Dangerous Tease (The Layton Family 3)

Two, unlike most of the waitresses, her twenties were a fast-fading memory.

And three, she'd just whacked a high roller and kicked him in the nuts.

Desperation tightened around her neck with each step on the short walk from the locker room to Clive's office. She had better odds at the slot machine than she did sweet-talking her boss into giving her more hours. Good luck with that.

He answered her knock before Josie's knuckles even broke contact with the door. A red blotch colored his Adam's apple. Clive only got the hives when he'd been on the business end of a reaming.

“What a way to end your last shift.” He scurried around his desk and flopped into his chair.

“About that—”

He held up his hand. “You already handed in your notice. This was your last day.”

Even though she’d expected it, her stomach sank. “Something came up. I changed my mind, can't you—”

“Jimmy 'Snips' Esposito went to the top. Shit, he dialed the CEO before he even hit the front door. They assured him tonight was your last night.”

“But he grabbed me!”

“He disputes that and no one witnessed the incident.”

“The security cameras—”

“Won't have seen anything. They never see anything when it comes to him.” He shrugged his shoulders. “I'm sorry, Josie, but it is what it is.”

Her body ached, every organ and limb hurt. A bone-deep sense of exhaustion swamped her. She didn't even have the energy to be pissed off. Everything had tumbled down on top of her like a house of cards. Just like L.A. The memory of that betrayal struggled to emerge from a lockbox in the back of her mind but she had enough practice ignoring the pain to force it back. She'd find a way out of this mess. She'd done it before. She'd do it again.

Josie spun on her heel and walked out the door, leaving her tacky-ass uniform in the duffle bag on the floor in front of Clive's desk.

Chapter Two

Twenty minutes later, Josie sank back onto a barstool near the casino's off-track betting room, desperate for a little girl talk with her best friend, Mike, who was tending bar. He’d handed her the usual vodka gimlet and hurried off to tend the customers at the other end of the bar. She twisted away from the raucous trio of blondes at the other end of the room whose last sober moment must have been hours ago—if not days.

Lucky them, everything was perfect in their lives. Damn, she sure sounded like a bitter little muffin with a forty thousand dollar debt tied around her neck. Must be the gimlets. She snorted at her own bad joke.

The first crisp, ice-cold vodka with a hint of lime in the had gone down way too easy. Josie really didn't care as she accepted the second that Mike slid her way. She'd already left Cy four voicemails. Her texts had gone unanswered. No one in the family had heard from him in a week. Not since Cy had e-mailed that he'd hooked up with a construction crew for a two-week job in Reno. Her twin vibe would be going mad if something had happened to him, like it had when he was shot in Iraq. She'd known hours before the call came. But this time, baby bro just didn't want to talk.

“Hell, if I owed pond scum forty thousand, I'd probably be ignoring my phone too,” she mumbled into her drink.

Still, a nugget of worry sat like a brick in her stomach. Why would Cy need to borrow money, let alone that much?

Stymied in her search for the answers, she took refuge in another gulp of vodka. After everything that had happened in the past few hours, some adult beverages and a bitch session with Mike were in order. Hashing it out with her best friend always seemed to set things clear in her head.

She'd accomplished step one, having a pair of vodka gimlets. Step two had been a bust because of the bachelorette party. The small casino bar was normally deserted at this time since most games had finished hours ago, but tonight Mike had slid the second gimlet her way then gone back to making a trio of pink martinis. He set the drinks on the bar in front of the flirty blondes and made his way toward Josie on the opposite end.

“Sorry, doll, you know what bachelorette parties are like—high maintenance but with an equally big tip. All I have to do is pour the drinks and bat my eyelashes.”

“Don't you feel the least bit guilty?”

He shrugged. “For what?”

“Flirting with horny drunk girls when you're gay?”

Mike arched a perfectly shaped eyebrow and blew her a kiss with lips that had never touched female flesh, except to kiss his mother on the cheek at Thanksgiving. “Honey, when I flirt, it is a form of high art. They could care less who I go home with.”

Judging by the lust reflected in the bride-to-be's glassy eyes, she just might.

“Oh, Mikey, I need some help.” The woman tilted her head and pouted.