Just One Night: Sex, Love & Stiletto Series (7 page)

Liam shook his head. “My point is,
all
my sisters are weirdos. I mean, look at Megan. She’s currently raiding my mother’s baking supplies for a dolphin-shaped cookie cutter. Hardly normal.”

“It’s normal for moms,” Sam said easily.

At least it was for the
good
moms. His own mom’s idea of making cookies was a package of Oreos, which would inevitably be stale because neither she nor her boyfriend of the week had bothered to seal the package back up.

“I’m just saying, Ri just seems edgier than usual,” Sam said as he added the dry plate to the clean stack.

Liam grunted. “Edgy is what Riley
does
. She’s not happy unless she’s pushing buttons.”

Yeah. Usually
my
buttons
. “Maybe it’s a guy,” Sam said, keeping his voice carefully casual, hoping Liam wouldn’t sense that he was fishing.

Liam scowled and cast a look at his middle sister. “You think?”

I hope not
.

But in Riley’s case, it probably wasn’t a guy. It was more likely
guys
. Plural. Because despite the way he’d shut down his mother’s implication that she slept around, it was no wonder Liam was so protective of Riley.

Riley’s career choice didn’t help matters. The woman was an honest-to-God
sex columnist
.

Granted, Liam was protective of all his sisters. But of Riley in particular. Those long legs, bright blue cat eyes, and sex-kitten waves were a big-brother nightmare.

Just one more way in which the woman was trying to send him to an early grave. If she’d done wonders for his fantasy life when she’d been a tomboyish soccer player, her transformation into a sassy bedroom expert was pretty much impossible to ignore.

Of course, he brought it upon himself by reading every single one of her articles. It was torture. He couldn’t read her words without hearing her voice. And he couldn’t hear her
voice
without picturing a naked Riley giving him a front-row demonstration of every one of her tips and tricks.

He thought about her article from a couple of months earlier, about taking charge:
It’s about control, ladies. Figure out if you want him beneath or above you. Ride him or let him ride you. Own it
.

Sam used the back of his hand to wipe the sweat from his forehead.

“Dish duty too much for you, Sammy?” Erin said as she moved around to put away the salt and pepper shakers.

Christ
. Just what he needed. Mrs. McKenna wanting to make small talk when he was about half a dirty thought away from having a boner over her daughter.

“Didn’t Liam and I have dish duty last week?” he complained, pushing his thoughts to safer territory.

Kate made a scolding noise from the kitchen counter, never looking up from her enormous textbook. “The coin doesn’t lie, Sam. Heads means the men are on dish duty.”

“Yeah, but there are more of you women,” Liam countered. “It’s not fair.”

Megan poked her head out of her mother’s baking drawer. “It’s not our fault that Patrick got a hair up his butt to move to Boston and that Brian’s on diaper duty.”

“Actually that last one
is
your fault, seeing as your husband’s changing the diaper of
your
son,” Kate told her sister, ever the pragmatist.

“Thank you for that bit of useful logic, dear,” Erin said mildly.

Sam snuck a look at Riley as Liam launched into demands to see the coin (because
clearly
the damn thing had two heads). This sort of ridiculous McKenna family spat was usually right up Riley’s alley. But her eyes never left the book where Lily was painstakingly sounding out every syllable.

Sam knew he should maybe apologize for what he’d said about her vast sexual experience. It had been out of jealousy, but she wouldn’t know that. Instead she’d just looked … stung.

Still, Riley herself had fostered her brand as the queen of sex. Not in front of her family, obviously—Liam would have a heart attack, to say nothing of her poor father—but how many times had she thrown her many men in his face when there were just the two of them?

Just like he threw his occasional woman in hers.

It was part of the game they played. He just wasn’t exactly sure
why
they played it. All he knew was that he let Riley think things with Angela were a lot more serious than they had actually been.

Which raised another nagging thought … if he was misleading her about
his
love life, might she be misleading him about hers?

It would explain why she looked like he’d slapped her with his crack about her rather busy sex life. He hadn’t meant it as a swipe—he wasn’t so much a Neanderthal that he didn’t think women deserved a healthy, varied sex life every bit as much as men did.

