Greetings from Sugartown

by Carmen Jenner

  I let out a shaky breath, and sit back on my heels. Ana takes three steps forward and sinks down in front of me, pulling Lil into her lap protectively. She covers our daughter’s ears as she whispers, “Do we call the police?”

  “No. If he wanted to hurt us he would have already.” I nod in Lil’s direction. “This was an olive branch.”

  “What are you going to do, Cade?” she asks quietly. I can see the worry behind her eyes. I reach out, and gently stroke her cheek with my knuckles.

  “Nothing. I’m gonna take my little girl home, and tuck her into bed. And then I’m going to do the same with my beautiful wife, and I’m never gonna let her go, because I have everything I need right here.”

  Ana presses a kiss to my fingers and I help her rise from the floor, hanging back to kill the lights as Ana and Lilly make their way to the door. Fate’s been unusually cruel and exceptionally kind to us over the years. We’ve been through hell and come out the other side, a little bruised, a little beaten and a little older, but there’s one thing that’s been constant throughout all of it: I want her. I want all of her, for all the rest of my days. However long or short a time that may be.

  I want her.

  HOLY SHIT, it’s even worse than I remembered.

  It’s funny the things you think when you’re staring down the bowels of Hell. I pull the van to a jerky stop on the shoulder of the road, and gawk at the tiny town spread out before me. It’s eight am, and it’s thriving with life. Cars bustle every which way, school kids are decked out in their blue uniform, chatting animatedly as they cross the road, and the traffic actually stops to allow them safe passage. The shops on Main Street are all freshly painted in pastels. Flowerbeds line the footpath, and brightly-coloured petunias pop out of the soil to greet you. It looks exactly like Stepford threw up. Twice.

  Jesus Christ. I’m gonna need a bottle of Jack, and an entire prescription worth of anxiety meds just to get through five minutes in this shithole town.

  I ease the car out onto the road—maybe ease is a stretch. What I mean to say here, is I slam my foot to the accelerator and fly down Main Street, doing sixty kilometres in a fifty zone. I would have gone much quicker, but I don’t need the cops riding my arse and asking questions about my newly acquired ride. Technically, if you factor in that my arse-wipe boss hasn’t paid me for a month, I do kinda own some of this van, like a tyre, or the second-hand freezer he installed last month. Though considering I probably owe him damages from punching him in the face, breaking his nose, and stealing his phone so he couldn’t call the cops on me, I guess this could still be considered theft.

  It’s not like I set out to steal his ice cream van, but the slimy bastard had rubbed his greasy, chesty Bonds-covered beer gut against my arse one to many times. When his meaty hands slipped under my skirt, and boldly tried to go where no balding, impotent, bogan, fifty-year-old scumbag’s had ever gone before, I put those lessons Uncle Elijah had taught me to good use, and elbowed him in the face. I maybe could have done without the boot to the balls, but violence excites me, and it was a heat-of-the-moment type of thing. Of course, once I’d driven my stolen van home to the shitty Fitzroy apartment I shared with my soon to be ex-boyfriend—on account of him being an inconsiderate, selfish, but hot-as-fuck douche—the gravity of my situation sunk in. I had no money, nowhere to go, and a possible warrant out for my arrest.

  Coop, my biological dad, is in LA, so even if I could get him to wire me the cash, it wouldn’t be here before night fell, and I needed a place to stay. I needed to get the hell out of the state. I needed to go home.

  Home.

  I supress the hysterical laughter that thought produces, and unscrew the cap on my meds. I empty two into my palm and throw them back with the remainder of my flat, warm can of Coke. God damn, do I wish it were mixed with something alcoholic.

  I’m busy punching the buttons on the piece of crap stereo when I glance up, and some moron in a fluoro yellow vest and matching hat is standing in the middle of the road holding a stop sign. I hit the brakes. The van swerves and skids all over the asphalt, screeching to a stop just inches from the man, and a gaggle of horrified-looking children and their outraged mothers.

