A Spot of Trouble

by Teri Wilson

  Again. No one wanted to see her get hurt again.

  The word hovered between them—unspoken, but very much there. Was the greater population of Turtle Beach ever going to move past Emmett’s betrayal?

  And then a thought hit her, right out of the blue—if Violet couldn’t put her humiliating romantic past behind her, how could she expect anyone else to do it, least of all her own family?

  Maybe it was time to forgive and forget, once and for all. Maybe she’d wasted enough time feeling bad about the way Emmett had taken advantage of her. Maybe it was time to give love another chance.

  Not with Sam, obviously. That was out of the question.

  Wasn’t it?

  Violet’s heart thumped hard in her chest.

  “I’m over it,” she announced, willing herself to believe it. “I’m not going to let myself get hurt.”

  She had way too much on the line to take a chance on another relationship. The greater population of Turtle Beach already thought she was a fragile little thing who couldn’t think for herself. They’d thought as much since the day she’d been born. Violet couldn’t imagine how her hometown would react if she let another firefighter break her heart.

  She’d have to walk up and down Seashell Drive with a bag over her head. Or better yet, move to an entirely new city. Maybe even another continent.

  Moving away was out of the question, though. Violet loved Turtle Beach, quirks and all. She loved her family too, naturally. She just wished they weren’t quite so invested in her personal life.

  “Dad knows about your wager with Sam,” Josh said. “He thinks your little bet is the reason why the Hoses were so fired up last Saturday.”

  Ouch.

  Violet winced. She hated the thought of disappointing her father. Even after the Emmett fiasco, he hadn’t blamed Violet. Ed March had reserved every last drop of his ire for anyone with a Turtle Beach Fire Department logo on their clothing.

  This was part of what she needed to leave behind, though. Her dad didn’t need to baby her. They should be able to talk about these things like adults, just like Violet should feel comfortable asking questions about her mother. She’d let the March men nurture their overprotective streak for far too long. Enough was enough.

  “I’ll deal with Dad. And from now on, I’ll deal with my own life in my own way.” Sprinkles leaned against her leg in solidarity, which reminded Violet that she wasn’t completely without fault in the current scenario. “The next time I think someone is kidnapping my Dalmatian, I’ll take care of it myself. And from this point forward, I want you both to treat me the same way you treat each other.”

  Josh and Joe exchanged a dubious look.

  “I’m serious,” Violet said.

  “We heard about bingo night too. You supposedly lit Sam on fire?” Josh’s expression dripped with incredulity.

  Right. That. “It was a teensy accident. He’s fine. I guess you didn’t hear about the part where I put out the fire? I saved Sam’s life.”

  Why did everyone completely ignore that important fact?

  “So, see? I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself. I extinguished Sam all on my own, even though there was another firefighter present.” Come to think of it, she was still waiting for a thank you from Sam. Ugh.

  Violet would deal with that later, after she’d finished putting her brothers in their place.

  She gestured at her Dalmatian. “And look how nicely Sprinkles is behaving. We’re fine. I’m fine.”

  Violet didn’t need a pair of guardian angels dressed in police uniforms any more than Sprinkles needed to go to obedience school.

  Josh glanced at Joe, threw his hands up and heaved a weary sigh. “We tried. I give up.”

  Violet beamed with triumph as she aimed a questioning glance at Joe.

  “One last thing,” he said.

  Violet held up her hand. “No.”

  “Are you sure? It’s really important, Vi.” Joe’s eyes narrowed.

  He was goading her, but Violet wasn’t about to fall for it. Not anymore.

  “I’ve never been so sure of anything in my life.”

  ***

  Perhaps it was the run-in with her brothers outside the firehouse, or perhaps she’d decided that a little payback was in order after the sprinkler incident, but when Violet arrived at the senior center, she marched into the building on a mission.

  The Charlie’s Angels were seated in the living room area of the lobby, half an hour early for the senior center’s bi-weekly trivia game. It was an unspoken rule of Turtle Beach’s over-seventy crowd that if you arrived right on time for a scheduled event, you were late. Therefore, anything on the senior center’s activity calendar that began at ten o’clock was already packed by nine-thirty, sometimes even nine-fifteen.

