The warehouse was organized and rustic and oddly appealing, but there was no sign of the man. She ran her hand over the barrels as she made her way toward the other side of the massive structure until she reached a door. She remembered the space being one large open room, but he’d obviously put walls up to make this a separate room since the last time she’d been here.

Her heart skipped into overdrive when she opened the insulated door and moved into the main part of the distillery. If Sam was here, this is where he’d be.

She didn’t know which would be worse—finding that he wasn’t around or finding that he was here, but not alone.

This is what she got for not calling first, but planning ahead had never really been Riley’s style. She was more of the just-go-with-it persuasion. Except when it came to sex, of course.

Which was exactly what had gotten her into this whole freaking mess in the first place.

Her heels made a steady tap-tap against the concrete floor as she scanned for signs of movement. She wound around a table covered in what seemed to be labeling equipment, a bunch of other scary-looking pot-type things she didn’t recognize, a stack of boxes containing empty bottles, and then …

There he was.

Dressed in jeans and a tight white T-shirt, and looking far better than any man had any right to look, he was crouched in front of one of the enormous copper vat-type things that lined the far wall.

She watched him for a second as he tinkered with some tool she couldn’t see, gathering her courage as she debated her best opening.

I need an itsy-bitsy little favor involving your joystick.

Nah, too simpering.

I can’t imagine doing this with anyone but you.

Too revealing.

Wanna hump?

Better …

“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. “Haven’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.

“I feel like that’s just a dirty joke waiting to happen.”

“Well, then lay it on me. I promise to laugh even if it’s not funny,” he said, clinking his glass against hers.

Riley pursed her lips. “Coming up blank. My mind’s too pure.”

Sam snorted. “Right. The picture of naiveté in a skintight dress.”

“I think you like my skintight dress.”

Sam froze for a split second in the process of rinsing out the cocktail shaker before he very deliberately turned it upside down on a towel to dry and braced both hands on the counter. “What the hell are you up to, Riley?”

She carefully crossed her legs and took a sip of the cocktail. “This is good,” she said, mildly surprised. “Your whisky is perfect in here. Sweet, but not obnoxiously so.”

He made a tsk-tsk noise. “Trying to change the subject by using flattery? I thought better of your moves.”

“Honey, you haven’t even seen my moves yet.”

“So sneaking in the back door of a man’s home, snooping through his stuff, and then startling the shit out of him isn’t your typical MO?”

“How do you know I snooped through your stuff?”

“Didn’t you?”

“Well, of course,” she said, fishing the cherry out of her drink. “But it was a total waste of time. There was no diary or dirty magazine or leopard-print boxers.”

“Clearly you didn’t look in the bottom right drawer.”

“Big secrets there, huh?”

“I’m not really a secret kind of guy.”

“Says the man who guards his whisky-making business more closely than a nuclear plant.”

He looked surprised. “I don’t keep this a secret.”

“Really? Then why haven’t I been here since you first bought the place?”

“Well, I haven’t been hosting a bunch of bridal showers in my place of work. I mean, you haven’t exactly been badgering me to stop by the Stiletto office.”

“You so do not belong in that office,” she said, her eyes going over his jeans and workingman T-shirt.

His eyes flashed in hurt surprise, and she belatedly realized how condescending that sounded. “I didn’t mean … it’s just … you’re so male.”

“No guys at Stiletto?”

“Only Oliver, and let’s just say he gets manicures every Monday and Friday and collects Justin Timberlake calendars.”

“I like Justin Timberlake’s music.”

“Shirtless calendars,” she added.

“So you really didn’t look in my bottom right drawer, then.”

Riley smiled, taking another small sip of whisky. “I’ve missed this. It’s been a while since we’ve done this.”

There was that wariness again. “Done what, exactly? Bickered? Tried to get under each other’s skin?”

“I was going to say talked.”

“So that’s why you stalked me all the way out in Greenpoint? To talk? Because you know, they have these things now … phones?”

“Would you have picked up if I’d called?”

His expression went abruptly serious—almost offended. “Of course. Didn’t I pick you up that time you got drunk in Williamsburg and couldn’t find your keys? Or the time you decided you wanted to rent a car and go upstate only to belatedly remember you needed a little refresher on how to drive? Or then there was the time you forgot your wallet and were too embarrassed to tell your family, so I had to come bail you out—”

She put up her hand. “I get it. You save my ass when I mess up. But that’s not what I’m getting at. I mean we’re talking. We don’t talk much anymore.”

He lifted a shoulder.

“How long have you lived here?” she asked, wanting to save this easy flow between them. “In the back of the distillery I mean.”

