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Riley’s eyes narrowed, but Brent gave an easy laugh. “Probably not. I’ve been trying to get her to go out with me for years, but she’s always been seeing someone else.”
“Oh, is that what the kids are calling sex these days. Seeing someone?”
You’re being a jerk. Didn’t you just walk out on your own mother for making those same inferences about Riley?
Unperturbed, Riley gave him a sympathetic smile before turning her attention to Brent. “Sam here’s a bit of a … oh, what’s the polite word … recluse? You know, I don’t think he’s actually seen a woman’s breast up close and personal since the Reagan administration.”
Brent gave a nervous laugh as Sam choked on his beer.
Recovering quickly, Sam turned back to Riley’s new “boyfriend.” “So, how’d she talk you into coming to her nephew’s First Communion party? A little tame for a first date, isn’t it?”
Riley opened her mouth, but Brent beat her to it. “Tame is fine with me. Especially since I have no intention of letting the first date be the last.”
Really? Because I have every intention of ensuring that this is your last date.
It was a damn good thing that this was a kid-centric party, because the appearance of Riley’s niece in a puffy purple dress was just about the only thing that would have stopped Sam from forcefully escorting Brent to the nearest train home.
“Uncle Sam, do you want to see my new Barbie car?”
He tore his eyes away from Riley to glance down at the little girl who looked just like her. Big blue eyes blinked up at him, and he couldn’t resist. This one had him wrapped around her finger.
Just like her aunt.
“A new Barbie car, huh? Did you have a birthday I missed?” he asked, setting his beer aside and scooping her up even though she was about a year too old for it. She squealed in delight and looped her skinny arms around his neck.
“Not my birthday, but my daddy bought it for me because I was good when I went to the hardware store with him.”
“Your daddy’s a sucker, and you can tell him I said that,” Sam said. Although he had to hand it to Brian. Bribing your daughter with Barbie crap so you could get your Home Depot fix was genius.
“Let’s go see this car, then. What kind of engine are we talking about on this thing?”
Lily laughed a little-girl laugh. “It’s pink!”
“Of course it is,” he said, edging by Brent and Riley.
He felt Riley’s eyes on him, but he didn’t look back as he listened to Lily ramble about how Barbie was a better driver than Ken.
Twenty minutes later, Megan came to coax Lily into eating something besides cake, and Sam was able to escape the makeshift playroom Erin and Josh had set up for their grandchildren and rejoin the adult party.
“Where’d you disappear to?” Liam asked, never taking his eyes off the football game.
Sam flopped down next to Liam and Brian. “Barbie and Ken were getting married.”
Brian shifted his sleeping infant son to his other shoulder. “Lily got to you, huh?”
“I didn’t mind.”
Liam’s dad entered, plopping into the ancient recliner that his wife hated but that was as much a part of the house as the man himself. Sam could still remember the first time he’d stepped into the McKenna home. The warm, motherly welcome from Liam’s mom practically had him reeling, to say nothing of the jolt to his hormones delivered by his first look at Riley. Then Liam had led him into the living room, where Josh was sitting in that very chair, looking completely unruffled by Sam’s most recent tattoo and surly smirk.
“Whisky?” Josh had asked.
“Joshua, he’s a minor,” said Riley’s mother.
Sam jumped in. “I’ve had whisky before.”
“Good enough for me.” Josh had poured them a couple of fingers of Jameson’s. Liam, being several months younger than Sam, had been offered lemonade. Sam had never admitted it to anyone, but he often wondered if his seemingly spontaneous decision to start a whisky distillery hadn’t been born out of that long-ago moment when Josh McKenna had taken a fatherless kid under his wing, no questions asked.
“Where have you been?” Josh asked Sam, jerking him back to the present. “You missed cake.”
