Freefall (10 page)

Brad Sumner had definitely changed since that long ago summer he'd supposedly been deadheading the Buchanans' tea roses. Although Titania was right about Sabrina's having had her head clouded with thoughts of Zach, the boy voted the most likely to con you out of your lunch money had been good-looking in a slick, smarmy sort of way that had garnered his share of female attraction.

This man had developed a paunch. His sandy hair was thinning a bit at the temples, and although he was not yet thirty, Sabrina could see the beginning of jowls. The red flush in his cheeks suggested an overindulgence in alcohol rather than too much sun.

"Hello, pretty lady." He flashed her a smile that, if she'd had any lunch money to lose, would have had her holding on to it more tightly. "Long time no see."

"Hello, Brad. This is a surprise."

"I saw you at the bank," he said, "but you left before I got a chance to welcome an old friend home."

"Well, isn't that hospitable of you?"

Sabrina decided not to point out that she doubted he'd ever said a dozen words to her in all the years she'd been coming to the island. Which didn't exactly make them bosom buddies.

Mr. Tall, Dark, and Too Sexy for His Tool Belt chose that moment to come strolling up behind her, chewing on one of the cookies Titania had sent home, looking for all the world as if he belonged here.

"Sumner." Zach nodded.

"Tremayne." The developer's lips narrowed to a thin, disapproving line. "This is a surprise." And not, Sabrina sensed, a pleasant one. "I thought that was your
father's
truck in the driveway."

"It belongs to Tremayne Construction. I work for Treymane Construction. Ergo, I drive the truck."

"And you're doing work here at Swannsea?"

"Seem to be."

"What kind of work?"

Zach shrugged. Took another bite of the cookie as if he didn't give a rat's ass about this conversation. "This and that."

The tension swirling between them was thick and a little uncomfortable, like the hot and humid air before a summer thunderstorm. Air that was sparked with testosterone.

Zach shot Sabrina a grin. It was wickedly male and, she sensed, intended as much to annoy Brad Sumner as to charm her.

"I'll be back first thing in the morning to see to the flashing, sugar. Then we can discuss Miss Lucie's plans for the new addition."

With that promise hanging in the air, he strolled across the veranda, down the steps, and toward the pickup.

"You're going through with the construction?" Brad asked, clearly surprised.

"I haven't decided yet."

Even as she directed her words to Brad, she couldn't take her eyes off Zach's bare, sweat-slick back and the sexy, drool-inducing way his narrow hips moved in those raggedy jeans.

It wasn't just that the man was ripped; after years working out in hotel gyms, she'd seen more than her share of buffed-up males. It was, she thought, the knowledge that he'd built his muscles the old-fashioned way—by hard work and whatever physical training SEALs did when they weren't killing terrorists—that made his body downright lust-inspiring.

Damned if Titania hadn't nailed it. Zachariah Tremayne was a tough, macho, serious piece of SEAL eye candy.

He was also a distraction she couldn't afford.

"I haven't really had time to digest the idea," she said, dragging her rebellious mind back to the conversation at hand.

She had no doubt that Lucie could've pulled off such an ambitious enterprise. But Titania, for all her talent in the kitchen and enough business skills to keep the Wisteria Tea Room running, might not be up to the grand-scale destination wedding/B&B/tearoom/tours idea her grandmother had come up with.

Since Brad was looking past her into the house, as if expecting to be invited in, Sabrina bit back a sigh, reclaimed her own Southern hospitality, and stepped aside.

"Would you like to come in?"

He glanced down at a diamond-studded gold Rolex that might have fit in if he were, say, a New York City hip-hop mogul but was definitely overkill for sleepy Swann Island.

"That'd be great. Thanks. I still have a few minutes before I have to leave for an appointment with my financial backers in Somersett. I'd like to talk with you about your plans for Swannsea."

She led him into the formal parlor and was relieved when he turned down her offer of tea and cookies.

"A great deal depends on Line," she said, thinking out loud as she absently straightened a stack of
Southern Living
magazines that looked about to topple off a mahogany table. She sat down on the Queen Anne chair covered in purple velvet.

If Lincoln Davis found tours of the plantation and factory disruptive to the operation of the farm, the entire idea wasn't worth considering. Because even opening the house to overnight guests and the added twist of Titania's using tea in the recipes wouldn't be enough of a draw to make Swannsea all that different from all the other lace-curtained tearooms scattered all over the South.

If she did take on the project, she was definitely going to have to clean out Lucie's stuff. The cardboard box beside the table, filled with bubble-wrapped pieces of shamrock-sprigged Belleek china decorative pieces, suggested that the same thought had occurred to her grandmother.

"I would imagine that it would be difficult, if not impossible, for Lincoln to operate the tours and oversee the actual plantation," Brad said, unwittingly echoing her own thoughts. He paused for a meaningful beat. "Have you even spoken with him about this so-called plan of Miss Lucie's?"

"Not in detail."

Sensing that he had an ulterior motive in asking, and not liking the veiled sarcasm in his use of the term "so-called," Sabrina wasn't about to admit that she'd learned about the idea only a few hours earlier.

"Of course we've talked on the phone," she added. "But with me having been in Florence and him first in South America and now Atlanta, it's been difficult to get together."

"I'm surprised he didn't see fit to be here when his boss arrived home."

"I arrived earlier than expected. Plus, the international conference in Atlanta has been planned for months; it's important to Swann Tea, so I wouldn't want to pull him away. Besides, I'm not exactly his boss."

"You own Swannsea."

"Well, yes. I guess I do." Something she still wasn't used to.

