by Teri Wilson
“Leave it,” he said firmly.
The leave it command was one of the most important in Cinder’s arsenal of tricks, and she’d perfected it years ago. The thickest, juiciest rib eye steak in the world could be lying on the floor at the scene of a fire, and Cinder wouldn’t go anywhere near it if Sam told her to leave it. Of course, they’d never actually been to a burning building teeming with premium beef, but if ever they were, Cinder was prepared.
As soon as he gave the command, she loosened her jaws, dropped the sheet, and backed away from the bed. No sweat. Dog training really wasn’t that difficult. Violet should really give it a try sometime.
“Good girl.” Sam stroked Cinder’s smooth, spotted neck. “That’s right. We’re slobs now.”
He laughed to himself as he headed back toward the kitchen to finish his coffee. Sam and Cinder would never be slobs, but perhaps they could afford to be a tad less regimented at home. At least enough to convince Sam that there was no truth whatsoever to Violet’s ludicrous accusations.
Cinder was nothing like a robot, and Sam certainly didn’t think of her as slave labor. He could make his own coffee and tuck in his own sheets. And if the bed never got made at all, so what? They lived at the beach now. This was how relaxed islanders lived.
Or so Sam had heard.
But when he strolled back to his bedroom to get dressed, the bed was back in pristine shape, duvet pulled tight and pillows positioned just so. If he didn’t know better, he would have sworn the sheets had been fashioned into hospital corners.
Sam jammed a hand through his hair, tugging hard at the ends. Cinder jumped onto the foot of the bed and wagged her tail, thoroughly pleased with herself.
Or was Sam mistaking that gleam in her soft brown eyes for satisfaction when it was really something else? Deep unhappiness, perhaps?
No way. Not possible.
Sam sighed. One thing was for sure—untraining his Dalmatian was going to be more challenging than he’d anticipated.
***
After a few more rounds of remaking, unmaking, and re-remaking the bed, Sam gave up and headed to work. He and Cinder walked to Seashell Drive, then turned left and made their way through Turtle Beach’s tiny strip of downtown until the firehouse came into view. He knew better than to wave at the police cruiser that crawled past him, but he didn’t hesitate to greet the business owners who were opening up their beach shops and the pedestrians on the opposite side of the street.
That’s how small towns worked, right? Everyone went out of their way to speak to one another, even if only to accuse the newcomer of dognapping.
Weirdly enough, not one person along the sandy stretch of downtown stopped to ask Sam what he was doing with Violet March’s Dalmatian. Sam should have been thrilled, and he would have been, if not for the large number of dirty looks aimed in his direction.
Something weird was going on. In the few days he’d spent thus far as a resident of Turtle Beach, he’d grown accustomed to being glared at by anyone in a blue uniform. Everyone else in town had been perfectly pleasant—Violet being the one notable exception. Even the locals who’d mistaken Cinder for Sprinkles had been relatively friendly about it. They’d been more curious than anything else.
Not so this morning. He waved to the group of fishermen crowded around the entrance to the pier, and not one of them returned the gesture. They all seemed to look right through him. When he walked past the Turtle Beach post office—which for some reason doubled as an old-fashioned roller skating rink in the evenings—every person inside cast him icy stares.
“Is it my imagination, or are we on the receiving end of some serious side-eye this morning?” Sam muttered.
Cinder kept her head held high, clearly unbothered by the drama. Sam envied her nonchalance.
Why should he care if everyone on the island suddenly seemed to hate him, though? A quiet, solitary life was exactly what he’d been looking for when he’d come to the Carolina coast.
Wasn’t it?
“I don’t know what you did, but it must have been bad,” Griff said, shaking his head as he leaned against the shiny red fire truck parked just outside the apparatus bay when Sam and Cinder arrived at the firehouse.
Sam felt himself frown. He’d been doing a lot of that lately. Frowning. When exactly was the relaxing part of his new stress-free life supposed to kick in? “What are you talking about?”
“Chief Murray is on a tear. He said he wanted to see you the second you got here.” Griff gave Sam’s right arm a poke.
