Bad Influence

2

M ORNING GENERALLY had a way of making things feel better, even if they didn’t look it. Paige studied her grandfather from a chair in his room. A purplish-red bruise blossomed on his left temple, but the blurry, unfocused look was gone from his eyes. Under protest, he’d stayed in his hospital gown and in bed, tapping his fingers impatiently as they waited for the doctor, the hot-pink cast gaily incongruous against the white coverlet.

“Your idea?” He nodded at his arm.

Paige’s lips twitched. “I thought you could grow to love it.”

“I’m never taking pain medication again. God only knows how I’ll wake up next time.”

“Look at it this way—it could have been argyle.” She grinned, relieved to have him back to his old self.

“I spoke with your father this morning,” he said.

“I called him last night before I went to bed. I thought he ought to know.”

“I suppose you’re right,” her grandfather said grudgingly. “But it’s not like I’m really hurt. Now he’s making plans to come over in a month or two.”

“Is he?” she asked, pleased. “It’ll be good to see him.”

“No sense in him leaving his work. I’m fine—or I would be if they’d let me out of here.”

Paige grinned. “I don’t think U.S.-Czech relations are going to be destroyed if Dad leaves for a week, Granddad. He cares about you. Besides, if the positions were reversed, you’d be the one dragging me to get on a flight to Prague.”

“I suppose. We’ll have to see if we can all manage to get together while he’s here.”

“Definitely. I’ll give him a call next week to see if he knows anything about when he’ll—”

“Good morning.” The hazel-eyed doctor walked in, clipboard in hand. “How are you feeling?”

“All right,” her grandfather said. “A little sore but ready to leave.”

“I’m not surprised,” the doctor said and ran Lyndon through a brisk exam, like a mechanic running an engine through its paces. “Sit up a little.”

Lyndon winced.

“Chest hurt? That’s the torn cartilage. It’s going to take time.” He handed Lyndon a prescription. “This is for the pain. They should take the edge off for the first couple of weeks. They’ll help with the ankle, too. You’re going to want to keep off that as much as possible. Rent a wheelchair and use it.” He turned to Paige. “Got that?”

“Yes, sir.”

His eyes settled again on her grandfather. “Other than that, you’re cleared to go. Just be sure to come back here Friday for a follow up. I assume you’re going to take care of that?” He looked at Paige inquiringly.

Lyndon cleared his throat. “Paige lives in Los Angeles. I’ll get a driver to take me around.”

“You’re going to need more than a driver,” the doctor told them. “For a couple of weeks, you’re going to need help with everything—getting in and out of bed, standing up, sitting down, all of it. You need someone full-time.”

“He’ll have someone,” Paige said assuringly and looked at her grandfather. “I’ll stay until you’re up and around.”

“But you have a business to run,” Lyndon protested.

She smiled. “I think my boss will understand.” Whether her clients would be prepared to brook a month or more delay on their projects was another question, but she didn’t consider staying a matter of choice. For her grandfather, she’d do just about anything.

“I’ve got Maria,” Lyndon said.

“Maria’s a housekeeper and a cook, not a nurse. And, anyway, you know it would drive you crazy to have her underfoot all the time.”

“It’ll drive me crazy to have you underfoot,” Lyndon grumbled, but beneath the bluster he looked grateful and more than a little relieved.

Paige just laughed and pressed a smacking kiss on him. “You don’t have a choice, Grandpappy. You’re at my mercy. Come on, let’s get you dressed and out of here. It’s time to go home.”

T HE BIG TOWN CAR purred along the curving road that headed up the bluffs toward Lyndon’s home. There hadn’t been a chance in hell that he would have fit into Paige’s sporty little BMW, and his Cadillac was currently the worse for wear. Hiring a car and driver had merely been pragmatic, and if she enjoyed the luxury of being able to admire the city instead of watching where she was going, that didn’t make her a bad person, did it?

Santa Barbara perched between the steep backdrop of the Santa Ynez Mountains and the blue of the Pacific. In the sun that burned through the coastal morning overcast, the ubiquitous terra-cotta roofs gleamed.

One of the comforting things about Santa Barbara was that little changed. Forget about Spanish Revival, the city was original Spanish, right down to the two-hundred-year-old Franciscan mission tucked away in the heart of town. In most places, a major tourist attraction would be surrounded by shops and restaurants. In Santa Barbara, the mission and its accompanying greensward sat in the midst of homes and quiet streets, even as it had been surrounded by adobes in the eighteenth century.

