Chapter 2
Felicity groaned. Sam groaned. And surprisingly, Nic groaned too.
“Now, as I’m sure you all know, parking and traffic congestion has been an enormous quagmire in and around the St. Clare Circle neighborhood for years.”
Felicity flicked a piece of dirt from her pants. “Sure, yesterday, I had to wait an extra twenty seconds to make that left turn in front of your building.”
“A troubling trend to be sure,” Bruce said without a hint of irony. After a small gesture at the two women, he addressed Nic. “Even more troubling is the state of the courtyard out front, and I’m sure you’ll all agree.”
Felicity cleared her throat. “I plan to—”
“I don’t mean to speak poorly of your aunt’s or Mr. Greene’s choices, even though I believe they were entrusted with the management of that property. I understand they both had ample things on their minds the last few years.”
Could you punch the patronizing tone out of someone?
“Cancer, man, it somehow gets in the way of routine landscaping maintenance.” Felicity crossed her arms.
Bruce pretended he didn’t hear her. “This is why my news should help us all.”
Nic scowled. “The courtyard really isn’t any of your business.”
“I think you’ll find you’re wro— One moment…” Bruce put his phone to his ear and stepped away so that none of them could hear his conversation.
Responsibility over the large rectangular courtyard Bruce was talking about was technically split between all three people who owned St. Clare Circle properties.
Sam’s grandfather owned the converted brick school building next door to the old church, and he had historically paid for the upkeep on the sidewalks and parking lot.
The renovated church building in the adjoining lot had been divided into two distinct properties.
Felicity’s aunt had bought the converted sanctuary half, and her aunt’s longtime friend Dexter Greene owned the other.
They had always paid for and managed the courtyard’s landscaping work and the patio in front of the church.
Despite her illness, Aunt Jeannie had managed remarkably well with the back garden, but everything else had fallen into neglect.
Dexter Greene had already deposited money into the shared account that was supposed to be used for landscaping maintenance.
Per the business agreement, Felicity was supposed to match it.
She didn’t have anywhere near that amount of cash on hand.
Felicity kept meaning to talk to Dexter about the situation, but he was always traveling.
She’d been so overwhelmed that she hadn’t given the courtyard mess much thought until a few weeks into owning the plant shop, when the restaurant’s popularity inexplicably blew up overnight.
One day when her shop was closed, she’d been hiding from the lunch mob, crouched down in the back garden, when she overheard Dexter Greene’s son Marshall talking to a man with a deep, unfamiliar voice. “If we take over the patio, we could triple our reservations.”
“Not a bad idea. Worth a shot. But the whole thing is a little awkward,” Marshall said in a tone that made Felicity blush with shame. Marshall had been the one to convert his dad’s half of the property into a restaurant. He owned and managed C’est la Vache.
After that, the deep-voiced man had gone on a long rant about the dilapidated stairs up to Felicity’s apartment being a safety risk and the overall disrepair of the old church building and on and on about the patio being sloppy and the courtyard being a disaster and how he couldn’t believe how bad everything was.
Felicity’s embarrassment had frozen into seething fury.
The worst was when Marshall Greene—the guy who used to give Felicity piggyback rides as a kid—didn’t even defend her aunt at all. He just said, “Maybe the niece’ll be less stubborn.”
“Here’s hoping,” said the deep-voiced dude with a rueful snort—the first of the insufferable snorts she had heard from him. “I think I’ll find a way to convince her to see reason. Maybe I’ll pop on over later and say hello.” His self-satisfied tone made Felicity instantly hate him.
He, whoever he was, was so confident he could win her over with his charm after shit-talking her aunt for ten minutes?
Well, Felicity would be just as determined to be un-charmed.
The pair of men emerged from the shadows for a split second.
Long enough for Felicity to realize that the man with the deep voice was none other than Nic Holm-Bozic, the critically acclaimed hotshot chef from Texas who had the neighborhood buzzing.
Allegedly, some other chef had quit right before the restaurant opened, and Nic appeared out of nowhere and made Marshall’s dining dream a reality.
