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Another surprise. No biker buddy, no bar fight. “Is she all right?”
“Nothing she won’t survive. She’s a tough one. How about yours?”
“A little dinged up. They’re keeping him overnight for observation.”
The clerk called out a name.
“How about that?” The bandito rose. “And just when things were getting interesting.”
“That you?”
“Looks like I’m getting out of purgatory.”
“I guess I’ve got a few more sins to work off.”
He stopped and looked at her. “Now there’s a thought that’ll keep me up tonight.” He started to walk away and turned back. “Hey, listen, I play Thursday nights at Eddie’s on the waterfront. Maybe you could come by.”
Paige blinked. Not a biker, not a bandit. A musician. She looked again at those hands and, despite herself, she was intrigued. Too bad it wasn’t possible. “I’ll try to do that if I’m still in town,” she said.
“Here’s hoping you wind up with a reason to stick around, then.” And he grinned, stuck his hands in his pockets and walked away.
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.”
