My Guilty Pleasure

Well, she had once. An outrageous tsunami that she doubted she’d ever hear the end of, or stop feeling guilty about. She was a disgrace to bad girls everywhere.

Angrily, she stubbed out her cigarette and downed another swallow of her drink. What she should’ve done was told Lionel Kane III to take the case and shove it, along with her position at the firm. But she hadn’t. God help her, she knew she wouldn’t. Gilson v. Pierce was an important case and although she wasn’t thrilled to play second fiddle to the firm’s newest flavor of the month, at least she hadn’t been removed from the case. To make matters worse, the managing partner had rubbed salt into an already open wound. Since trial was starting in another week, she’d been told it was up to her to bring the new guy up-to-date.

She hadn’t thought her day could get any worse, but she’d been wrong as it continued to spiral downward. The judge had denied her request for bail for one of the girls she mentored from the halfway house who’d been arrested on a possession charge. Not only did Ginny Karnes have to spend the weekend in the county jail, but the nineteen-year-old now faced revocation of her probation, which could result in her serving out the remainder of a five-year suspended sentence behind bars.

Things became even more chaotic when her secretary had gone home sick, having been struck by a particularly nasty flu bug making the rounds of the office. A meeting with one of the firm’s clients had gone badly. Then, to top off the end of a really nasty day, an impromptu dinner with her sisters had resulted in the announcement that her younger sister, Katie, and Liam James, Boston’s most eligible bachelor, were now engaged.

She took a long drink of her whiskey. Not that she’d ever begrudge any of her sisters a chance at real happiness. She was thrilled for Katie, but her little sister’s engagement to Liam only served to remind her that she was still painfully single with no prospects in sight. She suspected Brooke and David weren’t far behind on the matrimonial trail, either, for as much time as the two had been spending together the past couple of months.

Tired of feeling sorry for herself, she grabbed a couple of ones from the change Mitch had left on the bar and wove her way through the increasingly growing Friday night crowd to the jukebox. A country ballad blared through the speakers, but she wasn’t in the mood for a cryin’-in-your-beer song. Tonight it had to be rock—the harder, the better.

She slid the bills into the slot, then scanned the choices before making her selections. She settled on the latest from Korn along with a few of her other favorite rock bands.

“Excuse me, but I think you dropped this,” a deep male voice said suddenly from beside her.

Joey let out a sigh and turned, a “buzz off” comment hovering on her lips, half expecting to find the burly biker again. Instead, she found a stranger with traffic-stopping looks holding up a five-dollar bill between his long, slender fingers.

Bedroom eyes, she thought instantly. Rich, like smooth, dark chocolate. The kind that promised lust and sin, two of her favorite pastimes. The “get lost, creep” she’d been about to deliver immediately evaporated from her vocabulary.

He had the kind of build she found impossible to resist, too. All wide shoulders and lean hips. The kind that held up to the promise of that lush, dark gaze. Better yet, the cocky half smile canting his mouth had her toes curling inside her cowboy boots.

One look at that mouth and her imagination took off like a shot. Despite her foul mood, she smiled.

Mentally, she attempted to calculate how long it’d been since she’d gotten laid. After counting back six months and not coming up with a single memorable experience, her answering smile faded slightly.

Six months? That had to be a record.

For her anyway.

Considering everything that had been going on in her life, both personally and professionally, it was no wonder she’d been lacking in male companionship lately. Her mother had passed away in July after a brutal battle with pancreatic cancer, followed by the discovery of a half sister given up for adoption that she, Brooke and Katie hadn’t known existed. Only last month they’d been delivered another shock when they’d learned Brooke, her older sister, was only her half sister biologically. Not that Brooke’s parentage made a lick of difference to her or Katie, but they’d still been stunned by the news, especially Brooke. The Winfields, her mother in particular, apparently had more skeletons lurking behind their closet doors than a centuries-old mausoleum had tucked behind its marble walls.

She shuddered to think what might fall out next.

“I don’t think it’s mine,” she finally said. She had a few folded twenties still tucked into the front pocket of her jeans, her AmEx card in her hip pocket just in case and her cell phone hidden in the inside pocket of her suede bomber-style jacket along with her keys. Her smile returned. “But nice try.”

His smile deepened, crinkling the corners of those drown-in-me-forever brown eyes. “Too bad it didn’t work.”

“Maybe you should’ve made it a hundred,” she replied sassily, then headed back to the bar with his laughter ringing in her ears. He had a nice laugh, she thought as she slid back onto the bar stool. Open. Free. Like he used it often.

