did he have all of the ingredients on hand?
“Chicks dig the cherries,” he said.
“I feel like that’s just a dirty joke waiting to happen.”
“Well, then lay it on me. I promise to laugh even if it’s not funny,” he said, clinking
his glass against hers.
Riley pursed her lips. “Coming up blank. My mind’s too pure.”
Sam snorted. “Right. The picture of naiveté in a skintight dress.”
“I think you like my skintight dress.”
Sam froze for a split second in the process of rinsing out the cocktail shaker
before he very deliberately turned it upside down on a towel to dry and braced
both hands on the counter. “What the hell are you up to, Riley?”
She carefully crossed her legs and took a sip of the cocktail. “This is good,” she
said, mildly surprised. “Your whisky is perfect in here. Sweet, but not obnoxiously
so.”
He made a tsk-tsk noise. “Trying to change the subject by using flattery? I thought
better of your moves.”
“Honey, you haven’t even seen my moves yet.”
“So sneaking in the back door of a man’s home, snooping through his stuff, and
then startling the shit out of him isn’t your typical MO?”
“How do you know I snooped through your stuff?”
“Didn’t you?”
“Well, of course,” she said, fishing the cherry out of her drink. “But it was a total
waste of time. There was no diary or dirty magazine or leopard-print boxers.”
“Clearly you didn’t look in the bottom right drawer.”
“Big secrets there, huh?”
“I’m not really a secret kind of guy.”
“Says the man who guards his whisky-making business more closely than a
nuclear plant.”
He looked surprised. “I don’t keep this a secret.”
“Really? Then why haven’t I been here since you first bought the place?”
“Well, I haven’t been hosting a bunch of bridal showers in my place of work. I
mean, you haven’t exactly been badgering me to stop by the Stiletto office.”
“You so do not belong in that office,” she said, her eyes going over his jeans and
workingman T-shirt.
His eyes flashed in hurt surprise, and she belatedly realized how condescending
that sounded. “I didn’t mean … it’s just … you’re so male.”
“No guys at Stiletto?”
“Only Oliver, and let’s just say he gets manicures every Monday and Friday and
collects Justin Timberlake calendars.”
“I like Justin Timberlake’s music.”
“Shirtless calendars,” she added.
“So you really didn’t look in my bottom right drawer, then.”
Riley smiled, taking another small sip of whisky. “I’ve missed this. It’s been a while
since we’ve done this.”
There was that wariness again. “Done what, exactly? Bickered? Tried to get
under each other’s skin?”
“I was going to say talked.”
“So that’s why you stalked me all the way out in Greenpoint? To talk? Because
you know, they have these things now … phones?”
“Would you have picked up if I’d called?”
His expression went abruptly serious—almost offended. “Of course. Didn’t I pick
you up that time you got drunk in Williamsburg and couldn’t find your keys? Or
the time you decided you wanted to rent a car and go upstate only to belatedly
remember you needed a little refresher on how to drive? Or then there was the
time you forgot your wallet and were too embarrassed to tell your family, so I had
to come bail you out—”
She put up her hand. “I get it. You save my ass when I mess up. But that’s not
what I’m getting at. I mean we’re talking. We don’t talk much anymore.”
He lifted a shoulder.
“How long have you lived here?” she asked, wanting to save this easy flow
between them. “In the back of the distillery I mean.”
“Six months? Maybe a little longer? My lease went up, and the place was already
wired for a kitchen and a bathroom, so I thought, why not?”
“Don’t you get sick of it? Working and living in the same place? Doesn’t it smell