The mission was one of her earliest memories, walking down the stairs from the Favreau estate, holding hands with her father and mother. The original mansion had been built on the bluffs overlooking the mission perhaps a hundred years before by Lyndon’s oil-magnate grandfather. Then the stock market crash of ’29 and the thirties had hit, decimating the Favreau family fortunes. Lyndon’s father had sold off the main house and most of the land, retaining only the mother-in-law’s cottage that he’d built in the twenties—if any ten-thousand-square-foot home could properly be called a cottage.

Only one reminder of the long-ago glory days remained—the gate in the wall between the two properties. Once, it had been open so relatives could come and go. Now it was just a locked door between Lyndon’s house and his neighbor’s.

He stirred as they drove up to his estate. “That’s what caused it all.”

“What?”

“The sign.” He pointed.

“You got into a car accident because of a sign?” Paige stared at her grandfather.

“I was distracted,” he muttered, turning to look out the window. “I didn’t do it on purpose.”

And there it was, a white placard on the verge before the neighboring estate that said simply: Coming Soon, The Burlesque Museum.

“The next gate,” Paige told the driver and stared at the sign as they passed. No date, no specifics, just the words guaranteed to give her conservative grandfather fits.

“Don’t worry about it,” she said dismissively. “They can’t do it around here. It’s zoned residential. I mean, there’s the mission and the Museum of Natural History, but—”

“But those don’t involve strippers,” her grandfather ground out. “I grew up in that house. My grandfather is spinning in his grave right now. Traffic, cars parked on the street, hoodlums. I won’t stand for it. The neighborhood won’t stand for it,” he insisted, his mouth firming. “That woman is not going to get away with this.”

“What woman?” Paige punched the security code into the keypad and the big gates rolled back.

“Gloria Reed, that’s who.”

“Gloria Reed?” She frowned. “Your next-door neighbor?”

“Her and her fool museum idea. This accident was all her fault. She pulled out right in front of me.”

“Wait a minute—you ran into your neighbor? ”

“I wouldn’t have run into her if I hadn’t been surprised by that blasted sign,” he defended. “She just put it up without warning. And she always comes out of her gate too fast. That woman is a menace. Shameless,” he added as they pulled into his estate and drove up to the house. “Why, here she is in her seventies and she’s taken up with some long-haired kid who looks like a criminal.”

My grandmother just got knocked around in a fender bender.

Paige closed her eyes. “Long-haired kid?”

“Appalling for a woman her age. He looks young enough to be her son. Her grandson, even.”

“I think he is,” she said faintly. The car pulled to a stop before the front door.

“How would you know?”

“I think I met him last night in the emergency room.”

“She was hurt?” Sunlight slanted across his face to show a flash of mingled surprise and guilt as the driver opened the door.

“They kept her overnight, like you.”

Lyndon opened his mouth, then closed it. “Her grandson.”

Paige nodded and got out of the car.

“Well,” he said as she helped him get into the wheelchair the driver brought around for him. “Well,” he said again, then was silent until they got inside.

“Do you want to lie down?” Paige asked after the driver left.

Lyndon rose from the wheelchair with a wince. “No bed for me yet. I think I’ll just sit down in my easy chair for a while.”

“Chest hurting?” Paige asked.

His answer was a shrug; she knew he’d rather grin and bear it than complain.

“How about if I go get your medication?”

“I’ll be all right. Just get me an aspirin.”

“Granddad, I think there was a reason the doctor gave you something stronger. He said you’d be hurting. Don’t you think you should at least take the meds today? Your last dose from the hospital must be wearing off by now.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“I think I’ll go get the prescription filled anyway,” she said, ignoring him. “Let me get you settled and then I’ll just nip out for a minute. I need some things for the next couple of days anyway.”

“I don’t want to be any trouble to you, sweetheart.”

“Granddad, you and Nana practically raised me. The least I can do is help out a little when you’re down.” Paige tucked a pillow behind his head. “I’ve been meaning to take a break. It’ll give us a chance to have a nice, long visit.”

He smiled at her. “You’re a good girl.”

“I had good examples.” She patted his cheek. “Do you want me to have Maria make you some lunch?”

“Not just yet. We still need to do something about the museum, you know,” he said as Paige laid a coverlet over him.

“We who?” she asked.

“We the neighborhood. And you, now that you’re here. This estate will be yours one day. Do you really want a parade of thrill seekers coming up here, littering and parking on the verges and looking over the wall from the main house? It’s barely four feet high. Anyone could jump over.”

“Why don’t you make it higher?”

“Because it belongs to that woman,” he said. “She refuses to raise it because of the bougainvillea.”

The bougainvillea. The bane of Lyndon’s existence. Some relation or other had planted it decades before on the far side of the wall. It spilled over the white stucco in a tangle of leaves and blossoms, looking perfectly charming from Paige’s point of view.

