Page 15 of Hottie on Her Shelf
Chapter Four
Pancakes or French toast? Fitz preferred not having to decide. It was why he loved breakfast events at the Guillemot Golf Club. It was a buffet, which meant he could load his plate with both. Plus, the chef put out warm maple, blueberry, and butter pecan syrup.
It almost made this campaign kickoff bearable.
Reasons why he’d still hate today?
One, his dad’s cronies still treating him like a kid. One octogenarian had actually tried to tousle his hair while Fitz held the door open for him.
Two, the fact that a campaign event was hosted at a club where attendance was members only. C’mon—that was pure bullshit. Every adult citizen of Swan Cove deserved an equal chance to hear the candidates speak. But it was tradition that Guillemot kicked off the campaign, and tradition ran neck and neck with money when it came to what ruled this town.
Three, the way they’d sit through his stump speech but wouldn’t ask him any substantive questions. Shouldn’t they want answers from their mayor?
Derek had told him not to look a gift horse in the mouth. Still felt wrong, though.
And last but not least, four, sharing a table with Hallie Scott. His nemesis. Not by his reckoning. He’d tried, hadn’t he? To smooth things over. To start on an even playing field. To be a decent fellow candidate and not a club-swinging neanderthal jerk of an opponent.
It hadn’t worked.
“Fitzwilliam, you don’t need all that syrup. You’ll be drowning in sugar with that girl sitting next to you this morning.” It was his old golf coach, Lawrence Fenton. The man wore old-fashioned plus fours everywhere. As if someone might knock over the chafing dish full of French toast and demand he show them how to put some English on a putt in the next five minutes.
“What girl?” All the kids were still in school. Was some over-eager teacher dragging their class here as a civics field trip?
“The one running against you. The librarian.”
Holy hell. Lawrence was on the wrong side of sixty, but that was no excuse. “You can’t call Ms. Scott a girl.”
He waved the tongs, pinching two fat sausages. “Nobody’s around to hear. You don’t have to pretend to stick up for her.”
“For God’s sake, I’m not pretending. And I’m not sticking up for her. I’m sticking up for all women. Women,” he repeated slowly, drawing the word out. “Anyone of the opposite sex old enough to vote.”
“Ah. I see what you did there. Brought it back to being about the election. Well done.” Lawrence dropped a sausage on Fitz’s plate like a reward, winked, then ambled off.
That…had to be an anomaly. Hallie had the deck stacked against her—unfairly—because she wasn’t a Montgomery. Her gender couldn’t also be an issue. Not in the twenty-first century. Not in Swan Cove.
Could it? No. Not in Swan Cove. Fitz wouldn’t stand for it.
“Ah, Mayor Montgomery.” Olivier—God help anyone who accidentally pronounced it without that second “i” since he was named after the famous actor—leaned out to catch him as Fitz approached. “I see you broke out the seersucker on this warm morning. Perfect sartorial choice.”
After spending thirty years as a costumer for the soap operas that filmed in Manhattan, Olivier had come back home to care for his mom after her stroke. He’d immediately started writing a fashion column for the Swan Cove Bulletin. And apparently felt it his duty to comment on every outfit worn by every person he saw in a day.
It cracked Fitz up when Olivier heaped praise on the oyster shuckers along the cruise ship dock for their “practical yet peppy” aprons. Because the man was never mean. He’d compliment a burglar on wearing slimming black while the guy robbed him blind.
“Thanks, Ollie. I wanted to make a good impression on you. It’s your first election back home, and I’m hoping I can count on your vote.” Fitz angled closer. Lowered his voice. “If you were compelled to tell your mom about my seersucker suaveness so she voted for me, too? Even better.”
“You certainly look the part, my dear boy. Nobody else would even try to pull off that shade of green in seersucker. I approve.”
“Thanks.” He’d gotten the suit to attend the Kentucky Derby for a bachelor party. The invite had come with shopping links for “appropriate wear.” The suit had lasted longer than the marriage.
“But I can’t promise you my vote, Fitz. You’re a good friend, but that doesn’t make you a good mayor.”
Grimacing, Fitz said, “Ouch.”
“I didn’t say it made you a bad mayor. I’m simply saying I haven’t made up my mind yet now that there’s another candidate in the mix.”
He was actually fine with that. “Fair enough.”
“What’s her style?”
