Flirting with Felicity (3 page)

Bitterness brought a thin smile to his lips. He was
thirty-four years old. He was a successful businessman in both national and
international circles without his uncle’s help. His uncle Vernon had found
little use for an orphaned relative. He didn’t need the woman before him to
remind him of that.

At his continued silence, Felicity stood. “I won’t back down,
not without a fight. Take me to court, if you must. In the meanwhile, I suggest
you find another hotel to stay in.”

He stood, meeting her gaze across the table. “Am I unwelcome
here?”

“We’ve never turned away a guest yet, but—”

“Are you a gambler, Felicity?”

Her eyes went wide. “Absolutely not.”

“I am. I’ve gambled on many things in my life, and I’m
willing to do it right now, with you.”

Felicity startled. “What are you talking about?”

He wished for a crazy, desperate minute that they’d met under
different circumstances. That Uncle Vernon was not the only thing that had
brought their lives together. Or maybe he should be glad the old man had made
their meeting awkward, allowing him to keep her at a distance, so he could sue
her without remorse. But before things went that far, he had one last idea. “Uncle
Vernon placed us in an odd situation. I’m willing to keep this out of the
courts, if you agree to my plan.”

She frowned. “What are you offering?”

“We each spend one day with each other. We’ll start here in
Seattle. You can show me why you want to keep the Bancroft as it is. Then,
you’ll spend the day with me, and I’ll show you why I want the hotel and what
changes I have planned. At the end of those two days, we’ll determine if either
of us has persuaded the other, or if we still need to take this battle to the
courts.”

He saw a flash of temper in her eyes. “Why would I do that?
The hotel is already mine.”

“A lawsuit over the ownership of the hotel will turn your
life upside down and cost you every cent you have to fight me. The end result
will not be in your favor.” He shrugged. “At least this gives you a fifty-fifty
chance.”

Felicity’s cheeks flushed, but indecision flickered in her eyes.

He held out his hand to her. “We each spend one day with the other.
When we’re through, we both must agree on who can best serve the Bancroft Hotel
and take her into the future.” And the extra days would allow the necessary
time to prepare a lawsuit, if it came to that.

“But if we don’t come to a decision, we’ve wasted two days of
our lives.”

“Are you worried about your powers of persuasion?”

“No,” she said in an irritated tone.

“We’ve both wasted at least two days of our lives before,” he
said, then paused to give her time to consider. “Do we have a deal?”

She stared at his fingers for a moment before she accepted
his hand. Her fingers trembled ever so slightly, telling him she wasn’t as
worldly as he had given her credit for a moment ago, but she was brave. Not
many men stood up to him. And fewer women.

She pulled her hand back and offered him a polite smile. “I’ll
let them know at the registration desk that you’ll be checking in, if that’s
what you want.”

“It’s what I want.”

“All right. Until tomorrow, then.”

He nodded. “Until tomorrow. When and where should I meet you?”

A smug grin replaced her smile. “Meet me in the lobby at five
thirty in the morning.” At his frown, she added, “My day starts early. I’ll get
Marie to cover the housekeeping meeting at the hotel for me, so we can head
straight to the waterfront to buy seafood, then we’ll go to the farmer’s market
to see what fruit and vegetables are available.”

“I’ll be there,” he agreed, as she turned and walked out the
door. The room suddenly grew cold and dark without Felicity’s vibrant presence.

Blake dismissed the thought and reached for his water glass,
wishing it held something stronger. He never mixed business with pleasure, but
maybe it was time to break his own rule. Felicity was not his usual opponent.
She was passionate and headstrong, an interesting combination. If he was going
to win, he was going to have to use every possible advantage he had, perhaps including
seduction. He could be very persuasive. He lifted his water glass to his lips,
his mind dwelling on the possibilities.

Felicity walked the short distance from the hotel to her
studio apartment two blocks east without seeing a thing along the way. Dear God,
she was frightened. Not of Blake Bancroft, but of what he could undo. Just this
morning, Vern had given her a dream and a future. Blake could take all of that
away and more.

If he took the hotel away from her, she would lose her job
and her income. Blake wouldn’t keep her around to oversee the restaurant if he
took ownership. Without that, where would she be? Where would her father be?
She fisted her hands at her side. She would never go back to the poverty of her
past. A siren screamed from the street below as she let herself into her
apartment and shut the door behind her. Her “Pill Hill” location was
affordable, but she did have to put up with the noise of ambulances all hours
of the day and night as they rushed to and from the three hospitals located
nearby. Usually she could tune out the noise, but this afternoon she couldn’t.

Too strung up from her encounter with Blake Bancroft,
Felicity paced the small confines of her home. She cast an anxious glance about
the sparsely furnished apartment. She’d happily accepted her austere lifestyle,
because of what else it enabled her to do: provide for her father. The memory
of the car accident that killed her mother and left her father permanently
disabled came flooding back. Only Felicity had walked away without any visible
scars, but emotional scars were there, buried deep. Her family had always
struggled to make ends meet before the accident. But afterward, poverty had swallowed
her father and herself in an unending cycle of bills from her mother’s funeral
and her father’s hospital expenses. At sixteen, she’d had to sacrifice
everything normal teenage girls dreamed about in order to give her father
round-the-clock care.

Another siren blared outside her window. Felicity stiffened,
the muscles of her shoulders going rigid before she forced herself to relax.
The man her father had been would never return, but she had to care for what
was left of him.

Felicity frowned. She’d never told Vern anything about her
past, not that he had ever asked. Still, some part of her wondered if his act
of kindness went much further than giving a nice girl a restaurant. If he was
as rich as his lawyers claimed, then he could’ve had her investigated. She’d
tried to hide the truth about how poor she’d been in the past, but if someone
were determined enough to uncover her secrets, it wouldn’t be hard.

Felicity forced her thoughts back to the present. She would
never know what had motivated Vern to do what he did. All she could do was
accept what he’d given her and be grateful. And she was so grateful. At the
thought, the skin on her arms tingled and the giddy elation she’d experienced
earlier returned. She owned a hotel—a hotel that was well furnished, luxurious,
and blissfully quiet.

As the full impact of her situation washed over her, she
stopped pacing.
She
owned a hotel.
She could move in there, rent-free, giving herself
an instant raise. The experimental therapy her father needed but could never
afford was now within her reach.

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 have 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.