Yours, Mine...or Ours?

“Of course not, Bets, I’m just right here in the yard.”

“You get the letter?”

Violet turned, eyeing the plain white envelope on the entryway table, addressed in Mitch’s microscopic print. She picked it up, shoved it into her coat pocket. “Yeah, got it.”

The front door shut on the chaos inside, Violet inhaled deeply, savoring the cold, sweet air against her skin, the relative silence soothing both her eardrums and her tender, shattered soul. She wavered for a moment, then dug the letter out of her coat pocket, yanking off her mitten with her teeth to rip open the envelope. Like all the others, it only took a second to read, the usual warp and weft of apologies and vague promises, fringed with a plea for forgiveness.

Eyes burning, she crumpled it up, the sharp edges pricking her lips when she pressed it to her mouth.

He’d sent money for the boys from the beginning, not regularly, but when he could. If he said anything at all, it rarely went beyond, “I’m okay, hope you and the boys are okay, too.” The actual letters, though, hadn’t started until after the divorce a year ago, when Betsy had finally convinced Violet she’d be better off financially as an official single mom. As much as it hurt, she’d taken Mitch’s not contesting the divorce as a sign that that chapter of her life was indeed over and done with. That there wasn’t enough love and patience in the world to fix whatever had gone wrong between them.

Except no sooner had the hole in her heart begun to close up than the letters started coming, from a P.O. Box in Buffalo. At first, only with the monthly money order for the boys. Then every other week. Now almost weekly, even though he never called, not even to talk to the boys, even though he swore he loved them—that he still loved her—in every letter.

The hardest part was writing back. Not knowing what to say, other than to thank him for the money, his concern, letting him know what the boys were up to. Not knowing what she was supposed to feel, other than hugely conflicted. What do you say to a man who saved you from a living hell, only to ten years later plunge you right back into another one?

A hot tear streaked down Violet’s cheek as she planted her butt on Betsy’s front porch steps to glower at the front yard, nearly bald save for the occasional patch of leftover, dully glistening snow. The tear track instantly froze; Violet wiped it away with the mitten, then stuffed her freezing hand back into it, giving in to a wave of self-pity she’d kept barely contained for months.

At the lowest point of her life, Mitch had been as close to a knight in shining armor as someone like her was ever going to get. But white knights aren’t supposed to bail when things get tough, when kids get sick and cry all night, or a half-dozen things break at once and have to be fixed.

Nor were they supposed to dangle half promises in front of you, making you want to believe in second chances, that the past two years had only been another in series of bad dreams.

I know I screwed up, Vi. And I’m working on fixing that…

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Violet muttered, cramming the letter back into her coat pocket. She shivered, her breath clouding her vision the same way this newest setback was clearly clouding her good sense. She didn’t need no steenkin’ white knight, from the past or otherwise, she needed a plan. Something to keep her moving forward instead of constantly glancing over her shoulder at the what-might-have-beens. Elbows planted on her knees, she breathed into her mittened palms, warming her face, rallying the weary, mutinous tatters of her resolve.

Because, dammit, was she simply going to curl up in defeat, or take charge of her own destiny? Was she going to sit on her fanny for the next thirty years boo-hooing into her Diet Pepsi about the dearth of white knights in the area, or was she going to get up off that fanny and go make her own opportunity?

The possible solution poked at her, carefully, cringing in anticipated rejection. And indeed, No way was Violet’s first, immediate reaction to the absurd suggestion. Except the idea poked again, more insistently this time, demanding she look it full in the face instead of automatically dismissing it out of hand.

So she did, partly to shut it up, partly because it wasn’t like there were any other ideas around, begging for an audience. And after she’d listened with an open mind, and considered the pros and cons, she finally conceded that—as a temporary measure only, just until she figured out her next step—it might work.

The issue barely settled in her mind, a white Bronco, ghostlike in the halogen glow of the streetlamp, turned the corner and rumbled down the street, pulling up in front of Betsy’s house.

And when Rudy Vaccaro got out, he of the square jaw and solid everything and searing blue eyes that saw far more than Violet probably wanted him to, she glanced up at the sin-black sky, studded with a million trillion suns, and thought, This is a joke, right?