Sam frowned yet again. “What was that for?”
“Just checking. I thought maybe you injured your swinging arm.” Griff shrugged. “It seemed like the only thing that would make Murray so freaking mad.”
“My arm is fine.” Unfortunately. Sam would have welcomed a torn rotator cuff if it meant he could get out of Guns and Hoses, but he was pretty sure even that wouldn’t do the trick. Murray would probably make him bat left-handed. Or with his feet.
Griff jerked his head in the direction of the firehouse. “Well, you’d better get in there. He’s waiting for you in his office.”
Sam nodded. “Thanks for the warning.”
Surely all of this drama wasn’t about bingo. He’d only been doing his job. That crowded lobby had been an accident waiting to happen.
That couldn’t be it. Why would the general public, and especially the fire chief, care this much about game night at a retirement home? It just wasn’t possible.
“Nash.” Chief Murray’s nostrils flared and his eyes went flinty when Sam walked into his office. “Do you want to tell me what the hell happened last night at bingo?”
Okay, so maybe it was possible for the greater population of Turtle Beach to be emotionally invested in bingo. Go figure.
“The crowd was too large for the space.” Sam shrugged. “So I followed procedure and shut down the event.”
“Tell me you didn’t.” Chief Murray sighed.
“I did.” Sam moved to sit down in one of the chairs facing the chief’s desk but decided against it when Murray pounded his fist on the disheveled stack of papers in front of him.
Sam would stand. Standing was good. It would also allow him to make a faster getaway if one was needed, which was starting to seem like a very real possibility.
“Bingo night has been a Turtle Beach tradition for more than twenty-five years, and we’ve never closed it down. Ever. What procedure were you following, exactly?” Chief Murray narrowed his eyes at Sam.
Was he joking? The answer to his question seemed too obvious for Sam to answer. “Well, sir, I followed fire code procedure.”
Murray rolled his eyes.
“Tradition or not, it wasn’t safe. People were packed into that lobby, and at least half of them were seniors with mobility issues. If there’d been a fire or a bomb threat, people would have been trampled,” Sam said.
“A bomb threat?” Murray let out a bark of laughter. “Son, do I need to remind you that you’re not in Chicago anymore? We don’t have bomb threats in Turtle Beach. We barely even have fires.”
“With all due respect, sir, a tragedy can happen anywhere. Any time. Any place.” Sam’s gut churned. He shouldn’t have to spell things out like this for a fire chief, for crying out loud.
He wondered if Murray had ever been on a call like the one that had ended Sam’s career in Chicago. Obviously not, or they’d never be having this conversation.
“You were out of line.” Murray threw his hands in the air. “Did you consider giving them a warning, or perhaps asking for a few volunteers to leave and come back next week?”
No, actually. Sam hadn’t considered anything of the sort—probably because he’d been too busy exchanging verbal hand grenades with Violet.
“My phone has been ringing off the hook all morning with complaints.” Chief Murray pointed a beefy finger
at Sam. “About you.”
Right on cue, the red rotary telephone on the chief’s desk let out a piercing jingle. Murray closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. Cinder cocked her head at the ringing sound.
Murray picked up the phone. “TBFD, Chief Murray speaking.”
Sam shifted his weight from one foot to the other.
“Yes, I’m aware that bingo was shut down,” the chief said. “It was a mistake, and I apologize. As you know, Marshal Nash is new in town, and he just got a little overeager. We’ll make it up to you.”
The chief paused, then glanced up at Sam. “Actually, Nash himself will make it up to you. You have my word.”
Sam’s chest felt weighted down all of a sudden, as if he was being crushed by an elephant…or perhaps the antiquated expectations of a tiny beach town.
“Tomorrow at ten o’clock. He’ll be there. I promise.” Chief Murray slammed the phone back down on the receiver.
“Who was that?” Sam asked.
Anyone but her. Please.
If Sam’s boss was going to make him grovel to every bingo-loving elderly resident of Turtle Beach, he would. But he drew the line at apologizing to Violet.
