Bending the Rules

“You can’t just turn kids that young loose with buckets of paint and a few brushes and hope for the best,” Jerry said to Poppy. “Are you willing to supervise the project?”

Jase figured this was where her idealism would meet the reality of giving up her salon appointments or charity boards or however she spent her days in order to ride herd on three kids who—if his own experience was anything to go by—would be far from grateful.

He sat back, waiting to hear how she planned to get out of it.

But she merely gave Jerry a serene dip of her head. “Yes.”

“I’ll second the motion, then.”

Garret looked at Jase. “Since we invited your and Poppy’s opinions, we agreed to give you both a vote in this as well.”

He was too astounded by the way Calloway had busted his expectations to respond.

Garret turned his attention back to his group. “All in favor?”

Poppy and seven of the eleven merchants raised their hands.

“Against?”

The remaining four raised their hands. Jase abstained.

“The ayes have it.” Garret gave Poppy, whose smile was so bright Jase was tempted to whip out his shades, an avuncular smile. “I take it you have more to say?”

“Yes. I further propose we take this opportunity to teach these boys a more constructive way to decorate the buildings in their neighborhood. A way that, in the end, will benefit the entire community by giving us something we’ll all enjoy looking at, and incidentally perhaps give them the self-esteem to redirect their creative urges in a more acceptable direction.”

“Again, I have to ask,” Jerry said. “You supervising?”

“Yes.”

“I second the motion,” Penny said.

“All in favor?”

Poppy and five merchants—one of them Jerry, the owner of the building she proposed the kids paint—raised their hands.

Garret looked around the table expressionlessly. “Against?”

The six remaining merchants raised their hands, and all eyes turned to Jase to break the tie.

He should abstain again and let them fight it out among themselves. What the hell did he care if they rewarded these kids?

Except…

He knew from personal experience what chaos could come from bending—never mind breaking—the rules. He fought the temptation to do so every day and saw no reason to pass that temptation down to another generation. Teach them young to stay on the straight and narrow—that was his motto.

Raising his hand, he threw in with the against group.

Chapter Two

Well, there’s a perfectly good fantasy blown to hell.

“I CANNOT believe I was attracted to that stiff for even a minute!” Poppy dumped her big tote onto the floor of Brouwer’s Café, a pub that specialized in international beers. Pulling a chair away from the table Ava had scored near the long wood-topped bar, she dropped into it.

“What stiff?” Ava demanded over the raised voices of the crowd around them.

“Poppy!” Arriving at the table almost on her heels, Jane gave her an incredulous look. “You beat me here. How did that happen? You’re never on time.”

“She’s mad at some stiff,” Ava said. “It must have motivated her.”

“Yeah, I gathered as much when you called.” Jane hooked her bag over the chair rail and sat down, giving Poppy a concerned once-over. “That you’re seriously hacked off, that is. What gives?”

At the thought of what—or rather who—”gave,” her heart sped up and her hands wanted to clench. She flattened them against the wooden tabletop. “Guess who’s on the committee with me?”

Ava leaned into the table. “What committee?”

“The one to do with those kids who were caught tagging the businesses she designs boards for,” Jane reminded her.

“Oh, yeah. Sorry. You’ve got so many irons in the fire these days that I forgot about that for a sec. How did it go? Not great, I’m guessing.”

“Not great.” Her involuntary laugh tasted bitter and her fingers curled in toward her palms. “Oh, trust me, it was a tad worse than not great. It was a damn cluster f—”

The waitress, who’d had to weave her way through the throng of power-hour drinkers to reach their table, arrived just as she was about to cut loose with a truly grand-scale vent. “Get you ladies a drink?”

“I’d like the Leavenworth Blind Pig Dunkel-thing,” Ava said.

“Weizen,” the waitress supplied. “Dunkelweizen.”

“Yes. Thank you. One of those.”

“I’ll take a Fuller’s.” Poppy drew a deep breath and blew it out, but she was still so irate she barely glanced up from her hands, which were once again firmly splayed against the tabletop, her fingertips white from her effort not to make a fist. “And a large pomme frites with the pesto aioli.”

“Ooh. We’re eating, too?” Ava wiggled with pleasure. “I’ll have the Lembeck salad.”

“I’ll just have a Diet Coke with a lime, please,” Jane said.

Ava’s head whipped around to stare at her friend. “That’s it?” she demanded as the waitress nodded and moved on to the next table. “Please tell me your skinny butt’s not on a diet.”

“My skinny butt is not on a diet,” Jane obediently parroted. Then she grinned, her face radiant with newly-wed happiness. “In fact it’s spuds-and-sausage night at Dev’s folks and Mama K. hates it when I don’t eat enough to burst. I’m just reserving all the stomach room I can.”

That jerked Poppy out of her dilemma, and she grimaced at her own self-absorption. “You have dinner plans with your in-laws and you showed up for me?”

“Well…sure. We’re the Sisterhood, aren’t we?” Scooping her shiny brown hair behind her ears, she laughed. “Besides, this isn’t exactly altruism at its finest. The Kavanaghs never eat until around seven anyway, and Devlin’s riding over with his brother.”

“Which one? Bren? How’s he doing?” Jane’s husband, Dev, had returned from the Continent last year to pitch in at Kavanagh Construction, the family business, when his oldest brother’s cancer treatment called for chemotherapy. Jane and he had met when he’d headed the Wolcott mansion remodel, a project so huge it was still ongoing several months later. They’d had a rocky beginning and Poppy loved seeing her so flat-out happy.

“No, Finn, actually. But Bren is doing great. He’s finally done with chemo, his oncologist is very optimistic they got all the cancer and his hair’s even starting to grow back in.”

“That’s excellent news.”