No Place Like You Page 3

  “I agree,” Faith said as she took one and bit into it. Her eyes closed in pleasure. “Plus, God, Stella is the best at doughnuts. If there was a doughnut Olympics, she’d win gold.”

  “Totally.” Leah lifted the lid on her go cup, blowing on the coffee. Working in the studio for so many years had accustomed her to leaving her coffee abandoned way too long before she got around to drinking it. Call it supreme laziness in not wanting to get up and re-nuke it to heat it but she preferred it lukewarm these days. A fact that horrified her parents to the very core of their Italian American hearts but what they couldn’t see couldn’t hurt them.

  She waited for Faith to finish chewing. “So, Zach?” she prompted as Faith wiped her mouth with a napkin and eyed the remaining contents of the box.

  “You’re harshing my doughnut high,” Faith protested. “It’s too early to talk about my idiot brother.”

  “There are always more doughnuts.” Leah pointed out. “And you’re going to have to tell me sooner or later. So get it over and done with and we can put him back on the ‘do not discuss list.’ What’s convinced the great Zach Harper to grace us with his presence?”

  “Cone of silence?” Faith said.

  Leah nodded. “In the vault.” She drew her hand over her lips in a zipping motion.

  “Ryder’s having some sort of crisis. He’s decided to take a year off.”

  “Shit,” Leah said. “That’s … not great for the rest of the guys. They must be pissed. They’ve been going from strength to strength. Bad enough to miss the summer touring season let alone a whole year. They’ll lose all their momentum.”

  “Yep,” Faith agreed. “It’s kind of a dick move if you look at it from their perspective.”

  “So Zach’s back to what−lick his wounds and make plans?”

  Faith’s long blonde-brown hair bounced as she shook her head. “No, he wants to record some songs here. He’s thinking of making a solo album. Says he’s been writing.”

  Leah almost spat out her mouthful of latte. Wow. So that was “no” to Zach only being on Lansing for a few days. Damn. She hadn’t expected that. And she was definitely going to need a Plan B for dealing with the oldest Harper.

  Then the more sensible part of her brain caught up with what Faith had said. Zach wanted to record. Here on the island. Most likely in her studio. That was potentially complicated, but also potentially a fantastic opportunity.

  “Who’s producing for him?” she asked, hoping she sounded casual.

  Zach Harper making his first solo album in the same place where the album that had made his dad so famous had been recorded. That would sell a squazillion easy, as long as the music was good. And she knew Zach’s music was good. Ryder was the main songwriter for Fringe Dweller, but she’d heard enough of Zach’s music over the years to know the man had plenty of talent. The fact that he and Faith hadn’t taken off immediately had been more a product of youth and being slightly out of pace with where the market was at the time rather than their music being bad. If she could produce his album—or even some of the songs—then that would be the break she’d be looking for to take the next step in her career.

  “He said he had feelers out. And that Eli was going to work with him on a few songs.”

  Crap. She’d forgotten about Eli. He was also a sound engineer, one who was making a growing name for himself as a producer. Doing exactly what she wanted to do, in fact. And he was Zach’s best friend.

  So that was a wrinkle in trying to get a toe in the door with Zach on his album.

  She loved her job, but the itch to produce had been growing over the last few years. It had been a bone of contention between Joey and her. He didn’t like the idea of her doing something that would likely take her off-island for long chunks of time. She’d managed to do a little here and there but so far hadn’t found an act to take a chance on her who could give her the boost she needed. Faith had asked her to work with Nessa recording a few songs, but Zach was a whole different ballgame.

  She chewed her lip.

  “What?” Faith asked.

  “Just … thinking,” she said. “About when we might have a studio for him,” she added, not ready to share her budding plan with Faith just yet.

  “He’s going to use Grey’s studio to rehearse, maybe record some demos,” Faith said. “So it’s not an immediate issue.”

