Karen Templeton - Yours, Mine...or Ours?

“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.

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