Flirting with Felicity

by Gerri Russell

  It all seemed like a dream come true, except that Blake Bancroft was in town to challenge her for ownership.

  Her joy faded. There had to be a way to stop him, or stall him, or win the deal he’d set up between them today.

  Felicity pressed her fingers to her forehead, as if doing so would help her think. What could she possibly show him that might make him back away from a legal battle? She didn’t have any special skills besides cooking, and she didn’t know enough about the hotel yet to teach him anything significant. She could use her cooking skills to her advantage, but what else was there? Was there a way for her to make him see that he couldn’t make the changes he suggested?

  What hotel owner didn’t want renovations to a building they owned completed for free? But those changes wouldn’t be free. Blake wouldn’t do the restoration work then walk away. The price she would pay would be with her ownership, and her employees would be out of work. Felicity dropped her hands to her sides. Could she bargain with Blake to continue to pay her employees during any furlough that might occur?

  Again, that meant giving up her claim on the hotel.

  She stopped pacing and stared out her third-floor window that had a partially obstructed view of Puget Sound between two brick buildings. Two old buildings.

  What was it he’d said about historic preservation?

  Felicity went to her table and pulled out one of the iron and mosaic chairs. She reached for her laptop and turned it on. The first thing she did was to search online for information about Blake. What she found only made her more determined than ever to succeed. After that, she searched for information on the National Trust for Historic Preservation, then on the Seattle Historic Preservation Program. The process of applying for historic protection looked fairly straightforward, because she was the property owner. From her searches, it appeared the entire process from application to approval would take no more than six to eight weeks.

  Felicity’s teeth sank into her lower lip. Could she avoid Blake that entire time other than the two days to which she’d committed? Or was there some way to expedite the process? She had no idea who she should talk to about speeding up the process, but she was certain the lawyers who’d handled Vern’s estate did.

  Determined to succeed, Felicity printed out the application and filled out as much as she’d learned about the Bancroft Hotel in the three years she’d worked there. Edward and Marie were the two employees who’d been with the hotel the longest. She could ask them for more details about the Bancroft. In the meanwhile, she was determined to look online, on her own, to see what she could find about the hotel’s past.

  She learned the hotel had survived the Great Seattle Fire of 1889, but that the east wing had been rebuilt after another fire destroyed the kitchen area in 1993. Two presidents and numerous dignitaries had stayed there over the years. It had served as a Red Cross station during World War I and World War II, had a fallout shelter installed during the Cold War, and acted as a women’s dormitory for a nearby university. The Bancroft Hotel had a long history of housing many local families as well as travelers over the past one hundred years. Some of those local families had been taken away from the Bancroft and sent to internment camps during World War II. One report she read said that a room in the basement still contained personal items the Japanese families left behind.

  Felicity leaned back in her chair. Why had no one ever told her about that room? She understood why so many families decided to take up permanent residence at the Bancroft. Like Vern, those residents had access to all of Seattle’s attractions, including world-class medical care, and the hotel had a wonderful homey feel. It would be much the same if they’d lived in town on their own, but without the need to keep up their own place. For an elderly person, living at the Bancroft was a viable option to an assisted living facility. She’d have loved to have her father there, if he’d been independent enough.

  Vern had been one of several permanent residents who had chosen to spend his retirement years at the Bancroft. Again, regret came to Felicity. Would she have treated the old man any differently had she known who he was? She’d never know the answer to that, but at least she was proud of the time they’d shared together. He’d given her a piece of his legacy, because of their friendship. She would do everything in her power to help preserve what Vern had obviously loved.

  Edward, as the manager, might be able to add more detail about the Bancroft’s history before she took everything over to her lawyers’ office. She’d ask them to prepare and submit her formal application to the Seattle Historic Preservation Program. Everything had to be perfect. She couldn’t afford to make any mistakes.

  With luck, perhaps they could finish applying before the end of the week. Time was certainly of the essence, if she were going to keep the hotel and everyone in it safe from Blake Bancroft.

  An hour later, with a sense of accomplishment, Felicity packed up her application and the information she’d found. Before she returned to the hotel, she had a stop to make. If she hurried, she could see her father before she had to start work at the restaurant.

  “Welcome to the Bancroft. Your home away from home,” the bellhop said as he placed Blake’s bags in the bedroom of the suite.

  Home.

  Blake tipped the bellhop for carrying his bags, then shut the door as an ache settled deep within him. How long had it been since he’d had a home? There had been times over the past fourteen years when he’d missed his home with a ferocity that had been sheer torture.

  His lips twisted in a mockery of a smile. After his parents had died, he’d had a family and a home for all of two weeks before his uncle had sent him away. He and his uncle were too much alike and had never been able to reconcile that fact. Now it was too late. And as a punishment for being alive when his father was not, his uncle had given a stranger the one thing Blake had always wanted—something his uncle knew he wanted—the Bancroft. It was the only place that had ever felt like a home to him while his parents were alive.