Not that she would let him, anyway. He’d tried to help her get inside the senior center with her giant tray of cupcakes and look how that had turned out. They’d practically short-circuited the automatic doors.
“That was the director of the Turtle Beach Senior Living Center. She wanted to remind me that the proceeds from bingo night go toward the Turtle Beach Preservation Society. The residents are very upset. They’ve been saving up to donate more park benches up and down the dog beach.” Murray cast a pointed glance at Cinder. “I would think that would be a project you could get on board with.”
“It is.” Sam nodded, even though he still couldn’t quite work out how the lack of seating at the dog beach was his fault when he’d only been doing his job.
“Good. It’s all settled—you’re to go over there tomorrow morning and make things right.” Murray waved toward the door. “Now get out of my office and try not to cause any more trouble, would you?”
“Um.” Sam frowned. “How exactly am I supposed to make things right?”
“How should I know? You created this mess, and now you’re going to fix it. Is that clear?”
Sam nodded.
Clear as mud.
He turned to go, but Murray stopped him as Cinder scrambled to her feet.
“If I were you, I’d take that Dalmatian with you when you go. All the residents over there are dog crazy. Didn’t you say Cinder could do special tricks?”
“I said she’s trained to do fire safety demonstrations,” Sam countered.
“Good. Do that. They’ll love it. Just make it cute, okay? You need to charm the socks off of those retirees. Understood?” Chief Murray said. The red phone on his desk started ringing again, and the chief groaned.
Make it cute. Somehow Sam had missed that part of the fire code.
“Understood.”
Chapter 6
Thank goodness for small-town gossip, Violet thought as she heaved a heavy plastic tub out of her cupcake truck the following morning and carried it toward the entrance to the senior center.
In the past, she hadn’t been much of a fan of the rumor mill—particularly after the big humiliating breakup with Emmett. Trying to hold her head up high when everyone in town knew that she’d been duped had not been fun. But today she was singing a different tune.
Yesterday evening, she’d taken Sprinkles to the dog beach, where she’d crossed paths with Hoyt Hooper, Jr. and his aging Golden Retriever. Hoyt’s father—the original Hoyt Hooper, resident and current bingo caller at the senior center—heard via the senior center’s head chef that everyone in town had bombarded Chief Murray with complaints about bingo night being called off. Hoyt Jr. insisted that Sam had been ordered to apologize to the residents in person at ten in the morning…
Which just so happened to overlap nicely with Violet’s 9:30 a.m. yoga class.
She couldn’t wait to see Sam grovel. Just the thought of him being disgraced like that was altogether intoxicating—so much so that she’d invented a new cupcake for the occasion. Her special today was a warm cinnamon vanilla cake, stuffed with crushed blueberries and creamy custard center. She’d christened it the humble pie cupcake and fashioned the icing to look like crisscrossed pie crust.
Genius as it was, the cupcake was for her, not for Sam. It was simply Violet’s way of venting via whipped butter, eggs, and sugar. She had something entirely different planned for Sam himself. She’d had to make a forty-five minute drive across the bridge to nearby Wilmington last night to get it done, but the result had definitely been worth it. If he thought she was going to just roll over and ignore the ridiculous slip of pink paper he’d given her, he was delusional.
“Good morning, everyone,” she called in a singsong voice as she strolled inside the senior center’s lobby with Sprinkles prancing alongside her.
The bingo setup had been cleared away and replaced with yoga mats in soothing sea-glass hues. Class didn’t start for another twenty minutes or so, but most of her students were ready and waiting, just like always.
Sprinkles paused to sniff at Nibbles, curled into an itsy-bitsy ball on the corner of Mavis’s mat on the front row. Once the Dalmatian had confirmed that the tiny lump was, in fact, a dog and not a wayward snack, she moved on.
“You seem awfully happy this morning, Violet,” Opal said, exchanging puzzled glances with Ethel and Mavis.
Violet beamed as she unrolled her favorite yoga mat, decorated with row upon row of yummy donuts on a hot pink background. “I am. It’s a gorgeous day, don’t you think?”
The retirees all gawked at her.