  “Violet?” Ethel called as Violet strode across the lobby’s smooth tile floor. Ethel, Mavis, and Opal exchanged worried glances. “I think you have the wrong day again, dear. Yoga class is tomorrow. The only thing on the schedule this morning is trivia.”

  “I’m well aware of what day it is,” Violet said. She’d shown up one time for yoga on the wrong day of the week, and she’d yet to live it down. It was like her accidental free dog grooming business all over again.

  “So you’re here for trivia, then? How nice! We can probably make room.” Mavis scooted closer to Ethel on the sofa.

  Violet flashed her friends a smile. “No, I’m not here for trivia, either, but keep that space free. I’m inviting a special guest.”

  She spun around and headed for the hallway that led to the residents’ living quarters.

  “Where is she going?” Mavis said to Ethel and Opal while Violet was still within earshot. Then, once she’d apparently caught on to Violet’s devious plan, Mavis called after her. “Violet! Tell us where you’re going right this instant.”

  Violet kept on moving down the hall, and within minutes the three older women were trailing behind her as if she were the grand marshal in a walker parade.

  When she reached the door to Larry Sims’s apartment, she crossed her arms and waited for Ethel, Opal, and—most importantly, Mavis—to catch up.

  “What are you doing, Violet?” Ethel asked, eyes comically wide behind the lenses of her purple glasses.

  “You’re not really going to knock, are you?” Opal said.

  Mavis didn’t say a word, but she was trembling enough to rival Nibbles the Chihuahua, which was really saying something. The tiny dog leapt out of her blanket nest and began pacing back and forth the full length of the walker basket.

  Violet raised her hand, poised to knock on the elusive Larry Sims’s door. “You all thought it was cute to meddle in my personal life, so maybe it’s time I meddle in yours.”

  “Fine. I lied, okay?” Ethel blurted. “There was nothing wrong with the sprinklers. Go ahead and call Sam and have him throw me in the slammer.”

  Violet bit back a smile. “No one’s going to jail, Ethel. Particularly not you, because I have a feeling I know who the mastermind behind yesterday’s stunt was.”

  She pinned Mavis with a look.

  “What?” Mavis’s hand fluttered to her chest like a nervous bird. “Surely you don’t mean me.”

  Opal shifted her walker so that she was squared off with Mavis. “Oh, Mavis. Go ahead and tell her the truth. All of it.”

  Violet only waited a split second to see if Mavis would fess up. It didn’t really matter whether or not she did, because Violet had already made up her mind.

  She gave the door four knocks in rapid succession.

  Opal and Ethel gasped in horror, Nibbles yipped, and Sprinkles dropped into a play bow. Violet half-expected Mavis to flee, but she paused to cast a curious glance at the Dalmatian and by the time she prepared her walker for an emergency retreat, the door swung open.

  Larry Sims stoo
d on the threshold in all his cardiganed splendor, gaze swiveling from woman to spotted dog, to woman, to tiny trembling dog, to the other two women, clearly trying to figure out why there was an odd collection of humans and animals gathered outside his room.

  “Hi.” Violet held up her hand in a wave. “I’m Violet. This is my Dalmatian, Sprinkles, and these are my friends, Mavis, Opal, and Ethel.”

  “H-hello, there,” Larry said. A fluffy gray cat with piercing blue eyes appeared at his feet and began winding its way around his legs. “This is Skippy.”

  “Skippy is lovely. And wow, she doesn’t seem very afraid of dogs.” Violet bent to run a hand over the Persian kitty’s soft, slender back.

  “Oh, Skippy loves dogs. I had a Chihuahua for many years, and they were the best of friends.” Larry smiled at Nibbles, and miraculously, the little dog stopped trembling. “Who does this little sweetheart belong to?”

  “Me.” Mavis lit up like a sparkler on the Fourth of July. “She belongs to me. My name is Mavis.”

