Bad Influence, page 8
“Thanks for the fashion advice.”
“I’m always here to help if you want me to come over in the mornings to watch you dress.”
“I’ll pass,” she said, but he saw the ghost of a smile.
“So are you here to see me or are you the advance scout for the lynch mob?” In the distance, the sound of the meeting rose until some people were nearly shouting. “You’d think she had blood dripping from her fangs.”
“She may also have sold a baby or two into the white slave trade, from the sound of things. God. They’re just…” She spread her hands helplessly. “Some of what they’re concerned about is valid—traffic, noise, litter. But mostly it’s that they don’t want to change anything. They want it all quiet and controlled.”
“Sounds like some people I know.”
She flushed. “We’re not talking about me.”
“But we could be. So are you making a break for it? Come on over. We could go skinny-dipping, work on your wild side.”
She didn’t answer. Instead she began to wander along the fence.
Zach watched her. “Where are you going?”
“A walk.”
It couldn’t be easy for her, he realized. She was one of those compulsively loyal sorts. She’d see walking away from the meeting as a betrayal of her grandfather. And she’d brood on it.
So he drifted after her, following along the wall. Back this far, the bougainvillea gave way to a mini citrus orchard. Zach brushed the leaves of trees as they passed. “You’ve got your choice of sweet, sour or tangy,” he said, pointing to the orange, lemon and tangerine trees. “I’m going to go with tangy,” he decided and picked a couple. “I figure wherever you’re going, we’ll need provisions. Where are you going, anyway?”
“Down to the park.” In the corner, where the privacy wall intersected the back fence of the two properties, sat a pair of gates that led out onto the bluffs.
“You got a death wish?” Zach asked, watching her dial the combination that released the lock. “Those bluffs are pretty steep.”
“Not if you know where to go.” She opened the gate and stepped through.
He didn’t even bother messing with the padlock on his side, a mass of rust. Instead he vaulted over the wall and followed Paige. He didn’t mind following her, he thought, eyes on those neat hips in her narrow white pants.
The stairway that zigzagged its way down the bluff wasn’t obvious. He didn’t see it, in fact, until they were almost on top of it. “How did you know this was here?”
“My parents used to take me down this way to the mission when I was a kid. Granddad’s pretty compulsive about keeping it up, just in case.”
“Just in case of what, nuclear war?”
“Just in case of anything. That’s Granddad, he likes to be prepared.”
“And what about you? Are you a planner, too?”
“I like having things in order,” she answered.
“But sometimes you’ve got to be off-the-cuff, though, too, right? Spontaneous?”
“Sometimes,” she acknowledged.
The stairway dropped them at the edge of the broad green park that sat across from the Santa Barbara Mission. Paige headed toward an empty patch of grass and sat down with a sigh.
“We stopping?”
“I’m being spontaneous.”
Beyond them, a teenager played Frisbee with his dog, a bandanna-wearing build-a-breed that looked like a blend of Lab, spaniel and plain old garden-variety hound. Under some trees, a collection of girls, maybe five or so, played tag. A banner read Happy Birthday, Dana. Or maybe Lana, It was hard to tell with the wind flapping the fabric.
The scene seemed miles removed from the fierce infighting over the museum and even further removed from his life. Saturday mornings weren’t about sitting in parks for him. They were usually spent sleeping in to recover from a late set and then driving like hell to the next show.
This neat, cozy suburban scene wasn’t what he knew. He wasn’t sure what he thought of it now.
He watched Paige take off her shoes and stretch her toes out in the cool green grass. He glanced over. “First colored toenails, now bare feet in public. This part of your wild-thing program?”
“I don’t have a wild-thing program.”
He dropped down beside her. “Too bad. You could broaden your horizons.”
“My horizons are as broad as they need to be.” She leaned back on her hands, shaking a sheaf of her blond hair back out of her eyes.
“I’d debate that if I weren’t so lazy.” Zach said idly, picking a blade of grass. “So you grew up here?”
