me alone!” she cried, close to meltdown, slapping at his hands as she struggled to her knees and grabbed her chick. “Zeke! You okay? Does anything hurt?” Heedless of the spaghetti sauce and gravy clinging to her breasts, dribbled down her skirt, she frantically checked for blood and bruises. A noodle dangled from her hair; she yanked it out and tossed it on the floor, then clamped one tiny shoulder with a short-nailed hand, holding the other one three inches from the kid’s nose. “How many fingers?”
“Th-three,” the kid said, small-voiced, trembling. “I’m sorry, Mama, I had to pee! I didn’t see you!”
“It’s okay, baby, it’s okay.” The boy momentarily vanished into her bosom to have a dozen kisses rained upon a crop of short blond curls. “It’s okay,” she said again. “Accidents happen, it wasn’t your fault.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Rudy saw Stacey pick her way through the carnage. “If you want, I could take your little boy to the restroom and get him cleaned up,” she said, and Rudy gawked at her.
“Thank you,” Violet said, nodding, only now seeming to notice the extent of the mess, which verged on epic proportions. As Stacey led Zeke away, Violet sat back on her haunches and moaned. A tall, shapeless, hairnetted brunette in a grease-splotched apron appeared out of nowhere, bringing with her a deathly silence. Rudy glanced over his shoulder: Every eye was trained on the scene.
“This makes what, Violet?” she said. “The third time this month?”
“I know,” she said, flushing red as she began gathering the jagged pieces of earthenware, their soft clanking like screams in the deep hush. Rudy squatted to help her; she glared at him, then shrugged. “Zeke ran out in front of me—”
“And didn’t I say you could only bring the kids here while you worked as long as they weren’t a nuisance?”
“It was an accident, Maude.” The waitress kept her eyes on the floor, tense fingers clutching two neat halves of a broken plate, weariness and embarrassment stiffening her back. Kevin appeared with a gray plastic tub, started tossing the mess into it; Rudy tried to pry the broken plate from Violet’s hands, which earned him another glare. She tossed the destroyed crockery into the bin, saying, “I’ll pay for the loss. Like always.”
“I’m sorry, Violet, I really am,” the older woman said, not sorry at all. “This isn’t working out—”
“No! Maude, please!” Tears bulged in Violet’s eyes when she looked up. “I promise it won’t happen again—”
Rudy was on his feet, staring down whoever the hell this Maude was, his steady, now-we-don’t-want-any-trouble cop’s voice barely masking his irritation. “Like she said, it was an accident. So how about cutting the lady a break?”
“You stay out of this,” Violet said, now standing as well, the eyes inches away, as were the breasts, like double-dip mounds of pistachio ice cream, or maybe mint, the image almost enough to neutralize a tone meant to shrink gonads in a hundred-yard radius. Too bad for her Rudy’s were the nonshrinkable variety. He may have turned in his badge and gun, but not those. “I don’t need some stranger fighting my battles for me!”
“Then let me introduce myself,” he said, extending his hand. “Rudy Vaccaro.”
For a second, he thought she might spit at him.
“Who?” Maude said.
“He bought Doris’s place,” Violet said, and something in her voice brought his head around. Then, to add to the bizarreness, Maude laughed. Rudy’s head swung back to Maude. Who was smirking.
“No, mister, I sincerely doubt she wants your help,” she said, as Stacey returned with the younger boy, who immediately plastered himself to his mother’s side. As Violet cupped the boy’s head, her boss said, “So what’s it gonna be? You gonna find somebody to babysit your brats or what?”
The waitress flushed again, the deep pink a weird contrast to the orange hair, then turned, wagging her hand at the older boy. “Get your stuff together. We’re leaving,” she said softly.
Kevin tugged Rudy’s sleeve and whispered, “Not your problem, bro, let’s get back to the table, okay? Rudy!”
Torn, Rudy frowned into his brother’s eyes. “Obviously, you hanging around is only making this harder for her,” Kevin said under his breath. “Come on.”
After a final glance at Violet as she herded her sons through the restaurant and out the back door, Rudy followed his brother and daughter back to the booth. But everyone was still staring, and he knew damn well they were the subject of at least a half-dozen whispered conversations, too.
So when the other waitress brought them their redone dinners, Rudy asked, “Okay, clearly I’m missing something. What’s my buying the Hicks place got to do with Violet?”
Her eyes banged into his. “You don’t know?”
When Rudy shook his head, the waitress said, “Then let me be the first to break it to ya…”
Chapter Two
“Let me guess,” Kevin said as they made their way back to the car. “You’re about to bust something trying to figure out what to do about this new wrinkle.”
Rudy waited until Stacey, who’d run ahead, was out of earshot before he replied, “Yeah. Nothin’ worse than being the bad guy when it’s not even your fault. I mean, if there wasn’t a will—”
“Then I would think legally you’re in the clear,” his brother said, halting in front of a gated sports equipment store. “Not that I’m any expert, but like you said, you didn’t do anything wrong. Now, what I’m wondering is, what you’re gonna do about Violet?”
Rudy frowned at him, tempted to think he’d liked his brother better when he’d been a stoner and too out of it to stick his nose in. “What makes you think I should do anything about Violet?”
Kevin chuckled. Rudy sighed. Okay, so those damn pale green eyes were burned into his brain, along with all that I could fix you crap. Which was really stupid because maybe—maybe—Rudy could fix a house, but fixing women wasn’t part of his job description. Especially since, if memory served, women didn’t generally take kindly to being fixed.
But the more Darla, the other waitress, had yakked away about Violet’s situation, the more Rudy realized he had to do something. He’d had no idea, obviously, when he’d bought the place that the old lady had promised to leave it to Violet—
“Da-ad!” Stacey called, hopping up and down beside the car, her hands jammed inside her vest pockets. “Hello? Open the door?”
“Oh, sorry,” he mumbled, hitting the remote on his key chain. The car be-booped itself unlocked. Stacey yanked open the door and scrambled inside, slamming it shut again.
Somehow, he doubted Darla had exaggerated about Violet’s situation, even if she did have that gleam in her eye common to people taking comfort in other people’s troubles. She’d told him all about how Doris Hicks’s daughter had thrown Violet and her sons out of the house she’d believed would be hers in exchange for the eighteen months Violet had spent helping Doris to keep the inn open—an arrangement mutually beneficial for both an old woman determined to stay in her own home and a struggling young mother whose husband had taken a hike.
He could only imagine how blindsided she must’ve felt. Just like he’d been when Stacey’s mother had said, “Forget this,” leaving a rookie cop with a colicky six-month-old and a hole in his heart the size of the Grand Canyon. But at least Rudy’d had a safety net, in that huge extended family. There’d always been a home for his daughter, even if not one he’d envisioned.
He pulled up in front of the inn, shrouded in darkness save for the moonlight and the anemic ghosts of a half-dozen or so wussy, solar-powered yard lights standing lethargic sentry along the disintegrating