Bad Influence - Kristin Hardy

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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?

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