Welcome to Sugartown

Welcome
to

Sugartown

By

Carmen
Jenner

Welcome To
Sugartown

Carmen
Jenner

Copyright ©
2013 Carmen Jenner

Smashwords
Edition

All rights
reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including
photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods,
without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in
the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or
reviews.

This is a work
of fiction.

Names,
characters, businesses, organisations, places, events, and
incidents are either of the author’s imagination or used in a
fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living dead,
or actual events is purely coincidental.

This book is
licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be
re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share
this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy
for each person you share it with. If you are reading this book and
did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only,
then you should return it to the seller and purchase your own
copy.

Thank you for
respecting the author’s work and not making me set various
motorcycle gangs on you.

Published:
Carmen Jenner November
3
^rd
2013

[email protected]

Editing:
Lauren K
McKellar

http://laurenkmckellar.com/hire-an-editor/

Cover
Design:
Frankie Rose

http://frankierosewrites.com/

Formatting:
Frankie Rose

[email protected]

What The
Critics Are Saying

“
Very
dramatic, very heart wrenching, very sexy, very intense, very
violent, very scary at times. Very enjoyable!”

—
Ali @
Ginger-Read Reviews

"5
Magnificent Stars! In this heart-pounding and addictive love story,
Carmen Jenner will have you laughing, crying, and become so
spellbound with these small town characters that you'll never want
to leave. Who ever said small town living was boring has obviously
never been to Sugartown."

—
Debbie @
Keep Calm & Read Romance

“
Well, spank
my ass, that was flipping awesome! My world has been rocked by
Carmen Jenner's debut book, WELCOME TO SUGARTOWN.”

—
Paula @
Romantic Book Affairs

“
Welcome to
Sugartown will tear you to pieces but put you back together again
with its humour and host of unforgettable characters.”

—
Jo-Anne @
Worlds of Wonderment

“
I don't
think I'll ever see insignificant little towns in the same light
again … danger, humour, tats, bikers, loads of pie eating
(snigger), and enough chemistry to blow the roof off a science
lab!”

—
Leanne
Pearson, Author

For Ari and
Ava

May you find a
love of your own as big as this someday.

For Book
Bloggers Everywhere

Thank
you!

Chapter
One

Ana

There’s a
mind-numbing restlessness that comes with living in small towns.
The gossip, the people, and the unending monotony that makes you
want to poke your eyes out with a fork. I’ve lived my whole life in
Sugartown, so I should probably expect nothing to ever change, and
each new day to be just as dull as the last. And yet, every day I
wish for the unexpected. I wish for big cities, for
open-mindedness, for the ability to jump on my bike and ride the
hell out of town and never look back.

Every day I
dream of leaving Sugartown. And every day I open this crummy pie
shop, I make pies and serve customers, and stay several hours after
closing to make pies for the following day. I’m nineteen. The world
should be full of endless possibilities, right? Wrong. Oh, so very
wrong because I’ve just finished high school and my family happen
to own this joint. So instead of making the world my oyster and all
that, I’m stuck wearing this retro waitress uniform for the rest of
my days—my mum and dad had some kind of rockabilly diner fetish,
it’s sad really, don’t ask.

Sugartown
sits smack bang on the highway in the middle of nowhere. It’s a
quaint little town and a pleasant enough place to stop on your
journey from there to anywhere but here, but no one ever stays. And
why would they? It’s surrounded on both sides by nothing but cane
fields and the ancient sugar mill, that spreads its sweet acrid
stench in a smoggy cloud over the whole town, making everything
smell like burnt toffee. There’s nothing to do, nowhere to go, and
the nearest town is 25 kilometres away.

I sigh and
lean over the counter, staring out the window. Across the road, my
dad has shut the doors to his other business, a garage specialising
in custom Harley-Davidson fittings: Big Bob’s Bikes and Auto. He
leans against his bike and smokes a cigarette as he
waits.

My mum’s
dream was to open a diner and make pies all day. My dad’s? To run a
garage and customise Harleys. That way he could combine his early
midlife crisis with his love of mechanics. They were both lucky
enough to have had their dreams realized, and both unlucky enough
to have them shattered when she found out she had cancer. Amid the
chemo and the hospital visits, mum taught me how to make the pies
from her recipes. Now I bake pies in the kitchen she taught me how
to bake in, dad runs his garage across the street and in a way it’s
like my mum’s dream is still alive and kicking. Though I doubt she
expected the dragon stepmother to be a part of that
dream.

“
Ana, are you
even listening to me?” My friend and long-term tormentor Holly
screeches in my ear. Holly works every shift with me. She’s all
kinds of crazy gorgeous with wild red curls, green eyes and more
‘personality’ than a whole ward of mental patients.

“
It’s kinda
hard not to listen to you, Hols.” I say, and then laugh as I add,
“On account of you never shutting the fuck up
.
”

“
Shut up,
biatch, I know you haven’t been listening to a word I’ve said.
Lucky for you, I’ve got no problems repeating myself.”

“
Yippee.” I
deadpan.

