Page 43 of Deep Daddy

But something still didn’t add up.

Maybe it was his Daddy-sense, but Harrison had a strong urge that something was amiss. And he was determined to find out what.

Perhaps Zane’s call had come at just the right time. The prospect of spending a couple of hours with Zane in The Oil Bar was too good to turn down. Zane was a great sounding board, the kind of cool and collected thinker in a crisis that Harrison could do with having around in that moment.

Speaking of Zane, Harrison was just about beginning to wonder exactly where he was. They had arranged to meet at seven thirty and it was now nearly eight…

That son of a gun is probably paddling some cute boy.

Not that I blame him, but…

Just at this moment, a swaggering Zane entered the bar. Harrison stood up from his stool and the pair embraced. Zane was wearing a black t-shirt tucked into a pair of grey-black jeans with boots to match. He looked cool as hell, but Harrison wasn’t about to let his buddy off the hook for being late.

‘You’re lucky I don’t make you pay for the rest of the evening,’ Harrison joked, playfully punching Zane’s arms. ‘But for a millionaire ex-racing driver that wouldn’t even be a thing, right?’

‘Says the millionaire bestselling author? Gimme a break!’ Zane laughed, firing back with his own playful shot to Harrison’s rock-hard stomach. ‘Anyway. We both know that there’s a situation going on with Sammy. What gives?’

Harrison explained the situation – or as best as he knew of it – to Zane, who listened patiently. Zane was a great listener, something that came from his time sitting in the race car for hours on end as his team delivered instruction after instruction to him via a headset.

Zane had a knack of knowing what information to take on board and what to dismiss – and he was never scared of sharing his opinions afterward either.

‘Brother, you need to fight for your boy,’ Zane said. ‘You say you don’t know exactly what’s going on. Well, what do you know? You know that this manager asshole is… well, an asshole. You know that Sammy doesn’t want to be doing all this filming anymore.’

‘Yeah, I suppose…’

‘Suppose? No. You know this,’ Zane said. ‘I’m not going to even try and tell you what to do, but you need to follow your instinct. It’s served you well before. I say let it serve you now too.’

Harrison nodded and both he and Zane toasted their beers.

There was time for some more drinks. Harrison had a lot to think about, but there was nothing he could do that night. The beer and the whiskey saw to that.

All that remained was for Harrison to listen to Zane’s advice and follow his gut. Sammy was Harrison’s boy – and Harrison wanted to make sure that Sammy was as happy as he could be.

Right now, every bone in Harrison’s body was telling him that this wasn’t the case and something needed to be done.

But Harrison was stressed about the Dean’s threats too.

It was time for more booze. Thinking could wait after all.

Tomorrow would be a new day, and the night was made for drinking…

Chapter 19

SAMMY

The music was pumping, the studio lights were set to a stronger power-level than existed on the face of the sun, and Sammy was struggling to maintain any kind of enthusiasm.

With Tucker making Sammy make content clip after content clip, the words coming out of Sammy’s mouth were becoming totally meaningless. This wasn’t about Sammy’s passion for food now, it was just nothing more than empty content.

But with Tucker barking orders and a couple of Tucker’s hangers on milling around, Sammy very much felt outnumbered. Any indication of rebellion on Sammy’s part wouldn’t have been a good idea. Sammy simply didn’t feel like he had any power or any control over what was going on.

The feeling of having no control sucked. But Sammy felt like he was all out of options – he had to follow Tucker’s instructions and simply hope that the nightmare would end sooner rather than later.

Just keep going.

Keep smiling.

Hold back the tears…