If it hadn’t been for the streetlamp setting on fire the wisps of orange sticking out from underneath that silly hat, Rudy would have never recognized her. As Violet, as a woman, even—sad to say—as a human being. Since, unfortunately, in that puffy pink coat she looked like one of those awful coconut-covered marshmallow things his mother used to occasionally stick in their lunch boxes when she hadn’t had time to bake.

She stood as he approached, her expression uncertain. But only for a moment. Because almost instantly her gaze turned direct, purposeful, as though she’d tracked him down, not the other way around. Interesting.

“I asked Darla where you lived,” Rudy said, preempting.

“Because…?”

“Because you left before you got your tip.”

“I never actually served you, as I recall.”

“Technicality,” he said.

“I see. Well, then…” Unsmiling, she stuck out her hand.

Half amused, half unnerved, Rudy dug his wallet out of his back pocket, concentrating on fishing out a bill as he closed the gap between them. When he laid the bill in her mittened hand, however, he caught the smudged streaks on her cheeks. Despite the bitter cold, everything inside him melted.

She glanced up, surprised. Pleased. Clearly not in a position to protest his generosity. “Thanks,” she said, pocketing the twenty. “So. Was that it?”

Rudy crammed his own hands in his pockets, his ears fast-freezing by the second, even as he had this weird thought about how she was somehow like the house, neglected and closed up for far too long, her true potential hidden under umpteen layers of bad history. “Actually, no. I…we need to talk. About the inn.”

An odd mix of hurt, despair and determination flickered in her eyes. “Oh?”

“Yeah. Look, Darla told me you’d expected to get it, and…” A breeze nudged inside his jacket, salsa’d down his spine. “Is there someplace we can go? To talk? Someplace warm?”

“I can’t leave the boys,” Violet said, glancing back at the house. From inside, he heard a woman yell. Her gaze returned to his, eerily silver in the half-light. “They’re asleep.” Don’t ask, her eyes said.

“Can we at least go inside?” She shook her head. “My car, then.”

“Oh, right. Like I’m gonna get into a car with a complete stranger?”

“Dammit, Violet—I feel like crap about what happened, okay? All I want is a chance to at least try to make amends. But I’d rather not freeze my nuts off while I’m doing that, if it’s all the same to you.”

“Amends?” A wary curiosity flickered in her eyes. “Like how?”

“Like a job offer. Sort of. And a place to live.”

At her intake of breath, he moved in for the kill. “The car’s at least got a heater. And hot chocolate.”

“Hot chocolate?”

“I passed a Dunkin’ Donuts on the way over.” He shrugged. “I took a chance.” When her gaze drifted over to the car, he said, gently, “I was a cop. A good cop. I swear, you’re safe with me.”

He thought he might have seen one corner of her mouth twitch. “I only have your word on that, you know.”

Rudy flipped up his collar. His thighs were stinging, his butt was going numb and he didn’t even want to think about what was happening to other parts of his anatomy. “Okay, so yeah, for all you know I could be some raving weirdo. Actually my kid probably thinks I am, dragging her up here to live and everything. But that’s beside the point.”

He bent slightly to see her face, pretty and soft and round and pinked with the cold. Like one of those old porcelain-headed dolls his mother liked to collect. “So why don’t you go tell your friend inside to keep an eye out, and we’ll stay right where you can see the house.”

“I don’t know…”

“Violet. Please. Let me at least try to make this right, okay?”

She wavered for another several seconds before, with a sharp nod, she skipped up the porch stairs, opened the door and spoke to whoever was inside, then marched back down the walk, her coat swishing slightly in the still night air.

“This had better be some damn good hot chocolate,” she muttered as he opened the door for her.

Chapter Three

In the grand scheme of things, Violet mused as she sipped the hot chocolate, did it really matter who came up with the idea first? Because sometimes there was a fine line between forging your own destiny and begging. Between determination and desperation.

So all in all, she decided, sitting in Rudy’s nice warm car, the cozy throw he’d had dug out of the backseat snuggled around her thighs, the scent of big strong man mingling with the sweet, warm breath of the chocolate, things were probably working out better than she could have hoped.

