by Teri Wilson
And there it was.
Joe, Josh, Mavis, Ethel, and Opal all turned and looked at Sam. Funny how Violet’s brothers seemed to have fewer objections to a wager now that they knew it could end in Sam dressed as a baked good on the busiest street in Turtle Beach. The cupcake suit would be pink, obviously. He didn’t even have to ask.
“You would be providing the costumes, I’m assuming.” Sam raised his eyebrows at Violet.
She nodded. “Naturally. I’m the cupcake expert, after all.”
Definitely pink, then.
“And as you’ve pointed out on numerous occasions, I’m the dog training expert.” Sam paused as Violet’s eyes narrowed. Even though every shred of common sense he possessed told him to stay as far away from this wager scenario as possible, he couldn’t. “So if the fire department wins the tournament, you’re signing up for obedience lessons.”
“Obedience lessons,” she echoed.
“Those are my terms,” Sam said.
Josh laughed under his breath. “For her or the dog?”
Violet aimed a murderous glare at her brother.
“For Sprinkles, obviously,” Sam said. “At the obedience school of my choosing. I assure you it will be based on positive reinforcement techniques—treats, mostly. Knowing your position on treats, you can’t possibly object.”
Violet grew quiet, no doubt weighing the odds of whose pride would take the biggest hit if they lost. As far as Sam was concerned, it seemed like an equitable arrangement. Also, he seriously doubted anyone in Turtle Beach would be walking around in #FreeSprinkles attire if her Dalmatian started obedience training. On the contrary, the good citizens of their fair beach town would probably heave a collective sigh of relief.
“Those are my terms. Take them or leave them.” Sam rose from his chair, fully prepared to go back to the table of firefighters and get on with his normal, uneventful life.
But before he could walk away, Violet flew to her feet, eyes blazing with defiance.
“Fine. It’s a deal.”
They shook on it, and Sam pretended not to notice how soft and right Violet’s hand felt in his, a perfect fit. Because the Dalmatian negotiation was complete and now it was official—Sam and Violet were on opposing teams, and there could only be one champion.
He wasn’t going to coddle her like everyone else did. If a wager was what she wanted, then a wager was what she was going to get.
From now on, Sam was playing to win.
***
Violet lingered as long as possible at Island Pizza. Was it fun watching the firefighters celebrate their victory with pitchers of beer and obnoxious chants that centered around cop jokes and donuts? Hardly.
She couldn’t go home yet, though. Going home would mean facing her dad, who she’d been carefully avoiding ever since Sprinkles’s romp around the softball diamond.
He was going to be furious. The chiefs took Guns and Hoses just as seriously as the players did, if not more so. To Violet’s knowledge, her dad and Chief Murray had never shown up for post-game pizza. All the players did, along with their family members, and the community’s numerous softball fans. The chiefs? Never. Not once.
Their absence had never made much sense to Violet. The only time she’d asked her father why he and Chief Murray always skipped the summer pizza parties, he’d said just one word—“tradition.”
Well, that just makes things clear as mud now, doesn’t it, Dad?
Traditions had to start somewhere, didn’t they?
In any case, Violet didn’t want to unravel that particular mystery at the moment. Her team had lost, and yes, her dog was at least partially to blame, even if she’d been somehow lured into leaping onto the field by Sam’s mesmerizing charisma.
Dalmatian antics aside, by the time Violet left Island Pizza, she felt rather victorious herself. The bet with Sam had given her new life. She was tired of the weird and wholly inappropriate push-pull between them. Tired of never knowing if he was her enemy or her friend. Tired of having to try so hard to ignore him when his presence was a like a fire burning in the middle of the pizza parlor, consuming all her oxygen.
Now the battle lines had been definitively drawn. She was on one side, and Sam was very clearly on another. There would be no more placing cupcake orders in the middle of the game, no more unplanned heart-to-hearts, no more lingering glances in Sam’s direction when she thought no one was looking. Sam was going down. The next time she’d allow herself to ogle him, he’d be dressed as a cupcake. As soon as that happened, she’d take a good long look, and then she’d document it for the Sweetness on Wheels Facebook and Instagram accounts. Because of course she would.
