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Maybe she wasn’t playing games after all. And if she wasn’t … did that mean she was done with him?
The thought was more depressing than he cared to admit.
“Let’s just say Liam’s hugs don’t feel at all like that,” she said, giving him a meaningful look.
Sam waited for the old familiar tug of guilt at the mention of his best friend’s name, and it came, fast and sure. But interestingly enough, that long-ago promise he had made to Liam not to touch his sister felt a lot less important than the promises he wanted to make to Riley.
What sort of fresh hell have I gotten myself into?
“I got confused,” he said finally, deciding to keep these in a joking place. “I thought for a second you were actually attractive.”
Riley clucked as she tucked her arm in his companionably. “Happens all the time. Lucky for us, there’s nothing like a failed sex experiment to send two people to a permanent friend zone.”
Fuck the friend zone, Sam thought as he held the door open for her. It wasn’t enough.
Friendship would never be enough. Not with Riley.
Chapter Fourteen
Riley liked Sam.
Somehow she’d forgotten that in recent weeks. They’d been so busy trying to get into each other’s pants, or stay out of each other’s pants, that she’d pushed aside the basic fact that beneath the simmering physical attraction, they were friends.
“Try this one,” he said, pushing a small tumbler toward her. “Tell me what you smell.”
She sniffed. “Horse butt.”
“Leather, good. What else?”
She rolled her eyes and tried again. “Vanilla?”
He took the glass from her hand and gave it a sniff. “Nope. That’s almond you’re getting.”
“You’re worse than a wine snob,” Riley said, grabbing the glass and taking a tiny sip. Sam knew the bartender, which meant they’d tasted at least a dozen different whiskies. The pours were tiny, so she wasn’t drunk—just a sip or two of each—but there was a distinct warmth developing low in her belly.
Riley tried to tell herself it was the alcohol, but she knew it wasn’t just the whisky.
It was Sam and the way he looked in his layered T-shirts and perfect-fitting jeans and messy man hair. It was the way his eyes lit up when he talked about stills and casks, and the way he managed to make the word fermentation sound sexy.
It was the way he’d taken her to this run-down hole-in-the-wall, with its beat-up wood bar and slightly crotchety staff and worn bar stools. There was no foie gras, no weird berry compote, no fancy cocktails … just whisky, and a handful of pub-food options if you wanted them.
It was completely different from anyplace she’d been with a man in the past several years, and she loved it.
“Whisky has just as many nuances as wine, just not as many varietals,” Sam said, taking the glass back from her. He tilted it, watching the way the amber liquid slid along the side of the glass. “That’s part of what I’d like to change. I’m all for bourbon being bourbon, and Irish whisky being Irish whisky, plus rye and all the rest of them, but there’s room for something modern. Something new that tastes good without having all the rules.”
“And that’s what you’re doing?” she prodded, keeping her voice soothing but not condescending, as though talking to a skittish colt. He was weird when it came to his accomplishments with ROON. As though he didn’t know how to accept praise or success.
Or, and this was haunting, as though he didn’t deserve it.
As expected, his mouth pressed into a firm line. “ROON doesn’t fit into any of the classic whisky profiles. It’s whisky, sure, but it’s not distilled in bourbon country, so it can’t be bourbon. It’s not from Scotland, so it can’t be Scotch—”
She interrupted his barrage of things his product wasn’t. “So what is it? What’s your vision?”
He lifted a shoulder. Took another sip of whatever it was his bartender friend had poured. “Making something for the average but discerning drinker, I guess. Something without pretense. In the same way the wine world is slowly accepting bottles with screw tops, I want the whisky world to accept something that’s simply whisky. No subtype needed. Just ROON whisky. No judgment if you want to drink it neat, or in a Manhattan, or with fucking prune juice. I can’t stand those liquor connoisseurs who jump down your throat for adding an ice cube to a fifteen-year-old whatever. Fuck that. Drink what tastes good.”
As a reward for him speaking bluntly for once, she told him the unvarnished truth. He needed a little positive reinforcement. “You know, if we weren’t so solidly in the friend zone these days, I’d tell you that your passion about your company is kind of sexy.”
Sam didn’t miss a beat at the flirtatious turn. “Sweetie, if we weren’t so solidly in the friend zone, we’d be drinking my whisky naked in bed, not someone else’s whisky in a bar.”
