Page 73 of A Spot of Trouble
Sam needed to talk to her—now—just to be sure. If he didn’t, he’d be thinking about it for the entire game. All seven torturous innings.
“Please don’t,” Griff said.
But it was too late. Sam had already begun stomping toward the spinning pink cupcake with his Dalmatian hot on his heels.
***
Violet’s loyalties were clear—she was rooting for the police department to pull through and prevent the fire department from winning in a sweep. Naturally. She and Sam had a wager, and she fully intended to collect on her bet.
But she was also a businesswoman, so while her heart had most definitely chosen sides, her cupcake offerings on this most important of days catered to both teams. The Sprinkles Special spotty Dalmatian cupcakes had still been her best sellers so far, with the Guns and Hoses team cupcakes she’d created coming in a close second in precisely even quantities. With a quarter of an hour left before the opening pitch, Violet held a Guns cupcake in her left hand and a Hoses cupcake in her right when the line at the window of her food truck parted to make way for Sam, once again marching toward her at a most inopportune moment. Cinder galloped behind him with her cute black-and-white ears flapping in the wind.
Again? What was this—some sort of Dalmatian déjà vu?
Anxiety swirled around Violet, even as her heart did a delighted little flip-flop. Theentire townwas watching, including her dad and Coach Murray, who were both planted on opposite sides of the softball diamond with their hands on their hips.
“Sam.” She wanted to reach through the window and squish both cupcakes into his swoonworthy face. “What are you doing?”
“I need to talk to you. Right now.” His chest rose and fell with rapid breaths. “And preferably alone.”
“I have customers,” she said.
“And I have a game to play.” He gestured at the chaos surrounding them as—much to Violet’s amusement—Cinder collapsed at his feet and began gnawing on his shoelaces. “But this is important.”
Violet plunked the cupcakes down on the counter and dusted off her hands. “Fine.Meet me at the side door.”
She slammed the order window closed and hustled toward the trailer door, but Sam started pounding on it like a Neanderthal before she got there.
“What on earth”—she swung the door open, grabbed the front of his softball jersey and hauled him inside—“could possibly be so urgent?”
Sam practically crashed into her in the tiny space. Before the door closed behind him, Cinder wormed her way inside too. The interior of Sweetness on Wheels felt like it was shrinking by the second.
Violet lifted her chin to meet Sam’s gaze and prayed that he couldn’t somehow tell that she’d slept in his contraband T-shirt the night before. When their eyes met, his expression slowly changed. Violet watched it morph from irritation to something else—something that made her breath hitch.
“What’s the matter?” she managed to say. “Dalmatian got your tongue?”
The corner of his mouth tipped into a reluctant grin. “Still not a thing.”
Cinder shimmied on her belly toward Sprinkles’s pink crate. Their tails both beat against the floor in perfect unison. Violet almost envied them. No one expected an innocent Dalmatian to choose sides in a softball feud, after all.
As much as she loved Dalmatians, though, Violet didn’t want tobeone. If she were a dog, she probably wouldn’t have felt such a lovely warmth flowing through her while Sam gazed down at her, trying to form words for whatever it was that he wanted to say.
“Seriously, Sam. What’s this all about?” She tried her best to keep both her head and heart right there in the cupcake truck and not back on the sofa in Sam’s cozy beach cottage. She wasn’t altogether successful.
“I need to ask you an important question. Are you…could you…” Sam paused, swallowing before he continued. “Would you go to the Fireman’s Ball with me on the Fourth of July?”
Violet felt her eyes go wide.
Sam frowned, and his eyebrows drew together as if he were confused…as if he’d meant to ask her something else altogether.
Was he insane? She couldn’t go to the Fireman’s Ball with him. The ball was a fancy, elaborate affair. It took place on an enormous yacht floating in the bay and strung with twinkle lights. The firefighters wore dress uniforms with white gloves, and their dates either wore floor-length evening gowns or tuxes. At midnight, glittering fireworks went off over the water.
Violet had never been, obviously. Not even when she’d been dating Emmett, since everything had so spectacularly fallen apart well before the Fourth of July.
“What about Guns and Hoses?” she said. “The tournament could go on for another two weeks. If it does, the championship game would take place…”
“On the Fourth.” Sam nodded. “I know.”
Violet shook her head. “I don’t know what to say, Sam.”
