Bad Influence

“Whoa. Okay, wait a minute. Start the story from the beginning,” Delaney ordered. “This I’ve gotta hear.”

Telling the tale made her angry afresh. And it made her remember just how hot it had been. She dug in her desk for her memory stick.

Delaney watched her speculatively. “So when did this happen?”

“Yesterday.” Paige slammed the drawer shut.

“Have you kissed him yet?”

“Delaney, please.” Exasperation sparked in her voice. “I want nothing to do with the man.”

Delaney began to laugh. “I’m not sure that’s going to matter, sweet pea.”

Paige scowled. “This is me, remember? I don’t go looking for bad boys to rock my world.”

“Talk to me after you’ve been sleeping fifty feet away from him for three weeks. Better yet, call me after you’ve slept two inches away from him.”

“Never going to happen,” Paige said.

“Twenty bucks says it will. In fact, I’ll pay you twenty bucks to have sex with him. It’s just what you need. He can be your vacation fling.”

Paige rose and picked up her laptop and tote bag. “Just what I don’t need. Quite aside from the fact that it would send my grandfather around the bend, I don’t have any desire to sleep with a grown-up juvenile delinquent. I like men with brains, remember?”

“So date them when you get back home. Come on,” Delaney begged. “This is perfect.”

“I am so not listening to you,” Paige said, walking to the door.

“Okay, don’t blame me. I tried.” Delaney rose and followed her. “Where’s your luggage?”

“Already in the car.” Paige handed her a set of keys. “That’s the spare set. I’ve already cancelled the mail and newspapers and put timers on the lights. You know which plants to water when.”

“Got it,” Delaney said and looked back at the room with a broad smile. “Okeydoke. Par-tay.”

“No red wine on the white sofa,” Paige ordered. “And if I find one potato chip crumb between the cushions, you’re toast.”

“Toast?”

“Toast, melba.”

I T WAS EARLY AFTERNOON by the time Paige walked through the door of Lyndon’s house. “Granddad? Where are you?”

“In here,” he called from the living room.

“The mailman was out front.” She handed him the stack and set down her laptop. “Do you need anything? How about if I make us some lunch?”

“I won’t say no to a little feed, but why don’t you sit down and relax first? I’ll keep.”

“I might not, though.” She put a hand to her stomach. “I’m fading away even as we speak,” she said with a grin and headed toward the kitchen. As she got out the bread and cold cuts, she heard the sound of envelopes ripping open. And then a noise of explosive frustration.

“I’ll be damned.”

“What?” Paige stepped swiftly out to the living room to find Lyndon staring at a sheet of paper, his face red.

“I can’t believe they did this.”

“What?”

He stared at the sheet. “It’s from the planning commission. They’re having a meeting on a variance for that damned museum.”

4

“S HE ’ S GOT NO RIGHT ,” her grandfather railed. “My grandfather built that house. I was baptized there.” And he’d never gotten over the fact that it had been sold off after the last great crash of the thirties. Maybe if they’d moved somewhere else entirely it would have been easier. Instead, he’d spent nearly seventy years staring across the wall at the mansion he’d once known as home.

“She’s turning it into a joke, having any old Tom, Dick and Harry tramping through it staring at strippers.” If he’d been healthy, he’d have been up and pacing. Instead he thumped his fist on the arm of his chair.

“It’s not going to have strippers, I don’t think, Granddad. Just costumes and things,” Paige said. And it showed all the signs of really happening.

“Strippers, strippers’ clothing—same difference. She won’t do it, she just damned well won’t do it.” He moved to rise, wincing.

“You’re not going anywhere,” Paige ordered. “Sit back down.”

“We’ve got to do something and do it quick.”

“I’ll take care of it.”

“How?”

She paused. “I don’t know. First, we need to find out from the planning office how all this works. Once we know that, we’ll know how to fight it.”

“Fine. You do that and I’ll make some phone calls.”

“You’re not going to do anything but relax.”

He frowned. “Do you really think I can just sit around and do nothing?”

Unlikely, she acknowledged. As a compromise, she brought him the cordless phone. “Do you have a neighborhood roster?” she asked.

“Just bring me the address book in the drawer of the phone desk. It’s all in there.”

He was amazing, Paige thought as she retrieved the book. He had everyone listed. In L.A. she used the same elevator as her condo neighbors, walked in and out of the same front door on a daily basis. She couldn’t say she knew the numbers or even the names of more than two of them offhand. Her grandfather, living even behind walls, had somehow managed to get a list of everyone on the street. He’d fought in World War II briefly as a scared eighteen-year-old, but when he’d volunteered for a tour in Korea, he’d been an officer. She didn’t envy the enemy then and she didn’t envy Gloria Reed now. When Lyndon Favreau set his sights on something, it usually got done.

And if she didn’t step in, things were going to get ugly.

S O IT WAS LATER THAT same afternoon when she stood at the gate to Gloria’s estate and pressed the call button. The waning afternoon sun made her squint. Between her trip to L.A. and the time she’d spent in the planning office, the day was pretty well shot. But she knew now how it worked: first, the application for a zoning variance, then the notification letter, then a site visit by the planning commission and the neighbors. After, the planning commission would hold a public meeting to discuss the matter and hand down their decision. Less than three weeks for the whole thing, which meant she needed to jump on things pronto.