  “Still, it might take some juggling. We’re booked pretty solid up until CloudFest.” She had another thought. “I take it he wants a CloudFest slot too?”

  Faith nodded. “Yep. Haven’t promised him anything yet though. I don’t need a repeat of last year.”

  “Sensible,” Leah agreed. She took a brownie from the box. Bit into soft squidgy chocolate deliciousness. Faith was sensible not to trust Zach right away, but she had a feeling Zach would get his way if he played his cards right. The guy was way too charming for his own good. Even Faith, pissed as she was, wasn’t going to be able to resist him forever if he set out to prove he was reforming his ways.

  Zach Harper on a mission to win someone over was a force of nature.

  Which just meant that, now that she knew why he was here and what that might mean for her, she was going to have to give him absolutely no reason to want to charm her. Her hormones, if they decided to get stupid over him all over again, were just going to have to suck it up.

  chapter three

  It took a night of tossing and turning, and a day of being unable to shake the idea, for Leah to work up the determination to go find Zach and sound him out about producing. She couldn’t wait too long. If he got some big name to agree to take him on then that would be that, even if he brought them to work here on Lansing.

  Worse, a big-name producer might even want to bring their own sound engineer, and she’d be locked out of any involvement at all.

  She’d spent the day obsessively making a list of the arguments in her favor, drinking too much coffee, and fighting the urge to bite her nails to the quick. Nessa Lewis, Faith’s first foundation-grant recipient, had been in the studio but she and her band were rehearsing, not recording, and the other group wrapping up a recording stint had declared a day off while they worked out an issue with their last song. Which left Leah with just enough extra time on her hands to drive herself crazy.

  When she’d found herself scrubbing the toilets in the studio, she’d known she was only going to drive herself crazy if she put off asking Zach for even another day. She’d chased Nessa and her bandmates out right at five o’clock.

  So now, here she was, walking down from the studio to the guesthouse, taking the long way through the gardens around Faith’s house in the hope that maybe she wouldn’t be spotted.

  The days were growing longer, the heat of the day starting to linger into late afternoon. It was still technically spring, but the approaching summer was starting to make itself felt. She took a breath of warm air, let it soothe some of her nerves. Lansing’s climate was hardly freezing through the winter, but Leah was a summer girl. She liked the beach and wearing silly flirty sundresses and flip-flops and drinking cool beers on warm nights. Liked the heat of the sun on her skin.

  Maybe it was the Italian side of her. Born for the Mediterranean climate or something.

  She’d been to Italy twice and had loved it both times, but it wasn’t home. No, she wanted sea air and surf with her sunshine, not the weight of history and culture, as fascinating as that was.

  The breeze flowing through the garden was full of salt and the tang of the ocean, ruffling through her hair. She’d tied it back in a ponytail after a day of running her fingers through it as she tried to figure out how to talk to Zach had turned her curls into a tangled mess. Wild-eyed Medusa wasn’t the look she was going for, so the ponytail seemed safer. Along with her favorite long red cardigan over the black T-shirt and skinny jeans that formed the basis of her studio uniform most days in the colder months.

  The edge of the garden came faster than she would have liked, and her stupid heartbeat
picked up a little when she spotted the guesthouse.

  They had history, she and Zach and that guesthouse.

  She’d been inside it since, of course. The guesthouses were most often used by Grey’s rock-star friends or clients of the studio who were famous enough to require the security the Harper estate offered while they worked.

  That had happened more often when Grey had been alive. These days, any of the big names that came to the studio were just as likely to use one of the Blacklight guys’ houses. Danny and Billy and Shane were infrequent residents of Lansing now, all busy with the projects they’d taken up after Grey’s death.

  It had been hard on all of them, losing Grey. Leah had watched Faith and Mina battle the grief close up. She’d shared it with them—having grown up with Grey, pretty much the most fascinating of her uncles even if he was an uncle in name not blood. She’d envied the guys, Zach included, who’d all been able to leave the place that held the hardest of the memories behind them, who hadn’t had to face them every day.

