by Teri Wilson
Sam leaned forward in his chair, because Griff didn’t seem to be getting his point. “Mark my words, sooner or later, someone is going to get hurt.”
“I can’t argue with that. You might be right.” Griff gave Cinder a final scratch beneath her chin, then hauled himself out of the chair. “It’s just kind of funny, though.”
“What is?” Sam barked. He had another headache, and it wasn’t even 9:00 a.m. yet.
“For a minute there, it almost sounded like you weren’t talking about a dog at all.” Griff flashed him a suggestive grin. “Cute, but flighty? Friendly, but easily distracted? Beloved by everyone she meets, but utterly impulsive?”
Heat crawled up the back of Sam’s neck, and he redirected his gaze to the stack of papers on his desk. He knew what was coming next, but he didn’t want to see the knowing look in Griff’s eyes when he said it. Especially when Sam’s thoughts were still lingering on the most important snippet of their conversation. Mark my words, sooner or later, someone is going to get hurt.
Griff chuckled under his breath. “If I didn’t know better, I would’ve thought you were talking about Violet March herself.”
***
Violet coasted her bike to a stop as she turned into the wide driveway of one of the oldest and grandest homes in Turtle Beach.
Yes, she still lived with her family in the house where she’d grown up. But living at home wasn’t so bad when it meant a sprawling, three-story beach house propped up on tall pilings with sweeping views of the Carolina coast. Especially since her brothers had taken over the third floor apartments for themselves, leaving just Violet and her Dad in the main residence. Plus there was plenty of room in the open air garage beneath the house for her shiny silver Airstream trailer with its spinning cupcake on top.
When her cupcake truck wasn’t parked on the boardwalk or the softball field or anyplace else sugar-starved tourists and locals gathered, she kept it right here at home, alongside her dad and brothers’ police cruisers, a towering pile of sun chairs, and various other beach paraphernalia. Like Josh’s kayak. And the family croquet set. And her dad’s fishing poles, which she had just nearly plowed into, thanks to Sprinkles.
“What is it with you and the smell of fish, all of a sudden?” Violet wailed as she gave the handlebars a hard yank to the right.
Her front wheel bumped up against the kayak as she came to a wobbly halt. Sprinkles promptly pounced inside the narrow boat, and it rocked from side to side. With her pink tongue lolling out of the side of her mouth, she looked like a dog enjoying an amusement park ride.
“Get out of there, silly.” Violet grabbed the cardboard holder of frosty, whipped coffee drinks she’d just pedaled to the boardwalk to procure from her bicycle’s wicker basket. “It’s time for coffee.”
It was also time to clue her dad and brothers in on Sam Nash’s secret identity as a baseball phenom. Oh goody, this should be fun.
Not.
After leaving the firehouse yesterday, Violet had nearly walked directly across the street and straight into her dad’s office at the police station. She couldn’t do that, though. One look at the pink box in her hands, and her father would have blown a gasket. She knew better than to go waltzing into the firehouse laden with cupcakes and good intentions.
She should have, anyway.
It was fine, though. She could take care of herself, and she definitely wouldn’t be making that mistake again. Her dad, however, didn’t need to know about said mistake. The last time she’d fled the firehouse with her heart in tatters, he’d ended up in a screaming match with Chief Murray right there in the middle of Seashell Drive. They’d both been so red-faced that Violet had worried one of them might have some sort of cardiac episode. Griff Martin had nearly been forced to turn a fire hose on the two men.
What this situation needed was delicacy, so that the police chief and the fire chief didn’t accidentally end up brawling in the street again. Delicacy, plus frozen coffee with a heaping dash of chocolate and caramel should do it. The Milky Way frozen latte from Turtle Books, the island bookshop that doubled as a coffee bar down on the boardwalk, was her dad’s favorite thing in the entire world—as evidenced by the wide smile that creased his face when she plopped it down in front of him on the long table on the beach house’s second- floor porch.