“Some of the time,” she said. “When my dad couldn’t keep me.”
“Divorced?”
“Widowed. We lost my mom when I was five.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
She gave him a long, searching look. “Thank you,” she said, sounding almost surprised. “I stayed with him most of the time, but he had a job that moved him around.”
“What did he do?”
“He was a diplomat. Is,” she corrected herself. “Ambassador to the Czech Republic right now.”
Zach raised his brows. “Hang out with kings and princesses a lot, did you?”
“Sometimes.” She flashed a smile that about stopped his heart. “I got in big trouble once because I wouldn’t kiss the cheek of the Queen of Moldavia. I was five,” she elaborated.
“Look at you go,” he said admiringly.
“She was old and she smelled sweaty and there was this cakey powder on her cheek. I didn’t want to get close to her.”
“Don’t blame you. So did you start an international incident?”
“No. I got sent to bed without dinner, though,” she remembered. “And I couldn’t go play for a week.”
“I’d say you got the better end of the deal.”
The smile flashed again. “Anyway, a few times Dad got assigned to an area that I couldn’t go, East Berlin, Romania. That was when I had to come back here and stay with my grandparents. I shouldn’t say ‘had to’—I liked it. It was like an adventure, with the mission and the beach and everything. Anyway, how about you? Where did you grow up?”
Zach rolled onto his back, studying the leaves overhead. “Everywhere, pretty much. My parents were hippies. Still are, I suppose. You know, living outside of society’s expectations, not getting married, all that. My mom makes stuff to sell on the Renaissance Fair circuit. We’d start traveling in April, go through until October. All over the country.”
“It must have been like being on permanent vacation.”
“We had to work, too. And my sister and I were homeschooled, so we didn’t get off completely. But, yeah, for a kid, you couldn’t beat it—camping all the time, always being somewhere new. It was pretty cool.”
“What about winter?”
“Winters we stayed at a commune in eastern Oregon.”
“That could be interesting,” she said cautiously.
He laughed. “It taught me how to live without having a lot of stuff,” he said. “Handy for my lifestyle.”
“Do your parents still travel?”
He nodded. “Itchy feet, I guess. Family trait.”
“You must spend a lot of time on the road.”
“Pretty much all of it. It’s about the only way to get by unless you’re a big national act. Not a lot of blues bands fall into that category.”
“Why not move to Austin. Isn’t that the hotbed?”
It hadn’t been for him. Just one more try that hadn’t panned out. “If you want to play every night, there’s a better blues circuit up in the Pacific Northwest. It just means traveling a lot.”
Paige studied Zach and then lay back with a sigh, hands shading her eyes. “Is it hard having everything be…I don’t know…impermanent?” She couldn’t imagine it.
“It varies. It’s like anything else—some days it’s good, some days it sucks. Or I should say some nights—that’s what it’s really all about. Everything else is just killing time, waiting to get on stage.”
She frowned. “But isn’t that sort of like wishing your days away?”
He shifted to his side and propped his head on his hand. “Not really that different from most people, is it? They spend their days waiting for their shift to be over before they get to go home and enjoy themselves. I kill time when I’m off and enjoy myself at work. And sometimes I really enjoy myself.” He traced her fingers with his. “I liked having you in the audience the other night. I liked looking over to see you there.”
“I liked watching you.”
“I liked kissing you,” he said softly and leaned in across her.
She’d thought once that there was nothing gentle and tender about him. She’d been wrong. It was the sort of quick, easy kiss that couples exchanged, soft, not demanding. He brushed his lips against hers as though savoring their taste. At first, she just lay back and absorbed the sensation, eyes closed to the sunlight. Only a hint of insistence beneath it all reminded her of who he was, what he could do. When he shifted to kiss her throat, though, she moved to sit up.
“Whoa, there, Trigger. We’re in broad daylight in a public park. That’s probably enough.”
“So? You never kissed anyone in public?”