She waves
that away like I’m the one with all the crazy and begins wiping
down the counter with a dirty rag, smearing grease all over the
Formica. I love her, but I think Holly may have been dropped on her
head when she was a baby. “Anyway, as I was saying, are you going
to Nicole’s party next week?”

A scruffy
looking kid with strawberry blonde curls and bright blue eyes comes
strutting through the shop, saving me from a tiresome conversation
in which I continue to argue all the reasons why going to that
party would be disastrous for someone like me and where Holly
manages to twist the entire conversation back around to the fact
that not going would be social suicide. The little brat acts like
he owns the place, pokes his tongue out at me and jumps up on the
counter that Holly just finished wiping down.

I ruffle his
hair and he smiles up at me. “What’s up, Sammy?”

“
Nothing.
Whereth mum?”

“
The dragon’s
out the back, primping her dragon lady curls for my
dad.”

I was an only
child, until I wasn’t any more. Until former Belle’s Pies employee
Kerry sunk her talons into my dad after Mum died. Eventually they
got married and she fell pregnant. Kerry sat around on her
big-fat-pregnant bum while I worked double shifts on the weekends
in the shop.

I was
thirteen.

I can’t
fathom what Dad sees in her. It must be the sex, because I can’t
find a single redeeming quality. The only good thing to come out of
that woman was Sammy. He’s six now, every second word comes out
with a lisp and, despite his unfortunate parentage, he just may be
my favourite person in the entire world. It appears I’m his
favourite, too, a fact that irritates the dragon beyond belief,
that I may or may not play in my favour just to piss her
off.

“
But thee
thaid thee was going to take me for ice cream tith
afternoon.”

“
It’s Friday
night. Sorry, kiddo, but you’re stuck with me.”

“
Ith OK. I
liketh being thuck wif you, Ana Cabana.” He beams, and it’s so hard
not to pick him up and squeeze him until his adorable little guts
squish out.

“
Aw, thanks,
brat. I liketh being thuck wif you, too.” I mock and ruffle his
hair once more for good measure. “Now, go do your homework and I’ll
bring you a milkshake once the dragon lady is gone.”

“
Thweet.” He
jumps off the counter, poking his tongue out at Holly who pokes out
her own in return and then proceeds to make monkey faces at him. I
swear, sometimes it’s like Holly and Sam are the same age. She
makes out like she can’t stand him when the opposite is true—she
adores him just as much as I do.

Sammy bounds
over to a booth in the back, pulls out his supplies and gets to
work, his tongue poking out in concentration.

A few minutes
later the dragon stalks through the back door and into the kitchen,
huffing when she sees Sammy through the giant serving window. She
struts over to him, leaving a cloud of cheap perfume in her
wake.

“
Sammy baby,
you didn’t come and say hi to mummy.” Dragon ruffles his hair the
way I do, but he pulls away when she touches him and glares at
her.

“
My nameth
noth Thammy, ith’s Tham. And I’m not a baby.” He says indignantly
and goes back to his studies.

Dragon shoots
me a look. “Daddy and I have a party to go to tonight, so don’t
wait up.”

God, it’s so
gross when she calls him Daddy. The mental images those words
conjure when they come from her mouth are enough to make me vomit
for days on end. The sad thing is he’s almost old enough to be her
dad. And now for the second time in as many minutes I’m thinking of
my dad having sex, which is wrong on so many, many
levels.

Without even
a kiss goodbye for Sammy, Dragon sashays through the shop in her
short skirt and too-tight singlet top with the cut outs and her
high heeled boots.

“
Do you ever
want to crash one of their parties?” Holly pipes up, as we watch
Kerry cross the street. She kisses my dad full on the lips and then
straddles the seat behind him. He revs the throttle and they ride
away into the sunset.

“
And watch a
bunch of drunk, greying old bikers boast about how big their
engines are while their trampy women drape themselves across their
laps? Not my idea of fun, Holly.”

“
Yeah, bunch
of hussies. Though I wouldn’t mind draping myself across Red Hot
Rob’s lap again.”

“
Whath a
huthy?” Sam’s little lisp pipes up from beside me.

“
Yo’ momma.”
Holly shoots back with a cheeky grin.

“
Seriously
Holly? You don’t think he’s going to repeat that?”

She shrugs.
“It’s true.”

“
Hussy is a
bad word,” I tell him sternly, giving Holly a pointed look. “If I
ever catch you saying it there’ll be no more Banana Chocolate Cream
Ana Cabana Surprise Pies, okay?”

They’re Sam’s
favourite. It’s a concoction I made up one night when Dad and the
dragon were at one of their booze fests, and Holly and I had raided
their stash. Sam had been sound asleep, until we began marauding
the kitchen with a serious case of the munchies. I’d pulled it
together enough to bake a pie with the only edible things left in
the house: chocolate, bananas, beer and mini-marshmallows. The beer
was downed before it had a chance to meet chocolate and
banana—probably for the best—and after passing out before we had a
chance to taste the creation, we woke to Sam covered head to toe in
chocolate. He’d devoured the whole thing. The name stuck, and oddly
so did the recipe—minus the beer, of course—and now it’s one of our
best sellers.