Clean Start

Everyone knows the rumors about Violet Circle and the crazy inhabitants, but becoming a resident was my best option. These are the kind of decisions you're faced with when you have a baby at eighteen, and your knight in shining armor turns out to be a deadbeat dad in saggy boxers. Don't get me wrong, my five-year-old son, Aiden, is the love of my life, even when he's telling random strangers I'm constipated, or lecturing his preschool friends on the differences in their anatomy. I wouldn't trade him for anything, but raising him as a single parent while cleaning motel rooms for a living is like walking a balance beam made of sand. One wrong slip, and we're homeless. It doesn't take us long to adjust to our new home with all its eccentric people, and Aiden is happy here, but danger lurks right across the street. Not in the apartment of the odd woman who always wears a floppy sun hat and trench coat, or the crazy apartment full of college kids. I wish it were that simple. Neal Chambers, the single father who is ten years my senior, sets off alarms in my head. Mainly because he sets off other things in my panties.