As Bad As Can Be

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“Turning into a philosopher, Fee?” Colin asked as he walked up behind her to tug on her long red braid before ducking under the walkthrough into the bar.

“I believe I was talking with your brother, not your troublesome self,” she said tartly.

“I don’t believe in regrets,” Colin said, ignoring her comment. “There’s no point in them. You can learn from mistakes, but it’s everything you’ve done that’s made you who you are, so it’s sort of pointless to be sorry for any of it.”

“Now who’s turning into a philosopher,” Fiona jibed, raising a brow at him. “Are you after putting that into a song?”

Colin stared at her a moment and his eyes lit up. “Now there’s an idea.” He seized a napkin and scratched out a few lines then looked up. “So what’s all this talk of regrets? Did you try to get a job as a dancing girl and get turned down?”

Fiona gave him a frosty look. “I’m regretting that I wound up getting a job here with a man who devils me all the time, that’s what I’m regretting.”

“Oh, you’d miss it if I didn’t devil you, Fee,” Colin said with a crooked grin.

“Has your brother always had such an imagination, Shay?” Fiona asked, picking up her laden tray and walking away with a toss of her head.

“You shouldn’t tease her so much,” Shay said, watching her go.

“What?” Colin wrinkled his brow. “It’s just joking around. She can handle it.”

“She’s an employee, Colin.”

“Yeah, right. So what’s put you in such a good mood? Did you have a few too many at the bar last night and wake up in bed with a looker whose name you couldn’t remember?” He tied on his apron. “How was the new bar, anyway? I was thinking I might stop in and check it out.”

But Shay didn’t answer. He was staring at the door and the woman who’d just walked in.

Or stalked, more accurately, like a tiger after prey. Fury shouted from every rigid line of her body. Two spots of color burned high on her cheeks.

When he’d been lying in his bed the night before, searching for the sleep that refused to come, he’d told himself that she couldn’t be as beautiful as he remembered. He’d told himself that her smooth, flawless skin, her haunting cheekbones were just tricks of the light. Her mouth couldn’t have been such a delectable curve of humor and sensuality.

He’d been wrong.

He’d been wrong in so many ways, he thought in irritation, fighting to push down the memory of the heat of her body against him. A face and luscious body alone weren’t justification enough to make a man toss aside the habits of a lifetime. He’d had no business putting his hands on her, whether she was Dev’s sister or not. The fact that she actually happened to be Dev’s sister just made it all the worse. That morning on the phone, he’d done his best to duck out of any further involvement, but Dev wouldn’t hear of it.

“She’s my sister, man. I’m asking you, just keep an eye on her, keep her from getting too far out on a limb. I’d do it for you,” he’d wheedled, and Shay had relented, knowing Dev spoke the truth. Now, as Shay watched Mallory come toward him, he felt that unholy clutch in his gut that had him thinking once, only, and always of sex. But the night before had been the end of it. Dev’s sister was off-limits.

Period.

Mallory approached where he stood by the walkthrough, her stare unwavering as she came to a stop in front of him.

“Hello,” he offered.

Her face was unsmiling, unpainted, and as gorgeous as he’d ever seen on a living, breathing woman. “I’d say it’s time we introduced ourselves. Mallory Carson,” she said without extending her hand.

“Shay O’Connor.” Something in her cocky, go-to-hell stance needled him even as the whispers of her husky velvet voice shivered through him.

“So I’ve heard. It would have been nice to know that last night. What I want to know now is, where in the hell you get off coming into my bar and playing secret investigator, so you can carry tales back to my brother?” Her voice rose with each word.

“Now just hang on,” he began, rankled.

“Don’t tell me to hold on,” she said venomously. “I’m just getting started.”

“Stop right there.” His voice was a commanding hiss that brooked no argument. “You want to talk? Fine, we’ll go in the back and talk. This is a business establishment and you are not going to come in here and make a scene.”

“You have no idea of the scene I can make when I want to,” she said grimly. “And believe me,” her voice rose, “right now I really, really want to.”

Without thinking, Shay slammed the walkthrough back and tugged her behind the bar, ignoring her startled cry as he pulled her into the back. “Take over here, will you?” he asked Colin, who was watching, bug-eyed.

“Don’t you ever go dragging me along like a piece of meat,” she hissed, yanking her hand loose from him.