Meanwhile, she still had to slink back to the family beach house and somehow avoid her father. This was why grown women weren’t supposed to live at home anymore, despite the sprawling serenity of the crest and the fact that she liked to make sure her dad took all his prescriptions and ate something other than grilled meat seven nights a week.
“Look at the time.” Mavis glanced at the non-existent watch on her arm. “We should probably be getting back to the senior center.”
Opal rolled her eyes. “Why don’t you just go ahead and admit that you want to be home in time to watch Jeopardy! so you and Larry Sims will have something to chat about if he ever leaves his room?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Mavis picked a leftover piece of pepperoni from her plate and offered it to Nibbles, who took it with her tiny front teeth as if she were doing Mavis a favor.
Violet felt an immediate, intense longing for her Dalmatian. Sprinkles accompanied her almost everywhere, and the owner of Island Pizza kindly looked the other way when a certain retiree snuck her minuscule dog inside the restaurant in a walker basket, but due to an unfortunate incident involving flying pizza dough, Sprinkles had been deemed persona non grata around here.
“Please. We’ve all heard the Jeopardy! theme song blaring from behind your door every evening like clockwork,” Ethel said.
Opal nodded. “It’s true.”
Violet bit back a smile. “Whatever the reason, I’m happy to give you three a ride home. Sprinkles is probably wondering where we are.”
Since Sprinkles wasn’t welcome at Island Pizza, Violet had left her dog in Mavis’s room at the senior center, glued to the vast array of satellite programming options, most notably DOG-TV. Then Violet had driven their foursome to the restaurant in her cupcake truck. Jeopardy! wasn’t exactly late-night viewing, so she’d need to drag her feet on the way back to the beach house if she wanted to continue avoiding her father, but she definitely didn’t want to get in the way of elderly true love in the making.
Sprinkles was still riveted upon their return, sprawled on Mavis’s little sofa with her chin propped on a throw pillow—Dalmatian relaxation at its finest. When Mavis changed the channel just in time to catch the opening bars of the Jeopardy theme song, Violet’s dog signaled her displeasure by hopping down from the sofa and pawing at the door.
Violet could take a hint, plus she didn’t want to interrupt Mavis’s new game show ritual—which, judging by the way she planted her recliner mere inches from the television screen—was intense. So once Sprinkles’s pink collar was safely clipped to her cupcake leash, they said their goodbyes and headed home.
On the way to the crest, Violet pulled her silver cupcake truck into the narrow strip of sand-covered pavement that served as the parking lot for the dog beach. She stood in the shallows with gentle waves lapping at her feet while Sprinkles chased the incoming tide and couldn’t help but wonder what Sam and Cinder were doing. Some sort of military-esque canine obedience drill, probably. Just the thought of it made Violet’s eyes roll. Was it really so awful that she wished Sprinkles would listen and behave because she wanted to? Because they had a relationship built on mutual love and respect?
Was she wishing for a m
iracle?
Maybe she was. She’d always thought of Sprinkles as spirited, and yes, her dog occasionally got into a spot of trouble, but nothing dire. She wasn’t Cujo dressed up in a Dalmatian costume, for goodness’ sake.
But today had been…not great. And now that Violet was alone on a quiet stretch of shore instead of in a noisy pizza restaurant planning her complete and total annihilation of Sam Nash, she was beginning to feel slightly terrible that her dog’s antics had caused the police department to lose the game. Surely, they’d bounce back and win the tournament. They had to.
As expected, Violet’s dad was sitting on the deck, staring out at the moonlit sea when she and Sprinkles slinked back home in shame. Violet was sort of glad he’d waited up for her, actually. Better to just face the music and get it over with.
“Hi, Dad,” she said, wishing she’d had the foresight to bring home a boxed pizza as a peace offering.
