Norman looked over his shoulder at Federica. “You scared him.” His voice was reproachful. “He’s trembling.”
“
I
scared
him
?” Federica sucked in an indignant breath. “I thought I’d have a heart attack. What is he—it?”
“He’s a mongoose, honey.” Lilly sounded annoyed. “And a lazy, shiftless, voracious one at that. Which is why the menfolk love him so much. They identify with him. Norman, why is Cavendish out of his cage?”
“Come on, Lil. Have a heart. Cavendish looked so lonely in there. Even mongooses have a right to company.” Norman held out his hand and Cavendish flowed smoothly from Jack’s neck to Norman’s shoulder. Three men and a mongoose looked at Lilly and Federica with three innocent expressions and a crafty one.
“Men.” Lilly turned in disgust and took Federica by the arm. “Come on, Federica, Newton. Anyone for another beer?”
They trooped back through the kitchen and out into the garden. On his way out, Jack bent to peer with interest into the oven door.
“Hey Lil,” he called out casually. “Are the potatoes
supposed
to be black?”
With a cry, Lilly rushed back into the kitchen, grabbed the oven mitts and pulled out a smoking pan. “My casserole,” she moaned.
“That’s okay, Lil. I brought along an extra case of Pigswill and these.” Wyatt pulled out one of two bottles nestled in a plastic bucket of ice resting against one of the table legs. “This will wash out even the taste of
your
cooking. Dad’s best vintage.”
Curious, Federica checked the handmade label and laughed. The label showed the stylized profile of a man with a stem glass held to his lips. Above, in impressive Gothic script—
Plonk du Patron. Grand Cru 2004.
Lilly was fussing with the table settings. “Norman, you sit here, Newton here. Wyatt, you’ll be pouring, so you sit here. Jack,” she said, her voice casual, “you sit next to Federica. And as for
you
—” she plucked Cavendish off Norman’s shoulders, and carried him to a cage set against the pink-washed stucco wall. “You eat in the guest room.”
“Aw, Lil.” Three male voices rose in protest.
Lilly latched the cage and walked over to the barbecue. “Not another word out of you three or you’ll be eating in the guest room, too.” She forked the steaks onto a massive marbleized platter. Norman jumped up and took the platter out of his wife’s hands.
The food was indifferent. The steaks were tough and overcooked, the potato casserole over-salted and burnt, and the salad was watery. Federica didn’t care. It was so pleasant out in the garden, with the smell of charcoal and jasmine floating on the gentle summer breeze, and the glistening river just visible through the willows providing a soft background murmur.
“Sorry about the food. Particularly since you’ve been eating Stella’s fare.” Lilly smiled at Federica and Newton. “Norman’s the real cook around here, but he’s in the middle of a job and as you saw, he’s out of it when he’s working. It’s a good thing I ration him to one account a month, otherwise we’d starve to death.”
“What do you do, Norman?” Federica asked.
Norman winced when he put a bite of steak in his mouth. He hesitated a moment, then chewed, swallowed and gratefully put down his fork. “Well, now I keep the books of a few local businesses. I draw up the odd business plan or two, as well. That’s what I’m doing now. A local software company has asked me for advice. Three very smart kids. Silicon Valley refugees after the dot-com crash. We get a lot of those around here.”
“Are they planning on expanding?” Federica was having trouble keeping her mind on the conversation. The bench was small, and Jack was so close she could feel his body heat. He had on a short-sleeved polo shirt and Federica tried to keep her eyes off the fascinating play of muscles in his forearm, but it was hard. Jack’s hands were large and strong and Federica gave herself a shake when she found herself following his hands as he heaped his plate and hers.
Stop that right now
, she told herself sternly. Was this part of a nervous breakdown? It must be, because she couldn’t remember the last time she’d been mesmerized by a man’s hands. Large, gorgeous, thoroughly masculine hands, but just
hands
, for heaven’s sake!
She was here for business. Just business. She had to remember that.
