Just One Night(85)
unfamiliar feelings. “She didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Really? Because she pretty much castrated you with words. I mean I’d die for
Riley, but this article is—”
“Completely deserved,” Sam said, running his hands over his face and turning to
look at his friend. “Things were going great, and then I pushed her away like a
little boy who decided he’d rather play videogames than kiss the cute girl simply
because it was easier.”
“Wait, is she the one who got you the dog?” Liam asked.
“Yup.”
His friend winced. “So that was her bra I saw?”
“You really want me to answer that?”
“No. No, I do not. So what’s next? Because I’ve gotta tell you, family dinners are
going to be really awkward as long as she’s mad and you’re smitten, but you
probably know that.”
“Yeah,” Sam said glumly. “I thought if we ended it quickly enough, nobody would
get hurt, and things could go on unchanged, but …”
“But …?”
“I don’t know how I can face her. Not as a boyfriend, because I forfeited that right,
and worse, not as a friend, because I’ve been a terrible one.”
Liam took another sip and put on his thinking face. “You care about her?”
“Yes. More than—”
Liam winced. “Okay, don’t get sappy.”
“Just wait until it happens to you.”
“Not gonna happen. I’m a lone stallion.”
“Yeah. Stick with that.”
Liam rolled up the magazine and tapped it against his palm. “I figure I’ve got two
choices here. One: challenge you to a duel.”
“Um, pass?”
“Or two: help get you two weirdos back together so I can continue to eat my
mother’s mediocre cooking with my best friend and my sister.”
Sam’s spirits perked up slightly, but he felt far from hopeful. He replayed her
words over and over: I’d rather have no romance than be caught in a bad one …
“How drastic do you want to get?” Liam asked.
Key moments from the previous few months flitted through Sam’s mind.
Riley and the brave hope in her eyes when she’d boldly suggested they sleep
together.
Their first kiss in that cramped room with her mother’s Christmas tree jabbing him
in the hip.
The look on her face when she won the softball game. The noises she made
when he touched her in the middle of the night.
The fact that she bought him a dog he didn’t know he wanted.
And the most painful memory of all: her telling him she loved him even when he
was pushing her away.
He wanted it all back. Desperately.
But there was no brokenhearted Riley waiting by the phone, no pleading
magazine article begging him to reconsider. It would take more than a casual
drop-by apology.
“I’ll do anything,” he said quietly.
Liam nodded. “Good answer. Also, I don’t want any of those fussy little flowers
on my lapel at the wedding.”
Sam’s stomach dropped. “Easy there. Nobody said anything about a wedding.”
“Wanna bet on it?”
Sam looked down at Liam’s outstretched hand.
Then he pictured the white dress. Her walking toward him with forever on her lips.
He pictured waking up every morning to Riley’s sassy comebacks and messy
dark hair.
“Put that away.” He swiped his friend’s hand out of the way. No bet.
Liam grinned. “Thought so.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Riley wiped a glob of cream cheese off her chin as she looked at the piles of mail
covering both her and Grace’s desk, not to mention the smaller piles on Julie and
Emma’s chairs.
“Why do I have to select the letter to the editor?” she muttered.
“Because your article got the most responses,” Grace said reasonably as she
dug one of her sugar-free birdseed breakfast bars out from under a stack of
envelopes. “It’s easy. Just pick two to feature in next month’s issue and do a quick
little response.”
“But I don’t wanna respond,” she said around her cinnamon bagel. “It’s nobody’s
business but mine.”
“Yours and Bruce Dinkle’s,” Emma muttered.
“Hey,” Riley said, holding up a finger. “Camille put the kibosh on Samuel Condon.
I had to get creative.”
“Yeah, I’m sure Sam had noooo idea you were referring to him.”
Riley’s head snapped up. “Do you think he read it?”
Her friends looked away, and their silence said it all. If Sam had read the article,
he apparently hadn’t cared.
Because there had been nothing. Not one word. Not in the week’s grace period