As Bad As Can Be

Shay walked in through the open door and into controlled bedlam.

The music throbbed so loud that the walls seemed to vibrate with it. Colored spotlights swirled above a long bar that ran the length of the room. At least, he figured it was a bar. It was difficult to tell because of the wall of people in front of it. And above their heads he saw the two women.

They danced up and down the bar, whipping their hair, swaying to the music, throwing in the occasional bump and grind. The crowd of mostly young men whistled and hollered at every shift of the shapely hips above them. Blond and redheaded, the two played off each other, now dancing in synch, now doing their own moves, strutting down to the brass poles at either end of the bar to spin around.

The half-naked rumor was definitely an exaggeration. They wore hip-hugging pants and skimpy tops designed to flaunt cleavage and tanned midriffs. Nothing more scandalous than you’d see in the average shopping mall. Shay gave a wry smile. Perhaps Colin was right about him being married to the pub—the duo on the bar were designed to tease, but to him they looked harmless, more like sorority babes on spring break than anything else.

It seemed to work for the rest of the clientele, though, who surged whooping and cheering against the bar, completely involved in every movement. The redhead crouched down on the bar with a bottle of tequila and poured it into the open mouth of a frat boy who was leaning his head back, swallowing furiously while his buddies counted to ten. Then he straightened up, grinning, holding both hands over his head like a prize fighter.

Shay sighed. Even a half hour of this was going to be too much. It was going to be a long night if he had to hang around more than a few minutes.

A CROWDED BAR, that was what she liked to see, Mallory thought as she poured drinks, her hands an efficient blur of motion. Above her, Kayla swung her long blond hair and danced with redheaded Belinda, while Liane and Michelle worked next to her to pass drinks to patrons.

The buzz of the register was its own seductive music, especially after the lean weeks just past. If she could keep the bar full like this on a regular basis, her financial concerns would be only a memory.

“I’m going to take a quick walk around,” she said to Michelle and ducked under the walkthrough. Part of running her own place meant being responsible for every aspect of it, knowing what was happening outside as well as in. A good manager knew what was going on in her establishment.

She threaded through the crowd around the bar. A glance outside told her the admission line had doubled from when she’d seen it earlier in the night. “How’s the traffic look, Benny?” she asked her doorman in an undertone.

“We’re still at about three-quarters capacity,” he answered.

She could let them all in, but a line created buzz. Mallory checked her watch. “Keep the line at about six people until eleven, then let everybody in up to capacity.”

Benny grinned. “Whatever you say, chief.”

EVEN AS ONE OF THE DANCERS stepped down to go back to tending bar, another jumped up to take her place. Bored, Shay stepped away from the crowd at the bar and began to look around. The space was bigger than it looked on first impression. It stretched back beyond the bar area and widened out into a section filled with a couple of scaled down pool tables and some tables and chairs in an area that could double as a bar or a dance floor. Currently it was only lightly populated; everybody wanted to be by the bar, where the action was.

He grabbed a stool by the wall and sat down to watch the chaos. The servers behind the bar were feverishly pouring drinks. Definitely designed to appeal to the frat boy crowd, he decided, surveying the clientele. It made an impact all right, but for how long? This kind of novelty had to wear off sooner or later. And if it didn’t, what kind of a clientele was it likely to draw into the area once word spread?

The song changed and the blond bartender leaped back onto the bar. Shay scanned the crowd and shook his head. Dev, old buddy, you’ve gotten yourself into a king-size mess. Then his gaze fastened on a woman by the door and he froze.

She was, quite simply, stunning. Beautiful in the larger-than-life way of models and movie stars, in a way that seemed to suck in all available light. She wore a snug leather miniskirt and a short, white tank top that clung to her and exposed a tanned midriff where a gold navel ring glinted. A river of thick, dark hair tumbled down her back. Amid all the noise, it was as though for a moment he was in a cone of silence.

And all thoughts of Dev flew out of his head.

2

MALLORY STOOD BY THE DOOR, scanning the crowd for trouble out of habit. Some nights, the torqued up, liquored up patrons could turn on one another like snapping dogs—a possibility that justified having a second bouncer—but tonight they were content to be entranced by the dancer/bartenders, enticed enough to buy them drinks, tantalized enough to make passes that never succeeded. The girls knew the drill: flirt but don’t fall. Every guy who walked through the door, of course, assumed that he’d be the exception, and so they were happy to stand in line to get in, just for the chance of seeing and talking to the dancers. It was the source of Bad Reputation’s recent success.

Mallory took another glance across the room, and in the sea of faces, one leaped out at her. He wasn’t entranced—far from it. If anything, he looked bored. He didn’t nod his head to the music, but sat against the wall with a kind of stillness, the dim lighting shadowing his deep-set eyes. The beginnings of a beard darkened his jaw and encircled his mouth. And it was a beautiful mouth, she couldn’t help noticing even from this distance.