In just a few weeks, pasta-filled ceramic cows had become the hottest ticket in town for young, hungry university students—the same ones who had been flocking en masse to St. Clare Circle to take trending selfies with the life-sized cow statue in front of the restaurant and in the process trampling the courtyard into an even muddier mess.
Despite all this, Felicity had been sure that Marshall Greene wouldn’t sue her for breach of contract or yell at her about the derelict courtyard just because Viscount Cavatappi wanted his pretentious pasta palace to be pristine.
Marshall might be a terrifyingly tall ex–professional football player, but he had always behaved like a teddy bear stuffed with cotton candy come to life.
But then Marshall had apparently peaced out on some kind of international trip either to celebrate finishing his MBA or because some band he loved or person he loved was going on tour?
Felicity found the details of that very confusing.
Mainly because she had not asked the people who knew the details and instead tried to piece the whys and hows together through overheard drips and dribbles.
The only thing Felicity knew for sure was that for at least the next six months, star chef Mr. Sarcastic Spaghetti McSnorterton himself would be in charge of the restaurant.
Avoiding unpleasant thoughts and things and people was her current life strategy.
And Nic might have saved Marshall’s stupid restaurant, but Felicity would not be entertaining any attempt to “convince her” or anything.
All she could do was focus on her own business, and so far, ignoring him and hiding from him had worked.
The busier she was, the more her mind would stay away from the dark mental place she’d been living in before she moved back here.
As if Felicity’s life wasn’t hard enough, Bruce’s elated expression when he came back to face them told her that things would be getting worse.
Sam looked like she was trying to burn Bruce with the power of her conviction alone.
Nic stepped close enough to Bruce to demonstrate he had several inches on the tall man.
“Are you going to tell us the news? I’m guessing by your tone it’s something you’re happy about, but these women and I might feel different.
” Nic’s tone was liquid nitrogen, his Texas geniality vanishing.
“I think we’d all appreciate avoiding any more dramatic pauses. ”
Nic’s boss must not have given him the rundown of the fussy, bureaucratic hell that the bearded man before them could raise if provoked.
“The state has decided to invest in several new beautification projects around this lovely city of ours and has appropriated some grant funds for a little competition.”
Felicity, Samantha, and Nic exchanged bemused looks.
This sounded like an actual good thing. Ominouser and ominouser.
Bruce glanced at each, waiting for them to beg him to explain.
When no one seemed inclined to stroke his ego, he continued.
“The grant involves the creation of and investment in several ‘pocket parks’—which is a new trend in urban development. You probably aren’t aware, but current research shows that green space is essential for a city to thrive and progress with the younger generation.
We on the city council want to make sure our community is on the cutting edge of these trends to ensure that our investments in this city reap dividends. ”
Samantha cleared her throat, plainly torn between excitement on a professional and academic level and apprehension about Bruce’s motives and methods for delivering this news. “Yeah, there have been several other cities that have pioneered creating spaces like this, and they were shown to support—”
“In the council’s extensive research on the topic, we looked at the data science,” Bruce said as if the idea of science would be novel to the other persons present.
Sam straightened. “Actually, in grad school I studied the trends of—”
Bruce cleared his throat. “Then we analyzed it with the projected costs and found that, while these types of things might seem like hippie-dippie, hug-a-tree ideas, they can actually improve property values and attract big companies to the area, especially with the cost of living skyrocketing in bigger cities.”
Felicity could feel that vein in her forehead pulse. “Right, but Samantha—”
“It’s fine, Felicity.” She gave a little head shake.
Felicity wanted to shout that while Sam owned a bookstore, she also had a master’s degree in both public policy and literature from Yale.
That she probably had a unique perspective as a local tribal council member about how strategies like this could be implemented in a socially conscious and culturally sensitive way in this city.
That when Sam had moved back home, she was burned out from years spent trying to fix the private corporate sector from the inside, so she’d written up a business plan for her grandfather and opened the large bookstore that now occupied the former parochial school library.
And that, in fact, Sam had been trying to get on the city council without success, probably because it was stacked with the Bruce Hogan windbags of the world.
But Felicity respected the heck out of her, so if Sam wanted her to, she’d keep her mouth shut.