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“Hey.” Okay, not her best opening. But at least it was an opening.
Sam froze for several seconds before slowly standing and turning to face her. She’d been expecting surprise, and there was a split second of that before it turned to something far more telling.
Wariness.
“Riley,” he said, idly twirling some wrench-type thing before crossing his arms and studying her.
“Sam.”
“Is showing up unannounced considered fashionable in Manhattan?”
She lifted a shoulder. “Have
n’t gotten any complaints before.”
“No, I don’t suppose you would,” he said darkly. “Is your dress made out of plastic wrap?”
She glanced down at the formfitting red sheath. “It’s Trina Turk.”
“I don’t care if it’s made out of some yet undiscovered new element; it doesn’t belong in a distillery.”
Riley knew him well enough to hear the subtext. You don’t belong in the distillery.
“I haven’t been out here since you bought the property,” she said, keeping her voice easy.
He slapped a hand against his thigh. “Damn it! I knew all my party invitations got lost in the mail. Damn post office.”
Riley narrowed her eyes. “You’re cranky.”
“You’re trespassing.”
She waved this away. “I came to ask a favor,” she blurted out, going for broke.
His head tilted back slightly. “Am I going to need a drink for this?”
“Definitely. And also, maybe an attitude adjustment. This whole cranky-hermit thing you have going on …” She waggled her hand back and forth as if to say it’s only so-so.
He ignored her and moved toward the front corner of the warehouse. She followed, her eyes widening in surprise when she saw that he had had a full bar installed. “Fancy.”
“Necessary,” he said, moving behind the polished wood bar.
She plopped uninvited onto one of the barrels that doubled as bar stools.
He pulled down a couple of bottles, and she recognized one of his own labels. “Using the good stuff?”
He smiled a little. “The best.”
Huh. So definitely not modest around her. Just the rest of the world.
Riley watched as he poured an amber liquid from a ROON bottle into a shaker, followed by some sort of Italian liqueur, a couple of dashes of bitters, and some ice. Pulling a jar of cherries out of the fridge, he dropped one into each of two tumblers before deftly shaking and straining the drink into the glasses.
He handed one to her, not meeting her eyes when their fingers brushed.
She glanced at the cocktail in surprise. “A Manhattan?”
He didn’t answer her unspoken question. She could buy that he knew her favorite drink. He’d fetched her enough over the years when their social lives overlapped. But why did he have all of the ingredients on hand?
“Chicks dig the cherries,” he said.
