Page 92 of Hottie on Her Shelf
“I’m serious. Call divulging the truth my fee for this yet-to-be-named favor.”
As if this wasn’t already hard enough! “Well, then, yes. I’ve always been the smart one, the one with all the answers. It was what set me apart. Hard work, proving myself, was the only way.”
“The only way to what?”
“To do better than my parents. To be more. It was their dream for me, and it became my own. To escape Crow Harbor, get a scholarship, get my dream job.”
“It’s certainly one way—you’ve proven that—but steadfastly refusing help is not the only way, I promise you. Perhaps that’s a good lesson to instill in a child to keep them motivated. However, harder is not always better.” Then she winked. “Although there are certain unmentionable circumstances when harder is better.”
Hallie swallowed down a half laugh, half snort. Maybe Felicia would be fun to throw back margaritas with, despite being old enough to be her mom. “I came to ask you for help out of desperation, not from a position of strength.”
“Well done.” Felicia patted her leg. “Part of being smart is knowing what would be better served to call in for reinforcements.”
“Be a team and not a dictator?”
“Precisely.”
“In the spirit of being fully truthful, I’m still quite desperate, but I have received your excellent point. I’m absorbing it, and I promise to strive to apply it whenever appropriate.”
“Splendid. Now, what do you need?”
Hallie pointed at the platform still draped in bunting and with the Montgomery vs. Scottsign overhead. “I need to know how to win this campaign. How to be a good mayor.”
“Those are two separate items.”
“Long-term, yes. Short-term, though, my weaknesses in campaigning serve to point out where I’d be a weak mayor, which is mainly in the numbers department. I do words. Words are my thing. Numbers are the thing I ignore whenever possible.”
“You don’t have to be good at numbers to be mayor.”
“Dealing with the budget is a big part of the job.”
“Not always.” Felicia stood abruptly. “Walk with me. You were right. This should be discussed with a modicum of secrecy.”
What could be secret about Excel spreadsheets? Although, at this point, Hallie was willing to acknowledge it might be necessary to make a smelly potion of eye of newt just to understand them.
“Before you think me the worst aunt in the world, I’ll say I adore my nephew. What I’m about to tell you, I would’ve gladly shared with him—had he asked. One who seeks help often gets more than they expected.”
This sounded…juicy. It definitely sounded like more than the phone number to a guy three towns over who would agree under cloak of secrecy to explain budgets to her. “I couldn’t agree with you more. Fitz is a good man. He’s just possibly not the right man to lead this town.”
“Ha! Don’t I know it. The boy’s miserable. He’s so busy trying to do the honorable thing that he isn’t making time to do what he wants.” Felicia slanted a glance at Hallie. “Or perhaps he has made a bit of time…lately. I’ve had my suspicions.”
That look contained far too much certainty, not that Hallie would confess a thing—especially since there was no longer anything to confess. “You’d have to take that up with the mayor.”
Although it wouldn’t surprise her one bit if Felicia had sniffed out their secret romance. She didn’t appear to run the town’s government or businesses, unlike the men in her family, but she did seem to have eyes everywhere and an uncanny ability to know everything.
To her surprise, Felicia wasn’t leading her to the privacy of the shore. Instead, they seemed to be headed toward the Gazette office.
“Before you moved here, there used to be a city manager, in addition to the mayor. Someone to run the store while the mayor was the public face. Someone to deal with the budgets while the mayor greeted tourists and gave stirring eulogies.”
Well, that was brilliant. “Like the Prime Minister and the Queen of England?”
“Far less glitzy, but yes. Fitz’s idiotic and disreputable Uncle Jeremiah wiped out the position when he was mayor.”
“Why? The division of labor seems so much smarter.” It sounded like an utterly foolhardy decision.
“It was.” Felicia tucked her arm through Hallie’s and leaned closer. “It also enabled the city manager to discover that Jeremiah was embezzling. He fired him under blatantly trumped-up charges sweetened with an immense severance package and got rid of the position from the books so nobody else would catch him.”
Her head was reeling. The previous mayor—Fitz’s uncle—was a criminal? And he’d cooked the books too? How was this a secret?