  He was hiding behind the renovations, he knew, but they’d get him what he wanted for Bancroft Industries as well as for himself. He might not have had any allies as a little kid at boarding school, but now he had a team of expensive professionals to help him take down anyone who stood in his way.

  Feeling in control once more, Blake reached for his cell phone. He placed a call to Marcus Grady, the head of his legal team in San Francisco. While he waited for Marcus’s secretary to put the lawyer on the phone, Blake paced the sitting area of his suite. The bright and airy décor did nothing to calm the tension inside him.

  “Blake,” Marcus greeted. “Jesus, it’s only been three days since Vernon died. Give a guy a break. I don’t have much on your mysterious Felicity Wright yet.”

  “What do you have?”

  “Nothing that says she’s a gold digger. She’s twenty-nine years old, the only daughter of a merchant marine. Her parents were in a car wreck thirteen years ago. Her mother died. Her father is alive, but I can find nothing more on him other than that his mail goes to a PO box in Seattle. Felicity’s not active in politics. She’s never been arrested. She comes up clean.”

  Blake thought about the information, then discarded it. There was nothing there he could use to win the hotel if their battle went to court. “Is that all?”

  Marcus sighed. “I’m still digging. I have a call in to a friend from her college years. Maybe we’ll find something there.” Marcus was silent a moment. “Blake, your uncle’s will is fairly tight. We don’t have much of a case. I want to prepare you for that sooner rather than later.”

  “There has to be something. Everyone has something. Dig deeper.”

  “She might be what she appears—a decent person,” Marcus replied.

  “Who conned my uncle out of a multimillion-dollar hotel.”

  “Or else he gave it to her for a reason,” Marcus added. “You don’t know. Perhaps your best bet is to let her have it. Walk away. It’s what your uncle wanted. You don’t h
ave to fight every fight just to say you won. You’re not the underdog anymore.”

  Blake stopped pacing and gripped his cell phone harder. Only Marcus could get away with saying something like that to him. “You’ve known me a long time, but you’re treading a razor’s edge. Don’t push me.”

  Marcus sighed. “All right. I’ll call you when I have something to report.”

  “Tomorrow.” Blake hung up. He could feel a familiar frustration welling up inside. He moved restlessly toward the big picture window that looked out over the Seattle skyline toward the waterfront. He’d thought it would be easier to swoop in and take back what was his. He’d also thought it would be easier to stay remote as he manipulated events to his satisfaction. He’d only been near Felicity for a few minutes in the lobby of his hotel, and he’d found himself thinking and saying things he normally wouldn’t.

  Blake’s grip tightened on the curtains beside him as he remembered the sensation of Felicity’s body pressed against his for only a brief moment. A faint tremor had moved through her at his touch. He remembered her heat, her not-quite-hidden attraction. In just minutes, the woman had managed to pry open a crack in his defenses.

  He was hardening at the memory. With a groan of frustration, Blake turned away from the view. He had a job to do, and that was to take back the Bancroft Hotel. Pretty, pert Felicity Wright would not stand in his way.

  Felicity entered Saint Francis House, the assisted living facility where her father lived, and took the elevator to his room on the third floor. After a soft knock on the door that she knew he wouldn’t answer, she let herself in.

  As usual, her father sat in his chair by the window, looking over the city’s busy streets below. Her father had always loved to watch people—the way they moved from one place to another. Before the accident, and when he wasn’t working on the ferries that shuttled people and cars from one part of Puget Sound to another, he’d been a time-lapse photographer. He’d set up his camera in various places around the city and capture the movement of the people and cars along its streets. “A day in the life,” he used to call it.

  As she pulled up a chair beside him, she wished he still used that camera to see the world. But maybe he did the same kind of thing as he watched the day pass from morning to night in front of his window. She didn’t know what he thought about or even if anything registered anymore. He hadn’t said a word since the accident. But his silence didn’t stop her from talking.

  “Hey you.” She leaned over and kissed her father on the cheek. He was warm and smooth and smelled like talcum powder, just as he did every day following his hospitalization from the injury. “You look good,” she said, taking his hand in hers and giving it a squeeze. He never squeezed back.

  Daily she told him all the details of her often too-ordinary life. She’d talked to him for the last three years about Vern and his antics at the restaurant. In many ways, the shadows that haunted Vern’s eyes reminded her of her father. Although Vern could talk and respond to those around him, she knew that look of loneliness and regret. She’d never figured out what Vern’s regrets were, but they were definitely there.

  Felicity shook off the thought and returned her attention to the man beside her. “I got some great news today, Dad. You know that experimental therapy Dr. Mackie wanted to try? Well, you’re going to start your first treatment soon. Your procedure is scheduled in two days. The doctor wants to keep you in the hospital for a couple of days afterward for observation. And don’t worry about the money. My savings will cover it. We’re going to be fine.” For a while at least. She wouldn’t wait until everything was settled with Blake. She and her father had waited too long for this procedure already. This was one gamble she was willing to take.

  The Northstar procedure was having considerable success, Dr. Mackie had told her when she’d called him on her nine-block walk between the hotel and Saint Francis House.

