CEO Daddy (Crescent Cove 6.50)

Whoever had called me smart?

A car and a Jeep sat in the lot. Only one of them appeared to have been running in this century.

A blinking neon sign above the weathered door read Sharkey’s. Did he own the beater car? Or was he the owner of the Jeep? I couldn’t imagine anyone picking that name for a watering hole if it wasn’t their own.

Tentatively, I turned the door handle.

Devil, don’t desert me now.

I stepped inside the murky darkness of a rather ordinary drinking establishment. Tinny oldies music piped from unseen speakers, and the lone TV high on the wall was tuned to the sports highlights.

Only one patron sat at the bar. He wore a ball cap and a heavy down vest with a flannel shirt beneath. He didn’t look away from the TV as I grabbed a stool.

“Hey.”

He finally turned my way. “Hey. You lost too?”

The guy seemed around my age, give or take half a decade. I’d expected him to be some wizened old fisherman, judging from the way he was hunched over his frosty beer mug.

His mostly empty beer mug.

“You could say that. Is there a bartender in this joint?”

“Quit yer bitching.” A bubblegum-chomping redhead strolled out of the back on high enough platform heels that I hoped she never encountered spills. “Whatcha want?”

This was definitely not my usual sort of place.

“An old-fashioned, please.”

She looked back at the wall of bottles behind her, selected one, and plunked it down in front of me. “Here you go.” Then she disappeared in the back.

“She’s not the usual bartender,” the guy beside me offered. “She’s just filling in. Doesn’t give a shit about this job.”

I pried off my gloves. “You could’ve fooled me.”

The bottle wasn’t even opened. It definitely wasn’t a high-end whiskey either. But who was I to judge? I just wanted to get fucking drunk.

When I struggled to get the bottle open with the opener on my keychain, the guy beside me grabbed it and did the honors. “Not much of a drinker?”

“What makes you say that?”

His gaze dropped to my legs. “Your jeans look starched. Not part of the usual uniform.”

The guy’s jeans seemed pretty tidy themselves, but I couldn’t argue. “I don’t think I’ve gotten properly drunk since college.”

“Twenty years ago?”

Affronted, I tossed back the whiskey. And nearly choked until my eyes bled. “Try ten.”

He cocked his head, drank a little more, and nodded. “Yeah, I can see it. Sorry. The snow made your hair look grayer.”

“Grayer?” I leaned forward and tried to see my reflection in the mirror backing the bottles on the wall behind the bar. “I don’t have any gray. At least I didn’t before today. Now? Very possible.”

“What happened today?”

“I knocked up my New Year’s Eve date.” I sank back on the stool and braced my palms on the sticky bar top. Sightlessly, I stared straight ahead. “I can’t believe I just told you that.”

I also couldn’t believe I’d referred to Hannah that way. Although it had been technically accurate until a few hours ago when we crossed that line again, it wasn’t the truth. Hannah had never just been a hookup to me.