My Guilty Pleasure. Jamie Denton
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she should think about finding herself an apartment in the city. Despite the lack of real privacy she had by living on the family estate, the problem was, Joey actually liked living in the carriage house. She enjoyed the quiet, especially the view of the beautifully manicured grounds, particularly the English garden. During the warmer months, she often spent her weekend mornings outside on the little flagstone patio with her morning coffee, a toasted bagel slathered with cream cheese and the Times crossword puzzle. But Sunday mornings were her quiet time, something she looked forward to all week.
Later would be soon enough for quiet time. Tonight, loud was on her agenda. Rowdy, even. There was that crappy day to shake off, after all, and the sooner, the better.
Her day had started out like any other, until Molly had made her run late. Somehow her mischievous cat had managed to jump on top of the entertainment center. The stubborn feline had refused to come down, regardless of the fact she’d spent nearly ten minutes yowling in distress over her predicament.
A run in her nylons and a chipped nail later, she’d driven like a bat out of hell to get to the office in time for a meeting with one of the managing partners to discuss the status of an important case she had coming up for trial. She’d been stunned to learn that she wouldn’t be the lead trial attorney in the matter, but instead had been relegated to second chair, working with some new hotshot litigator the firm had spent weeks recruiting to head up their litigation department.
And what had she done about it? Not a damn thing. She’d very calmly expressed her disappointment, despite the fact she’d been seething inside. Not so much as a single forceful objection. Barely even a real protest, for that matter. She’d just sat there, saying nothing about the hours she’d spent preparing the case for trial, drafting motions and interviewing several witnesses, or the time she’d spent prepping her client for what promised to be a difficult cross-examination. She’d done what she’d been raised to do—be the good girl and not make any waves.
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