Page 8 of A Spot of Trouble
Sam finally looked up.
“Oh. Hi.” He pushed back his chair and stood. Why did it suddenly feel like there wasn’t nearly enough air in his tiny office? “It’s you.”
Sprinkles scurried toward him and spat the Ping-Pong ball out of her mouth, where it bounced at Sam’s feet. Miraculously, the other Dalmatian completely ignored it.
Sam’s gaze shifted toward Sprinkles. “And you too.”
Sprinkles wagged her tail and nudged Sam’s hand until he patted her. Violet’s heart gave a rebellious little tug. Did he have to look so good petting her dog? There was a gentleness in the way his fingertips ran over her smooth, black-and-white coat—a tender reverence that put a wholly inappropriate lump in Violet’s throat.
“Don’t worry. She’s had a bath since you last saw her,” Violet said, trying her best to focus on something less dangerous, like Sam’s insanely organized office supplies.
“Yeah, I can smell that.” Sam wiggled his nose. “Am I imagining things, or does she smell like cake now?”
“Oh, that’s not her. I brought you cupcakes.” She thrust the pink box toward him.
His gaze remained impassive. “You did?”
“As a peace offering.” Her face went hot. “It’s what I do—I’m a baker.”
She added that last bit because it seemed crucial to point out that she hadn’t gone to any extraordinary lengths to cook something for him. She was a career woman, not Betty Draper.
Granted, she was a career woman who spent most of her time in a frilly pink polka dot apron and still lived in the rambling March family beach house with her father and two older brothers. Plus she’d owned her cupcake truck for less than a week, but those things didn’t make her any less of a professional.
“I see.” Sam glanced down at her whimsical logo: a Dalmatian behind the wheel of a food truck topped with a giant spinning cupcake. “Sweetness on Wheels, that’s you?”
“Sure is. Like I said, I just wanted to come by and apologize. Things are kind of nuts here when it comes to softball, and for a minute, I thought you were trying to steal Sprinkles as some sort of prank. But I realize now that you’re new in town. Cinder clearly belongs to you, and you obviously don’t know a thing about our nutty little feud.”
Sam’s gaze met hers, and then that stern mouth of his curved into a lopsided smile that made her go all gooey inside, like one of her molten hot chocolate cupcakes. Ugh, what was wrong with her?
She plunked the bakery box down on his desk with shaky hands, and when she looked back up at him, her gaze snagged on something over his left shoulder—something that snapped her immediately back to reality.
Sam raked a hand through his perfect hair. “Actually, I—”
Violet cut him off before he could continue. “What is that?”
Her tone went razor sharp, prompting Sam’s smile to vanish as quickly as it had appeared.
His gaze narrowed. “What’s what?”
Violet wasn’t about to spell things out for him. She didn’t have to. The damning evidence was hanging right there on the back wall of his office in the form of a framed newspaper article with a huge headline that readLocal College Hall of Famer Sam Nash Turns Down MLB Contract to Join Chicago Fire Department.
Sam was practically a Major League Baseball player? This could only mean one thing. He was a ringer!
The fire department had brought him to Turtle Beach and installed him in a fancy office for the sole purpose of snagging the Guns and Hoses championship trophy this season. What’s more, he didn’t even have the common decency to try and hide it.
How low could a person get? How dare he come marching into town with his athletic build, his Hall of Fame muscles, and his despicably handsome face and think he could just hand the TBFD a victory. It was basically stealing. He deserved to rot in her father’s single-cell jail across the street. Maybe she should call 911 again.
“Violet?” Sam’s brow furrowed, as if he hadn’t a clue what she was suddenly so upset about.
Sprinkles and Cinder touched noses, tails wagging, and the adorable sight of the two dogs together nearly broke Violet’s heart. Somehow the fact that Sam had a Dalmatian made his betrayal so much worse. He didn’t deserve such a spotted sweetheart of a dog. Violet couldn’tbelieveshe’d wasted a single second feeling bad about falsely accusing him of dognapping. She’d swallowed her pride and baked him cupcakes, and the man was nothing but a Dalmatian abomination.
Sam held up his hands. “I’m not sure what’s going on here, but—”
Finally, he followed her gaze and turned to glance over his shoulder. He muttered an expletive and ground his teeth so hard that an ultra-manly knot flexed to life in his jawline. Violet averted her gaze before she accidentally went all swoony again.
“Look, I can explain,” he said.
Why did that seem to be the one thing men always said when they’d done something atrocious?