The pronto part didn’t seem to be happening, though. She stood in silence, waiting for a response that didn’t come. The seconds ticked by. She peered through the iron bars of the gate, trying to detect signs of life deeper in the estate, but the road curved abruptly away and she couldn’t see a thing. Anyway, the cars were probably in a garage, not sitting out on the drive.

Hesitantly Paige rang the bell again.

She didn’t really want to disturb Gloria. After all, barely three days had passed since the accident. The woman was probably still sore and fatigued. Better to track down Zach and see if the two of them could somehow talk this through and work out a compromise. The emergency neighborhood meeting her grandfather had called for the weekend only upped the stakes.

Paige pressed the bell one last time before finally turning away. So maybe they’d gone out. Maybe Gloria was napping. Maybe she was meditating and Zach was inventing the cure for the common cold. No matter what the cause, it looked pretty obvious they were not around.

As she turned to go back to Lyndon’s, she heard a snatch of rock music drift out of the windows of a passing car. She stopped, considering. Thursday night. Hadn’t he said he played Thursday nights somewhere down by the pier? If she couldn’t catch Zach at home, maybe she could catch him there. It wouldn’t take long. A quick conversation between sets, a plan to meet later and sort things out and they were done. All she had to do was find him.

And if a part of her felt a little tingle at the idea, it certainly had nothing to do with anticipation, right?

S OME IDEAS WERE better in theory than in practice, Paige thought later as she watched the dozenth bartender shake his head at her. The whole thing would have been easier if she’d remembered the name of the bar. Of course, when Zach had thrown out the invitation, she’d never in a million years have thought she’d want to go see him play. Further proof that the world was a surprising place. The downside was that now it left her walking the waterfront, going from place to place.

She’d already made her way down Stearns Wharf. No sign of him there, which wasn’t exactly a surprise. He didn’t seem the type to play some glossy restaurant or squeaky-clean club. She saw him more at a tavern, the kind with sawdust on the floor and pool tables in the back. Of course, the Santa Barbara waterfront rents didn’t lend themselves to those kinds of establishments, which left her scratching her head.

Okay, so maybe it hadn’t been such a brilliant idea after all. But after spending days in the comparative isolation of her grandfather’s house, the idea of getting out for a few hours had been irresistible. It had been a nice change of pace to throw on a skirt and some heels and lipstick.

And getting a look or two from the guys she passed was nice, too.

The problem was, she was running out of places to try. Paige walked back out into the warm evening and took stock. She was at the end of the waterfront. There was one more place, probably a long shot, but she really ought to check it out.

Maybe she’d even have herself a drink while she was at it.

The closer she got, the less likely the drink part seemed. But she had a sudden feeling she was going to find Zach.

A flickering neon sign read Eddie’s. The window held a lighted sign advertising genuine draft beer. She knew it was the place before she ever got near the door, and when she did, she could hear it: the soft, silky blues with its cadence of sex.

The bouncer sported tattoos that looked as if they’d been done in a jailhouse with ballpoint-pen ink. What the X’s tattooed on his beefy bicep stood for, she didn’t want to know. Instead she shoved her five at him, ignoring his look, and stepped hastily through the door.

Eddie’s was no more prepossessing inside than out. It was cramped and dim, hot with the warmth of too many bodies. Smoke drifted near the ceiling in blithe violation of antismoking ordinances. A trio of pool tables lined the side wall. The band stood at the back. A few people danced—mostly women, Paige noticed. She walked forward, glancing at the stage.

And stopped in her tracks.

She’d always been a little amused at her friends who fell head over heels for man after man. Not the ones like Sabrina or Kelly, who’d found relationships that were real and lasting, but the ones who bounced from one infatuation to the next, the ones who got breathless and starry-eyed talking about their latest “pash,” at least until the magic wore off.

It had never hit her like that. Mild interest, yes. Attraction, sure. But nothing overwhelming. Nothing that she couldn’t manage. In Zach Reed’s case, it wasn’t even mild interest, just annoyance.

At least not until that moment when she stood in the dark bar staring at him up onstage.

Then it just morphed instantly into pure lust.

He wore his usual T-shirt and jeans, but under the lights, drawing hot and nasty blues from a beat-up electric, he was riveting. He wasn’t a showman. He didn’t strut or flail or talk to the crowd. He just stood and played as though he were the only one in the room, his eyes half-closed, his hands sliding up and down the fret board with the same absent grace she imagined he might use caressing a woman.

Agile and strong. She couldn’t help imagining those fingers against her skin. How would they feel on her body? How would he feel on her body? She swallowed and glanced up.

Only to see him staring at her with eyes so hot and dark they seemed to burn right through her, binding them together with an arc of energy. Her knees turned to water as he hit a hard chord once, twice, three times to end the song.

The room erupted in applause and ear-piercing whistles. She glanced around. A chair, a stool…she had to find somewhere to sit and soon. When she saw an open bar stool, she slid onto it thankfully, mostly because her legs wouldn’t hold her anymore.

Zach’s mouth curved, giving her the uneasy feeling that he knew exactly the effect he had on her. With a nod to the backing band, he launched into a new number, and pulled her under his spell.

She felt it, she knew it as it was happening. It was, purely and simply, the aural equivalent of sex. Before, the beat had been faster, the solos more aggressive. Now, the pace was slower, a rhythmic pulse that thudded into her system and had her moving to it without volition in the same way a woman’s hips moved helplessly to the touch of a man.

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