  “The idea behind the treatment is that the doctor will shut down the right side of your brain using transcranial magnetic stimulation—he called it TMS—especially in the areas involved in speech, allowing the weakened side of your brain to form new connections that might restore your speech.”

  Her father continued to stare out the window, expressionless as always.

  Felicity continued, “You’ll have speech therapy every day for the next week. And either you’ll make some progress, or we’ll determine if a second treatment is advisable.”

  Again, he showed no sign of having heard a thing she said.

  Despite his unresponsiveness, Felicity couldn’t hold back a smile. Just the thought of actually doing something proactive for a change instead of waiting to see if he ever recovered filled her with a renewed sense of hope. Dr. Mackie had given her all the usual warnings about getting her hopes up, but she couldn’t help it. Her father hadn’t said a thing to her in thirteen years. She didn’t even need words for the treatment to be a success. She simply wanted to look into her father’s eyes and see something other than the emptiness brought on by the brain trauma he’d suffered years ago.

  “Now, on to other news,” she said, settling in beside her father. She told him everything that had happened to her that day—about Vern’s funeral, about him giving her the hotel and restaurant in his will, about meeting Blake, and about moving into the Bancroft Hotel so she could save money to pay for the new treatment.

  She’d never been able to talk to her father about the intimate details of her life before the accident. She’d been too young to really see him as anything other than a parent. The accident had changed their roles. Felicity had always believed their newfound relationship, even though it was terribly one-sided, had been a blessing that had come out of their shared tragedy. But on the tails of that sense of peace came a piercing stab of guilt, acrid and sour. It didn’t seem fair that she’d been allowed to walk away from that accident when her mother and father had paid so dearly.

  She’d been grappling with the unfairness of life ever since. And instantly her thoughts moved back to Blake. Was it fair that she’d been given something that should have been his legacy? Did she truly deserve the gift Vern had given her?

  She wished in that moment that her father could talk and give her advice, the way a father usually did when his daughter was in crisis. Instead, she touched his chin with affection. “See you later, alligator,” she said the way her father always had in the past before leaving her. In a softer voice she echoed her response, “After a while, crocodile.”

  She’d get no advice from him today, but now there was hope that maybe she would in the future.

  Felicity walked back along Terry Avenue toward the hotel when she saw Mary Beth wave at her from the opposite side of the street. Felicity watched as Mary Beth crossed the street. The young woman was small and quite fragile looking, though Felicity knew that wasn’t the case. Mary Beth was tough. She’d had to be in order to survive the last few years. “What are you doing here?” Felicity asked at her approach. “Where’s Amelia?” It wasn’t yet time for work, and Felicity knew her friend liked to spend as much time as possible with her baby.

  “With my brother. Until I had Amelia, I didn’t know how lucky I was to have him living at home with me. I needed a break today. We had another tough night.”

  “Teething again?”

  “Amelia decided to get her front bottom teeth at the same time, but they finally broke through. There’s hope for sleep tonight.” Mary Beth did look tired, but even so, she was dressed like she’d had all day to pull her outfit together. Her leggings, pink silk tunic top, and metallic-colored Roman-inspired sandals were stylish yet cool enough for the warm Seattle day. And, despite the fact that she’d had a baby less than six months ago, Mary Beth always managed to look her best—a lesson from her former life as a Seattle socialite that had not vanished along with her family’s fortune.

  Side by side they started walking toward the hotel. “Why come to the hotel early for work when you have help at home? I’m sure there are a m
illion other things you’d rather be doing.”

  Mary Beth slid a guilty look Felicity’s way. “Besides needing to change into my kitchen clothes? All right, if you want the truth, I heard the news, and I just had to hear it from you myself.” She stopped walking, forcing Felicity to do the same. “Did Vern really leave you the hotel and restaurant in his will?”

  “News travels fast,” Felicity said with a chuckle. “Who told you?”

  “Hans texted me.”

  “It’s true,” Felicity admitted, pulling Mary Beth over into the entrance of the alley behind the Bancroft Hotel so they could talk more privately.

  “Oh my God,” Mary Beth whispered. “This is the best news ever. It’s about time something good happened in your life.”

  Memories of Felicity’s past tiptoed into her mind. She saw the shoddy trailer park in the south end of Puget Sound she’d once called home. She saw her father, sitting in his chair, the same chair he sat in every day, all day, staring out the window as though waiting for her mother to return.

  Luck had not smiled upon them then. Her father had been placed in a run-down nursing facility. It was all they could afford. And, because she was sixteen and had no other relatives to rely on, she’d been placed in foster care for a short time until she could legally declare herself an emancipated minor and return to the trailer, taking her father back home with her.

  “I still can’t quite believe it’s true.” Felicity shook off the memories and looked past Mary Beth, to the seventh-floor windowsill where five pigeons perched together, cooing softly to one another as they did every day. Nothing had changed in their lives, even though the very foundation of hers had shifted.

  “You signed papers, right?” Mary Beth asked.

  Felicity nodded, bringing her gaze back to her friend. “Several of them.”