"Which means you also own the tea company. Which, in turn, makes you Davis's boss."

When he put it that way, she couldn't debate it. "Perhaps on an organizational pyramid," she allowed. "But other than liking to drink tea, I really don't know anything about the business."

Which was why, up until now, having been too focused on her own possible promotion, she'd left the details of the farm to Line and Harlan.

Still, she'd known that eventually she would have to get up to speed so she could understand all those reports the two men kept sending her. Also, while she might not know all that much about the family business, she believed that Line's latest idea—blending pure cocoa he'd made a deal to buy while down in South America with cinnamon in an herbal tea infusion—could prove hugely popular.

"You could always sell."

"Sell what?"

"The business."

"To whom?"

He shrugged. "To me."

"You?"

Surprise made her tone sharper than she'd intended.

Although there wasn't any solid proof, many historians considered Swann Tea to be America's first tea plantation, established back in the eighteen hundreds when the French explorer and botanist Andre Michaux had imported the tea plants, along with stunningly beautiful varieties of camellias, gardenias, and azaleas to enhance the formal gardens of wealthy Southern planters.

Margaret Swann, a famous Southern beauty known for her charm, had been a guest at a dinner party in Charleston where Michaux was showing off his garden plan. Before the botanist knew what had hit him, he'd not only agreed to create showplace formal gardens on Swann Island but also surrendered precious tea plants that had been destined for a rival farm on Pawley's Island.

The plantation thrived, and despite all the stories children were taught in elementary schools about the colonies' switching to coffee after those patriots up in Boston held their little tea party, Sabrina's family had supplied tea to the Continental Army during the American Revolution.

In fact, George Washington had reportedly told Matthew Swann that while he was willing to make many sacrifices for this fledgling democracy, giving up Swann Darjeeling was not one of them.

Although the gardens had been burned by Federal troops during the War Between the States, Annabelle Swann—another beauty whose husband had died during brutal hand-to-hand combat in the battle for Fort Wagner on Morris Island—charmed the officer in command of the mission by roasting Swannsea's last remaining chicken and serving it to him along with two bottles of port she'd buried in the kitchen garden.

While rumors continued to this day as to exactly how far Annabelle had been willing to go to save her family home from the Yankees, the fact was that Swannsea was one of the few antebellum homes outside of Savannah to survive the war.

The family's most prized memento of those early years was a cartoon published in the
Boston Gazette
. A takeoff on Napoleon's quote about an army marching on its stomach, it showed the Revolutionary army marching while drinking Swann Tea. It would be a wonderful item to frame for the new tearoom, Sabrina thought.

Going one step further, what if they were to build an attached gift shop and sell replicas? The image could even appear on postcards sold with boxes of tea and copies of other Swannsea memorabilia, much of which was historically valuable enough to draw media attention if it were all gathered into a collection. Perhaps in a small museum on the premises?

Which could draw in both professional and amateur historians and add even more credibility to the idea of Swannsea as a destination location.

"Sabrina?"

"I'm sorry."

Belatedly realizing he'd been talking to her, Sabrina shook her head to rid it of a mental image of the John Singer Sargent portrait of her great-grandmother that hung at the top of the stairs in the main foyer.

Wouldn't that make a fabulous focal point for the restaurant?

"What did you say?"

"We were discussing you selling Swannsea to me. Well, technically, to my real estate company. We've had great success with Plantation Shores. The entire development sold out before we'd even broken ground."

"Even if I wanted to sell something that has been in my family for over two hundred years, do you have any experience with growing tea?"

"No more than you," he said pointedly. An edge of annoyance revealed a crack in his smoothly polished exterior. "But I wasn't thinking of growing tea."

He turned toward the fields of tea plants. "As I was explaining to Miss Lucie before her untimely passing, tea's always been a risky proposition down here, what with the possibility of hurricanes. I've never understood why she kept the business running after her husband left."

"Perhaps because not only has the business been successful for two centuries, the Swann name has always been synonymous with the best tea in the world," Sabrina said loyally. "I couldn't imagine Swann Plantation without it."

Granted, according to those spreadsheets Harlan had sent her, sales had dipped in the years after Starbucks got seemingly the entire country hooked on coffee, but tea had been making a strong comeback for the past three quarters.

"Times change," he pointed out—something she knew herself. "Even down here in the South." Another pause. "This is some of the most prime real estate on the eastern seaboard. It would be an ideal location for a golf course."

Surely he wasn't serious? "There are already two courses on the island."

"With more and more tourism, we can always use another. Swannsea would definitely be the jewel in my crown."

His crown
? Sabrina nearly had to bite her tongue to keep from pointing out that no one had notified her that Brad had been declared king of Swann Island.

"Some of the most famous course designers in the world are salivating to develop this location, which offers the best of the best," he said, pressing his point. "You've got the beach on one side, then the marsh, then, of course, all the trees, which would make Swannsea one of the more challenging courses in the South. The greens would be where the fields currently are, of course."

He was looking out over the fields in question, hands on his hips, for all the world like a king or emperor surveying his domain.

The only problem was it happened to be
her
domain.

"The fields look pretty green to me right now." They were also lovely, and they stirred an unexpected emotion of belonging deep inside her.

Unlike competing countries, where workers were paid next to nothing to harvest tea by hand, at Swannsea Tea a commercial machine chugged up and down the rows, cutting the top leaves from the shoulder-high bushes.

"Granted, but there's nothing prettier than rolling bent-grass greens." Her dry tone had obviously flown right over his head. "The factory would have to go, of course. But the actual house would stay."