Lyndon swore at the litter of fallen leaves and blossoms and had his gardener kneecap the blooming vine on a regular basis.

“The contractor told her the bougainvillea roots had undermined the foundation and raising the height would mean tearing out the plants and putting in a whole new wall. She refuses. Completely unreasonable. But she won’t get her way with the museum,” he said with relish. “I’m going to organize a neighborhood meeting to talk about this.”

“Right now you need to forget about the museum,” Paige told him. “The only thing you should be worrying about is healing.”

“We’ve got to stay on top of her. There’s no telling what that woman will do.”

“Later,” she said.

“We don’t have time for later.”

“I’ll take care of it,” she soothed.

“Tomorrow, then,” he said drowsily.

Paige sighed. “We’ll see.”

“I’ M TELLING YOU , I DON ’ T need to be in bed. I’m not made of glass, you know.”

Zach Reed looked at the flustered woman on the bed in all of her platinum-blond, buxom splendor and resisted the urge to grin. Gloria Reed was no one’s idea of how a seventy-eight-year-old grandmother should look and act. Fresh back from the hospital, she had still found time to put on fresh lipstick—fire-engine-red, to match her acrylic nails. Maybe her days as a pinup and burlesque superstar were over, but she still kept up her image. And she might roll on satin sheets, but that didn’t mean she took to being coddled.

“The doctor said you had to take it easy.”

“Easy means having a houseboy feed me peeled grapes while he fans me, not having my grandson put me to bed. I can still paddle you, you know.”

Zach did smile then. “I bet you can, but let’s not put it to the test.”

“All I did was get shaken up a little bit.”

“Is that why you’ve got your knee wrapped up?”

She scowled at him. “This time tomorrow I’ll be fine.”

“Then tomorrow you’ll be up. But not today. You don’t just walk away from a car getting smacked around like yours did.”

“My poor Bentley,” she mourned. “Was it bad?”

“Not if you look at it from the passenger side.”

“Cute.”

“So people tell me. Let’s see…he basically T-boned you as you pulled out of the gate, so the front driver’s-side quarter panel is pretty much toast. You’re lucky you weren’t really hurt.”

“Good engineering. Those air bags do their job.”

“The problem is that he went right into the wheel, wrecked the bearings, bent the axle and did a number on your engine.”

“Can I get it fixed?”

He shrugged. “You probably could, and for less than the car costs, but it’s not ever going to be the same.”

“Sounds like it’s time to go shopping, then,” she said, rallying. “Do we need to get a new van for you while we’re at it?”

It was his turn to scowl. “You’re not going to buy me a van.”

“Yours is falling apart.”

“I’ll get one when I’m ready.”

“You’re stubborn, you know that? Right down to your core.”

Zach leaned against the doorjamb and folded his arms. “Can’t imagine where I got that from.”

She looked at him in reproof. “Disrespectful, too.”

“Can’t imagine where I got that from either.”

Gloria threw her head back and laughed. “It’s good to have you here, kiddo. And it was worth a few bruises and losing my Bentley to see the expression on the face of that old geezer next door.” A smile of satisfaction spread over her face. “You should have seen him, staring at the sign all pop-eyed, even when the paramedics were trying to get him out of his car. He was having fits over the museum, and they thought he was spluttering because he was hurt.” She gave a contented giggle.

“You’re a bad girl, Gloria Reed.”

“Kiddo, that’s been the source of my fortune. Now are you going to let me up from here or not?”

Zach considered. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll let you up if you can get out of bed on your own and walk over here.”

“Fine.” She flipped back the covers. Underneath, she wore cream silk lounging pajamas, to go with her silvery blond hair. “Okay, up and across the room.” She swung her legs around with a grimace to dangle off the edge of the bed. “Okay?”

Zach merely watched her.

She put her feet down, her toenails a vivid red against the white of the carpet. Her mouth tightened, then she pressed her hands on the mattress and made as if to rise.

“Okay. Done.” Zach moved forward quickly.

“You didn’t even let me try.”

“I saw enough. You’re hurting.”

She glowered. “What of it? It’s just bruising. You heard the doctor—it’s nothing serious.”

“It will be if you don’t leave it alone.”

“Yes, Mother,” she muttered.

“The mind boggles,” Zach said.

“Mouthy,” she shot back but lay down with a sigh.

Zach flipped the covers over her. “Okay, you’ve got your Pepsi and your magazines, and the remote’s right here. Is there anything else you need?”

She pouted. “A grandson who isn’t a tyrant?”

“Out of luck there. I’m going to go get your prescription filled. I don’t want you out of this bed, understand? Now are you set?”

She relented and pulled him down so she could kiss his cheek. “Kiddo, I am as set as I can be. Thank you.”