Actually, she should be steering the conversation around to the sale of Harry’s Folly. She should be angling for an appointment with the Town Council. It wouldn’t be hard. The Carson’s Bluff Town Council was right here with her, sitting around a picnic table, guzzling beer.
She tried to concentrate on the sale, then Jack’s thigh brushed hers, and her thoughts melted and slid warmly down her spine to pool in her middle.
“No, they aren’t planning on expanding,” Norman said, and for a moment Federica wondered what he was talking about. Then she remembered she’d asked a question. “Just the opposite, in fact.” He carefully cut around the charred part of the potato casserole. “That’s the problem. They’ve had an exceptional year, too much work to handle comfortably with current staff levels, and they want a plan to scale down without losing market share.” He paused with his fork halfway to his mouth and his eyes lost their focus. “Non-growth is a tricky problem, because there are a lot of things you have to factor in, like client weight, pluri-annual contracts as opposed to jobbing…”
“Norman,” Lilly said gently.
“And of course, advertising has to be scaled accordingly and very carefully placed—”
“Norman—”
“—and you have to watch your quarterly estimates and calculate FICA—”
“
Norman
!”
“
What?”
He sounded aggrieved.
“Work time is
over
, Norman.”
He sighed and pushed his plate away.
“Have you always been a freelancer?” Federica asked.
Norman grimaced. “No. I used to be a vice president at Longthorn, Pace and Feldstein.” He took a long swallow of Pigswill. “In a previous life.”
“They keep our accounts,” Federica said, startled. Longthorn, Pace and Feldstein was one of the largest accountancy firms in the state and far and away the best. It was also known for its shark-like accounting practices and for walking the finest line possible between clever bookkeeping and tax evasion. Which was why, Federica thought uncomfortably, it kept Mansion Enterprises’ books.
The firm was also famous for treating its employees like the pharoahs treated the workers on the pyramids. “I know Longthorn, Pace and Feldstein very well. If you were a vice president, you must have worked sixty-hour weeks.” It was hard to square that with Norman’s present lifestyle.
“Seventy-hour weeks, actually. I had one heart attack and was barreling straight into my second when I met Lilly.” He reached for his wife’s hand and smiled into her eyes. “Best thing that ever happened to me. Saved my life in more ways than one.” Norman looked around the table. “Of course, the downside to that is that my wife comes with a couple of flatliners for brothers, but what the hell. Her folks are nice and it’s not that big a price to pay.”
“I’ll drink to that.” Wyatt was grinning as he walked out of the kitchen with a tray of wine glasses. He set the tray down and uncorked the bottle of wine, deftly filling the glasses. “Here’s to Dad. Long may he vint, if that’s the word I want.”
Jack handed Federica a glass and watched with a smile as she sniffed, then took a sip.
Federica rolled the wine around her tongue and swallowed. She took another sip and closed her eyes in delight. It was like tasting sunlight. The wine was a full-bodied red, with a very faint fruity aftertaste, and it went down like a dream. Federica opened her eyes to find everyone watching her.
“So what do you think?” Jack’s eyes bored into hers. Against his deep suntan, the electric blue of his eyes was startling. An incredible blue. The bluest blue this side of—
“Heaven,” she said without thinking. And blushed.
“Dad laid this down the year Norman and Lilly got married.” Wyatt pushed back a shock of blond hair and Federica was struck again by how good-looking he was. He was better looking than Jack, his features more even and less craggy. But it was to Jack’s face that her eyes kept wandering. “He said ‘one down, two to go’.”
“He also said that you two would never get married.” Lilly was nestling comfortably in Norman’s embrace. “He said you were too flighty and Jack was too serious.”
Federica was mulling this over when an extraordinary apparition rounded the corner of the cottage.
“Lilly, blast it all, where are you, woman? My mug’s broken and I need a new one. How can I drink my whisky out of a broken mug?”
An ancient man, bent almost double over a cane, hobbled into view. The hand clutching the cane was twisted with arthritis. Nonetheless, he covered ground surprisingly quickly. He stood for a moment while Jack got him a chair, then sat down, pulling off a battered black felt beret and revealing a bald, brown liver-spotted pate.