The March family gathered on the deck every morning for coffee and most evenings for dinner. The house sat on the southernmost tip of the island, known as the crest to locals, separate from Turtle Beach’s neat rows of beach cottages. Violet’s great-grandfather had built the rambling house by hand back in 1952, when the Marches had been among the first families to move onto the secluded island, seeking their own little slice of Southern paradise.
All these years later, Turtle Beach still felt that way to Violet—serene, idyllic—despite the recent Dalmatian migration and the accompanying arrival of Sam Nash. Out here on the crest, where the water from the bay spilled into the salty depths of the Atlantic and dolphins frolicked just offshore, it was easy to forget about Sam, his annoyingly sweet dog, and his major league–worthy bod.
Then why can’t you?
“What’s this?” Violet’s dad picked up his frozen coffee drink and took a big sip from its oversized, colorful straw. “Is today a special occasion?”
She shrugged. “I just felt like taking a little bike ride this morning, and while I was over at the north end, I stopped by the boardwalk.”
It wasn’t a total lie. Sprinkles needed her morning exercise, and Violet wasn’t quite ready to show her face or her Dalmatian at the dog beach again. Not without police backup. Or possibly a bag to wear over her head.
“Don’t worry, I got one for each of my favorite police officers.” She plucked two more frozen coffees from the cardboard carrier and offered them to Josh and Joe.
“Thanks, sis,” Josh said, gulping half of his down in one big swallow, an ice cream headache waiting to happen.
Joe, the more patient brother, narrowed his gaze as he took his cup from Violet. “I’m with Dad. What’s going on? You never go for a bike ride this early.”
“Can’t I do something nice for my family without being interrogated?” Honestly, sometimes it wasn’t easy being the only member of the household who wasn’t actively involved in law enforcement.
“Don’t question it.” Josh shook his head. “At least she’s not down at the dog beach trying to arrest people.”
Joe arched a brow. “Or bringing random mutts home and bathing them for free.”
Violet glared at her brother. “That only happened once.”
It had happened a handful of times, actually. But they’d all stemmed from a single misguided, altruistic episode in which Violet thought she was rescuing a stray chocolate Lab mix she’d seen trotting up and down the shore all alone. Violet had a certain fondness for Dalmatians—a Dalmatian infatuation, some might say—but she was also a proper, equal-opportunity dog lover. She wasn’t a Dalmatian snob, for goodness’ sake. So she’d taken the lost dog home to bathe and blow-dry him. She might have also spritzed him with her favorite lavender-and-marshmallow-scented body spray from Bath & Body Works, only to find out that he belonged to the reclusive fisherman who lived right next door.
In true Turtle Beach form, word of Violet’s dog-saving efforts had spread like wildfire. Other loose pups started popping up on the beach directly in front of the March house. It only took her three more rounds of sudsing and spritzing for Violet to realize that people were “losing” their dogs on purpose to take advantage of her complimentary grooming services.
Really, though. That had nothing to do with the matter at hand. Why did her brothers insist on bringing it up so often?
Violet sat down with a huff. “If you must know, I have some news.”
She was just going to have to rip the Band-Aid off and tell them about Sam before they heard about his baseball prowes
s from someone else. It wouldn’t be pleasant, but she couldn’t hold it in any longer. She’d tried—oh, how she’d tried. Much to her irritation, Sam Nash had even popped up in her dreams, which could only be attributed to the giant secret she knew about him. Once the police force knew he was a ringer, she could properly forget about him once and for all.
“News?” Her father glanced down at the newspaper spread in front of him, anchored to the table with a conch shell.
“Not so much news as gossip, really.” But once word got out to the general public, Sam’s smug face would probably be staring back at her from the front page of the Turtle Beach Gazette. “Accurate, verifiable gossip.”
“Spit it out, Vi,” Josh said blithely.
What a joy it was to live with three men. Sometimes Violet really missed her mother. It was possible to miss someone you’d never really known, wasn’t it?
“Fine.” She cleared her throat. “You know the new fire marshal?”
“You mean the guy with the dog that looks just like Sprinkles?” Joe said. Sprinkles cocked her head and bounded toward him at the mention of her name.
“The one you wanted us to throw in jail?” Josh added.