“Better” definitely being a relative term. Because she felt a little how Moses’s mother must’ve felt after she’d hidden her baby in the rushes so Pharoah’s daughter would find him, then going and offering herself as a wet nurse. Yeah, she’d been able to stay with her baby, which was some consolation, but he was no longer really hers, was he? A temporary arrangement was all it had been.

Not that the house had ever been hers, Violet reminded herself. But in her heart, it was the same thing. She pressed her lips together, staring into the dark, jittery liquid. “Let me get this straight—you want me and the boys to come live in the house—”

“Well, in the apartment over the garage, if that’s okay. But yes.”

Violet chewed the inside of her cheek to keep the flutter of excitement leashed. It was Violet herself who’d convinced Doris to renovate the space a few years ago, for families who might prefer a self-contained area with its own kitchen to staying in the bed-and-breakfast proper. The apartment wasn’t big, only one bedroom, but flooded with light in the winter, tenderly shaded by a dozen trees in the summer. And the sofa bed didn’t smell like old gym socks.

A dream she’d given up, twice, now hovered again in front of her, a firefly begging for capture—

Stop it, she told herself. Don’t you dare let yourself get caught up again in something that never existed except in your own head.

“And in exchange,” she said, not looking at him, not showing her hand, “you want me to help you put the inn back in order?”

“And then stay on as breakfast cook after we’re up and running again. Like you did for Doris.” She could feel his gaze on the side of her face, earnest and warm. Another man hell-bent on rescuing her. “I can’t pay you much to start, but at least all your living expenses would be covered.” He paused. “And if you wanted to work part-time somewhere else and needed to leave the boys…I suppose we could work something out about that, too.”

Violet’s eyes shot to his. Having no idea about his renovation plans, she’d only planned on asking for the cook’s job. Funny, she mused, doing her best to keep from slipping into that open, steady gaze, how guilt so often motivated the innocent far more than it ever did the guilty.

“Wow,” she said, looking away again. “That’s really generous.”

“Not a bit of it. You’d be doing me a huge favor. Because I’d have to hire someone eventually, anyway,” he said to her slight frown. “So who better than someone who already knew the drill?”

Another sip of hot chocolate was in order while she pretended to think. Rudy apparently took her hesitation for bitterness. With good reason.

“Violet,” he said in that gruff-soft way of his that would be her undoing if she wasn’t careful. If he wasn’t. Two years without a man’s touch is a long time. Becoming a nun, she thought ruefully, had never been on the short list. Yet another reason why she hadn’t exactly immediately embraced the idea. Because hanging around Rudy Vaccaro…

Yeah, she needed that aggravation like a hole in the head.

“I know this isn’t what you’d hoped for,” he was saying, “but I can’t undo what’s done. Or give you the place just because—”

“Of course you can’t give me the house!” she said, startled that he’d even think such a thing. “Yes, I’m disappointed, but I’m not delusional!” She already knew he’d bought the house outright. Which made him borderline insane as well as impossibly generous. Another strike against him. “The house is yours, fair and square. I mean, if there’s no will, there’s no will, right?”

He looked at her again, oozing concern and macho protectiveness, and she wanted to say, Quit it, will ya? because her body and her emotions and her head were on three different pages, which was not good.

“So Doris did tell you she was leaving it to you?”

Violet nodded. “A month before she died, maybe, she swore she was going to put it in writing, so there’d be no question. I knew Doris ever since I was little, I usedta work there during the summers when I was a teenager. I’d—” Her words caught in her throat. “I’d never known her to break a promise before.”

But then, her life was a junkyard of broken promises, wasn’t it?

“And you never had a chance to search the house?”

Violet looked right into those night-darkened eyes and half wanted to smack him one. “Jeez, what is it with you? I would think finding that will would be the last thing you’d want.”

“So maybe I’m just making sure I’ve got nothing to worry about.”

After a moment, she averted her gaze. “Not too long before Doris passed, her daughter Patty came up here from Boston and strong-armed the old girl into a nursing home. And of course, the minute Doris was out, so were the boys and me. A week later, the house went up for sale. I’m guessing Patty got power of attorney or whatever.”

“So when the old lady died, everything went to Patty.”

