"Poor Mal," she laughs, sinking gracefully into one of the seats. She pulls the one next to her out, in case he had some silly idea about sitting across the table or something.

"Bourbon was, believe it or not, my drink of choice throughout the latter years of my companion training," Inara tells him, resting her elbow on the table and leaning her chin in her hand. "There's a delicious cocktail, extremely old fashioned, called a Manhattan. Bourbon, red vermouth, a dash of bitters and a little cocktail cherry."

A gentleman at one of her pre-debut parties had introduced Inara to them and she'd rather fallen in love with the beverage, especially upon being assured that it wasn't a silly, girly sort of a cocktail. Inara had had aspirations of being something of a broad as a young woman. She laughs ruefully at the memory. "I drank a fair number of those."