Heading In The Right Direction

Chapter Three

Author's Notes:

Thanks for everyone's patience...here is the update as promised.

Not sure how far this fic if going to go but it's been challenging to create new characters and not have the backup of existing backgrounds etc to draw on. This chapter will be the full introduction of said new characters.

J💕💕💕

Heading In The Right Direction

Chapter 03

The Pickled Note

Jimmy POV

Jimmy stood behind the bar watching the CCTV screen, arms crossed with one hand over his mouth, as Emmi talked with the persistent stranger.

It worried him. Emmi had already been burned once, so utterly broken and betrayed by a man loved and trusted.

Jimmy's level of trust where his ex-son-in-law had been concerned, was nowhere near the same as Emmi's trust in him but Jimmy had given Niles the benefit of the doubt because he had made Emmi happy. That was, until he'd taken Emmi's trust and happiness and squashed them beneath the heel of his boot as he'd walked out the door with all Emmi's earnings from her music career in Europe.

He didn't want to see Emmi go through that level of pain again so he, like any good father would do, discouraged any eager hound dogs that came sniffing around his daughter these days.

"Hey, Daddy."

Speak of the little she-devil herself.

"You were talking to him. Again."

"I know," she said with a shrug and laid her garment bag across the back of a barstool. "I'll give him one thing...he's persistent." Emmi stepped behind the bar and hugged him. "Relax, Dad. We were only talking."

"Hmm." Jimmy replied but accepted her kiss on his cheek. "Harry says he's been hangin' around a lot."

Harry was his friend and the local busy-body, who liked to report anything noteworthy to Jimmy. They'd first met him shortly after Jimmy bought the building to convert it from a decades-old abandoned bodega into the jazz and blues club that it was today. It had been Harry who had suggested turning it into a speakeasy, with secret passwords and a hidden entrance.

Harry lived down a building or two, and due to a brain injury sustained at work one day, was unemployable. Jimmy had been about to start the extensive job of cleaning the exterior of the old shop front when Harry had approached him. He'd seemed harmless and amiable enough, and Jimmy warmed to the older man instantly. He'd invited Harry in and explained what they were planning to do to convert it into The Pickled Note.

Harry was also one of their few friends and acquaintances who didn't look at him with pity in his eyes. After Claudia, his wife, unexpectedly died at work one day from a brain aneurysm, all their friends suddenly seemed to fall away, especially after her funeral. Even the ones that did keep in touch would look at him with such doleful eyes, full of pity and sadness that it always made him uncomfortable.

"Harry says a lot of things, Dad," Emmi said, reaching past Jimmy to turn off the CCTV. "Why were you watching the front door anyway?"

"He was knockin'...more like poundin' actually," Jimmy huffed.

"Why can't you just let him in?" his daughter asked as she poured herself a stiff drink.

"Ain't he some big rock and roll star?" Jimmy asked. "Why would a guy like that be interested in a place like this? Anyways, you're late!"