  The lollipop man is tall. His wide shoulders barely fit in the fluoro vest, and the sleeves of his shirt strain against bulging muscles. His hair falls into a messy, blonde just-fucked shag around his face, and a set of gorgeous baby blues glare at me through the windscreen.

  “What the hell, lady? You didn’t see the gigantic neon stop sign?” he shouts, holding his arms out to either side of him. He lost the sign about the time I imagine he thought I was going to plough into him. “You coulda killed me. You could have killed these kids!”

  I ignore the fission of heat that spreads out from the centre of my belly all the way to my cock socket. I have a thing for the mean ones.

  “Yeah, I saw it. About two seconds before I slammed on my breaks,” I scream back through the partially rolled down window. I unbuckle my belt that sits way too loose over my hips, because my lard-arse boss stretched it all out of shape, and throw open the door. It groans on rusty hinges. “So, little Sammy Belle grew up to be a lollipop man.”

  “Do I know you?”

  “You should,” I say slamming the door, folding my arms, and coming out from around the vehicle to see him better. “We used to bathe naked together.”

  “Pepper?”

  “Naww, you do remember me.” I bat my eyelids coquettishly, then give him a devilish grin.

  Sam folds his arms, assessing me from my long pastel-pink hair right down to my calf-length leopard print Doc Martens. I don’t miss the way his gaze rakes over the ink sleeve on my right arm. Or the roses on my thigh playing peek-a-boo with my short skirt. His eyes flit back to mine with a grin.

  “Huh,” he says.

  I frown. “Huh what?”

  “You grew up, is all.”

  “So did you.”

  “I’m six years older than you, darlin’. You would hope I’d have grown up by now.” And there it is, the reminder I spent my entire adolescent life trying not to hear: Sammy Belle is too old for me. Six years too old for me. You might not be thinking that’s such a big deal. Twenty year olds fuck men forty years their senior all the time. But most of those are money-grubbing whores and well, when you’re a horny fourteen-year-old girl lusting after a hot twenty-one year old, who’s only ever behaved the way a brother would, and you throw caution to the wind, remove your bikini top and hurl yourself at him? Yeah, trust me, you’re not ever going to forget something as insignificant as a six-year age difference. The memory of my humiliation comes unbidden into my mind, and I chase it away with an appraisal of my own.

  Sam looks older. Good. But older. He’s tanned, and has lost that baby-faced boyish charm. He’s a man, and from the looks of the front of his jeans, he hasn’t forgotten that in my presence. I share a wry smile of my own, flicking the tiny Monroe piercing in my upper lip with my tongue. He clears his throat.

  “You look good, Pepper,” he says, before checking himself, and shutting his face down into a stoic expression. “Now, if you’re done terrorising the neighbourhood, I gotta get back to work. Someone has to keep the kiddies safe from Harajuku nut jobs, intent on flattening them with their ice cream van.”

  I clench my jaw. “You did not just call me Harajuku.”

  “Run along, Sailor Moon,” Sam says, and winks. “Just be careful not to run anyone over, this time.”

  And just like that, he dismisses me. Sammy fucking Belle, the lollypop man, the guy who took me to my year twelve formal, the guy who sat and made fun of all the other arseholes dressed in their tuxes and frilly pastel dresses while I wore combat boots, ripped jeans and a corset. The guy who told me not to give a shit that they were staring, because I was the most beautiful girl in the room, and he couldn’t take his eyes off me. The guy who I stole my first kiss from—that Sammy Belle, who’s a tanned, sunshiny real-life golden boy, dismisses me.


  I laugh, humourlessly.

  Run over? Oh no, Sammy. I’m going to run rings around you.

  Jumping back in the van, I twist the key in the ignition, and feel a sense of pride when she sputters out a big black cloud of exhaust smoke. She backfires, and I know without a doubt that every single pair of eyes in that street is staring at me. I flip the switch on the dash and “Greensleeves” filters out through the giant speaker on top of the van. The kids’ mouths open in excitement, because no matter where you are in the world, and no matter what time of the morning it may be, that sound means one thing: ice cream.

  An errant little boy escapes the clutches of his pink tracksuit clad mother, and heads right for me, shouting, “Ice Tweem!”