Violet shrugged. “What?”
“Well, dear, we expected you to still be upset about what happened at bingo night,” Ethel said.
“She must not know,” Opal whispered in a voice loud enough for a room full of elderly yogis to hear her, which subsequently wasn’t much of a whisper at all.
“Obviously not,” Mavis whisper-screamed back.
Violet planted her hands on her hips. “You guys, I’m well aware that Sam Nash is coming here at ten o’clock, and I’m completely fine with it.”
“You’re not mad at him about the other night?” Ethel’s eyes narrowed. “At all?”
“Nope. I’m fine.” Violet’s smile stiffened. “Totally.”
Okay, maybe she wasn’t altogether fine, but she would be in about forty-five minutes when Sam showed up.
She pulled the lid off the plastic tub and began removing fresh new T-shirts from inside. “Actually, I have a surprise for you all today.”
“What did she say?” Hoyt Hooper said from the back row. “She brought us pies?”
“No!” the man beside him bellowed. “She’s got a surprise.”
Hoyt frowned. “So no pie, then?”
“No pie,” Violet said, trying her best not to sigh. “But here, put this on.”
She tossed him one of the T-shirts and wove her way through the maze of yoga mats, giving each of her students a shirt of their own while Sprinkles stretched into a literal downward dog pose on the donut yoga mat at the front of the room.
“What does this say?” Ethel held up her shirt and squinted at it over the top of her purple glasses. “Is that a tic-tac-toe sign?”
Mavis rolled her eyes. “Get with the times. It’s a hashtag.”
“Hashtag free Cinder.” Opal’s mouth fell open as she stared at the lettering on the front of her T-shirt. “Oh my goodness.”
Ethel blinked. “Isn’t Cinder the name of Sam’s sweet Dalmatian?”
“Yes, and she’s being treated like a prisoner. These T-shirts are a statement. We’re standing up for Cinder’s rights.” Violet pulled one
of the T-shirts on and struck a superhero pose.
Once again, Ethel, Mavis, and Opal exchanged glances.
“Stop looking at each other like that. You know I’m right. I tried to give Cinder a treat the other night, and he wouldn’t let her eat it.” Violet crossed her arms and waited for them to react with the appropriate level of horror.
And waited.
And waited some more.
Finally, she threw her hands in the air. “Would you please just put the shirts on? Surely I don’t have to remind you that the man shut down bingo night.”
“Don’t get upset, dear. If it will make you happy, we’ll wear the tic-tac-toe shirts.” Ethel shimmied into her shirt.
The rest of the seniors followed, and even though it had taken a teensy bit of arm-twisting, the end result was fabulous. At least thirty silver-haired yogis smiled back at her from their mats with #FreeCinder emblazoned across their chests.
Take that, Bingo-Hater.
Violet wasn’t usually quite so confrontational, but this was a matter of simple Dalmatian vindication. She was looking out for Sprinkles’s spotted sister. Girl power and all that…but canine.
That was her story, anyway, and she was sticking to it.
If Sprinkles was overly concerned with the plight of her black-and-white body double, she didn’t let it show. Once class started, she gleefully participated, just like she always did. She planted her chin on top of Violet’s crisscrossed legs during the opening meditation—a quiet, serene moment when Violet encouraged her students to set their intention for the day’s yoga practice. Setting an intention typically involved focusing on some noble quality a yogi wanted to nurture in their life, like gratitude, kindness, or grace. Since sweet, sweet revenge didn’t exactly qualify as noble, Violet chose to focus on letting go. Which she would totally do…
Right after she had the pleasure of seeing Sam walk into the senior center to find an army of zen octogenarians advocating for his Dalmatian’s rights to treats. Namaste!
“Okay, everyone, let’s transition slowly into downward facing dog. If this pose is difficult for you, don’t forget you can do it on all fours instead.” Violet stretched into a gentle down dog, and Sprinkles did a commando crawl onto the yoga mat until she was positioned directly beneath Violet. Then the Dalmatian flipped onto her back and gazed up at her with her doggy mouth split into a wide grin.
