A Man Of Influence

Gregory shouted louder. Chad ignored him, trying to dissect the appeal of Tracy’s smile. He liked women with sophistication and polish. Tracy didn’t wear any makeup. Her black A-line apron wasn’t sophisticated. She was as simple and homey as the town seemed to be.

Seemed? Nothing was as it seemed in Harmony Valley.

Someone called for Tracy in the kitchen.

“Go on. Pick him up.” Tracy carried her loaded tray toward the swinging kitchen door. “He won’t break.”

“You’re leaving him with me?” Chad could be a kidnapper or a child molester. He could grab the kid and be out the door before the checkers champs could say, “King me.”

“Thirty seconds.” Tracy disappeared through the swinging kitchen door. He couldn’t be sure, but he thought she’d been grinning.

Gregory shrieked, a test run to a full-blown tantrum, for sure.

The old men chuckled some more. Feminine laughter cascaded from the kitchen. These people didn’t think he could do this.

Chad could pick up the kid. He could change a diaper. He’d changed them for his father. He’d changed so many he’d vowed never to change a diaper again.

He bent over the edge of the crib, getting a more pungent whiff of the Poop Monster. “You don’t want me, kid.”

Gregory grinned and drooled. But when Chad didn’t pick him up, he kicked out again, blinked like Eunice and then shrieked.

Chad felt as if he was being studied, tested and stalked. By a baby. Not to mention the women in the kitchen.

Gregory gave another shriek, and then his lower lip began to tremble and his eyes to water.

“Don’t do that.” Chad reached for the kid. “They’ll think I’m torturing you.”

Before his hands reached Gregory, the kitchen door swung open. A woman with an olive complexion and a thick, dark ponytail hurried toward the crib. “Eunice, Gregory isn’t a meter you use to measure a man. I’m so sorry.” She swept Gregory into her arms and spun him around. “Hello, baby mine.”

Gregory rewarded his mother with a round of giggles that eased the tension in Chad despite the awful smell coming from the kid’s pants.

Eunice returned to the window seat and tsked. “I had such high hopes for you, Chad.”

CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_2416e456-4e87-5745-a06d-4880290a3f5e)

“YOU WANT ME to ask Leona if that travel writer can spend the night with her?” In the barber shop, Phil Lambridge was beside himself with jealousy. He paced. He paused. He sounded as if he might cry. “Alone? Unchaperoned?”

Mildred clenched her remaining molars together so she wouldn’t shout. Phil was a traditional man. He was still in love with his ex-wife twenty years after she’d divorced him. Mildred wanted to tell Phil to get over it and take one for the Harmony Valley team, to man up and do the right thing. But what good would it do? Phil would still be jealous and still walk on egg shells around Leona.

Rose flitted about the narrow shop. “We need a hotel room for that travel writer. Your granddaughters are going to open a bed & breakfast in Leona’s house anyway come spring.”

Agnes sat in one red barbershop chair, nodding in agreement. Larry sat in the other red chair, nodding in agreement. Mildred sat on her walker just inside the front window watching Phil angst and pace. Phil was a tall, gangly man with limbs that moved with marionette uncertainty. He was just so...so...ridiculously endearing.

“You know how Leona is,” Phil said. Given her vision challenges, Mildred could only see his sharp nose and chin. Both stuck out stubbornly. “Until those girls sign on the dotted line, that home is Leona’s castle.”

Everyone knew how Leona was. Bitter. Caustic. Penny-pinching. She gave no charity and expected none in return. But she lived in what had once been a mansion in Harmony Valley. She kept up the hundred-year-old Victorian like a showplace. It was their only chance to impress upon the travel writer that Harmony Valley was a good tourist destination.

“You ask her, Agnes.” Phil was a cream puff. It was why Leona had kicked him out two decades ago. She needed a strong man to stand up to her.

Mildred didn’t need a man. But she wanted one. And for some unknown reason, her heart was set on wanting Phil. For the life of her, Mildred couldn’t figure it out. She’d been a race car driver back when men would do anything to keep women off the track. She’d been independent forever. Why did Phil and his gentle ways make her feel as if she was forty again?

