by Lauren Layne
Carefully hiding her disdain, she went to the curb to watch for an available cab. Despite the common misperception that Manhattan had an unlimited supply of taxis, on rainy Friday nights in the Village this couldn’t be further from the truth. Riley’s fingers turned numb right before her hand lost feeling from being held in the air for a good five minutes.
A quick glance revealed that Prince Charming was huddled beneath the restaurant awning with four other women.
Seriously?
Okay, so maybe a little machismo wouldn’t be so bad.
In the back of her head, Riley heard Emma Sinclair discreetly clear her throat. Don’t do that. Do not go searching for reasons why he’s all wrong. Nobody’s perfect.
Riley snorted.
Like Emma was one to talk. Emma was every bit as single as Riley.
Then again, Emma seemed quite happy with her status. Emma Sinclair, in all her unruffled southern belle glory, wasn’t in the midst of a rather epic dry spell like Riley.
And maybe nobody was perfect. But sometimes it felt like there was a guy that was perfect for Riley. Only it wasn’t the guy currently hiding from the elements. It wasn’t her date.
Finally a taxi deposited a group of girls in front of the restaurant, and Riley swooped in for the kill, smiling apologetically at the two men who’d made a move for the same cab.
Sorry, boys. My delicate little flower needs to get his Italian shoes out of the rain.
Steven hurried over and scooted her into the cab before sliding in and closing the door behind him.
“West Fourth and Perry, please,” Riley told the cabdriver. It was at times like these that Riley was glad she’d snatched up the West Village apartment Julie had left behind when she’d moved in with Mitchell. Riley still considered herself a Brooklyn girl, born and raised, but there were times when a Manhattan address was priceless.
Rainy booty-call nights were definitely one of those times. At least she was pretty sure. One would have to have actually had a booty call to be positive.
Although with each passing second, Riley’s determination to give Steven Moore a front-row seat to her garter belt was fading.
Particularly since he was still fussing with the shoes.
“They’re ruined,” he muttered.
All right. Enough of this.
“So, on a scale of getting laid off, to, say … getting a terminal illness, where would you say the ruination of Italian leather falls?” she asked sweetly.
Steven stared at her in surprise, and then, to her relief, he gave a sheepish laugh. “I’m being a baby, huh?”
Oh no. Much worse than any baby I’ve ever known.
“A little,” she agreed. “But I get it. I’m pretty attached to some of my shoes too.”
“I’ll tell ya what. If you agree to forget about my prissy moment there, I’ll make it up to you later?”
Uh-oh.
Steven Moore was putting on the moves, and they weren’t good. He’d unsubtly moved closer to her in the cab, and his hand was on the back of her neck in what could have been a seductive massage if his hands weren’t freezing and his grip wasn’t pinching.
Riley wanted nothing more than to suggest that this nice but thoroughly not-for-her man might prefer to spend the rest of the evening at home saying a eulogy for his shoes.
Alone.
But then she remembered the ramifications of that particular suggestion.
It would also mean Riley would be home alone. Again.
“You know that this is every man’s fantasy?” he said, his tongue finding her ear.
She closed her eyes and ordered herself to not pull away. It’s supposed to feel good, Riley.
Her heart was starting to pound. And not in the impending-sexy-times kind of way.
Riley’s hand found his knee and squeezed. Hard. “Steven, it’s my turn to be prissy. Do you mind if we get back to my place, before … um … I just feel kind of gross from the rain, you know?”
He pulled back. “You don’t look gross. But sure, no problem. I know that mood’s important.” Steven gave her an understanding look and gently tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.
Riley gave him a smile—the first genuine one of the night. Well, whaddya know. Her mother and friends had been right. Maybe she was too quick to write men off. Maybe they just needed a little gentle nudging to keep them from being complete tools.
She took a deep breath and tried to think sexy thoughts. She’d written an article about this just a few months ago: “Sixteen Sexy Mental Tricks to Rev Your Lady Libido.”
Now, if she could only remember them.
Just one of them …
Come on, now, any one would do …
“My friends are all taking bets on this, you know.”
“Hmm?” Riley asked, still trying to summon Lady Libido.
“They didn’t believe me when I told them that Riley McKenna had agreed to go out with me, but here we are on date number five.”
“Uh-huh.” Honestly, how was she supposed to get to her sexy place when the man wouldn’t shut up?
“Are you looking for research material for your next article? If you are, is there anything special you want from me? I mean, I know you’re the expert, but I’ve never gotten any complaints …”
Stop. Talking. “I never mix business and pleasure,” she said, giving him her old standby line to go with her standby wink.
“Of course,” he said. “But I wouldn’t mind, if, you know …”
“No, I actually don’t know,” she said, saying a mental goodbye to Lady Libido. Not that she’d been likely to show up. She never had before.
“I read last month’s article,” Steven whispered, with a quick glance at the driver.
Please. Like a cabdriver gave a crap whether his passenger had snuck a peek at a women’s magazine.
“Last month’s article … the BDSM one?”
She wrote a BDSM article about once a year, which was about how often it came up as “the next naughty thing everyone but you is trying.”