She was no one’s idea of a grandmother, Zach thought, squeezing her hand—except maybe his.

T HE PHARMACY WAS close and amazingly well stocked. Paige had never really thought before about what you could pick up in a drugstore. So it wasn’t exactly Estée Lauder, but she had the basics to tide her over, including a Santa Barbara T-shirt to swap for the camisole and silk shirt she’d worn to the restaurant the night before. It seemed aeons ago now, with all that had gone on. The fact that she’d washed her things out the night before and ironed them that morning didn’t help. Maybe in the afternoon she’d take a quick run to the mall and get a few things to wear.

In the meantime, she’d deal.

She rounded the corner of the building carrying her bags, heading absently toward her car.

And saw him.

The impression punched into her before she could take a breath—hot, sexy and just a little bit dangerous. Knowing he wasn’t an outlaw biker made him no less disconcerting. If anything, it made him more so, because now she couldn’t dismiss those careless dark looks. This time he simply wore Levi’s and a white T-shirt, looking lean and stripped down and purposeful as he headed across the parking lot. He’d shaved, she saw, and combed his hair back. When their eyes locked, she felt it as an almost physical sensation. Breathe, she reminded herself.

He stopped before her. “Looks like you survived the E.R.,” he said.

“Just barely. I think they should give out merit badges for it.”

His lips twitched as he looked her up and down. “Yeah, you probably were a Girl Scout. I bet you had a million merit badges. You look like you’d be good at collecting them.”

She didn’t bother asking him about merit badges. He didn’t look like the type who’d ever been a Boy Scout. “So you’re Gloria Reed’s grandson?” she asked instead.

“And you’re Lyndon Favreau’s granddaughter.”

“Ten points for you,” she said.

“Do you have a name or should I just call you the granddaughter?”

“Paige,” she said. “Paige Favreau.”

“Zach Reed.” He offered his hand.

Not taking it would have been silly, so she shifted her bags and reached out.

And heat flushed through her. The contact felt startlingly intimate, the skin of her palm more sensitive than she’d had any idea it was.

She’d been right about the strength, the hardness, the purpose in his hand. His fingers slid against hers, curved around. Somehow, he felt more immediate than just about anyone she could think of. There was a vitality about him, an energy that hummed through him and into her. Something like butterflies skittered through her stomach.

She let go as quickly as possible.

“Nice to meet you, Zach.”

“My pleasure entirely,” he said. “So I hear the deal is your grandfather ran into my grandmother.”

“We keep it all in the neighborhood, apparently.” She swallowed, consciously trying to settle her pulse.

“Convenient. I guess that means you’re going to be hanging around town after all.”

“I guess so. You?” she asked.

“I was already here for a couple days anyway.”

She’d never liked men with mustaches. What was it about his that it only made her focus on the mouth it framed? A mouth that looked more tempting than a man’s should, ruddy and sardonic and entirely too intriguing. His brows formed dark, straight lines above those black eyes.

When one of those brows rose in question, she brought herself back to the conversation with a jolt. The last thing she needed to be doing was wondering what it would feel like to kiss him.

“So, um, how is your grandmother?” she asked.

“Oh, sore, feisty. I’m having to sit on her to keep her in bed. How’s your grandfather?”

“Bouncing back. I hope I do as well at his age.”

His gaze rested on her, warm and lazy. “I think you do pretty well already.”

Her cheeks heated. “I thought I was a Girl Scout.”

“I always did like those cookies. Melt in your mouth.”

And if he kept talking to her in that warm, husky voice, she’d be the one melting. She needed to concentrate on the matter at hand. Paige cleared her throat. “I was hoping to talk with your grandmother in a couple of days about the museum thing. My grandfather is in kind of a stir about it.”

“Not right now. She needs to focus on getting up and around. Talk to me instead,” he suggested.

“Are you a part of it?”

“While I’m here. Try me.”

Paige hesitated, eyeing him. “Okay, how set on this museum is she?”

“What does it matter? It’s her house, it’s her property. What business is it of anyone else’s?”

“A lot. It’s got the potential to really change the neighborhood. She lives in a community and what she does affects them.”

Zach laughed. “With all the walls and gates that they have? I think the neighborhood will survive.”

“How do you know? You’re not from this area.”

“And you are?”

He was baiting her, Paige realized, biting back the little twinge of annoyance. “I grew up here. People like things to stay the same. They don’t like change, especially changes like this.”

“Changes like what?”

“Changes like your grandmother’s museum.”

Zach shrugged. “The neighborhood already has a slew of museums. The mission’s at our doorstep. You think one more is going to change things?”

“Given the kind of crowd this museum is likely to attract, yes,” she retorted.