  When he’s close enough to the window I roll it all the way down, hang out my head and hiss at him, which sends him scurrying off the road and back to his mother. Then I skid out and slowly, and very deliberately drive a dawdling circle around Sammy. He stands in the centre and follows me through the 360◦ revolution, eyes tight, face guarded, and arms folded against his broad chest.

  Sam the lollipop man is pissed.

  On the second drive-by, he just shakes his head, and I think I see a dry smile twist the corner of his mouth. I grin back, throw him a wink, and flatten my foot to the floor. The van lurches forward, and the gearbox protests as I grind it into second and zoom off in a cloud of black exhaust and squealing tyres.

  Sugartown might be the absolute end of the earth, but now that I’m a little older, I think I might actually have some fun here.

  Coming Soon

  from Carmen Jenner

  Taint #1 by Carmen Jenner

  Cooper Ryan is living the dream. Between the parties with rock royalty, booze, groupies and performing to crowds of thousands with his band Taint, life seems pretty sweet. There’s just one thing missing: the feisty little red-head that took his baby and ran off with his heart. Throwing himself into music is the only thing keeping him sane.

  Until a run-in with a nonplussed, package-wielding PA throws everything off balance.

  Ali Jones is having a craptastic life. Her grandmother died, leaving her homeless, penniless, and alone, and her boyfriend left her for a tramp who takes her clothes off for money. That’s why when she lands her dream job at a record company it seems like it’s too good to be true.

  Because it is.

  Slapped with an ultimatum, Ali must decide if facing the horror of the unemployment line is a fate worse than going on the road with four rowdy rockers hell-bent on making her life misery.

  He’s adored by millions.

  She’s not even loved by her cat.

  Can they ignore their hatred long enough to survive the tour from hell? Or will their chemistry force everything to come crashing down around them?

  Read other books by Carmen Jenner

  You’d think that after doing this a few times before, I’d have this reigning-in-the-acknowledgements-so-that-they-don’t-resemble-a-small-novel stuff down already. Yeah, well … you’d be wrong. Though, like the two books prior to this one, I will try to keep it brief. I’m not making any promises though.

  Firstly, to the readers, I want to say a BIG, HUGE, CRAZY, GIGANTIC THANK YOU!! While Greetings is not the final book in the series, in many ways it feels like it is because it’s the conclusion to Ana and Elijah’s story. When I started out, this book was a novella, it was a little bit of fun, a small thirty thousand word fable of happiness that I could give to the readers for loving these kids as much as I do. I hadn’t thought much beyond wanting to give you the HEA you craved after the first book. #TEAMFINGERGATE deserved that, you deserved that, hell, even I deserved that. But once I dove in, I found there was much more standing in the way of Ana and Elijah’s happiness then simply overcoming their pasts. I love the direction this book has taken. I love that once I immersed myself in their world, I couldn’t stop writing and ended up with the fifty thousand plus novel you’re holding in your hands, but mostly I loved what a joy this book was to write, and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I loved putting the words on the page.

  To my darling Ben, for the love, the endless cups of tea, the hours upon hours of listening to me stress/cry/delight/freak-out and prattle on about my book babies, for the ‘quiet time’, the teasers, the awesome swag graphics, the willingness to get things done and be the one to pick up the slack when your non-wife is tucked away in her office dreaming up imaginary worlds, or road tripping around the US, for never complaining about how messy the house is, for your unwavering support and belief in me, and most of all for being the best damn non-husband a girl could ever have; THANK YOU!!! I love you and I couldn’t do any of this without you!

  To my real babies: Ava and Ari; thanks for being AWESOME!! Thanks for the cuddles, and the unconditional love and for sharing my love of reading. Some of mummy’s favourite memories are of watching your little faces light up as Daddy and I read to you! Whether you grow up and continue to love reading or not does not matter, but I hope you find something you love just as much because I always want to see the same look of joy on your faces as when watching you get lost in the fantastical world of words. DREAM BIG!

  To my family, thanks for your unconditional love and support, and for the reminder that there’s a life outside of Book World. Thanks for daring me to venture out into it every now and then to enjoy your company, great food, and your beautiful laughter.

