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Wrong Turn
By Stella Cameron Harlequin Enterprises Ltd.
Copyright © 2003 Harlequin Enterprises Ltd.
All right reserved. ISBN: 0-373-83556-6
Chapter One
"Hey, hard body! How's business?"
"Busy, Peeler, busy," Page said. She dodged the off-duty guy from another bike courier service and rode on.
Getting mad wasted valuable energy and time, but the next smart aleck with a wisecrack was likely to get the full benefit of her inventive tongue.
To give her tailbone a rest, she stood up on the pedals of her bike and coasted, gathering speed, down Kearny. San Francisco could be a bike jockey's nightmare. It could also be a dream. Despite too many hours on duty, tonight Page thought the city was terrific. An autumn fog was rolling off the bay, and the cold, pungent air bore scents of exotic food to mix with the wreathing damp that turned the lights ahead of her into converging neon wires of red, blue and green.
The radio, hooked to the neck of her purple satin racing shirt, crackled. She pressed a button and lowered her head. "Yeah, Waldo?" At this time of night, Waldo Sands was her only customer. She made the 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. deliveries for his twenty-four hour delicatessen, Touch Tone Gourmet.
"You on your way, kid?" Waldo always called her that. Page smiled. At twenty-seven, a woman had to be grateful to be called kid by anyone.
"On my way." A cable car clanked alongside and a cab cut in front of her. "Laguna and Green, right?"
"Right. They just called back. Been waiting twenty minutes for their truffle pâté and champagne, they said. Need it pronto."
Need it. Who needed truffle anything at midnight? Maybe the customer was pregnant. "They'll get it when they get it. Soon. Talk to you, Waldo." She cut him off, jumped the curb and shot far enough forward to overtake the cab and bump back to the street.
She mouthed, "So long," over her shoulder at the cabbie and made it through a light just tickling red.
This job for Waldo was a blessing and a curse. A blessing because starting your own bicycle courier service in San Francisco was a hit-and-miss undertaking and any extra money she could make took her that much closer to success. The curse in working for Waldo lay in spending a good portion of every night, when she should be sleeping to get ready for the next grueling day, delivering goodies to people who didn't have a thing to do in the morning.
Still, she'd always be grateful to her roommate, Tanya, for finding Pedal Pushers the extra work. One day maybe she'd parlay the unusual aspect of a nighttime delivery service into a real moneymaker.
At the moment she didn't want to ask any of the four riders she employed to take on more than the relentless ten-hour shifts they already shouldered. In time there would be more riders. Page pedaled harder. In time there would be mopeds-and real quarters for the dispatcher and repair shop, rather than the garage behind the house where she and Tanya rented an apartment.
The cab caught up, passed, and the driver called to Page through the open window. "Hiyah, toots. Don't you ever take a night off?"
She aimed a foot toward a dented rear fender, grinned at the man's raised fist and made a sliding left turn onto Green. Uphill again. This was where the legs took it. Unlike any of the people she employed, Page preferred her single-geared, balloon-tired Schwinn to a racing bike, but the machine didn't make it on the steep grades of San Francisco without a lot of muscle help.
At Laguna, Page took a right and started looking for house numbers. The Pacific Heights area had always appealed to her, with its big Victorians, each one unique-and each one worth more than her fledgling delivery service was likely to net in more years than she wanted to consider right now.
This was it. White, big columns, fretwork around the windows and too big to miss.
Page considered going to a side entrance just visible through a trellis archway, but opted instead for the front door. She hauled her bike up wide redbrick steps and across the portico.
No bell. The hollow thunk of the brass knocker made her flinch and step back. An insistent beat of music played too loudly came from inside. Page lifted the distinctive black-and-gold Touch Tone Gourmet box from the basket attached to her handlebars.
The radio blipped again. "Yeah, Waldo? Making delivery now."
Waldo had his own radio at the store and enjoyed using it more than Page would have liked. "Do it fast and get back. We've got another rush job." He chuckled. "You sure are quicker than me taking the van out half a dozen times a night."
"I'll be there." She switched off and knocked again. Waldo looked like a sleek, well-fed cat when he laughed like that-a big, handsome, sandy cat. Page wondered, not for the first time, just how close Tanya and Waldo were. Tanya had evaded the question when Page asked, and just said they were friends. But Waldo Sands wasn't a man who spent time with a beautiful woman like Tanya just for friendship.
Despite the music, no light showed through the leaded-glass panels in the door. Maybe she had the wrong address.
Page leaned her bike against the wall and jogged back down the steps to look up. Ah, a steady glow shone against pale draperies at three of the upstairs windows.
She knocked once more, waited a couple more precious, money-making minutes, then turned the handle cautiously. The door wasn't locked. Either the owner was overly trusting or careless. From the delivery slip in her hand, the truffle pâté and champagne lover-in-residence was an Ian Faber. From the volume of the music, she decided he probably couldn't hear her knock, any more than he'd hear any other intruder.
As she opened the door, a pale wedge cut across the darkened hall, crept over walls covered in watered silk, glistening curved banisters, and up wide stairs.
Music blared down.
"Delivery!" Page called.
Nothing but unintelligible melodic yells from the entertainment, and high-pitched laughter. Damn. She couldn't afford this kind of time waste. Muttering, she hauled her bike inside onto Italian marble and shut the door. If the choice was between leaving a little dirt on the floor and losing her wheels ... there wasn't one.
By the size and weight of the box she carried upstairs, she'd been turning a magnum of champagne into a bubbly shake all the way from Sutter Street on the other side of Chinatown. Page made a wry face. Better warn the customer. Then, if he cared as little as she had a hunch he would, she'd get clear of the blast area before the cork went into orbit.
At the top of the stairs Page shouted, "Delivery, Mr. Faber." The noise came from the left where a wall sconce at the entrance to a corridor spread blush glow on thick red carpet.
She advanced, the box held in both hands, until she came to closed double doors.
For an instant she considered knocking, setting down the box and sneaking away. But she needed payment and a signature on the delivery bill. She knocked, waited, knocked again. Waldo wasn't going to be pleased with her efforts this evening.
There was nothing else to do but open another door she'd rather not touch.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Wrong Turn by Stella Cameron Copyright © 2003 by Harlequin Enterprises Ltd.
Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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