“If you don’t put that cigarette out this instant, I’m going to make you eat it.”

As the asshole with the Marlboro light gave me a slow once-over, I could read on his face what he was thinking. Barely over five feet, with curves but no discernable muscle, I wasn’t exactly the most intimidating person in the room, but he was new here, so I could excuse him for underestimating me.

What I couldn’t excuse was him smoking in my bar.

“Why don’t you head over to the bar and bring me a drink?” He winked at me – actually fucking winked at me – and then added, “And I wouldn’t say no to your number.”

“Listen here, you little fucker!”

Gilly Snowe shouldn’t have been any more intimidating than me, but something about her tended to scare the shit out of people. The smoker was no exception.

His eyes went wide, and he immediately stubbed out his cigarette and threw up his hands in front of him. “It’s out! Chill!”

I could’ve told him that was one of the absolute worst things he could have said to Gilly, but then I wouldn’t have had the pleasure of watching her grab the guy’s ear, yank him up out of his seat, and drag him over to the door.

“You want to smoke, you go outside to do it,” she said. “And you treat that woman with respect. After all, she owns the bar.”

The guy looked at me, and I shrugged. It wasn’t my fault he assumed I was a waitress. I may have owned the place, but I wasn’t too proud to work in it. Hell, I’d been working here for as long as I could remember. Definitely before it’d technically been legal, but since Dad had owned the place, and he’d kept me away from the alcohol, nobody’d said much of anything about it.

“Now that we’ve come to an understanding,” Gilly released the man’s ear, “I think you should buy everyone a round as an apology for stinking up the place.”

When Gilly got like this, it always made me wonder what sort of life she’d come from. For as long as I could remember, she’d been here, but I knew she wasn’t a native to Boston. I’d heard the story once or twice over the years, how she’d come to the bar for work and hadn’t left until my dad had given her a job. She was almost like the big sister I never had, and with Dad gone, she was pretty much my only family.

The pain in my chest was familiar after two years. It hadn’t gone away, just faded into the background where I could forget about it for a while.

No, not forget. I could never forget about my father. It’d been almost two years since he died, and whenever I thought about him, it felt like yesterday.

I looked around my bar – his bar – and smiled at each of the customers even though I knew it didn’t make it to my eyes. I looked like him. The same olive-green color, and the same cocoa-brown waves of hair too. I didn’t remember my mother, and I didn’t see any of her in my reflection either. But Dad? Him, I saw everywhere.

“Miss Reeve?” I turned to see the smoker standing in front of me, his cheeks red, eyes downcast. “I’m sorry.”

I nodded once, then headed back behind the bar. I didn’t usually come out onto the floor unless absolutely necessary, but when I saw that idiot lighting up in here, I hadn’t thought twice. Even back before all the smoking laws, my dad had banned smoking in the bar because he hadn’t wanted me breathing in all that crap.

“Fucking tourists,” Gilly said as she came by to pick up a tray of drinks. “Come in here, acting like they own the fucking place.” Her green eyes snapped angrily.

I reached across the bar and put my hand on her arm. “You know as well as I do that those tourists are keeping us afloat.”

“We have our regulars.” She pushed back the curls from her face and leaned on the bar.

“We do,” I agreed. “But they aren’t drinking as much as they used to, and the ones that are, aren’t drinking the same quality they used to.”

She opened her mouth like she was going to argue, because that was what Gilly did. She argued with me. But not right now because there wasn’t anything she could say. Because she knew it was true. I loved our regulars, loved the way they remembered my dad, but they weren’t making ends meet anymore.

“I need a Dark & Stormy, a French Connection, and a Park Avenue.” Ariene Sward threw the drink orders at me with a toss of her bottle-blonde hair. “And you might want to hurry it up.”

I would’ve been hurrying to do just that if she hadn’t told me to do it like she was my boss instead of the other way around. Ariene had only been a waitress here for a few months, but she liked to pretend that she could do whatever she wanted. At least once a week I had to do something to remind her that she wasn’t nearly as important as she thought she was. It sounded harsh, I knew, but she skated the line of what was acceptable behavior for an employee.

I purposefully pulled up two bottles of beer and reached around Ariene to hand them to Gilly. “Angus and Tommy look like they’re getting low over there.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Gilly’s words had an undercurrent of amusement, but she didn’t say anything else as she took the bottles.

I ignored the glare Ariene sent my way as I set about making the drinks she requested. I would’ve loved to fire her and find someone else, but I didn’t have the time or the energy to train another new waitress. That was another reason the bar’s finances were stretched thin. I couldn’t compete with other places willing and able to pay more.

“Here.” I put the last glass on the tray. “And when you’re done, pick up the extra glasses and take them back to the kitchen. If you need them, wash them up.”

Ariene puffed out an annoyed breath. “I thought you hired me as a waitress, not as a dishwasher. I didn’t apply to wash dishes.”

I raised an eyebrow and looked up at her. “If you read your terms of employment, you’d know that you were hired primarily as a waitress, but to also do other things as needed. The first one on that list was dishwashing.”

Her cheeks flushed, but she didn’t say anything. She wasn’t stupid, just spoiled. She knew she’d pushed me as far as she could today. Especially since Gilly was glaring at her from across the room. The two couldn’t stand each other, and I knew it wouldn’t take much provocation for Gilly to throw Ariene out on her ass.

And now, I wouldn’t be too disinclined to stop her.

“You look exhausted,” Gilly announced as she came behind the bar to pour her own drinks. “You need to get some sleep.”

I didn’t bother to respond. She was only six years older than my own twenty-four, but she’d been mothering me since the moment we first met. Making sure I ate, slept, took care of myself. Or she tried to as best she could anyway. I didn’t always listen.

“Hey, babe, got a cold one for me?”

If I hadn’t recognized his voice, I would’ve known he’d come in by the chill I could feel coming from Gilly.

Billy Outhwaite and I had been dating since I was a senior in high school. Seven years. Most people thought we’d be married by now, but I was glad he never popped the question. I would’ve had to say no. I loved him, sure, but I wasn’t sure I could live with him. We both liked our space.

“How did things go today?” I asked as he came up behind me and wrapped his arm around my waist. He kissed the top of my head and ground his crotch against my ass while I tried not to roll my eyes. We’d talked about his PDA before, but he always came back to babe, I can’t help it if you get me hot and bothered, and any arguments about appropriate public behavior got lost in him turning the whole conversation into how I just didn’t understand how much he needed to show me he loved me.

“Not bad,” he said as he kissed the side of my neck. “Benji said he’d put in a good word for me with his boss.”

I clenched my jaw and stepped to the side, moving out of his embrace. Billy had been unemployed for nearly eight months now, and every time I asked him how the job search was going, it was like this. He’d say something non-committal, and then talk about some friend of his who was going to ‘put in a good word with his boss.’

I reminded myself that all relationships had their ups and downs, then I smiled and got back to work.