God, was there anything sexier?

She signaled to Mitch for a refill. A stab of disappointment pierced her when the money-wielding stud didn’t follow her to make another attempt to pick her up. Probably for the best. Her plan to blow off steam didn’t include sex with an anonymous stranger, no matter how good-looking or intriguing. That reckless, she wasn’t.

Or was she?

Using the long mirror behind the bar, she searched for Hunky Warbucks. She finally found him, seated in the rear of the bar near the pool tables. A slow smile tugged her lips again. Lordy, but he was nice. Nice and hot.

Mitch arrived with her fresh drink and she downed half of the fiery liquid in one gulp. “Let me have some quarters for the pool table,” she said, tugging another twenty from her pocket.

Mitch obliged, albeit from the look of warning in his eyes, begrudgingly. “No trouble tonight, Joey.”

“What trouble?”

His unibrow hiked skyward again over a disbelieving expression. “Yeah, right. The last time you came in here and shot pool you caused a fight.”

“Oh, like it was my fault those two goons thought I was the prize?” she scoffed. “Just give me the quarters, Mitch.”

“Do me a favor and be specific this time if you want to make it interesting, okay?” His hazel eyes narrowed. “No hustling the customers or I’ll eighty-six you from the place.”

“I never hustle,” she said in her best blue-blooded tone as she hopped off the bar stool. She picked up her drink, tucked the cigarettes and a book of matches into her jacket pocket and winked at Mitch. “I just play to win, is all.”

2

HER ASS WAS the sweetest thing he’d seen in ages. After having lived for several years in Miami, Sebastian Stanhope considered himself an expert on the subject.

The blonde bent over the pool table and attempted to line up a difficult shot. Curvy, he thought, eyeing that luscious behind. And firm. He’d bet a month’s salary that her sweet and curvy and firm ass would fit his hands to perfection.

Sebastian tipped back the beer he’d been nursing for the better part of the night in an attempt to cool his climbing temperature. It proved to be an exercise in futility the minute the sassy blonde bent forward again to take aim and make the winning shot. Damn if she didn’t sink the eight ball into the corner pocket like a pro, and look mighty fine doing it, too.

“That’s another fifty you owe me, Bose,” she said to a rough-looking biker.

All night Sebastian had been watching her hustle anyone foolish enough to accept the challenge. The woman didn’t know how to lose. He liked that.

“Damn, Joey,” the big man complained good-naturedly. He slipped two twenties and a ten from the wallet chained to his dirty jeans. “How’d a babe like you get so good at pool?”

“I played a lot in college,” she said, pocketing her winnings. “But hey, don’t worry—” she chalked the tip of her cue stick “—I’ll give you a chance to win your money back.”

Bose shook his head and laid his cue over the table. “Nah,” he said, “you’re too rich for my blood.”

A concept Sebastian understood all too well. He might have the Stanhope name, but the family fortune never had been, and never would be, his. What money he’d accumulated, he’d done so the old-fashioned way. He’d worked his tail off, putting in twice the billable hours as most of the other associates in the Miami law firm he’d joined right out of law school, and had hired a damn good broker to build up his portfolio. He wasn’t rich by old money, Bostonian standards, but he no longer had to hustle pool games to survive, either.

He finished off his beer and stood. Sauntering over to the pool table, he laid a buck’s worth of quarters down on the polished edge of the table.

Bose inclined his head in Sebastian’s direction. “Looks like you’ve got a new pigeon waiting to be plucked.”

The blonde looked over her shoulder at him, no doubt to size up the competition. Her blue eyes sparkled with excitement as a slow, easy smile spread across her pretty face.

“You play?” she asked.

He was no pigeon, which she’d find out soon enough. “A little.” Not exactly a lie, but hardly the truth. He just hadn’t played much lately, in part because it hadn’t been necessary to his survival. There’d been a time, not all that long ago, when a wager at the tables had been the difference between sleeping in his car or making the rent.

A definite gleam entered her gaze. “Care to make it interesting?”

He’d expected no less. The woman was a shark at the tables and had to be a good two to three hundred bucks richer in the time he’d watched her play. Not that he suspected she needed the cash. The woman smelled like money, from the expensive cut of her hair down to a pair of high-quality, albeit scruffy, boots. And he’d spent enough time with his nose pressed to the glass to know the difference.

“What did you have in mind?” he asked her.

She reached into her hip pocket and peeled off five twenties. “Interesting enough for you?” She tossed the bills onto the black circled mark on the green felt of the pool table.