  This was going even more smoothly than Violet had dared to hope. Yes, she’d aimed to teach her friends a lesson about meddling, but she’d also wanted to get Mavis and her secret crush to actually speak to one another. It was the least she could do after Mavis had smuggled the copy of the Gazette with Adeline March’s picture on the front page out of the library…even if Violet still hadn’t been able to get her father to tell her where her mother’s Dalmatian puppy had come from.

  “Mavis was wondering if you might like to join her in the lobby right now for group trivia,” Violet said, and with a wink she added, “It’s kind of like Jeopardy! minus all the Geico commercials.”

  “That lizard.” Mavis rolled her eyes.

  “Skippy likes to hiss at that green nuisance,” Larry said.

  Then he buttoned his cardigan up to the top and fell into step beside Mavis as the seniors hurried back to the lobby. Trivia wasn’t set to start for another twenty minutes, so of course Opal, Ethel, and Mavis were warning Larry that they were already late.

  Nope, I don’t think so. Violet smiled to herself and bent to ruffle Sprinkles’s ears. Something tells me Larry Sims is right on time.

  Chapter 14

  The next morning proceeded exactly as the previous one had in Sam’s quiet, tranquil little cottage on the beach. Except things were no longer so quiet. Or tranquil, for that matter.

  Like the day before, Cinder opted not to make the bed. Nor did she paw at the button of the coffee maker to switch it on. This aversion to household chores continued for the remainder of the week. Sam didn’t mind either of those omissions from Cinder’s morning routine. Of course he didn’t. This was, in fact, what he’d wanted all along.

  Sam had never intended for his Dalmatian to make his bed. She’d just picked up the behavior on her own after watching Sam straighten his covers every morning. And he could certainly push a button to brew his own coffee. That particular trick had always been more about aesthetics than necessity. Translation: it was cute. Even Sam enjoyed a cute dog trick now and then.

  It hadn’t seemed so cute after Violet accused him of treating his Dalmatian like the canine version of Cinderella. So, sure, he could live without it.

  Teaching a dog to unlearn a behavior was more challenging than most people realized. Old dogs, new tricks and all that. Dogs were creatures of habit. They liked routines and thrived best in environments where they knew exactly what was expected of them. The easiest way to get a dog to stop engaging in a certain behavior—like turning on a coffee maker, for instance—was to replace the action with something else. To trade one behavior for another. That way, the pup would better understand the trainer’s expectations.

  Sam knew all of this, obviously. He quite literally could have written a book on it after all the time and effort he’d put into training Cinder to be a working fire safety dog. His failure to replace making the bed and turning on the coffee maker with another action had clearly been a mistake.

  His motives had been pure, though. He’d wanted Cinder to relax, not perform—which he now realized was about as ridiculous as Violet’s assertion that Sprinkles didn’t need obedience lessons because she was “naturally sweet.” Cinder enjoyed learning new things. Dalmatians, in particular, were very high-energy dogs. A bored Dalmatian could be a disaster. Sam’s initial encounter with Sprinkles on the dog beach sprang quickly to mind.

  Again, none of this was new information to Sam, which was why he shouldn’t have been surprised to find that his very bright, very trainable Dalmatian had apparently decided to choose her own replacement behavior in the absence of specific direction from Sam. But why oh why did the replacement behavior have to involve his socks?

  Cinder pranced past him with a sock dangling from her mouth as Sam jammed at the button on the coffee maker. He’d already rescued one sock from her jaws, and within seconds she’d somehow swiped its mate.

  Sam needed caffeine. Immediately. Forget making the bed. Rumpled bedsheets were the least of his worries at the moment. He still hadn’t responded to his old chief about the job offer, and the texts and voicemails were continuing to pile up. Murray had started showing up at the batting cages for practice in the evenings to remind Sam and the other players how fantastic it would be if they could beat the police department in a sweep. Sam was beginning to wonder if turning down the Chicago job was really such a smart move. What would happen if the TBFD failed to win the tournament? Would Sam even have a job in Turtle Beach anymore?