“Yes, that one,” Violet said primly. She was never going to live it down, was she?
“I caught a glimpse of that dog myself, yesterday.” Her dad shook his head. “It was an honest mistake, Cupcake. It could have happened to anybody.”
But it hadn’t happened to just anybody. Like most of the embarrassing things around here, it had happened to Violet. Then she’d tried to shower Sam with apology cupcakes, and the situation had gone from bad to worse.
“Thanks, Dad.” She took a deep breath. Her poor father had no idea what was coming. “Anyway, you’re about to wish for a real reason to toss the new fire marshal in jail, especially this Saturday.”
Her father’s smile faded. “Saturday, as in opening game day of Guns and Hoses?”
Both of Violet’s brothers grew still, their faces etched with matching expressions of concern.
There was no other way to say it, so she just blurted out the truth. “Sam’s a ringer. He’s in the collegiate Hall of Fame and could have played professional baseball but joined the fire department instead.”
Now that she thought about it, Sam had made a most unusual choice—a heroic choice, as much as she loathed to think about him in such glowing terms. It wasn’t every day that someone gave up a lucrative sports career to fight fires.
“You’re kidding,” Joe said flatly.
Josh shook his head. “No way. I don’t believe it.”
Violet’s father didn’t say a word, even as his face turned an alarming shade of red.
“It’s true. He’s even got a framed newspaper article about it hanging on the wall of his office,” Violet said.
Seriously, who did that? There was nothing that could explain that level of egotism. Sam might be a literal hero, but he was also obviously some sort of Dalmatian-loving narcissist.
“This is bad,” Josh said.
Joe nodded. “Really bad.”
“Surely there’s something we can do. Does Turtle Beach even need a fire marshal?” Josh’s gaze slid to their father.
The older man’s brows drew together. “It’s Murray’s call. Emmett left, and it’s up to the chief to replace him with whomever he sees fit.”
Oh, so this whole mess is my fault? Violet’s chest went tight. No one could seem to look directly at her all of a sudden, just like every other time Emmett’s name came up in conversation.
Sprinkles abandoned Joe to tiptoe toward Violet and drop her sweet spotted head into Violet’s lap. She rubbed one of the Dalmatian’s soft, supple ears between her thumb and forefinger and wondered if any of this would be happening if her mother were still alive. Surely not.
Violet had never known her mom. Adeline March had always been something of a legend in Turtle Beach—the hometown girl everyone fell in love with, most notably police chief Ed March and fire chief Murray Jones. After she died giving birth to Violet, it was as if the whole town lost its mind.
At least that’s what Violet’s friends at the retirement center always said. Adeline’s untimely passing cast a long shadow over their quaint little island, and sometimes Violet still felt like a little girl, fumbling her way through the dark.
“Maybe it’s time to put an end to the annual tournament,” Violet said as calmly as she could manage. “Don’t you think twenty-eight years is long enough?”
Nearly three decades, and somehow, the animosity between the two teams grew deeper and deeper every year. Whoever coined the phrase “time heals all wounds” had clearly never sat through nine innings of Turtle Beach’s first responders doing their best to annihilate one another on the softball diamond.
Josh snorted. “You can’t be serious. We’re not going to run scared just because Chief Murray brought in a ringer.”
“He’s right,” Joe said. “It’s a matter of honor. We beat them last year, and we can do it again. This just means we have to work harder to crush them.”
“No,” Dad said tersely. Sprinkles’s tail drooped between her legs at the sudden hardness in his tone. “This means war.”
Violet sighed. So much for trying to defuse the situation. She’d have a better chance of teaching Sprinkles to make her bed in the morning than she would getting the TBPD to forget about softball.
Her dad grunted, pushed away from the table, and stormed inside the beach house. Josh clomped after him.
Ugh, men.
Joe was the only human who stayed, staring quietly out at the water rushing gently ashore beneath the pink morning sky. Sprinkles stayed by Violet’s side too, of course. Until a pelican glided by overhead, and she scrambled after its shadow moving across the deck’s worn wooden slats.
Joe shook his head at Sprinkles and then turned his attention back to Violet. “Can I ask you a question?”
