LITMIR.BIZ

      1

      “HEY THERE, BABE. You come here often?”

      By the sheer grace of what remaining patience she had left after a particularly rotten day, Joey Winfield resisted the urge to flip the bird at the scruffy biker with the tired old pickup line. She was in no mood for flirtations, harmless or otherwise. She’d come to Rosalie’s, a roadhouse located on the outskirts of Boston, for one reason—to blow off some steam. She’d wanted a place where no one knew where she came from, that she was one of “the” Boston Winfields. A place where the whiskey wasn’t watered down and where she could get rowdy if she wanted to or just sit quietly and contemplate the bottom of several empty glasses of bourbon. At Rosalie’s, no one would judge her every move.

      Maybe she’d even kick a little ass at the pool tables tonight. She was in that kind of mood.

      She manufactured a saccharine sweet smile for the biker blocking her path. “Not as often as you comb your hair,” she said saucily as she sidestepped the bear of a man and continued toward the bar before he realized he’d just been insulted.

      Sidling up to the long mahogany bar scarred with age, she signaled for Mitch, the bartender. Perched on an empty black vinyl bar stool, she hooked the heels of her scuffed cowboy boots on the chrome rung. “Jack. Neat,” she ordered when the bald-as-a-cue-ball bartender, who made the scruffy biker look puny in comparison, worked his way down the bar to her.

      Mitch’s bushy unibrow winged upward at her request, but he didn’t offer comment as he set a glass in front of her and poured a generous two fingers’ worth of whiskey. Hard drinking was a staple of Rosalie’s and Joey had every intention of doing some herself.

      She fingered a twenty from the front pocket of her figure-hugging jeans and slapped it on the bar. “Better make it a double.” She slid the bill toward Mitch. “And a pack of Marlboro Lights while you’re at it.”

      That unibrow rose another fraction as he snagged a pack of cigarettes from the rack near the register. “Bad day?” he asked, tipping the bottle of JD again.

      More like a bad year.

      “You have no idea.” She took a swig of Jack Daniel’s, then tamped the pack on the bar before ripping it open and withdrawing a cigarette. Her throat would feel like seared meat come morning, but she didn’t much care. She had a serious edge in need of smoothing out and could use all the help she could get in that department.

      “How’s your sister?” About a year ago she’d met Mitch through his sister, Lissa, who’d been a resident of the halfway house where Joey mentored troubled girls. The bald, tattooed bartender was capable of keeping the roughest customers in line but was a giant marshmallow where his little sister was concerned.

      “Keeping her nose clean, last I heard,” he said, offering her a light. “Phoenix is a good place for her.”

      “Glad to hear it,” she said. Lissa had been a mixed-up kid who’d gotten in with the wrong crowd and ended up in trouble, despite her big brother’s efforts to the contrary. She’d served three months in County on an accessory conviction to a B&E, then had been released to the halfway house for the first six months of a three-year probationary period. Joey had been the one to convince Lissa’s probation officer to allow the girl to relocate to Phoenix to live with an aunt for a fresh start. It pleased her to hear the situation was working out well for Lissa.

      “Anything else?” Mitch asked.

      She shook her head and drew on the cigarette. “Thanks, I’m good.”

      Mitch nodded then took off to answer the call for more drinks from a pair of weary-looking men at the other end of the long bar. She took another sip of whiskey, then glanced around at the smattering of tables. She didn’t recognize any of the patrons, but then she wasn’t exactly a regular at Rosalie’s, either.

      She supposed she could’ve gone to Chassy, the trendy bar on Boston’s south side that her half sister, Lindsay Beckham, owned, but she wasn’t in the mood to be sociable or hang with the girls. Conversation wasn’t high on her list of priorities tonight. In fact, the last thing she wanted tonight was to be Josephine Winfield, born with a silver spoon up her privileged ass. Tonight she wanted to just be Joey, a girl looking to raise a little hell.

      Just once she wanted to be herself and not worry about the consequences.

      A sardonic smile twisted her lips before she drew heavily on the Marlboro. What a concept, she thought, blowing out a plume of blue smoke. But who did she think she was kidding? She’d been so tied up in being what everyone else wanted her to be, or thought she should be, she’d forgotten what the real Joey was even like. Maybe she never really knew, but one thing she did know with absolute certainty—she was so sick to death of pretending to be the good girl she could scream.

      But that didn’t mean she didn’t enjoy a few minor rebellions on occasion. Like Molly, the high-priced Bengal cat she’d bought because it kept her Great Aunt Josephine and her snooty daughter, Eve, who were both severely allergic, from dropping in on her unannounced. Or the sleek fire-engine red sports car she drove, which made her Grandmother Winfield frown with disapproval whenever she buzzed past the main house to the carriage house, located on the extensive grounds of the Winfield family home. But those were the only acts of defiance her family was aware of…of that she made certain. Her grandmother and great aunt’s blue hair would turn a shocking shade of purple if they knew that deep down, their little

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