hand on Sam’s shoulder and moving away. “We won’t keep you from this pretty
lady any longer.”
Riley let her eyelashes flutter. “You’re sweet, but don’t get the wrong idea.
Sammy and I here are just old friends. He’s like my brother.”
She saw his eyebrows creep up.
“Oh yeah?” Rob asked, looking at Riley with fresh appreciation now that she was
no longer the boss’s woman. “You know, I can wait a few minutes if you want
someone to walk you?”
Sam snorted. “Trust me on this one, Rob. If Riley accompanies you to the subway
stop, you’ll be the one needing an escort.”
Riley merely gave a demure smile. “Thanks for the offer, but I’ve made this trek
a million times.”
“A million, huh?” Sam asked quietly in her ear. “Where was I the other nine
hundred ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine times?”
She ignored him, brushing past him without actually making contact before
ushering Rob and the other guys out the door with a promise that she’d absolutely
make sure that Sam would eat, but no, she wasn’t at all sure that it would improve
his disposition.
Then they were alone.
A month earlier, they would have been circling each other and trying to ignore the
sexual tension in the room.
A week earlier they’d have been all over each other, embracing that sexual
tension.
And this time … the sexual tension was behind them.
At least that’s what she was letting him believe.
“How’s your mom?” she asked, following him to his bar, where he’d retreated the
minute the other men had left.
“Good. Better. I talked to Carl—that’s her boyfriend—yesterday, and she’s at
home resting. All of her tests came back fine.”
“I’m glad.” His hands never stopped their cocktail making even as he studied her.
He twisted the top off a jar of cherries, plucking one out with a toothpick and
handing it to her before dropping one into each cocktail glass.
She let the silence last for several seconds before she forged ahead with the
plan. “I came to apologize.”
Nothing. Not even a surprised blink.
“Aren’t you going to say anything?” she asked.
He held her gaze for several more seconds before shrugging. “Let’s just say that
over the years, I’ve learned that any Riley McKenna ‘apology’ is best received
with a helmet.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because I’m finding that as much as you like to pretend you’re a straight shooter,
nothing’s simple when it comes to you and men.”
She leaned forward, helping herself to another cherry from the open jar. “Sounds
to me like you’re calling me manipulative.”
“It does, doesn’t it?”
Riley shrugged. “Well, let’s just say hell’s frozen over and this apology is for real.
Now that I’ve had some time to think about it, I’m mortified about the other night.
Seriously.”
“By which part?” He poured the dark brown liquid into each glass. “The fact that
you were going to sleep with a man for the sake of a story, or the fact that you
chose me?”
“Oh, I’m used to the first one,” she said cheekily, clinking her glass against his.
“Occupational hazard.”
“That’s what hookers say about STDs.”
She tilted her head. “Well, great news, Compton. It’s about to become not your
problem.”
Sam studied her carefully, obviously searching for her angle. He got a little crease
between his eyebrows that told her he couldn’t figure it out.
“Why are you really here, Ri? Was your tactic to apologize first to wrangle a
corresponding apology out of me? Fine. I’ll apologize for leaving you in that hotel
room like I did. But we both know it’s best that I did. It never should have gotten
that far in the first place.”
It took all of Riley’s self-control not to smirk. The horse was being led right to the
water, and he had no idea.
“Exactly.” She reached forward and pressed her fingers to the back of his hand
briefly, pulling back before he had a chance to suspect the touch was anything
other than friendly and instinctive.
This entire plan depended on him believing that she wasn’t the least bit attuned
to him.
“It’s weird, isn’t it?” she mused. “That after so long of having that weird simmering-
tension thing between us, when we were on the verge of actually doing something
about it we realized it was all smoke and mirrors.”
Sam blinked. Blinked again. “Wait. What?”