Hard Checked (Ice Kings #4) - Stacey Lynn Page 0,13
my Jeep Wrangler. The garbage bags filled with my clothes I’ve tossed into the back will take me a day and a half to finish at the laundromat, so I pick up the phone and call my dad while I’m on my way to his place a few miles away.
“Hey Dad… any chance I can swing by and cook you a good meal before you head into the bar?”
He laughs into the phone. “Let the laundry get away from you again?”
He knows me well.
“Something like that.” I can’t even see out my rearview window the bags are piled so high.
“Anytime baby. You know that. Besides, I already have a roast in the oven.”
“Even better.” My dad’s cooking is kick-ass.
My dad is one of the best men I’ve ever met. He’s always seemed to understand what I need in my life before I realized I needed it. When Evan and I told him we were separating and divorcing, that we realized we’d made a mistake, I can still see the way his shoulders slumped with relief. When I decided to pack a large traveling backpack and go see Eastern Europe, those shoulders had tightened, with that fear and worry I assume all awesome fathers have for their little girls. Then he nodded, smiled that scared, small smile of his, and said, “Go then. If that’s what you need to fuel your soul.”
That’s my dad. Always encouraging. Always understanding. When my mom died in a car accident during a brutal rainstorm on her way home from her work at a nearby hospital, my dad never once faltered in his love and support for me. I would hear him crying at night, missing the greatest woman I’ve ever known. His love for her was a palpable thing, as was his grief. Yet during the day, his red, sad eyes would crinkle when he smiled at me. He made the worst period of our lives only slightly bearable because of his strength and love.
He took what they always wanted for me—for me to be happy, to find my passion and my drive and live it to the fullest—and he never once tried to hold me back. He’s always the guy I can go to. I can talk to him about anything and everything. Even boys. Somehow, he made that okay and safe for me. He never once balked at anything girly, like buying me tampons or asking if I needed to go on birth control.
He did all the things moms do and as a guy, a man’s man with a slight beer gut and running a rundown bar that was his pride and joy, I always came first.
George Barnes likes the simple things in life, and he wants me to have everything I want and need.
It’s what makes me feel like dirt for hiding the fact Sebastian spent the night in my apartment when he asks if Sebastian got in a cab all right that night.
“I should have known Steve would call you.”
“You know he doesn’t like you being alone at the bar with customers.”
“Yeah. I know.” I slide my fork through my dad’s pot roast. Somehow, he makes a simple meal so tender and juicy, the meat melts in your mouth. “But Steve should also know I’m comfortable with it, and I’m a pretty good shot with the gun. He is the one who taught me how to use it.”
We keep a nine-millimeter handgun behind the bar, loaded. My dad hates the reminder I might need to use it someday. But in all honesty, I’ve never been frightened when I’m there late. Our bar is south of Charlotte, skimming the suburbs. It’s off the beaten path, but not an unsafe path, and most of the men who come in are guys like my dad. Many of whom I’ve known since birth. Also, the Ice Kings. Obviously, we have other customers, but while we turn a decent profit now, I know that if Dad hadn’t paid off the mortgage on the building right around the time I graduated college, we’d be struggling to stay afloat.
I like the slowness of it. The family feel of it since I know most everyone. Charlotte’s one of the top fifteen largest cities in the country, and yet our bar has a small-town, know everyone who enters, feel to it.
“You give any more thought to what you want to do now?”
Not this again. He’s been asking me for the last few months if I’m looking for other jobs. I