It wasn’t that she wasn’t intrigued, it was just that when you spent most of your time trying to figure out whether the correct spelling was blindfold or blind-fold, it sort of took some of the titillation out of the whole concept.
“I never thought it’d be my thing,” Steven was yammering, “but I’ll try anything once. Especially if you show me the ropes. Pun intended.”
Good one.
Steven was shifting his weight, leaning into her so that he could pull something out of his back pocket.
Riley stared in horror at the shiny object in his hand before looking up at his eh-not-bad face. “Handcuffs?”
“Portable ones.”
Was there any other kind?
“I know you probably have your own, but—”
Riley held up a finger to stop him. “What part of me not mixing business with pleasure went over your head? Just because I write about something for my job doesn’t mean I want it in my personal life.”
Steven pulled back. “Is this part of the routine? Acting like you don’t want it?”
“No!”
He grinned. “Whew. For a second I thought the legendary Riley McKenna was a bit frigid.”
There it was. Her breaking point.
She may not have known how this all worked, but she did know it wasn’t supposed to be like this. Why did it always end this way? Just once she wanted to be treated like a woman instead of some sort of novelty lay.
Riley’s Irish temper officially snapped.
“Get out.”
Steven frowned in confusion. “We’re there?”
“No, we’re stuck in traffic. But get out.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Is this why you asked me out? Because you wanted to see if I lived up to my articles?”
“Oh, come on. It wasn’t just about that,” he said, holding out a placating hand. She slapped it away. “You know you’re hot.”
She conti
nued to stare at him, and he relented. “Okay, and it’s a little bit like bedding a Bond girl, you know? Bragging rights, baby.”
“No, I don’t know. I’m not your Bond girl,” she snapped, trying to push him closer to the door and out of her cab. “And I’m definitely not your baby.”
“Jesus, what’s your deal?”
The guy looked confused, and somehow that just made it all worse. He genuinely had no clue that beneath the sex expert lay Riley McKenna the person. Or maybe he did know, and he didn’t care.
She couldn’t even get that mad at him. After all, she wasn’t exactly dying to know the person beneath the boring brown hair and ugly Italian shoes either.
“Christ, if you treat all guys this way, I don’t know how you get any material for your slutty articles.”
Maybe she could get a little mad at him. Still, she refused to let her expression change. No way was she letting him know he’d hit her weak spot. She hadn’t revealed it to anybody, and she wasn’t going to start with a too-tall douche bag.
The taxi driver had figured out there was no budding romance in the backseat and had pulled over despite the traffic having started to move again.
“Out,” she said again.
“This is nuts,” he muttered. “This was supposed to be an easy lay, and instead I’m getting dumped in the middle of a rainstorm.”
Easy lay, my ass.
“Careful with your shoes!” she called as he slid into the wet night.
She saw his middle finger raised seconds before the door slammed.
Riley sucked in a breath. Mr. Good Enough just became Mr. Good for Nothing.
The cab resumed its slow crawl home, and Riley stared unseeingly out the blurry window, feeling nothing and everything all at once.
Anger. Regret. Confusion.
She’d done it again. She’d royally screwed up a chance to actually experience what it was she wrote about.
But he hadn’t been the right one.
Because with the right one, she wouldn’t be scared. With the right one, she knew she wouldn’t need to hide the truth.
And the truth was a whopper.
There was a running joke at the Stiletto office that Riley’s sexual partners outnumbered the New York City pigeon population.
But the truth was far worse.
The truth was, she could count her sexual encounters on one hand.
On one thumb, actually.
Because Riley McKenna, sex expert extraordinaire, was exactly one tepid, beer-fueled college encounter away from being a virgin.
But that wasn’t even the real problem, she thought as she pulled out her cellphone and turned it on. The problem was that the reason for her near-virgin status came down to one very sexy, very off-limits Sam Compton.
The only man she’d ever wanted. And the one man in New York City who didn’t want into her pants.
She glanced down at her phone. Nothing from Sam, but there was one more from her mother. You did that THING, didn’t you?
Riley rammed her head against the headrest. You know, Mom? I think I did.
Chapter Two
For most New Yorkers, the chance to escape upstate was a welcome breath of fresh air. A chance to get away from the fast pace and frenetic energy of the city.
For Sam Compton, going upstate meant old cigarette smoke, stale crackers, and nonstop guilt trips.
He’d rather be anywhere else. Hell, driving Riley and her friends to the freaking outlet mall had been better than this, and that included a high-pitched debate on the advantages of waxing over shaving.
The view in the rearview mirror had been worth it though. Riley had been wearing this purple dress that kept climbing up her thighs …
Knock it off. She was on a date last night. With a guy she actually liked.
Who also happened to be a guy Sam would like to punch, but that was pretty much par for the course when it came to his feelings on Riley’s men. He’d learned over the years to deal with it.
His mother let out a rough smoker’s cough, drawing Sam’s attention back to the family obligation at hand.
He made the trip every couple of months or so, and depending on his mother’s mood—and sobriety level—that was either too much or not nearly enough to make her happy.
His mother always seemed to want the opposite of whatever it was Sam was currently doing.