But if he was wrong …

Didn’t he know firsthand how much it sucked to have people make unfounded assumptions?

His eyes fell on the
Stiletto
magazine her mother had laid out as he moved to put a stack of plates away.
Nah
. He couldn’t be wrong. No way could she write the way she did, with that candid, sultry style, unless she was speaking from personal experience. And since he’d never known her to have a serious relationship, that meant she was doing a lot of playing the field.

Which was fine. He did the same. It was just …

Hell no. It
wasn’t
fine. And that was the problem.

The only person who should be spanking Riley’s swimsuit-model-worthy ass was him. There were just a few hiccups.

First, her father might kill him. And Liam likely would kill him, because he’d sworn to his best friend that he’d keep his hands off his baby sister.

And the biggest problem? He wasn’t even remotely worthy of her, and he was pretty sure she knew it. Sure, maybe there was that … 
thing
that happened whenever they made eye contact or accidentally touched.

Even she couldn’t deny that there was some serious physical chemistry there.

But it wasn’t something she’d act on. Riley’s men were brokers in bespoke suits (a term he hadn’t even known until he’d had to meet one of these overpaid bores at Kate’s birthday party last year), who stopped off to get manicures on their way to overpriced cocktail bars. They were the ones who had access to luxury suites at Yankee Stadium, rather than saving their pennies for an extra seat in the nosebleed section.

Riley’s men certainly weren’t rough-around-the edges Brooklyn natives who only owned one pair of pants that wasn’t denim. And he didn’t even know where those were.

In other words, it didn’t matter how badly he wanted her—and he
did
want her, acutely.

But at the end of the day, she wasn’t for him. Wouldn’t ever be for him.

“Dude. I think it’s dry.”

Liam grabbed the pot that Sam had been absently drying for the better part of five minutes.

“Liam, honey, would you walk Riley to the subway station?”

Sam snapped to attention. Riley was leaving?

Sure enough, she was shrugging on her fancy trench coat and doing a damn good job of not looking at him.

“Ma, I don’t need someone to walk me to the subway station,” she protested. “I’ve been doing it on my own since third grade.”

Erin moved in to fuss with Riley’s collar. “Yes, but that’s before Mr. Blanton thought he saw an intruder in his front yard last week.”

Riley rolled her eyes. “Mr. Blanton also mistakes his own cat for the mailman. I think I can manage the five-minute walk.”

Her mother ignored this. “Liam?”

Liam popped the top on his beer. “Is Dad still doing his nightly walk? Maybe Riley can tag along and they can detour to the train stop.”

“Your father’s ‘nightly walk routine’ is simply on his weekly rotation of reasons he can’t do the dishes.”

Liam’s beer can paused halfway to his mouth. “Wait. Rotation?”

Erin gave him a look.

“Damn,” Liam muttered. “So his arthritis isn’t aggravated by water?”

“What arthritis?” Erin said with an amused lift of her eyebrows.

“Wily old bastard,” Liam muttered. “
Fine
. I’ll take baby sister to the subway. But you’d better have your MetroCard this time, Ri, because I’m not falling for the old—”

“I’ll walk her.” The words were out before Sam realized he’d opened his mouth.

Riley’s head snapped around, fierce blue eyes boring into his.
No
.

“I don’t need anyone to walk me,” she said through gritted teeth.

Liam patted her head and made his way toward the living room. “Mom says you do.”

And in the McKenna household, that was enough.

Riley’s shoulders sagged only briefly before she straightened and lifted her chin. “Fine.” She leaned in and pecked her mom’s cheek. “Love you. Thanks for dinner.”

Erin cupped her daughter’s face. “You remember what we talked about, okay? The passion?”

“Ma!”

“Told you she was a prude,” Kate muttered not so quietly to Megan.

Sam’s eyebrows crept up. Now,
this
was interesting.

Riley pointed at both sisters, her glare livid. “We are
not
having this conversation right now.”

“Definitely a prude,” Megan whispered.

Riley let out a huff of frustration before heading toward the front door. “Come on, guard dog,” she snapped, not bothering to look at him as she stormed past.