“Then don’t you come into my bar shouting and disturbing my customers,” he snapped back. “No wonder your brother’s worried about you, if you don’t have any better sense than that.” He led her into a cramped room beyond that served as the pub’s office, closing the door and turning to her. “Okay, you’ve got five minutes to say whatever it is you came here to say.”

“Listen, buster, I’ve got a million reasons to be upset at you right now, so don’t even try to shut me down.”

Shay dropped into the chair behind his desk and eyed her. “Tough as nails, huh?” So long as she acted like a spoiled teenager, it was easier to imagine that he might be able to go more than a few days without having to have his hands on her.

“Don’t push me,” Mallory said. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me who you were last night?” Fury burned in her eyes.

“I was just there scoping things out. I didn’t realize I had to check in at the security desk,” he drawled in a voice calculated to annoy her.

“You weren’t just dropping in at the new neighborhood bar. You were there to review the place for my brother.”

“Who wanted me to take a quiet look and tell him what I thought.” He didn’t bother masking the edge in his voice. The frustration he’d felt all day finally had an outlet.

“I had a right to know,” Mallory said stubbornly, sitting down in a chair by the wall.

“Well I wasn’t about to tell you I was checking out the bar. It was Dev’s place to tell you, not mine.”

“You didn’t think it was a courtesy I deserved?”

“Come off it.” This time, the impatience sounded thick and ripe in his voice. “It’s eleven o’clock at night, the place is packed to the rafters, the last thing I’m going to do is run around looking for the owner. Anyway, I didn’t want to get the happy tour. I wanted to get my arms around the place, see what you were doing with it.”

“Well, you managed to get your arms around a few things quite efficiently.” Her voice was tart.

“I didn’t see you telling me you owned the place.”

“That should make a difference? It’s okay for you to sleep with my employees?”

“Who kissed who first?” he demanded.

If she’d been a cat, she’d have been hissing with her back arched. “You need a razor to help split that hair? You were the one who followed me into the basement and you were just as into it as I was.”

His voice rose to match hers. “Well, one thing I can tell you is it sure as hell won’t happen again. It wouldn’t have happened last night if I’d known who you were.”

“Or if I’d known who you were. And then you’ve got the nerve to call my brother this morning and tell him that I’m not handling things properly.” It rankled even more now that she was looking at him.

“I told him what I saw,” Dev snapped back. But he hadn’t, not really. He hadn’t told him about the way she’d looked in the dim lighting, the way she’d danced like an invitation to sin, the way his mind had already had her undressed, twisting hot and urgent against him. He hadn’t told him that the image had kept him awake all night.

Mallory stood up and braced her hands on the edge of the desk. “Bad Reputation is mine. Do you understand that?” She leaned toward him, her eyes dark with intensity. “I don’t need some stiff-necked son of Ireland spreading horror stories about it. Thanks to you, Dev’s got some crazy idea that I’m going to scandalize the neighbors and get run out of town on a rail.”

“I just told him what I saw.”

She turned around and sat back down, squeezing the arms of the chair. “I don’t know who I’m more angry at, you or Dev.”

“Look, even if he weren’t your brother he’s your business partner, and he’s got a right to information. He’s got a right to have input. Besides, where I come from, family looks after family.”

“I don’t need looking after,” she said icily.

“You may need looking over, though.”

“Not by you,” she retorted.

How could a woman look so outrageously tempting with her jaw jutted out daring him to come after her? “You keep doing what you’re doing and eventually it’s going to come back and bite you.”

“I know the regs, O’Connor. Having the bartenders dance on the bar once in a while won’t get us shut down.”

“I’m not talking about the authorities. I’m talking about customers.”

She gave him a smug stare. “Do you want to know my take last night?”

“You don’t get it. Newport may be a summer town, but you’ve also got people who live here year-round.”

“So?”

“So the summer people are here four months max. The rest of the time you’re depending on the townies, plus some of the yachty set. You’re pitching your place to the summer crowd, but they’ll only keep you in business for a few months out of the year. And if you get a rep as a bar that makes the town look cheap, the townies won’t come.”

Mallory rolled her eyes. “Please. We’ve got universities in town. The students will keep me in business.”

Dev hadn’t told him she was half mule. “Don’t you know the first rule of college? Students always have the most money at the beginning of the semester. After a few weeks, you’ll notice that fewer and fewer of them will show. Your blue-collar guys, if they want to see women, they’ll go to a real strip bar. And you’re cutting yourself out of one whole part of your demographic if you set up the bar so that women won’t want to come alone.” He shook his head. “Not a smart move.”