“Six months? Maybe a little longer? My lease went up, and the place was already wired for a kitchen and a bathroom, so I thought, why not?”

“Don’t you get sick of it? Working and living in the same place? Doesn’t it smell like … whisky?”

He looked around the enormous space. “It does smell. But I love it. And sure, I guess I get a little restless sometimes. But it doesn’t feel like work when you love it, you know?”

“I guess.”

He drained the rest of his cocktail and began the process of mixing another one. “You don’t feel that way about Stiletto? And you’re not exactly one to talk about work/life separation. You get paid to write about your life.”

She couldn’t have asked for a more perfect opening. Actually, funny you mention that … I may have kind of sort of been fudging my credibility on that front …

But she couldn’t. Not yet. “Can I have another?” she asked, even though her first drink was still half full. A little more liquid courage couldn’t hurt.

“How come you never talk about your whisky?” she asked.

Sam didn’t answer for several seconds. “I’ll tell you what … I’ll answer that, if you tell me what you’re doing here. And don’t BS me about just wanting to chat and be all buddy-buddy. Despite your claims the other night, I do know you. And I know when you want something.”

Sure. But do you know when I want someone?

“You first,” she said, taking a large swallow of her drink and pushing it toward him for a refill.

“Well,” he said, giving the shaker one last rattle before straining it over her glass. “I guess you could say that it’s too important.”

“Not following.”

“ROON’s everything to me. It’s my savings, my livelihood, my passion. But the McKennas are everything to me too. You were my family when mine was crappy, and you’re even more my family now that mine’s mostly out of the picture.”

Riley resisted the urge to put her hand over his. Sam was an only child, raised by the most indifferent mother on the planet. Riley had only met Helena Compton once or twice, and although she’d passed along good looks to her son, she hadn’t been a mom. Not in the ways that mattered.

“I don’t get it,” she said softly. “Because both are important to you, they can’t overlap?”

“Let’s just say that my whisky’s my baby and your parents are my parents. I don’t think I can bear Erin and Josh not liking their grandchild.”

He gave her a boyish grin, but Riley heard the truth behind his casual tone. He was scared to death of disappointing the McKennas.

“But you’re letting me drink it.”

“Only because you batter-rammed your way into my home and I wanted—needed—a drink to deal with you.”

“Why do you think that is?”

His eyes locked on hers. She hadn’t meant for her voice to come out so husky, but her coy question sounded very much like a dangerous proposition.

“Because you’re dangerous to me,” he replied very simply. “Particularly when I don’t know what you’re after, and I confess—I’m completely stumped right now. It’s Friday night. Shouldn’t you be at some swanky hot spot with some suit in the city?”

She reached across the bar and helped herself to the cherry in his drink. “Maybe I’m in the mood for a casual home bar with a jeans-and-T-shirt guy in Brooklyn.”

Sam grabbed her wrist and her gaze flew to his, startled by his intense expression.

“Don’t,” he said sharply. “Do not play that game. Not with me.”

It’s not a game.

She tugged her hand back, and he released her arm but not her eyes. Riley took a deep breath. It was time.

“I said I was here because I needed a favor …”

His expression never changed. “Anything.”

Her heart flipped a little at that. “It’s um … a little more personal than my usual favors. This isn’t a ride home, or a lesson on the difference between screwdrivers, or help moving furniture.”

Sam’s eyes narrowed. “How personal?”

Riley licked her lips. “Kind of as personal as you can get.”

He warily came around the bar, settling on one of the barrels next to her, although keeping a safe distance between them. “Why don’t you start at the beginning.”

And then Riley was telling him everything. Well, not everything. Just the part about Stiletto’s anniversary issue, and how she was supposed to tell the truth behind the story. How she was supposed to write about something personal.

He nodded slightly when she was done. “Okay, I get it. They want all of the writers to give a more personal account for this issue. But I’m not getting what that has to do with me.”

Here we go, here we go …

“Well, my articles are mostly about … sex.”

He rolled his eyes. “I know. I think the entire city knows.”

“Well, that’s kind of my problem,” she continued quietly. “Julie and Grace, even Emma … it’s easier for them to make their stories more personal.”

“More personal than sex?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Nope.”

“Come on,” she said, exasperated. “You’re a guy. You should know more than anyone that sometimes sex is just … sex. There’s plenty to talk about and nothing to talk about all at the same time.”

“No offense, Ri, but I’m pretty sure you might be better off having this conversation with your friends or your sisters.”

“No, I wouldn’t,” she said stubbornly. “Because they can’t have sex with me.”

And there it was.

Riley braced herself.

She’d run through the list of possible reactions. Laughter. Yelling. Swooning, maybe.