As Bad As Can Be (5 page)

“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 scan
dalize 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.”

T
HE 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.

The thing was, though, she didn't need to be bailed out. She knew exactly what she was doing and while her long-term plan maybe didn't call for dancing girls on the bar, the short-term sure did. So now she was saddled with a watchdog who seemed dead set on complicating everything she tried to do.

How to get out of it, that was the question. Much though she itched to tell Dev to take a hike, she simply couldn't do it. It was out of the question: she owed him too much. She could accomplish the same thing
by getting Shay to quit, or at least getting him under her sway. There had to be a way to distract Shay from his purpose. No one was perfect, not even him.

She took a sip of her coffee and stared along the waterfront. It was too bad that she had to be at odds with O'Connor when he was so purely and simply gorgeous. Even the previous day when she'd been spitting mad at him, some part of her brain had still registered the magnetism of that carelessly handsome face, the fascination of those strong, long-fingered hands. It made it hard to hate him properly when her libido was busily imagining just what it would be like to have those hands all over her, to be able to taste that delectable mouth of his at her leisure, to be able to…

She sighed and leaned an arm on the back of the bench as she pondered. Then a slow smile began to spread over her face. Perhaps there was a way out of this after all, a way she could have her cake and eat it, too. Maybe the thing to do was seduce him. Seduce him, she thought with an unholy flutter in her gut. If she did it right, she'd have him so focused on her that the last thing he'd think about would be the bar. He was such a straight-up guy that if he slept with her, he might even give up on the whole watch dog thing entirely. Either way, she couldn't lose.

But the best part was that for a while, at least, she could have her fill of him. Sex without complications, for once in her life. After all, he could hardly give her a tumble and explain to Dev they'd been sleeping together. No, they could have a purely physical fling that would satisfy both of them. After what she'd felt and tasted and touched that night in the bar, she could say that with full confidence.

Mallory got up and began to walk in high good humor. She'd head back to the office, finish some of the paperwork and go find— She froze, staring down the street at none other than Shay O'Connor, stepping out of a shop on Thames Street and walking away from her. Oh, it was too perfect, she thought, dragging her hands through her hair to tousle it and pinching color into her cheeks. Yep, sometimes things were just meant to be.

 

S
HAY TURNED AT THE SOUND
of his name to see Mallory Carson walking toward him, leggy and quick in jeans and a jacket, her loose hair flying in the breeze. She was off limits, he reminded himself, but that didn't mean he had to like it.

He eyed her. After the way she'd stomped out of his office the previous day, he did an automatic check for weapons before relaxing.

“I thought that was you,” she said as she walked up. “Doing some shopping?” There was an energy humming around her that made him uneasy. Something in her manner suggested that he was exactly what she was looking for, and he was pretty sure that wasn't the case.

“An errand or two. How about you?”

“I just like walking along the waterfront in the morning. Clears my head.” She tossed her paper coffee cup in a nearby trash can. “I also wanted to look into some of the restaurants along here. We've got a full kitchen and we're licensed to serve food. I'm trying to figure out how deep I want to get into it.” She looked at him speculatively. “I'd be curious what you think.”

The words sounded a little stilted. Given the tenor
of their previous conversation, it was hard to believe that she'd had such a dramatic change of heart. He gave her a skeptical look. “What happened to the woman who wanted to strangle me yesterday?”

She shrugged and glanced away. “Maybe I'm resigned to my fate.”

Somehow she didn't strike him as the type to see reason that quickly. Based on what he'd seen, he was pretty sure she had a stubborn streak a mile wide and two miles deep. “You suddenly saw the light?”

“Don't look so suspicious. Cut me some slack.”

“Hey, I'm all for epiphanies.” And he wasn't born yesterday. Something was up, he could smell it.

Mallory stopped in front of the doorway of a café that doubled as a tourist magnet.

“The Brickworks?” He raised an eyebrow.

“Look, let me buy you lunch and make it up to you. We can talk about my plans. Unless you have to be somewhere.”

He told himself it was curiosity. It wasn't that he couldn't make himself walk away from that fabulous face while her scent rose around him. He shrugged. “I've got time.”

“Great.”

Inside, they nabbed one of the few remaining tables. Even on weekdays, the Brickworks was a powerful draw.