“I guess you can just set it on the shelf over there,” Helena Compton groused. “Don’t know why you brought it. You know I only drink gin and beer.”
Sam’s fingers tightened briefly on the bottle of whisky he’d brought with him, carefully nestled on the front seat of his truck all the way from Brooklyn. His whisky, from his first batch, from the distillery he’d created from nothing.
Granted, it wasn’t his first bottle. He wouldn’t waste that honor on her. But somehow he’d thought that maybe, beneath all the bitterness, she’d want a little piece of what Sam had been pouring his heart—and savings—into for the previous two years. So he’d brought her one of the special first bottles, complete with the label he’d designed himself and had carefully applied just that morning.
He shouldn’t have bothered. Giving even a little bit of himself to his mother had always been a mistake.
“I know you like gin, Mom,” he said tersely as he set the bottle on a small beat-up bookshelf that served as her and her boyfriend’s home bar. “But Carl likes whisky, so I thought—”
“Carl likes Johnny Walker, not that overpriced, local organic shit.”
“It’s not organic,” he ground out. “And it’s not overpriced considering I brought it as a gift.”
Actually, none of his whisky was overpriced. It wasn’t priced at all. But he wasn’t about to tell his mom that he wasn’t making money from ROON Distillery. Yet.
Cashing in his 401(k) in order to open a distillery had given his old financial advisor a heart attack, but so far it had been worth it every single morning when Sam woke up and realized he didn’t have to put on the dreaded suit and tie and do the dog-and-pony dance in an office that he hated.
But his savings would only last him so long.
It was time to shit or get off the pot. Soon.
He’d deal with that later.
Sam took a deep breath, only to regret it when the smell of cigarette smoke singed his nostrils. You’d think a childhood’s worth of inhaling the stuff secondhand would have made him immune, but to him the scent was still reminiscent of yelling and disappointment.
“Where is Carl?” he asked, sitting carefully on the edge of a cracked-leather sofa.
“Working,” his mother snapped. “Some people have to do that, you know.”
Some people didn’t include her, though. Sam seemed to remember her getting unemployment checks in the mail more often than she ever got a paycheck. Or alimony from one of her—count ’em—six ex-husbands. Carl at least had had the good sense not to marry her, but Helena had been so desperate to get out of their crumbling house in Brooklyn that she’d jumped at the chance to move upstate even without a cheap wedding ring on her finger.
And it was better for Sam too. Increased distance between him and his mother could only be a good thing.
“Where’s Carl working, still at that bar and grill up the road?”
“It’s not a bar and grill, Sam, it’s a just a bar. A shitty, run-down dive bar. He hates it, but he doesn’t have the luxury to up and quit and follow some piss-in-the-river dreams.”
Piss-in-the-river? That was a new one.
She was always coming up with weird sayings that weren’t actual sayings, but they all pretty much conveyed the same sentiment: Only a loser would quit a promising career as an investment banker to start a distillery in a warehouse in Brooklyn.
The hell of it was, she’d hated it when he was an investment banker. He’d made the mistake of wearing a suit when he dropped by with her birthday gift four years earlier, and she’d accused him of being a yuppie poser.
Best as Sam could t
ell, she just didn’t want him to be happy.
But too bad for her, because he was the closest he’d been in years.
In his professional life anyway. On the personal front …
“Heard from Hannah lately?” she asked, pushing herself out of her recliner and finding a half-empty bottle of Beefeater’s on the shelf. At fifty, she was still pretty. That baffled him. Sure, there were some telltale lines around her mouth from the frowning and the smoking, but otherwise, for a woman who’d thrown away her life to laziness and alcohol and bad men, she was still inexplicably lovely. Granted, her clothes weren’t high-fashion, and they were too young for her age, but her hair was still thick and blond, her eyes still wide and blue, and she’d managed to avoid any middle-aged weight gain.
He watched her, not saying anything about her having unnecessarily shoved his own whisky out of the way to get to her gin. And he certainly didn’t bother mentioning that it wasn’t even two in the afternoon. It’d be a waste of breath.
Sam pushed his fingers into his eyes, wondering, as he always did, why he bothered coming here at all. “No, I haven’t heard from my ex-wife, Mom. I haven’t heard from her since we signed the papers and very amicably parted ways six years ago.”
But thanks for bringing it up.
Although that wasn’t even fair. Hearing Hannah’s name didn’t cause so much as a pang. The shitty part of it was, not only could Sam not remember why they’d gotten divorced, he couldn’t even remember why they’d gotten married in the first place. And he wasn’t even sure either reason mattered. He and Hannah had been wrong for each other from the very first minute, and by the end, they’d both known it.
Helena sniffed. “You can’t blame her for leaving you. If you were half as inattentive a husband as you are a son—”
Sam flopped back onto the couch. “Let’s have it, Mom. Just get it alllll out now. I’m listening.”
She angrily twisted the cap off a bottle of tonic. There was no fizzing noise, and certainly no ice, but she didn’t seem to care or notice as she dumped a splash into her glass. “All I’m saying is that it would be nice to see you once in a while.”