“Exactly. And obviously she wasn’t about to let me in to go looking for a will she’d hardly want me to find.”

“If there was one.”

Violet hesitated, then lifted the cup to her lips again. “If there was one,” she echoed over the stab of betrayal.

One wrist propped on the steering wheel, Rudy leaned back in his seat, momentarily unable to look at the tough little cookie sitting beside him. He suspected, though, that it wouldn’t take much to rip away the calluses buffering her flat, resigned words. He didn’t doubt her story for a minute—this was no con artist sitting beside him. But realizing his dream at the expense of somebody else’s had never been part of the plan.

He looked at her profile, all those crazy curls now free of the hat, and felt pulled apart by a weird combination of protectiveness and frustration. “I know I’m a stranger to you, but trust me, Violet—I don’t get my kicks from putting women and children out on the street.”

She stared straight ahead for several seconds before she said, “First off, I’m not out on the street. And anyway, it wasn’t your fault. You didn’t know.”

“No consolation to you, I’m sure.”

“No, but…” Her lips pursed, she swished the hot chocolate around in the cup. “Look, I’m sorry for reacting the way I did tonight. At the diner. You’re right, none of this is your fault, and it was pretty poor of me to take out my frustrations on you.”

“Forget it, no apology necessary.” He fisted his free hand to keep from touching her—taking her hand, squeezing her shoulder. Something. Anything. “I understand your husband left you and the boys?”

“Yeah,” she said after a moment. “He did. We’ve been divorced for a year. But since I’m not a big fan of being pitied—”

“Then there’s nothing to worry about here. Pity’s for the pathetic, Violet. People who make poor choices because they’re too dumb to see the pitfalls.”

“And how do you know that’s not the case here?”

One side of his mouth lifted. “Okay, so how about we agree that any decision made before we’re twenty-one doesn’t count?”

Her soft, half laugh died a quick death. “Oh. I take it—”

“Yep. Me, too.” Rudy let out a long, weighty sigh. “That bundle of attitude you saw me with tonight? It’s just been her and me since she was six months old. I only know her mother’s still alive because I run a periodic check to find out. Whether she knows—or even cares—if Stace and I are, I have no idea. So…what I’m seeing on your face right now? Is that pity? Or simpatico?”

“It’s amazement. That any woman could be that stupid.”

“You don’t know me, Violet.”

“I know enough. In the space of a cuppla hours, you stood up for a stranger in public, gave that stranger a twenty-dollar tip, brought her hot chocolate and offered her a job and place to live. Any woman who tosses out somebody like that…” She shook her head. “Stoo-pid.”

“Yeah, except she wasn’t a woman, she was a kid. We both were. I was twenty, she was eighteen. Too young.”

“Says who?” Violet said, a dark flush tingeing her cheeks. “I was eighteen when George came along, and I sure as hell didn’t bail on him. Unlike Mitch, who after eight years and two kids decided…whatever it was he decided. That he wasn’t cut out for family life, I suppose. Unfortunately he came to that conclusion the week before Christmas. Two years ago.” She smirked. “There was a fun holiday, let me tell you. Nothing says lovin’ like a note and a couple hundred bucks left on the kitchen table. Although we—or at least, I—still hear from him.”

Something in her voice—like a faint, bitter aftertaste you can’t quite identify—put Rudy on alert. He also decided he liked her much better mad than sad. Or, worse, in that dead zone where you try to make everybody think you’re okay. Mad, though…he could work with that. Because where there was anger, there was hope.

“He sees the boys?”

Curls quivered when she shook her head. “Although he says…he’s working up to it.”

“What on earth—”

“He says he’s figuring things out,” she said wearily. “In his head.”

“As in, a possible reconciliation?”

“Who the hell knows?” She rubbed her forehead. “Although, believe me, I’m not holding my breath. Promises…” Her mouth flattened. “Anybody can make a promise. Keeping it is something else entirely.”

As Rudy fought the temptation to ask her if she wanted a reconciliation, he realized, too late, that he’d inadvertently stripped away those calluses, leaving her tender and vulnerable and probably mad as hell at him. Feeling like an idiot, he touched her arm, making her jump.

