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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.
