“Lord have mercy, Hammond.” She looked beyond him, as though expecting an entourage. “You’re the last person in the world I’d expect to see in a dive like this. You slumming tonight?”
“I came to see you.”
“Same as,” she said, snorting a humorless laugh. “I didn’t think you were speaking to me.”
“I wasn’t.”
“You had every right to be pissed.”
“I still am.”
“So what put you in a forgiving mood?”
“An emergency.” He glanced down at her nearly empty glass. “Buy you a drink?”
“Ever know me to turn one down?”
Wishing the privacy of a booth, Hammond gallantly helped her off the barstool. If he hadn’t lent a supporting hand, her knees might have buckled when she stood up. The drink she left on the bar hadn’t been her first, or even her second.
As she teetered along beside him, he acknowledged to himself that there was a very good chance he was going to sorely regret doing this. But as he had told her, it was an emergency.
He ensconced her in a booth, then returned to the bar and ordered two Jack Daniel’s black, one straight, one with water over rocks. He passed the former to Loretta as he slid into the booth.
“Cheers.” She raised her glass to him before taking a hefty swallow. Fortified by the drink, she turned her attention to Hammond. “You’re looking good.”
“Thanks.”
“I mean it. You always did look good, of course, but you’re just now coming into your own. Growing into your bones. Whatever it is that you men do that makes you get better-looking with age while we women rapidly go to pot.”
He smiled, wishing he could exchange compliments with her. She was barely fifty, but looked much older.
“You’re better-looking than your daddy,” she observed. “And I always thought Preston Cross was a right handsome man.”
“Thanks again.”
“Part of your problem with him—”
“I don’t have a problem with him.”
She frowned, squelching his denial. “Part of your problem with him is that he’s jealous of you.”
Hammond scoffed.
“It’s true,” Loretta pronounced with the superior air of drunks and sages. “Your daddy’s afraid that you might surpass him. You might achieve more than he has. You might become more powerful than he is. Earn more respect. He couldn’t stand that.”
Hammond looked down into his own drink, which he didn’t want. The one he’d had a couple hours ago with Smilow and Steffi had left him slightly queasy. Or maybe it had been the subject matter that had turned his stomach. In any case, he wasn’t thirsty for Tennessee sipping whiskey. “I didn’t come here to talk about my father, Loretta.”
“Right, right. An emergency.” She took another drink. “How’d you find me?”
“I called the last number I had.”
“My daughter lives there now.”
“It’s your apartment.”
“But Bev is paying the rent, and has been for months. She told me if I didn’t pull myself together, she was going to kick me out.” She raised her shoulders. “Here I am.”
Suddenly he realized why sh