Sam's grin came more freely, wide and bright and mischievous. The dessert, it wasn't anything on Austin's finest, two years back. But it was a reminder, or an echo of what had come before and it was worth it for the recollection it might evoke. There was that - and then there was being owed a favor by a friend.
And she laughed, good-natured skepticism about the state of her appearance. Sam knew real well other people managed plenty. They hadn't relied on cosmetics and good clothes to bolster them up any and losing them didn't trouble them. Blood gritted her fingernails on the way home, the smell of vomit and bodily fluids clung to her skin under the stringent antiseptic and Sam, she hung on grimly to the little use she had. She wasn't real pretty just then and she knew it, but she patted fingertips to his cheek.
"You're trying to be sweet, Pete Whelan, but you just made a damn liar out of yourself." And he walked a line Sam knew well as she knew herself, the awkwardness of friendships either side rended in two by a relationship gone ten ways to sour. Savannah, Sam liked real well. Well enough that she didn't flirt with intent around her man. Even he wasn't, no more.
Flirting without intent, that was just the way the woman was made. "You can make plenty with the compliments, honey, but that don't get you off the hook from that favor," she teased.