Mallory studied him and her mouth began to curve. “You know, not every woman is turned off by the atmosphere in Bad Reputation. Some of them like it. We’ve got some regulars—they like the fact that the clientele is mostly men. They like watching the women dance—hell, sometimes they even get up on the bar themselves.” She traced a small pattern on the desk with one finger. “I don’t think using sex to sell the place is a dumb idea, I think it’s brilliant.”

Shay shook his head. “You’re not getting the big picture. You’re setting yourself up for trouble.”

Mallory stared at him for a long moment, then she stood up, the corners of her mouth tugged into a dangerous smile. “You think I’m trouble so far, honey? You don’t know the half of it.”

“Don’t try to turn this into some power game. Let’s just do the best thing for the bar and for your brother, not something that’s bad for both.” Shay watched her walk to the door.

“You want to see bad, sweet pea?” She stood with her hand on the doorknob, eyes flashing. “You just watch. I’ll show you how bad I can be.”

5

THE MIDMORNING SUN SHONE out of a cloud-dotted sky as Mallory ambled along the Newport waterfront, sipping at her coffee. She loved it like this, cool and quiet, empty of crowds. White-topped pilings marched along the edges of docks that were lined with boats bobbing on the blue water. Turn-of-the century buildings ran down some of the older wharfs. Along with the brick sidewalks, still damp from the rain the night before, it took her back to another time.

She settled on a bench that let her look along the cobbled streets and at the old post office, itself a historic landmark. Newport was a town that could be easy to love. Maybe she’d finally found a place she could stay.

She’d grown up first in Newark, then in a dilapidated Philly suburb. After turning sixteen and moving in with Dev, she drifted along from city to city, as they followed his itinerant carpenter lifestyle. Somehow, though, even after she’d grown old enough to strike out on her own, she never settled down. After she’d been in a place for a while she’d get restless, find herself looking for something more.

When the itch hit, she knew it was time to move on. It was part of her nature, maybe, the part that was perpetually dissatisfied with the status quo and craved something different. “Selfish girl. You’re just like your no-good mother,” she could hear her aunt Rue’s sour voice as though she were sitting next to her. “Always looking for something else.” Mallory squeezed her eyes closed.

Maybe the reason she moved so often was to get away from the suffocating sense of negativity that she’d grown up with, their already unstable household torn apart. She remembered the day her world flew apart so clearly: coming home from kindergarten, getting off the bus with Dev, walking into the house, knowing somehow that something was different.

Even at her young age, Mallory already knew better than to expect hugs and cookies when she got home. There’d been times when their mother was at work and times when they’d found her passed out on the couch, a bottle at her side. This time, though, it was different, with an emptiness, a silence that rang in the ears.

And a note on the kitchen table.

Everything after that was a blur—Dev on the phone, the sight of her father’s grief and the arrival of her pinch-faced aunt Rue. Then the move, leaving her friends and most of her belongings behind to crowd into Aunt Rue’s shabby bungalow in a suburb of Philadelphia. And the refrain that had echoed in her ears right up to the day she’d walked out the door with nothing but the clothes on her back: “You’re no good, just like your mother.”

Maybe if Aunt Rue hadn’t practically raised Mallory’s father, she wouldn’t have seen the drifter he married as an evil interloper. Maybe if Mallory had gotten her father’s light hair and blue eyes instead of her mother’s dramatic Mediterranean coloring, Aunt Rue wouldn’t have treated her as a stand-in for all that she hated. Maybe if once, just once, her father had stuck up for her, Mallory would have stood a chance.

“Enough,” Mallory muttered, opening her eyes to stare hard at the water. It was the past, and done. Dev had escaped as soon as he could, unable to continue watching their father’s slide into a silent alcoholism. When a freak dockside crane collapse had killed her father, Mallory figured she had two choices—stick around and see how bad it could get or find Dev and hope to God he’d take her in.

The fact that he had, without hesitation, made her eternally grateful to him. Almost grateful enough to get over wanting to strangle him for his great idea about Shay O’Connor.

Shay O’Connor…a frown settled over her features as she watched a boat come into the dock. How was she going to get him out of Bad Reputation? It was hers, she thought. She was the owner, Dev the silent partner, that had been the arrangement. Only Dev’d never been able to break himself of being her big brother. God knew he’d gotten her out of trouble enough times when they were kids that maybe she shouldn’t blame him for thinking she needed to be bailed out of this one.