Mallory spread her napkin over her knees. “Good thing I'm not starting a restaurant. I'd hate to go up against some place as entrenched as this.”

“Newport's a tough market, not least because it changes throughout the year. It's easy to stumble.” The way he'd stumbled for her.

“Hopefully I won't do too much of that.” She
opened the menu and scanned it. “I know food can be a hassle of its own, but I figure it's a good way of keeping clientele from going somewhere else. We get 'em to spend more money and with food in their stomachs, they'll be able to drink longer.”

“What are you going to serve?”

“I haven't thought it through all that much at this point. Bar food, I suppose, with three or four obvious crowd pleasers. We don't want to put a lot of resources into it when we're just getting started.”

“You definitely want to go into it cautiously, the way you are. I'm surprised. I'd have pegged you for the…ambitious type,” he said. “No offense.”

Mallory slanted him a look. “None taken. Now, see, I already had you down as the cautious type. Doesn't it ever get frustrating, though?”

“What do you mean?” He glanced up at her.

“Being cautious all the time. Don't you ever get the urge to say the hell with it and just go for what you want?”

For a brief, inescapable moment, his imagination painted exactly what he wanted—her, hot and steamy and naked against him.

The waitress interrupted them to take their orders and Shay jolted. He watched the mischievous look flicker over Mallory's face as she ordered an array of bar food.

“Onion rings, potato skins, jalapeño poppers and French fries? Are you paid up on your medical insurance?” he asked dryly.

Fun glimmered in her eyes. “I'm doing research. Who knows, I might wind up stealing their chef.”

“Their chef's name is Andre and he's the son-in-law of the owner. He's not going anywhere.”

“How'd you know that?”

“I tried to steal him two years ago,” he said blandly.

The waitress set down their drinks and Mallory stripped the paper off her straw. “So we were talking about going for it, I believe. And do you ever?”

“Rarely. It's generally a luxury I can't afford.”

Mallory gave him a sidelong glance. “How can such a gorgeous, sexy man be such a hopeless stuffed shirt?” she asked aloud, pouring a packet of sugar into her tea. Flicking a glance at him, she licked the stray crystals off her fingertip, sucking on it for a moment, her eyes on his.

Shay shifted in his chair, suddenly aware that his thoughts had nothing to do with the question of Mallory's bar. “Don't be so sure you have me pegged. I might surprise you.”

“Like you surprised me by coming on to me at the bar when you were working for Dev? Relax,” she waved him down, “I've forgotten it. More or less.” She gave him an enigmatic smile, then looked around the restaurant. “So is the Brickworks competition for you? It goes after the family crowd like O'Connor's does.”

He moved his shoulders and tried not to think of the way she'd looked licking her fingers like a smug cat going after cream. “O'Connor's is more about local people than visitors.”

“Did you plan it that way?” Now her face just showed curiosity, and he relaxed a little.

“My great-grandfather did. He started it as a place for the Irish workers to feel at home. There weren't so many places like that back then.”

Mallory's eyes widened a bit in surprise. “O'Connor's has been around since your great-grandfather's time?”

Shay watched her, a faint smile on his face. “Look around next time you come in. The building's been there since the turn of the century. We've kept it up.”

“I'll say. You really love it, don't you?”

“It's part of our history, part of who we are as a family.” But the other part of it, what he only rarely admitted to himself, was that lately he'd been feeling suffocated. He'd lived for O'Connor's since he'd turned sixteen. Lately he'd been itching for something more.

“So your great-grandfather started it, then your grandfather took over, then your father, then you?”

“Not quite. My father was never a part of the chain.”

“Ah.” Her eyes brightened. “A black sheep? I have a soft spot for black sheep.”

“Sort of. He decided he wanted to be a lawyer instead of pull pints of stout. I took over from my grandfather when I was twenty. I'd been working for him for about four years by then, so I knew the business.”

“You've been running a seven-day-a-week business since you were twenty?”

“My grandfather consulted at first, but he was in his seventies by then, so it was definitely time.”

“No wonder you're so sedate,” she murmured, propping her chin on one hand. “Did you ever have a chance to get wild at all?”

“Some.” When he'd been able to get away, which hadn't been all that often. “But we had a tradition to keep going and I was entrusted with it. That's part of what Newport is about is history and tradition. You have to respect that.”