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Do not go there, Compton.
The self–pep talks sometimes worked. Most of the time they didn’t.
“Kate has a philosophy exam on Friday. She’s entitled to be preoccupied,” Sam replied, jerking his attention back to the conversation with his best friend.
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?