  It was harder to forget when you couldn’t leave.

  And now, staring at the guesthouse and wondering why her feet had suddenly frozen and left her rooted in place, she knew there were other memories that she thought she’d dealt with a long time ago, just waiting to pounce on her once she stepped through the white door.

  So. Keep her head. Keep her cool. Keep her mind firmly in the moment.

  She was here for business.

  Nothing more.

  Zach could be a client. He might even be a friend again if he could prove that he hadn’t turned into just another self-obsessed rock star chasing the dream. He hadn’t done much in the last year or so to make her think he hadn’t. Not with the way he’d neglected his family, let alone the stunt he’d pulled with CloudFest.

  So a friendly acquaintance perhaps. She wanted to hold out a small shred of hope that somewhere in there was the Zach she’d known. But part of her thought there wasn’t. Not the laughing older boy who’d been part of the landscape of her life for eighteen years. Definitely not the man who’d been the first to break her heart.

  That Zach Harper belonged in her memories. Locked away in the deep recesses of her brain where she rarely dared to think about him.

  He had no place in real life. Real life, where he’d be leaving and she’d be staying right here on Lansing.

  She straightened her shoulders, forced herself to move. Strode across to the guesthouse door. Only to realize that the place was deathly quiet. Zach rarely existed in silence. There was always music playing in any space he was in. It was like oxygen to him. Even when he was out in public, he hummed under his breath or tapped his fingers in endless rhythms when he wasn’t thinking about what he was doing.

  Faith did the humming thing too, but not to the same extent.

  Wired for sound, the two of them. And Zach had been able to indulge his passion. Hadn’t had to learn to put it aside like Faith had. So he never really tried to hide the fact that part of his brain was almost always listening to some melody only he could hear.

  She pressed the doorbell, wondering if maybe he might be asleep. The sound of the chime came through the door but there were no answering footsteps or movement in response. She waited, but that didn’t change. There was only silence beyond the door that stayed stubbornly closed.

  Dammit. Where was the man?

  It had taken her this long to get up the nerve to face him, she didn’t want to have to do it all over again tomorrow.

  “Where would I be if I was Zach Harper?” she muttered to herself. Grey’s old truck—presumably borrowed from Faith—was parked in one of the covered spots off to the side of the guesthouse, so somewhere on the estate seemed like a safe enough bet. Unless he was with Eli. But counting that out for now, then the most likely places were the beach or … Grey’s studio, she realized.

  Zach was a night owl. It was close to six now, which for him was more like lunchtime.

  If he was settling into the studio, he’d just be getting started.

  She should have thought of that earlier. Another quick detour, retracing her path through the garden a little faster, and she was past the main house safely again and heading down the opposite side of the garden, following the narrow cliff path that led down to the small studio building and then onward to the property line where the Harper estate ended and Shane’s land began.

  A line of salt-and-wind-battered bushes formed a wall between the path and the house, so she was hopefully still incognito and safe from Faith’s eagle eye. In fact, at this time of day Faith was probably still working in the Harper Inc. offices. With less than three months now until CloudFest, Faith was starting to hit the pointy end of the mountain of organization that lay behind pulling off a massive music festival.

  It meant long hours and working nights while she was trying to deal with musicians and management located all over the world.

  And this year she was throwing a wedding into the mix. She and Caleb had set the date for the start of September.

  Personally, Leah thought that was insane. Faith usually took a few weeks off to recover after CloudFest, and this year she’d have to roll straight into final countdown for her wedding.

  But maybe Faith was thinking longer term. She and Caleb could take a vacation each year that culminated in their anniversary with no need for any kind of excuse. There was some method to the madness when you thought about it that way.