“Goddammit. I shouted myself hoarse out front.” His black eyes, as crafty as Cavendish’s, surveyed the picnic table, and the empty bottles of Pigswill scattered over the tabletop like so many fallen soldiers. “Of course, if I’d known you people were out here getting pie-eyed, I would have saved my breath and joined you earlier.”
“Here, Horace.” Wyatt uncorked another bottle and poured the old man a full glass of wine. “Dad wants to know what you think of it.”
“Don’t mind if I do, boy. Don’t mind if I do.” The wine disappeared down the old man’s throat in two long swallows. “Ah…” He smacked his lips and held out the glass. “Okay, now I’ve primed the pump.”
Wyatt had been holding the bottle ready and topped the glass up again. The next sip was worthy of a sommelier. The old man chewed the wine for a moment, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Chateau Sutter.” He nodded slowly. “Tell old Charlie it’s better than the St. Emilion I used to drink in Paris.”
Federica gasped and took a closer look at the man. Most of the light had drained from the evening sky and a few stars had come out, but it was still possible to see. The skin was more flaccid and the monk’s rim of hair had gone, as had a few teeth, but the face was the same as the one on the back cover of one of her favorite books.
Horace
.
Wyatt had called him Horace. Of course.
Horace Milton, author of America’s most famous dirty books. He had written movingly, lyrically, lewdly, hilariously about his life and loves as a struggling artist in Paris during the Depression years. Federica had learned a lot about life—and love—by reading his forbidden books. Horace Milton. But how could Horace Milton be here?
Now
? He had been in his twenties at the start of the Depression, which made him…
“I thought you were dead,” Federica blurted.
The old man turned his head slowly. He stared at her out of coal-black eyes which, for all their age, had lost nothing of their sharpness. For a moment, Federica felt stripped to the bone as he seemed to stare straight into her soul.
“Dead?” The old man’s lips widened in a smile to reveal a mouthful of blackened stumps. “No, sweetheart. Not as long as there’s a Republican majority I’m not. Though there are a lot of husbands who would have been happy to dance on my grave.” Federica stared for a moment into his lively, ferociously intelligent black eyes. “
Ha
!” he suddenly cackled, and Federica jumped. “Outlived them all!”
“I used to read you in school,” she breathed.
It was hard to believe he was here, at a picnic table with her in a small town in Northern California. He was forever fixed in her mind in the corner of a smoky bistro in Montmartre with a girl in one hand and a filter-less cigarette in another.
Again, she had the impression that he could see straight into her as he stared at her. “Good God, girl. Don’t tell me I’m being taught in school now. I’d hate to be required reading in some asinine syllabus.”
“Actually,” Federica smiled, “I read you under the covers at night with a flashlight.”
Horace Milton cackled. “That’s more like it. Who are you, girl?” He looked around. “Come on, who is she? She’s pretty. I want her.”
“Horace Milton, meet Federica Mansion.” Lilly’s voice was quiet in the deepening darkness.
“
Mansion
!” The bantering tone was gone. Horace Milton took another long look at Federica, all the flirtatiousness and good humor vanished in an instant. Milton stared at Jack accusingly. “You didn’t tell us at the meeting that this Mansion monster was a woman.”
“We didn’t know he was a she, either.” Jack answered evenly.
Milton scooted his chair closer.
“You listen to me girl, and listen good.” He pressed a nicotine-stained finger into her chest. “I know the Mansion Hotels. Godless, soulless places, all of them. Well, we don’t want that here. We don’t want any truck with your kind of commercialism. This is one of the last unsullied spots left on Earth and we all want to keep it that way. And as long as I’m alive, I’ll fight you to my last breath. I don’t care if I die in the process. You get me?” He jabbed hard at her chest and Newton half-rose in his seat.
“Do you understand me, girl
?”
Federica shook her head at Newton, then turned to meet Milton’s hostile, black-eyed gaze. “Yes,” she said quietly, “I understand.”