“Hi, Cupcake,” he said, smiling even though his grin didn’t quite reach his eyes.
Violet felt a little pang in her chest at his use of her childhood nickname, which Ed March had adorably resurrected once Sweetness on Wheels had been born. “Can I sit with you for a minute?”
“Of course.”
Violet lowered herself into a rocking chair facing the water as Sprinkles greeted her dad, leaving a trail of wet paw prints on the deck.
“You two must have gone to the dog beach on the way home,” Dad said.
“We did.” Violet took a deep breath. “Listen, Dad. I want to talk about what happened at the softball game.”
He nodded. “Okay, then. Let’s talk.”
“I’m sorry.” Violet squeezed her eyes closed, and the tide roared in her ears. When she licked her lips, they tasted of salt and ocean spray.
Why did she feel like a kid again all of a sudden?
Dad finally turned to look at her, and his eyes narrowed. “Josh seems to think Sam Nash was involved somehow. You two aren’t…”
He couldn’t even finish the sentence. Violet didn’t blame him—not after the embarrassing Emmett episode.
“Absolutely not.” She shook her head. “No way. Never. Not in a million years.”
She bit down hard on the inside of her cheek to stop herself from saying more. A simple no would have sufficed. Who was she trying to convince? Her father or herself?
Dad sighed. “Violet.”
“You don’t have to worry about me. I promise. Sam ordered cupcakes, that’s all.”
“In the middle of the game.” He raised his brows. “Yes, I noticed. Everyone did. You two seemed to be having a quite a conversation at your cupcake truck.”
“We were just chatting, that’s all. There’s no secret love affair going on between us. I have no intention of repeating past mistakes.”
“Good.” He nodded and for a second, he looked far older than his fifty-seven years. “You know I just want you to be happy, right, Cupcake?”
“I know, Dad.”
“And the fact of the matter is that I just don’t trust the man.”
“That makes two of us,” Violet said quietly.
She would have added Sprinkles to the equation, but the Dalmatian was clearly enamored of Turtle Beach’s newest fireman, just like everybody else in town.
“For what it’s worth, though, I’m not entirely sure Sam intentionally set out to get Sprinkles to interfere with the game.” Violet cleared her throat. She would never have admitted as much to Sam, but she wanted to be honest with her father. “He made a cute little clicking noise, and Sprinkles just threw herself at him like he was the long lost inventor of dog biscuits.”
That was what had upset Violet the most—not that the game had been forfeited, but that her dog might actually have a canine crush on her nemesis. The possibility stung more than it should have. She knew without a doubt that she was her dog’s favorite person in the world. But if Sprinkles had to have a crush on someone, did it have to be him? Clearly, Sprinkles—sweet, innocent soul that she was—had learned nothing from Violet’s tumultuous romantic past.
“Anyway, it won’t happen again, Dad. I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure the police department wins the tournament.” Obviously. “We’re just one game down, but I know we can bounce back.”
“Heck yes. We can. Sam doesn’t seem to be quite the softball savior that Murray seemed to think he was, particularly if he keeps walking off the field in the middle of the game.” A small smile crept its way to Ed March’s face. And just when Violet thought the conversation was over and she was free to hunker down in her wing of the rambling beach house to plot Sam’s demise, her father held up a finger. “One more thing, if you don’t mind my asking.”
“Sure.”
“What were you two talking about for so long in the middle of the fourth inning?”
Violet’s face suddenly felt as hot as if she’d just spent an entire day baking on a beach towel by the shore. Visions of Sam’s charming dimples and his perfectly chiseled jawline danced in her head.
I think you and I should be friends…
“Nothing, really.” She kept her gaze glued on the horizon, where a row of pelicans swooped low over the sea, letting the tips of their wings skim the surface of the water. “Just chitchat, mostly about our dogs.”
Her dad nodded, and that should have been that, but Violet realized if she elaborated just a little bit, she might have an opening to push for an answer to the question she’d been dying to know for as long as she could remember.