At the bar, the noise of the crowd spiked as Kayla and Belinda danced together. It was then that she saw it.

A smirk. A head shake. A faintly supercilious look that spread across his face as he took in the scene.

Irritation flashed through her. On its heels came her innate practicality—a bored guy wasn’t going to stick around and buy drinks, and he sure wasn’t going to recommend the place to friends. Part of the path to success was sending everyone out happy and ready to return. Maybe she needed to do something about him.

Just then, he turned and looked at her. The eye contact shivered through her veins, stopping her dead. Those eyes pulled at her in a way that made everything recede until she was only conscious of them and of the sudden thud of her heartbeat in her ears.

Then someone at the bar rang the cow bell signifying a tequila shot and she snapped out of it. Magic eyes or no, he was just another customer, and the thing to do with customers was jolly them into spending money. She hooked a circular tray from behind the bar and walked toward him.

The closer she drew, the more clearly she could see his face, the black brows and the slashes of the high cheekbones that gave him something of the artist-in-a-garret look, an impression enhanced by the white poet’s shirt he wore. His hair appeared disordered, as though he raked his hands through it regularly. But it was his mouth that drew her, full and sculpted with equal parts humor and anticipation hovering around the corners.

She gave her head an impatient shake. This wasn’t about getting distracted by a pretty face, it was about turning a wall sitter into a paying customer. It was time to pull out the charm, blast him with sex. He’d be buying drinks before he knew what hit him. Three, she decided, looking at him under her lashes. He’d buy at least three before he walked out.

Mallory stopped and fixed him with a sultry smile. “Welcome to Bad Reputation, sugar. What’s your pleasure?”

SHAY BLINKED. SHE WAS HIS pleasure, if he was honest, though he had a pretty good idea that she wouldn’t be all that impressed with that response. He’d watched her move across the room in a lithe, flowing walk that managed to be far more provocative than any hip sway might be. Why she’d decided to come his way, he wasn’t sure, but he was certainly interested in finding out. Up close, she was everything the glance from afar had promised and more. In another century, she would have had men dueling over that aristocratic beauty, vying to tease a smile from that wide, mobile mouth with its full lower lip.

One slim brow arched as she looked down at him. “I get the impression from the way you were looking that we’re not doing a very good job entertaining you.”

Shay smiled. “Quite the contrary. I’m very entertained right now. And I’ll take a beer when you get a chance. You have Guinness?”

“No Guinness, at least not yet. We’ve got Bud, Bud Light, Miller, and Heineken.”

“Heineken, then,” Shay said. She was in a whole different class from the rest of the bartenders in the place. Whoever had hired her had known what they were doing.

She leaned over to collect bottles from the shelf behind him, setting them on the tray. “Is this your first time at Bad Reputation?”

Shay nodded, watching her. She had the kind of face that sucked a man in, that made it impossible to look away, because the minute you did, you started wondering if anyone could really be that beautiful. “Just stopped by to see if what I’ve heard was true.” Not just beauty, he thought. Sex. Something in the curve of her lips and the tilt of those dark eyes suggested abandonment, disregard for rules. Come with me, they said, and I’ll show you things you’ve never even thought of.

“And what had you heard?” The brunette propped her tray on the shelf and looked at him under her lashes.

His mouth curved. “Something about half-naked women dancing on the bar.”

“Well, you’ve got to admit, they’re on the bar and they’re dancing.” She glanced over her shoulder to where the blonde was whipping her hair to the music.

“Like college girls having a wild night.”

“You’re calling us girls?” She smiled, but her eyes narrowed a trifle in warning.

“Not you, darlin’.” He ran his gaze from her long, smooth legs to the sleek curve of hip and waist, to the dark hair tumbling down her back, and up to that fabulous face. “You’re a whole different class from girls.”

A little buzz went through Mallory at his look, and she gave herself a mental shake. She might be giving the appearance of flirting, but she was supposed to be working a customer. It definitely didn’t do to get caught up in it. “And here I thought I’d heard about every line out there.”

“I didn’t intend it as a line.” His teeth gleamed, and something of the pirate came out in him then. “Did you want it to be?”

For the first time in years, she found herself at a loss for words. To buy time, she picked up her tray. “Let me go get you that beer,” she said, and turned for the bar.

It was something worth thinking about, that he’d thrown her off her stride. It wasn’t just the good looks—she’d had plenty of handsome men come on to her. There was something about him, some command of his surroundings that made him far more compelling than the usual pretty face. To allow her system time to settle, she stopped for a few more orders on her way in.

When she returned with his beer, he still sat loose and relaxed, observing his surroundings with an almost purposeful air.

“Miss me?” she asked teasingly.

“Every second was an eternity,” he said dryly.

Mallory laughed. “I’ll bet.”