Page 77 of A Spot of Trouble
“Wait, though. Please.” Violet leaned forward, clutching the bars that separated the back seat from the front seat. “I’m sorry, Dad. I should have taken all those citations seriously. I just thought—”
“Cupcake, you and I talked about this just a few days ago. I tried to make sure you knew you had to pay the fines. You assured me you were taking care of things.”
What? When had they discussed her fire code citations? Violet didn’t even know her dad knew about them.
“Dad, what are you…” Violet’s voice drifted off as she realized the conversation he was talking about. They’d been in the dugout at practice. She’d tried to get him to tell her about the newspaper photo of her mom and Polkadot, and all he’d wanted to do was warn her away from Sam—or so she’d thought.
Wow. She and her fatherreallyneeded to work on their communication skills. And they would. Violet would make certain they did, but first she probably needed to get fingerprinted or whatever lovely step came next in this mortifying ordeal.
“Joe tried to tell me. You asked him to talk to me and he tried, but I told him I didn’t want to hear whatever it was he had to say,” Violet said quietly.
She’d been so mad at him because he and Josh had cornered her about taking Sam cupcakes. Her fault, yet again, because she’d refused to listen. But another common denominator seemed to be popping up with every misstep she’d taken lately.
And that denominator was Sam.
“Come on, Cupcake. Let’s get this done.” Dad hauled himself out of the car and held her door open for her.
Violet did the walk of shame or perp walk or whatever it was called into the station, where she was officially charged, booked, and taken into custody. Mercifully, the police station was practically a ghost town since everyone in the department was still living it up at Island Pizza. But the reality of Violet’s regretful circumstances hit her hard when the door to her tiny cell clanged shut and her dad locked it with a huge skeleton key.
Old-fashioned as it may be, the Turtle Beach jail was still jail. She wasn’t sitting in a cute pink wire crate like Sprinkles had to do during the baseball games. This wasn’t a field trip to her father’s office with her Girl Scout troop. Violet had gone and gotten herself into a major pickle.
“I called Mavis and told her you can get bailed out anytime now. She’s on her way,” her dad said. He looked as though he’d aged ten years in the past two hours. Again, totally Violet’s doing. “I’d do it myself, but it wouldn’t be proper. You understand, right?”
“Of course, Dad. I get it.” She was actually relieved that her father couldn’t be the one to pay her bail. That would only add insult to injury.
After Mavis took her back to her cupcake truck, Violet would pay her back every last dime from the proceeds of today’s cupcake sales. Violet didn’t care how broke she might be afterward. She was ready to turn over a new leaf. From here on out, she was going to be the most responsible person on the entire island. No more letting her Dalmatian run amok at the dog beach, no more bringing home random canines to bathe and spritz with her favorite bath products, no more setting firemen ablaze.
Andabsolutelyno more kissing the most inappropriate man on the entire Eastern Seaboard. Violet had learned her lesson the hard way.
Her father reappeared, swinging his set of keys as Violet was adding up all her citations, late fees, penalties, and arrest costs in her head. She would need to sell a lot of Dalmatian cupcakes at the next softball game, or Sprinkles might have to start eating generic dog food.
“You’re free to go.” He frowned as he opened the cell door.
“Thank goodness.” Violet threw her arms around her father. “I’m so sorry, Dad. Nothing like this will happen ever again. I promise.”
He gave her a cursory pat on the back, and Violet chalked his standoffishness up to the fact that she’d disappointed him in a major way. She vowed to do better. She didn’t know how she’d make this up to her dad, but she definitely would.
In the meantime, Violet couldn’t wait to see Mavis. She hoped she’d brought Sprinkles with her. Violet couldn’t wait to wrap her arms around her beloved Dalmatian and have a good cry into the dog’s soft spotted fur.
But when she reached the entrance to the police station, Violet suddenly understood why her father had seemed less than pleased to let her go. Her heart wrenched. Sprinkles was there, waiting for her with a wagging tail, just as Violet had hoped. But Mavis hadn’t come to collect her, after all.
The keys to Violet’s freedom had been secured by none other than Sam Nash.
***
“I’m going to kill Mavis.” Violet’s gaze flashed quickly from Sam to her Dalmatian as she grabbed Sprinkles’s leash and walked right past him.
Cinder glanced up at him and let out a mournful whine as the ice cream cone in Sam’s grasp began dripping down his hand.
The ice cream had been a bad idea. Clearly. He wasn’t picking up a child from summer camp. Violet had been in jail—because ofhim. But he’d wanted to do something nice for her besides paying every last dime of her bail, her fire code fines, and the accompanying penalties. Ice cream seemed like just the sort of whimsical surprise Violet might like. He’d even had the cone topped with a generous portion of sprinkles in honor of her Dalmatian.
Big mistake, obviously. All of it. Sam had seen the error of his ways in the hard glitter of tears in her eyes the moment she’d spotted him waiting for her in the police station lobby. If looks could have killed him, he’d already have been dead after coming face to face with Ed March and signing Violet’s exit paperwork while juggling the ridiculous ice cream cone. But the tearful glare Violet sent his way was far worse. It hit Sam right where it hurt most—the aching center of his soul.
“Come on, Cinder. We’re not giving up this easily,” he said, pushing through the door of the station and chasing Violet down Seashell Drive.
He sidestepped a couple walking arm-in-arm and nearly crashed into a group of pre-teens headed toward the beach access with flashlights in their hands, chatting excitedly about chasing ghost crabs in the sand. By the time he caught up with Violet, the ice cream was dripping all the way to his elbow.
“Violet, please. Can we talk?” he said to her ramrod-straight back.