  To the Beta Team of Awesomeness: Ali Hymer, Debbie Besabella, Kristine Barakat and Alexis Moore. I chose all of you to beta read Greetings from Sugartown because you’re tough, thoughtful and extremely good at nurturing—and yes, sometimes bitch-slapping—my books into to their full potential. Please check out their blogs, Black Heart Reviews, Glass Paper Ink Bookblog and Reality Bites! Let’s Get Lost! all four girls produce some of the best, eloquent and thought provoking reviews I’ve ever read.

  Ali and Debbie your particular brand of ‘tough love’ hasn’t steered me wrong yet. Though we don’t always agree, I take everything you say on board, and to heart. Traveling around the US with you girls and Miss Annie Walls was one of the greatest experiences of my life, and I miss you every day.

  Kristine, thanks for being the one to see deeper and to see Ana’s light in what was sort of a dark time for her character. You had even more of a grasp on her than I think I did. I love that you read deeper into this, into any book you read than most others do. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: while other readers see black and white and sometimes grey, Kristine Barakat sees colours that aren’t even on our spectrum. I loves ya, honey!

  Alexis, I think out of all my betas I was most nervous about handing this book over to you. I needn’t have worried. You did an amazing job! Your notes really pulled everything into focus for me and gave me that push I needed to keep going. I really hope this is the beginning of a very long and beautiful beta relationship.

  Beautiful Chelle Bliss, thank you for always making time in your busy schedule to beta/critique my work! And for allowing me the same opportunity with yours! You never miss the chance to encourage me and send a little Chelle Belle lovin’ my way! I’m so freaking awed by the bright and shiny star you’ve become, babe, and I’m damn proud to be able to call you my friend!

  To Lauren McKellar (McStellar!!!) … where do I even begin? Your dedication to your clients is unparalleled, lady! Thank you for always making time for me, for treating me like not just a valued client, but also a good friend, and for working on my manuscript and delivering a flawless job—ON TIME!!—two days before your wedding!!!! You are without a doubt the hardest working and talented editor in the business! Also, you may be kinda crazy … but I like it!

  To Teresa Mary Rose from Readers Live A Thousand Lives, thank you for your ongoing support! I never thought when we met way back in my blogging days that I’d be doing this thing for a living and that you’d be naming one of my books! You never miss a reveal, a share, a promo blitz, blog tour sign up, or an opportunity to pimp t
he bejeebus out of me and my books!! One day, lady, I’m coming to collect cuddles from you!

  To my incredible Sugar Junkies, I don’t know how I got so lucky to have all you wonderful women standing by my side to spread the word of Sugartown! Thank you for your support, your encouragement, your love, your teasers, your man candy, and for giving me a place to escape to when the world—and the writing cave—is doing my head in. I’d be lost without all of you!

  To Ari from Cover It! Designs, working with you on both the Greetings from Sugartown and REVELRY covers, has been like a breath of fresh air. Your creative genius knows no bounds! You took an already established series and managed to make the new book just as beautiful as the first two but with your own flare. I can’t wait to see what your mad skillz come up with in the future!

  Squishy love and cuddles go out to the SydVegas girls who keep me laughing maniacally: Kristine Barakat, Simone Nicole, Lauren McKellar and Jennifer Ryder. I’ve never been much of a ‘girls’ girl—don’t let the lipstick love fool you—but I can’t imagine not having you girls in my life. Here’s to taking over Oz with our drunken shenanigans. I’m Batman!

  Heartfelt thanks go to all the beautiful bloggers who pimp/share/promote and show your love for Suagrtown! I couldn’t do this without any of you!

  Carmen Jenner is a thirty-something USA Today and Amazon International Best-Selling author, doctor, pilot and CIA agent.

  She's also a compulsive, flagrant prevaricator who gets to make things up for a living.

  While Sugartown may not technically exist, Carmen grew up in a small Australian town just like it, and just like her characters, she always longed for something more. They didn't have an Elijah Cade, though. If they did, you can be sure she would have never left.