  Surely he didn’t need to worry about such a remote possibility. The Hoses were already up 2–0. Odds were definitely in their favor. And it was hard to imagine that he could actually be fired for losing an extracurricular ball game. But stranger things had certainly happened in Turtle Beach. In fact, stranger things happened on a daily basis in this wacky town—the sock thing, for instance.

  “Cinder, you need to be on your best behavior at work today. We have the fire safety demo for the surf camp kids.” Sam wrestled the sock away from her.

  The Dalmatian cocked her head as if she were listening, but Sam wasn’t entirely convinced.

  “Do you hear me? This is serious,” he said.

  Cinder huffed, and Sam sagged with relief. Then the Dalmatian collapsed on the floor to writhe around and give herself a prolonged back-scratch.

  What had happened to his serious, competent dog?

  Sam had no idea, and while a small part him (so small that it would have been invisible to the naked eye) enjoyed seeing his Dalmatian act like a puppy again, he was starting to worry about their presentation.

  Sam gulped the majority of his coffee down in one giant swallow. Then he pulled on his damp socks and his carefully pressed uniform, telling himself all the while that he had nothing to worry about. Cinder was the best fire dog he’d ever seen. True, she’d been acting up at home, but at the fire station she’d been business as usual. She’d never embarrass him on the job. Cinder was his partner, and that was an unbreakable bond.

  By mid-morning, however, Cinder appeared to be challenging that notion. The setting for the presentation—the beach—seemed to further complicate things.

  “Hello, boys and girls. I’m Marshal Sam and this is my dog, Cinder. We’re here today to teach you about fire prevention.” Sam glanced down at the spot beside him that his Dalmatian typically occupied and saw nothing but a ghost crab scurrying toward its hole.

  His audience, comprised of about a dozen children between the ages of nine and ten years old wearing wet bathing suits and long-sleeved rash guards, collapsed into giggles. One of them pointed toward the water’s edge, where Cinder was trailing a sandpiper scurrying in and out of the shallows. The bird poked its narrow beak into the sand, and Cinder imitated the sandpiper, doing the same with her muzzle. When she lifted her head, her black heart-shaped nose was covered in sugary sand.

  “Cinder,” Sam said in what he hoped so
unded liked a firm-but-kind voice. “Come.”

  The Dalmatian swiveled her head in his direction, as if surprised to see him there and then bounded toward him. When she took her place by his side, she sneezed three times in rapid succession, spraying the children with wet sand.

  Every black spot on Cinder’s body could have fallen off right before Sam’s eyes and he would have been less surprised than he was at seeing his beloved Dalmatian behave this way. Astonished didn’t begin to cover it.

  Was he dreaming? Was this some sort of strange Dalmatian hallucination?

  “Gross!” a little girl on the front row wailed as she wiped sandy sludge from the front of her rash guard.

  A boy next to her laughed as he smeared the wet sand Cinder had slung at him more fully into his hair.

  The camp counselors—a group of young twenty-something surfer types with sun-bleached hair and noses slathered with white zinc oxide—exchanged concerned glances. Sam’s gut churned. How awful did you have to be in order to crack the chilled-out composure of a surf instructor?

  He took a deep breath. They’d gotten off to a rocky start, that was all. The beach was full of distractions. Sam could save this presentation. They still had half an hour to go.

  “Cinder,” he said, waiting a beat for the Dalmatian to meet his gaze. “Let’s teach the children what phone number they should dial if they smell smoke.”

  Sam waited for Cinder to bark out 911, like she’d done countless times before.

  And waited.

  And waited some more.

  “Cinder, you know the answer. What number should the kids dial if they smell smoke?” he prompted, taking great care to enunciate in case the Dalmatian was having trouble hearing him over the roar of the Atlantic Ocean.

  Could she have an ear infection? That would explain a lot.

  Except Sam had given her a thorough grooming the night before. Nail trim, bath, ear cleaning—the whole nine yards. Sam had noticed nothing amiss.

  Cinder let out a woof, and Sam held his breath as he waited for eight more barks.