“It’s settled then. The town council will make the request.” Mayor Larry could also be filed under “Non-Confrontational Man.” He wouldn’t risk alienating Leona, because she still voted. “Do what you have to, ladies. Phil and I will go back to the bakery and entertain our guest until you come up with a workable solution.”

Phil moaned.

A few minutes later, Agnes parked her late model, faded green Buick in front of Leona’s home.

Mildred got out using the door for support, waiting for Agnes to bring her walker from the trunk. “This is going to be a waste of time.”

“Not necessarily,” Agnes said. “It’s a beautiful home and she doesn’t get to show it off very often.”

“It’s not as pretty as mine.” Rose had a much smaller painted lady, and a history of arguing with anyone who’d listen that hers was superior.

Even with her glasses, Mildred couldn’t see the details on the Victorian, so she couldn’t judge. In her eyes, Leona’s home was a green hulk with white trim that towered over the back fence of Mildred’s small Craftsman-style home. In forty years of being neighbors, she’d heard Leona’s caustic laugh over that fence. She’d heard her sing off-key as she gardened. She’d also heard some searing arguments between Leona and Phil before their official break-up. She’d always be Team Phil.

“How many steps are there?” Mildred’s annoyance increased. Growing old was a pain in the tuckus. Back in the day, Mildred would have skipped up the steps the same as Rose was doing now.

Of course, Rose had sundowning syndrome, which meant when she got tired, she got loopy. Mildred had all her marbles. The macular degeneration was stealing her vision and a car crash decades ago had weakened her knees. But Mildred would take her marbles any day of the week.

Agnes carried Mildred’s walker up the steps in one hand, holding on to Mildred’s arm with the other.

Leona opened the front door and stared them down. “Well, if it isn’t the town council.”

Mildred didn’t need to see details to recognize Leona’s salt-and-pepper hair in its usual tight beehive. She wore a blue dress—and heels, from the sound of her feet on hardwood—and probably had her mother’s pearl choker around her neck. There was no way Mildred was wearing a skirt and heels just to hang around the house. Did the woman never let her hair down?

“Leona.” Agnes had the unique talent of putting both sweetness and authority into her tone. “We’ve come to ask a favor.”

“I will not contribute to the Harvest Festival bake sale.”

It was hard to imagine soft-hearted Phil being in love with this dragon. She hadn’t even invited them in. And Mildred was standing in the brisk morning air with her walker!

“That’s not the favor.” Agnes should have been mayor. There was both respect and determination in her words. Of course, she wasn’t in love with Phil, so she probably had more patience for Leona than Mildred did. “May we come in?”

“If you must, but wipe your feet. I just did the floors.”

Mildred navigated carefully over the threshold, wishing it’d been raining and she’d rolled her walker through the mud. Leona brought out the most uncharitable thoughts in Mildred. Her mother wouldn’t have approved. Of course, her mother hadn’t approved of Mildred racing either.

Leona’s house smelled of furniture polish and disinfectant, sterile and off-putting, like the owner herself.

While Mildred sat in her walker, Rose perched on a black leather wingback chair nearby, unhappiness radiating from them both, like sulky children banished to the basement.

“There’s a travel writer in town.” Agnes shared the antique pink velvet loveseat across the room with Leona. What she didn’t share was Leona’s sour attitude. “You know how important getting the word out about Harmony Valley is.” If they didn’t attract young people to town, Harmony Valley would die with its aging citizens.

“It’s important to some.” Snooty. Leona was snooty. If they’d been in a car race together back in the day, Mildred would have given her a bump and sent her into the wall. “As soon as my granddaughters make me an acceptable formal offer and turn this into a bed & breakfast, I’m retiring to the city.”

Good riddance.

“The thing is, Leona...” Once again, Agnes’ calm voice filled the room. “We need a bed & breakfast for this man now. Today.”