“Not the way you kiss.”
He sat up, as well. “Then I suppose you’ve never had sex outdoors either.”
“Of course not.”
“You ought to try it.” He traced a finger over her instep. “Do something wild every once in a while, Paige. Refuse to kiss a queen. Make love under the sun. You might just find you like it.”
7
“W E ’ RE HERE FOR THE site visit,” Paige said to the valet at the gates to Gloria Reed’s estate. With a nod, he stepped back and waved them in.
It was the first time she’d ever been inside. She’d heard tales about it off and on her whole life, but always it had been protected behind the high gates of the front or behind a wall of foliage. From the mission area below, she’d occasionally caught a glimpse of the buildings, but a glimpse only—a gleam of white stone, the impression of size and grandeur.
It didn’t prepare her for the real thing.
The driveway curved through lush plantings, past a sweep of emerald lawn, up to a long, narrow reflecting pond that ran through the center of the access drive.
Her grandfather stirred. “My mother had that pond built. It used to have big goldfish in it. Koi, I guess they were. We gave them all names.”
Paige reached out and squeezed his hand.
The car drove slowly toward the mansion. And it was a mansion, not even remotely to be confused with a mere house. Lyndon Favreau the first had apparently been enamored of the great homes of Europe and he’d built a baroque wonder of carved stone and filigreed bronze. The building’s two wings curved around the reflecting pond so that the shallow water revealed a reversed image of the ornate facade. Doric pillars flanking the elaborate grand entrance ran all the way up to the third story.
And her grandfather had grown up here.
“It’s lovely,” Paige said.
“There’s a Japanese pagoda out back…at least there used to be. It’s been a long time.” Sixty-nine years, give or take.
The car rolled to a stop. Stairs, Paige saw, her heart sinking. Lyndon had the wheelchair for once they got inside—even he had admitted his ankle wouldn’t stand up to the entire tour. But five steep stairs with no handrail in sight?
She got out of the car. “I’ll go see if we can get some help,” she began.
“There’s another way in without steps,” she heard Zach’s voice say.
Amazing how her pulse rate could go from normal to double time in an instant. It had been days since she’d seen him, days of tending to Lyndon, working insofar as she could. And days in which she’d realized that here was a chance to break outside her self-imposed limits for a little while. To sleep with Zach wouldn’t mean she was giving up her values. She wouldn’t be betraying herself if she indulged in a brief affair with him.
She’d be betraying herself if she didn’t.
The night before, she’d fought down the temptation to go see him play at Eddie’s, to find him. None of that being swept away stuff. Yes, she wanted to do this, but she had to do it on her own terms.
Her terms had no answer for the fact that just seeing him had her trembling.
He’d dressed up for the occasion in a jacket and white shirt over jeans. Except for his mustache, he was clean-shaven. He looked tame, but any woman who thought that would be a fool.
Her pulse bumped. “Look at you, all cleaned up.”
“I’d rather look at you.”
She’d chosen yellow for the day, a goldenrod sheath with a matching short-sleeved black jacket and spectator pumps. Simple, classic, professional. She’d never considered the dress as being particularly short or snug—at least not until she stood before Zach Reed. Something in his eyes now made her think of undressing, garment by garment, for his pleasure alone.
“So what’s this about a back way?” she asked, ignoring the heat in her cheeks.
A corner of his mouth turned up. “Are you thinking bad-girl thoughts, Wild Thing? Because you’re blushing.”
“I’d just like to get back in the car,” she said. “I’m hot.”
“I’ll say.” He looked her up and down. “Tell you what, let me ride with you and I’ll show you the way.”
“What’s going on?” Lyndon asked when she got back into the car.
“Zach says there’s an entrance without any steps. He’s going to show us.”
“I can climb a few stairs.” Lyndon bristled.
“Why bother?” Zach asked, sliding into the front seat. “Anyway, this way you’ll get to see more of the house.”
“Don’t know why your grandmother wants people tramping all over her home,” Lyndon said.
