The truth behind the headlines.
The truth.
She’d always known there’d come a breaking point. A time when she’d either have to come clean or get laid.
The trouble was, she didn’t know how to come clean without losing her pride. And worse, she wasn’t at all sure she could get laid without losing her heart.
Because when Riley was completely honest with herself, she wasn’t celibate because of lack of opportunity, or because guys like Steven Moore carried around handcuffs in their back pockets.
When it came right down to it, there was only one man for Riley Anne McKenna, and she’d pretty much made a career out of telling herself he wasn’t interested.
But if she was going personal for the story—if she was going to tell the truth—first, she had to find out the most important truth, once and for all.
It was time to find out if Sam Compton wanted her back.
Chapter Four
“Um, Mom? Does Dad know we’re having tacos for dinner?”
“No, he does not. And neither of you will mention it until it’s too late for him to start hollering about the ways of our motherland. It’s a stubborn, rigid mind-set, if you ask me.”
Riley exchanged a glance with her younger sister, Kate, both of them wisely opting not to mention the chunks of potatoes nestled in with the meat on the stove. Her mother probably hadn’t even consciously included them. For her potatoes were like salt. Never the meal, but always an unspoken part of the meal.
Both Erin and Joshua McKenna had been born and raised in Cork, Ireland, but they had different approaches when it came to the cuisine of their homeland. Riley’s dad was a purist and rarely made it through a meal without muttering, “If my mother caught me eating this foreign slop, she’d die all over again.”
Erin, on the other hand, fancied herself a bit of a fusion cook.
Hence the tacos with potatoes. Last week it had been pasta carbonara. With potatoes. The week before that, she’d put corned beef in stir-fry.
“Always an adventure,” Kate muttered under her breath before grabbing her beer and escaping to the living room, where the guys were watching soccer.
“I like the new cupboards,” Riley said, gesturing at the dark-wood cabinetry her mother had finally convinced her father that they needed to install. It was one of the few things that had changed in the Park Slope house Riley’d been born and raised in, and she liked it that way. She liked the way everybody had a favorite chair around the kitchen table that fit their butt just right. Liked the way they all knew not to wear socks without shoes in the kitchen because the boards were getting rough and tended to snag them. She even liked her mother’s affinity for cheap watercolors, and the way the weepy landscapes covered every possible wall.
It wasn’t fancy. But it was home.
“How’s work?” her mother asked, carefully spooning a carton of sour cream into a bowl. Riley’s mother wasn’t above convenience, but she drew the line at setting a plastic carton on the dinner table. Everything store-bought was promptly transferred to a “real dish.”
“Work?” Riley asked, feeling her eyebrows creep up to her hairline. Her mother rarely asked about Riley’s job.
Probably because she hated Riley’s job.
Riley couldn’t blame her. She doubted there were very many mothers out there who would be excited that their baby girl’s career involved reviewing dildos.
Particularly conservative Irish-Catholic mothers.
“Work’s … um …” Awful? Stressful? Ruining my life?
It had been two days since Camille had dropped her little bomb about the fiftieth-anniversary issue, and even though Riley wouldn’t need to turn in a draft for the stupid semicentennial issue for at least another month, it was all she’d been able to think about.
“Work’s fine.”
“Mmm …” Her mother sucked a glob of sour cream off her thumb and wandered over to the side table, where they stacked mail and bills and magazines. “Here it is.”
Shit.
It was the most recent Stiletto article. The one in which Riley’s BDSM headline was sandwiched between “Over-the-Knee Boots Are Back!” and “Rich Autumn Makeup That Anyone Can Pull Off.”
“What about it?” Riley asked nervously.