Free Homecoming by Elizabeth Jennings Page B

to now and it is, quite frankly, rather bothersome. Why aren’t you checking your email?
    Russell
     
    MESSAGE NOT RECEIVED/NO SIGNAL
     
    EMAIL FROM: [email protected]
    TO: [email protected]
     
    Hey Russ,
    I called to confirm our squash date tonight and your office said that you’re off to Hawaii. You lucky stiff. The farthest I’ve traveled for Mansion Enterprises is Sacramento to lobby for tax breaks.
    Should I reschedule the squash court for next Tuesday?
    By the way, sorry to have to turn your loan application down.
    Will
     
    Federica woke up very late, very suddenly. She had slept through the usual early morning cacophony around the Folly. Sunrise at the Folly was to the accompaniment of blue jays and robins chattering at each other and a brisk breeze soughing through the oak stand. By late morning, though, the noise died down and a peaceful hush enveloped the Folly.
    The light was slanting in at a high angle through the half-open window and there was a deep hush, so she knew it was late.
    As always at the Folly, she had slept well and dreamlessly. If only she could bottle the peace of Harry’s Folly and take it with her, she thought wistfully.
    For months now, her sleeping had been fitful. She would wake up in some strange hotel room with a dry mouth, unrested, her head full of half-remembered images. Not like now, waking up totally refreshed, thinking of Jack’s mouth on hers…
    Federica bolted up in the bed. Had she really kissed Jack Sutter last night?
    It was unthinkable. She barely knew the man. Not to mention the fact that he was slated to be on the opposite side of the bargaining table. Once she could force herself to sit down at it—whenever that would be.
    If there was one thing she should have learned from her brief and disastrous affair with Russell White, it was that work and romance do not mix.
    Ever.
    Though that heavenly blend of excitement and ease she felt when in Jack’s presence was not what she had felt with Russell.
    She was here for a purpose and that purpose was to leave Jack Sutter, Mayor, Jack Sutter, Sheriff, Wyatt Sutter, Treasurer, Lilly Sutter Wright, Clerk, and God knows how many other cousins and friends facedown in the dust and to tip Carson’s Bluff into the maw of Mansion Enterprises.
    Horace Milton was right, she thought glumly. Within a year of the purchase of the Folly, the Town Council would be stacked with Mansion Enterprises lackeys, most of the shops would be mere service providers to the executive center up at the Folly, and nothing that could be even remotely considered detrimental to Uncle Frederick’s interests would ever happen in the town.
    Of course, she hadn’t seen Carson’s Bluff in the flesh, as it were. Maybe Carson’s Bluff was a charmless dump, a pimple on the face of beautiful Northern California, and no great loss. Somehow she didn’t think so.
    And she, Federica Mansion would be the one to change its nature. For she would win.
    She always won, both because she was good at what she did and because she had the vast financial and logistical resources of Mansion Enterprises behind her. Carson’s Bluff would fight and Carson’s Bluff would lose. There was no doubt about that. Just as there was no doubt about the fact that the Sutters and the rest of the Town Council would prove to be honest but ineffectual adversaries.
    They would be eaten alive.
    Kissing the man she was destined to engage in a dogfight with—and the man she was going to send spiraling down in flames—was not a good move.
    Suddenly Federica had a thought that made her cheeks burn. Surely Jack didn’t think that she was trying to seduce him into surrender?
    What had he said? “I was afraid of that .”
    As if he had suspected that a potent kiss, a kiss she hadn’t even known she had in her, was a wily trick she could pull out of her ostrich-skin briefcase. Why, that would make her no better than…no better than…
    Federica’s stomach rumbled and she remembered that