She swallowed hard, brushed her windswept hair from her face and tried to keep her voice as calm and even as possible. “Actually, Sam asked me how I ended up adopting a Dalmatian.”
Dad went still, like he always did any time Violet tiptoed anywhere close to the topic of her mother. She never pushed, though. Ever. The last thing she wanted was to make her father feel like he hadn’t been enough for her or that her childhood had been traumatic. Honestly, it hadn’t. Of course she’d wondered what it would have been like to have a mother to read her bedtime stories or braid her hair, but Dad had stepped up and done those things himself. And when he’d been busy with work, the OG Charlie’s Angels had stepped in to make sure she was always taken care of, always cherished.
But no matter how much the town rallied, Violet was still curious. She wanted to know more about the smiling woman in the pictures who’d sacrificed everything to give birth to her. She’d just never figured out a way to make her father talk. He seemed to want to leave all those yesterdays right where they belonged—in the past.
Violet kept talking in an effort to fill the loaded silence. “I told him it was because Mom had one a long time ago. But of course you already know that.”
Was she imagining things, or did the salty evening air go heavy all of a sudden? Thick with memories, secrets, and family lore that went deeper than old pictures pressed between the pages of leather-bound books. “How did she end up with a Dalmatian, Dad? I don’t think you’ve ever told me.”
“It’s getting late, Cupcake,” he said.
His rocking chair creaked as he stood and raked a hand through his hair and gave her one last smile before heading inside. Sprinkles sprang to her feet as the sliding glass door closed behind him and came to rest her head in Violet’s lap. Her dark eyes glittered in the moonlight.
“Good girl,” Violet whispered.
Sprinkles was good, no matter what Sam thought. She was sweet and loving, and always seemed to know when Violet needed a little extra comfort. Surely that was just as important as sitting on command or rolling over or knowing how to dial 911.
Okay, maybe that last one really was extra-important. Still, in Violet’s eyes, Sprinkles was the most perfect dog in Turtle Beach, if not the world.
She ran her fingertips along the Dalmatian’s smooth head, pausing to touch each black spot with the pad of h
er thumb, like tender little kisses. She wondered if her mother had ever done the same with Polkadot or if Adeline’s Dalmatian knew how to do fancy tricks like Cinder or if she’d ever gone to obedience classes like the ones Sam wanted her to attend. What sort of dog had Polkadot been, and where had she come from?
Like so much else, Violet suspected she might never know.
Chapter 9
On Tuesday morning, Sam was scheduled to give another fire safety demonstration at the Turtle Beach Public Library. Since news of Cinder’s impressive skillset had hit the island’s rumor mill, he’d received a mountain of requests for presentations. They ran the gamut from scout troops and beach camps to garden clubs and ocean conservationist groups. Apparently, Turtle Beach was home to a special hospital and rehabilitation center for endangered sea turtles, and even the turtles were allegedly interested in fire safety and prevention.
It was pretty much a dream come true scenario for a newly appointed fire marshal. Since Sam’s new role involved stopping fires before they started, the more people he and Cinder could educate, the better, so Tuesdays and Thursdays had been designated as community outreach days on his calendar. He’d devote the remaining three days of the week to various inspections and upholding the current fire code, which no one on the island realized was an actual thing.
That was fine, though. It was his job to get the islanders up to speed, and as daunting as the task seemed at times, it provided the perfect distraction from his wager with Violet March. Word had spread about that too, of course. Nothing that happened in Turtle Beach went unnoticed. His Dalmatian could sneeze and it would probably show up in the Turtle Beach Gazette.
“Welcome, Marshal Nash, and welcome to you too, Cinder. We’re so pleased you could come today!” Hazel Smith, the librarian, grinned as he entered the building located on the boardwalk alongside Turtle Beach’s popular stretch of ice cream parlors, surf shops, and art galleries offering watercolor prints of the island’s famed sunsets and local landmarks.