  Leah reached the end of the path, rounding the last slight bend, which brought Grey’s studio into sight. Now she could hear music, the sound of a guitar. Definitely Zach, she thought, listening to the melody. She didn’t recognize the song but she knew the style of the musician. He must have the windows open, airing the place out. The studio was well soundproofed, so she wouldn’t hear him otherwise.

  It was tempting to stay right where she was and just listen to him play. He might be a dick, but he was a great guitarist. And the music he coaxed from six simple strings always had the power to steal her breath and her common sense. It would be all too easy to stand here and let herself be a lost-in-a-crush teenager again.

  But that wasn’t going to get the job done. She wanted to work with him, not jump him.

  So when the music stopped abruptly, she walked over and knocked on the door.

  It swung open faster than she had expected and there he was. Zach Harper. Large as life.

  Larger, maybe.

  “Leah,” he said, sounding surprised. Then he smiled, and her pulse sped up all over again as the force of that grin hit her like the kick of a bass drum to the back of her head.

  Larger than life and still freaking hot.

  Dammit.

  “How the hell are you, Santelli?” Zach said, stepping back to let her in.

  She skirted around him. There would be no contact.

  “What, no kiss hello?” Zach said, closing the door behind her. Leah kept walking. No contact and definitely no thinking about kissing. Of any kind.

  “Let me guess. Faith is mad at me, so you’re mad at me? The old best friend solidarity thing?”

  “Faith is mad at you,” Leah agreed. She stopped and turned to face him. Took a breath while she figured out what exactly she was going to say. That was a mistake. The studio smelled like Zach.

  How was that even possible? The man had only been in residence a little over a day. The studio had been, as far as she knew, closed up for years. Maybe Faith had it cleaned now and then—it didn’t looked covered in dust. It shouldn’t have smelled like much at all. But it did. Another breath. Yep, there it was. A scent so familiar she would have known who it was with her eyes closed. Spice. Salt. Zach.

  It made her want to close her eyes and breathe deeper.

  So not going to happen. Business. It was all about business. She straightened her shoulders. “I, on the other hand, am willing to maintain a neutral stance.”

  “Neutral, huh? Sounds interesting.”

  He was still smiling. Zach Harper’s smile had
always made it difficult to concentrate.

  She turned back to face the studio. She hadn’t been in here in forever. There was a tiny recording booth and board in the next room, but this main room was rehearsal space. A guitar case lay open by a stool and a mic stand. The guitar itself was resting carefully on a stand.

  “Is that your dad’s old Martin Shade-Top?” she asked. “Nice.” She wandered over to look at the guitar, but didn’t touch it. She’d seen Grey play this guitar a hundred times. Rarely on stage, but it was one he reached for when he was jamming with friends or working out an idea in the studio or just roaming the house trying to work up a song.

  She hadn’t realized Zach had kept it.

  “Yes,” Zach said. “I brought a few of his with me. Thought I could warm up the place with some sounds it remembered. Kind of reintroduce myself.”

  She understood. A studio was more than a room. Every space had its own personality, the little quirks and foibles that gave it a unique sound. Musicians were superstitious about such things. There was a reason Grey had rebuilt a studio in this spot after all. She knew every inch of the studios at Harper Inc., knew how to coax them into behaving and giving her back some glorious music.

  She’d never recorded here though. Maybe her dad had, but she couldn’t remember him mentioning it. This had been Grey’s space. Blacklight space. Sacred Harper ground. So how did Zach feel standing here?

  “Sounds like a good idea to me,” she said. “Get a feel for it again.”

  She circled the guitar, which brought her back face to face with the man. Who looked almost … relieved? Why? Because she’d told him that what he was doing made sense. Wait, was Zach nervous about recording an album?

  He stood there, barefooted, wearing worn jeans that hung loose around his hips and a plain white T-shirt. Textbook. He looked good but up close, tired too. There were some shadows under those Harper eyes—more gray today—that didn’t usually mar his face. Well, he’d been touring, and that was exhausting even if he hadn’t been screwed over by his bandmate at the end of it.