“No, I haven’t accidentally bathed any random dogs lately. Let it go, already.” She was never telling him about the one cat. Ever.
“My question isn’t pet-related.”
Violet shrugged. “Okay, then. Ask away.”
Her brother’s gaze narrowed, and all of a sudden, he seemed to be looking at her with his Resting Interrogator Face, which Violet swore he must have learned from binge-watching Criminal Minds on Netflix. The only real-life interrogating he ever did on Turtle Beach involved benign things like misappropriated beach chairs and missing towels—most of which had been swept away by the tide rather than legitimately stolen.
The look didn’t have anything to do with misplaced terry cloth, though. Not by a long shot.
“How exactly do you know what the inside of the new fire marshal’s office looks like?”
Chapter 4
“He didn’t ask you that!” Ethel Banks, owner of the corgi who’d recently taken a bite out of Violet’s lululemons, gasped, eyes wide behind her purple-framed trifocals. “What did you say?”
Violet had forgiven Max the corgi for chomping on her yoga leggings. In an effort to reclaim her dignity, she’d chosen to forget most of what had gone on yesterday morning at the dog beach—other than the bits involving Sam’s smug attitude and the TBFD logo stitched onto his T-shirt. Those things were important to hang onto, lest she become tempted to bake for him again. She had no reason to hold a grudge against an innocent dog, though—especially when the stout little pup belonged to one of her oldest and closest friends.
Ethel was one of a trio of residents at Turtle Beach Senior Living Center who were near and dear to Violet’s heart. A volunteer yoga teacher probably wasn’t supposed to have class favorites, but Violet couldn’t help it. Her affection for the three older ladies was quite involuntary. Violet had been drawn to Ethel Banks, Mavis Hubbard, and Opal Lewinsky from her very first day as their instructor. She loved the neon
spandex they always wore to yoga class and the way they frequently tied colorful balloons to the other residents’ walkers when they weren’t looking.
The three women also remembered Adeline March in perfect detail and often told Violet stories about her mother—stories she’d never heard from her father before. Getting her dad to share anything about her mom was like pulling teeth. Ethel, Mavis, and Opal were convinced his stoic silence was because Violet reminded him of Adeline. According to her friends, Violet and her mother had much in common—the same strawberry-blonde hair, the same delicate features, and, most notably, the same sense of chaotic whimsy. Violet was never sure if the older women were telling her the absolute truth or exaggerating for the sake of sentimentality, but it didn’t really matter. She hung on their every word, rapt.
The feeling was quite mutual. Ethel, Mavis, and Opal were Violet’s closest confidantes, and she unburdened herself to them often. Like now, when Ethel, Mavis, and Opal stood in a cluster around Violet’s cupcake truck as she prepared for Tuesday night bingo, the busiest night on Turtle Beach’s weekly social calendar.
“You didn’t tell Joe that you’d actually been inside Sam’s office, did you?” Mavis held onto her aluminum walker with one hand and pressed the other hand to her heart. Nibbles, her tiny teacup Chihuahua, sat trembling on a blanket in the walker’s wire basket.
“No, are you kidding?” Violet carefully piped icing onto a vanilla cupcake. “I told him I’d heard about the framed article in Sam’s office from Griff Martin.”
She paused to examine her handiwork. So far, she’d decorated three dozen cupcakes with bingo letter and number combinations. B4, I19, N33 and the like. She’d pretty much covered B, I, and N. Now to start on G and O.
Bingo night was scheduled to begin in less than fifteen minutes. The first half hour was always reserved for early birds. But by seven o’clock, just about everyone on the island would pack into the lobby of the senior center, tourists and locals alike. Tuesday night bingo had been a Turtle Beach summer tradition since Violet was a little girl. She could still remember sitting between Josh and Joe, stamping her bingo cards with her hot-pink sponge-tipped dauber, holding her breath when she only had one square left. Bingo nights meant RC Colas and MoonPies. Breezy dresses and sunburned shoulders. The whole town cheering every time someone yelled Bingo! at the top of their lungs.
