His hands were like brackets around her wrists as he lifted her hands away from his body, holding them safely between them so she couldn’t reach for him again.
“Find someone else.” His eyes went to her mouth before he tore his gaze away.
He released her hands then, moving around her and going back to his copper still and pulling his stupid tool out of his back pocket as though the whole exchange had never happened.
But his hands were shaky and his motions jerky where he crouched in front of his stupid whisky pot. That exchange had definitely happened. And he wasn’t nearly as unaffected as he wished.
Inspiration struck.
Maybe the way to get exactly what she wanted was to give Sam a taste of what he thought he wanted.
Find someone else, he’d said.
Using jealousy as manipulation was the oldest, lousiest trick in the book, but it was the only one she had left. She moved behind him, noting the way his shoulders tensed as he heard her approach.
When she was alongside him, she knelt very slowly, very deliberately, until her lips were even with his ear. “I think you’re right. I think I’ll find someone who knows how to use his hands on something other than a copper machine.”
“Go for it,” he muttered. “We’ve both been seeing other people for years.”
She paused for a heartbeat, letting her eyes linger on his mouth. Letting the tension build. “Have we?”
With that, she stood and marched back the way she came, her mind already scrolling through her mental black book.
Riley heard the clank of metal against cement seconds before she heard Sam utter a string of heartfelt curses.
She smiled. He was right where she wanted him.
Chapter Seven
Sam thought she’d been joking.
No. He hoped she’d been joking.
He sure as hell hadn’t been prepared for her to show up at her nephew’s First Communion party with another man on her arm two days after she’d propositioned him.
And just what had she meant by her implication that they hadn’t been seeing other people over the years? He certainly had. Not that any of them had mattered. Not that any of the other women had ever gotten under his skin the way Riley McKenna did.
But there had been women. Plenty of them. Just like she’d had plenty of dates.
So just what the hell had she meant?
Riley thought Sam didn’t know how to use his hands? Wrong. Because he was thinking of plenty of ways to use them right now. Strangling her was at the top of the list.
Right after he punched the toothpaste-model smile off her new boyfriend.
He tuned in half an ear as Riley introduced the guy to her aunt. Brent Barry. What the hell kind of name was that anyway?
Sam’s fingers tightened around the neck of his beer bottle as he tilted it up to his mouth and very
intentionally dragged his eyes away from Riley and Mr. Hollywood Good Looks.
Sam joined Liam at the food table. Plucking a corn chip from a bowl, he dunked it into a seven-layer bean dip that had mercifully been spared Erin’s special touch with potatoes.
“So whaddya think?” he asked his best friend.
Liam scanned the room for his mother before flicking a black olive into the sink. He’d never been able to stomach the things. “What do I think about what?”
“Riley’s new boyfriend.”