Sugar by Jenna Jameson & Hope Tarr

Author:Jenna Jameson & Hope Tarr [Jameson, Jenna]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Published: 2013-10-21T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

Clancy’s in Astoria was a cop bar where the Guinness was poured with a perfect head, the Jameson shots came as a double, and the city’s ban on smoking in public places was seen as more of a misguided suggestion. Sarah found her father at the brass-railed bar, a stein of half drunk dark beer and an empty shot glass beside it.

Picking her way through the plumes of smoke mushrooming from the closely packed tables, Sarah walked up. “Hi, Pop.”

Her dad didn’t stir. “Look what the west wind blew in,” he said, taking a sip of his beer.

She settled onto the empty stool beside him. “I stopped by the house, but your neighbor said you’d gone out. I figured I’d try you here.” She’d called first, but it seemed his land line was disconnected once again.

Keeping his gaze straight ahead, he asked, “To what do I owe this honor?”

“I told you I was coming back in town.” She’d left a voice message for him before leaving California, which he’d never returned. Now she wondered if he’d ever gotten it.

He snorted, stabbing his cigarette into the ash tray. “You’ve been back how many weeks is it?”

Despite the booze he regularly knocked back, he had a mind like a steel trap, as well as cop connections just about everywhere. Whether or not he’d gotten her message, he likely knew down to the hour when she’d set foot in the city.

“I’ve been . . . settling in.”

She deliberately avoided bringing up Liz. Mentioning her, any friend, would only trigger an interrogation, starting with how they knew one another. Once she admitted they’d met on a film shoot, his ears would close to everything else.

He gestured to behind the bar, the liquor shelves filled with dusty bottles and backed by mirrored glass. “You want something?”

Sarah hesitated. I want your love. “A Guinness, I guess.” She wasn’t much of a beer drinker, at least not anymore, but the wine at Clancy’s would come from a box, and she’d never had much of a head for liquor.

He beckoned to the bartender, the low light catching on his retirement watch. Thirty years on the force from patrol cop to detective first-grade. Unfortunately playing the ponies had blown through his pension, along with her mother’s small savings. “One Guinness, no shot, and put it on my tab.”

“So, you back for good?”

Sarah shrugged. “I’m not sure, maybe.”

He let out a sharp laugh. “A definite maybe, huh? That’s good, Sarah, real good. I can see you haven’t changed.”

Sarah stiffened. “Neither have you.”

Except that he’d grown older, a lot older. The last time she’d seen him was Christmas five years ago. His thick thatch of hair was all gray now, and his slope-shouldered posture spoke of too many days spent like this one, hunched over a bar. Seeing him again, she didn’t feel any of the anger she’d expected and only a little of the hurt. What she mostly felt was sad. He might feel she’d pissed away her life, but she felt the same about him.

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