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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.