Wordlessly Sam trailed after her, grabbing his leather jacket on his way out the door, hoping it was cooler out than when he’d arrived.

The irate Irish wench marching down the sidewalk needed to cool off.

“Wait up,” he called.

She didn’t.

He trotted after her, slowing back to a walk when he pulled even. “Whew, that was close. Mr. Blanton’s creep could have jumped out and got you at any time.”

“Pretty sure the only creep on this block is my present company.”

He glanced down at her familiar profile. “Not your best comeback. You okay?”

She glanced away, and his chest tightened. Not okay, then.
Damn it
.

“Trying the
other
big-brother role on for size?” she asked, still not looking at him.

“Okay, I’ll bite. What’s that mean?”

This time she did glance at him, and since she was wearing her usual skyscraper heels, their gazes were nearly level. Sam wasn’t short, but Riley had the tall, long-legged figure of a model, putting her close to six feet with the right shoes.

“You’re putting a new spin on your big-brother routine,” she explained, her voice flat. “Usually you take on the little-boy tormentor role. Pushing my buttons, pulling my hair—”

He nearly laughed. “I have never pulled your hair.”

She gave him a tiny smile. “You’ve wanted to.”

“Only because you’re a brat.” He smiled back.

“See,
that
,” she said, spinning toward him now that they’d made it to the top of the stairs leading down to the subway. “
That
is your usual shtick. Calling me a brat, pissing me off. Just stick to that.”

“I thought I was,” he said, feeling completely flummoxed by her.

“No, you asked me if I was okay,” she said, jabbing a finger at his chest.

Christ
. “So?”

“So don’t,” she snapped. “It’s not your business.”

Sam felt his temper begin to fray. “How do you figure? I’m practically part of your family.”

“Exactly,” she said, taking a step closer. “
Almost
, but not.”

It was true, but it stung all the same. He wasn’t related by blood, but the McKennas were everything to him. This McKenna in particular. And Liam. Liam, who would really not appreciate there being less than a foot between Riley and Sam at the moment.

“Fine,” he asked. “I won’t ask if you’re okay. I’ll just go on pissing you off and making you cry.”

Her nostrils flared. “You didn’t make me cry.”

Sam felt a little jerk of surprise. He’d been joking about the crying thing. He couldn’t imagine Riley crying, much less crying because of
him
.

But her nostrils had flared.

You didn’t spend a decade studying someone and not know when they were lying. And just then when she’d said he didn’t make her cry?

She’d been lying.

He’d stumbled on the truth by a lucky guess, and the truth sucked.

“Talk to me, Ri,” he said, unable to stop from reaching for her hand. “I don’t get what’s going on with you tonight.”

She snorted. “Oh, it’s just tonight you don’t know? Like you know what’s going on with me the rest of the time?”

He took a deep breath. “I think I’ve got a pretty good idea, yeah.”

Riley gave a little shake of her head, dislodging a strand of hair from its messy bun. His fingers itched to reach out and touch it. Just once.

Instead he shoved his hands into his back pockets. Which turned out to be damn fortuitous, because she took a step closer and the urge to reach for her was instinctive and fierce.

“You don’t know the first thing about me,” she said, her voice going husky and dangerous. “Not the real me.”

“Don’t I?” Damn it, he couldn’t think straight when she was standing so close, drowning him in her sweet and spicy scent.

“No,” she whispered, her eyes meeting his before they moved to his mouth. “But you’re about to find out.”

She pulled back just as he was leaning forward, and she was gone and walking down the steps to the subway platform without a glance back.

He closed his eyes briefly and forced himself to turn around instead of going after her and showing her exactly what happened to women who added a lit match to an already volatile relationship.

For years Sam had been bracing for the inevitable moment when he and Riley would cross that line, and while they hadn’t quite gone there, she’d strolled pretty close to that line with her sex-kitten shoes.

“Damn you, Riley,” he muttered to himself, completely alone on the peaceful Brooklyn street. “Don’t go complicating things.”

Only he was pretty sure they’d been on the road of complicated ever since he’d walked into the McKenna kitchen for the first time at nineteen and seen her sitting on that stool looking way better than any seventeen-year-old girl had any right to look.