“Hey,” he said, his voice thick. “You okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m…” She sucked in a breath, shaking her head. “Here’s the thing—you can chug along for years, getting by, making do, on whatever scraps you can piece together. You learn to find contentment, even joy, in the small stuff, like your baby’s smile or a new lipstick. Hanging out with friends on the first really warm spring night. And little by little, you start to inch forward. Or at least, you think you are. Sure, life slings mud at you, but you either wipe it off or you get real good at ducking. Only then…”

One hand waved, like she was struggling for the words. “Only then, out of the blue, some totally unexpected opportunity comes along, and suddenly you’re thinking in terms of bigger. Better. More.”

She looked away, but not before he saw her eyes fill. “I know,” he said softly, and she blew up on him.

“You don’t know! You don’t know anything about it, or me, or what that sorry, run-down place represented! Not just to me, but to Doris, who loved that house like it was her child. Who thought of her guests like family, because they made her feel needed. Important. Like she mattered.”

Blinking, she faced front. “I never expected Doris to offer me the house. I always assumed it would go to her daughter. So when she said she wanted to leave it to me, you have no idea how…honored that made me feel. That she trusted me to make the most of her gift. I had such plans, Rudy,” she said softly. “Such wonderful plans.”

Frowning, Rudy tucked his sleeve into his palm and brushed her cheek, blotting a tear that had spilled over, her frustration mingling with his. “But even if Doris had left you the house, how would you have managed? You couldn’t really open it again, not yet. It needs too much work.”

She frowned at that last little bit of hot—now cold, probably—chocolate in the bottom of her cup, then swirled it around and drank it anyway, grimacing. “I was going to sell it, Rudy,” she said flatly, not looking at him. “Sell it and get the hell out of here, finish my education. Set aside a college fund for the boys. Buy a car with less than 150,000 miles on it. Doris and I used to talk about it all the time. That’s why I know she’d wanted me to have the house, to give me a shot at my dream, the same way the house had allowed her to live hers.”

If nothing else, all those years of being a cop had taught Rudy a thing or two about reading people, about picking up clues from their body language, how most people’s voices change when they’re not being straight with you. And right now, Violet Kildare was setting off alarms loud enough to hear in China.

“So,” he said, casually, “you never actually wanted to run the inn?”

“Run the inn?” She burst out laughing. “Heavens no! Believe me, my aspirations, such as they were, never included turning into Doris Hicks’s clone.”

“Oh. Well. I guess I must’ve misunderstood, then.” He squinted over at her. “Darla seemed to think you had a real thing for the house itself.”

Even in the darkened car, he saw her blush. “The house was only a means to an end,” she said into her empty cup, then slid her eyes to his, her lips barely curved. “It’s getting late. I need to get back before Betsy freaks.”

Rudy let their gazes mingle. “That mean you’re not accepting my offer?”

She tapped the cup’s rim once, twice, then leaned over to screw it into the cup holder under the radio. “Can I think about it for a couple of days? Until school starts again, day after tomorrow?”

Rudy started. “Day after tomorrow…? I thought school started on Monday?”

“Uh, no, since yesterday was New Year’s? As it is the only reason they don’t start back tomorrow is because of some in-service day or something.”

Oh, crap. That should go over big with a certain party. Why had he assumed he’d have at least a week before they had to deal with that particular trauma? “Yeah, sure,” he said over the Good going, Dad reverberating through his brain. “Since I imagine it’ll be a day or so before we have heat and utilities, anyway. Here.” He reached for his wallet again, extracting one of his old cards. For a second, he stared at the tiny, grainy photo of him in uniform, then handed her the card. “My cell number’s on there, in case you need it.”

Nodding, she took the card. “I’ll let you know, then.” She pushed open the door and climbed out, then looked back, obviously relieved that that was over. “Thanks again for the tip,” she said, her breath a cloud around her face, then disappeared.

“So what was that all about?” Bets asked the minute Violet walked back inside. The noise level had dropped dramatically in the past half hour, thanks to two-thirds of Betsy’s spawn being down for the count. Only little Trey was still awake, cuddled next to his mother in a new-two-brothers-ago blanket sleeper, thumb plugged in mouth as they finished up CSI. Quiet and immobile, the kid was actually cute.