Paige thought that two small armies could tramp through the house without ever encountering each other.
As to Zach, she wasn’t sure whether she was relieved or disappointed that he’d chosen to sit in front. Certainly the back seat would have been a little cozy for all three of them. But the way he’d looked at her had started that slow simmer in her blood, had her imagining the feel of his thigh pressing against hers, the feel of his hands, the taste of his mouth—
“Turn here,” Zach directed the driver. “Head toward that portico at the end. There’s parking just beyond. You’ll be going in through the wing where Gloria lives,” he said, turning back toward them. “The museum will be on the other side, kept separate.” His mouth curved. “No tramping in sight.”
Inside, the walls rose a dozen feet to egg-and-dart crown moldings. Chandeliers hung down at intervals from plaster ceiling medallions in swirling vine motifs. Underfoot, thick carpet cushioned the softly lustrous marble floor.
Without a word, Zach began pushing the wheelchair. Lyndon made no protest; from the look on his face, he was deep in memory. They passed one door that was ajar. “Wait,” Lyndon said. “Roll back. Is that the library?”
“Yep.” Zach stopped and reached out to push the door open.
And Lyndon simply stared. Inside, leather books lined floor-to-ceiling shelves. A coffered ceiling hung over a floor scattered with leather club chairs and green-shaded reading lamps. “It hasn’t changed,” he said under his breath.
“What?” Zach asked.
“Later,” Paige murmured.
The wing seemed to go on forever. Finally, though, they passed through an archway to the central entrance hall of the house.
As the first thing guests coming in the main entrance would see, it had been designed to impress. And impress it did. Marble-faced walls of dove-gray soared up some thirty feet to the loggia of the second story. Multiple layers of complicated moldings marched around the ceiling overhead, which bore a trompe l’oeil scene of blue sky edged with clouds, with a Greek god and goddess looking down.
“Apollo and Athena?” Paige guessed.
“Ben and J.Lo.” Zach winked at her. “We didn’t have the money to get it fixed.”
Smothering a laugh, Paige glanced to her right to see the steps that led down to the bronze-and-glass doors of the front entrance. Flanking those steps on either side, broad marble staircases curved up to a central landing and then ran up to the second floor.
To the other side, she saw a reception area. If the entrance hall was meant to impress, the reception room was meant to welcome. Persian rugs covered the marble floor. Damask-covered settees and chairs clustered around tables suggested intimacy, bringing the scale of the room down to simple comfort, no small feat in such imposing surroundings. Gloria Reed, Paige reflected, had exquisite taste, whether in design or in choosing an interior designer.
Or both.
At the top of the entrance steps, a group that she assumed was the planning commission was gathered, talking quietly.
“Lyndon!” A tall, hawk-nosed man with a mane of silver hair strode over to meet them. “What have you done to yourself?” he demanded.
Lyndon looked down ruefully at his cast and wheelchair. “Oh, not watching where I was going, like a damned fool. Nothing serious, though. I’ll be back up and running in no time.” He glanced at Paige. “Gareth, I’d like you to meet my granddaughter, Paige Favreau. Paige, this is Gareth James, a real up-and-comer in local politics.”
The white hair was premature, she saw—Gareth James looked to be no more than his early forties. Paige extended her hand. “It’s a pleasure.”
“Oh, no. The pleasure’s mine.” Instead of shaking her hand, Gareth raised it to his lips, his gaze lingering on her. “I had no idea you had such a lovely granddaughter, Lyndon.”
Paige coughed and retrieved her hand. Next to her, Zach made a muffled noise. When she glanced over, she saw the ghost of amusement hovering around the corners of his mouth.
Lyndon gave her a satisfied look. “I met Gareth when he was an intern. He’s a county supervisor and the head of the planning commission these days, isn’t that right, Gareth?”
“Not head of the planning commission anymore. That’s Charlie Shepard. Hey, Charlie, come on over here.”
