Blue Clouds (20 page)

“Family is more important than neighbors,” she announced, apparently following their earlier conversation about his mother and the condo. “There's a bond there that doesn't exist anywhere else.”

All right, so he'd asked for that. Imagination was always better than the real thing. Seth wandered toward the escape of his office. “Dream on.” He dismissed her lecture.

“My mother died last year.”

Damn. He'd almost gotten away. Leaning against the door- jamb, Seth watched her through narrowed eyes. She still wasn't looking at him. “I'm sorry. You were close?” What else could he say?

“I was the youngest. I guess so. I still want to pick up the phone and call her, ask for her advice, or her sympathy, or just an understanding word. She's still here with me, somehow. How about your father? Do you miss him?”

Now that she had him by the throat, she swung around and nailed him to the wall with those wide, green eyes. Double damnation.

Seth shrugged. “Not particularly. We didn't see each other much. He was always away on business trips, and then I went off to school and didn't come home often.”

“I thought you were privately tutored.”

He didn't want to go into all this. It wasn't any of her damned business. Nobody ever questioned him. No one else had the impertinence. Irked at his inability to slam the door in her face, he shoved his hands in his pockets and contemplated the space above her head.

“Through most of grade school. Then they sent me to boarding schools.” After his mother started gambling, after he'd caught his father with one of his bimbos, after he'd nearly burnt down his parents' wing of the house, and other similar disasters. He had no desire whatsoever to reminisce over those years.

“That must have been hard,” she said nonchalantly, her fingers flying over the keyboard as if she weren't listening at all. “Home-schooled kids always have a hard time adjusting to public schools. They don't know how to cope with other kids. And middle-school age is one of the roughest for boys.”

Tell me about it
, Seth snorted mentally. He hadn't been too successful at setting fire to the first school they sent him to, but the experiment had been enough to get him kicked out. After that, he'd discovered it was just as easy to insult the class bully and get pounded to a pulp, resulting in his mother's jerking him out of school. He'd been something of a wimp at that age, to put it mildly. He'd overcome that handicap with an adolescent growth spurt and an education his parents had known nothing about, but the wimpy kid still cowered inside him. He supposed that feeling never went away.

“I survived,” he replied grumpily. “Have you finished those chapters yet?”

“I've almost finished the typing. I have to format them and run spell check. Must you write such gore? You know teenage boys drool over this stuff.”

“And if they go around killing gophers, that's a bad thing?” he asked dryly, turning toward his office and away from his too perceptive assistant.

“Some teenage boys understand analogies,” she sang out.

He shut the door between them.

***

Standing at the pool later that day, watching Seth Wyatt emerge from the cabana in his swimsuit, Pippa wondered how much California psychiatrists charged. She really ought to have her head examined for suggesting the swimming lessons. She'd dated a lot of men, but she couldn't think of a single one who matched Seth's physique. Billy had been big, but beefy. Seth was... Heck, Seth was everything a woman could wish for, and then some. He crossed the blue-and-earthen-colored tiles with the athletic grace of an Olympic swimmer. He must work out regularly.

Glancing down at her own less than svelte figure, Pippa considered doing the same, then forgot about it as Chad shouted in triumph from the shallow side of the pool.

“You've got it, cowboy!” she yelled back as he clung to the edge of the pool and shook water out of his eyes after traversing the width on his back under his therapist's watchful eye.

“That's still not swimming,” Seth murmured as he reached her side.

“Knowing how to float can save his life, and it uses muscles he wouldn't otherwise be using. Besides, it gives him confidence. All children need to know they can accomplish what they set out to do.” Pippa focused on the child in the water and not on the: man beside her.

“And how do we teach him to withstand the blow to his self- esteem when he realizes most children can do a great deal more than he can ever hope to do?”

The bitterness in Seth's voice surprised her into looking up at him. She had thought to see pleasure at his son's accomplishment, Instead, his mouth had a grim set, and his eyes wore a tortured look she longed to erase. She didn't know why he was beating himself up like this, and she had no business asking.

She was an employee, and she'd better start behaving like one. If she could just treat Seth Wyatt like one of the doctors she'd scorned in her prior life, she'd be all right. But somehow, in her flight to California, she seemed to have lost that protective shield.

“Breaststroke?” she asked in her best clipped nurse's voice.

“Good a place as any to start. Did you ever discover who sent those toffees?”

With a clean, swift motion, he dived into the sparkling waters with every apparent expectation that she would follow him to continue their conversation.

With his dark hair plastered to his sculpted skull and long neck, he resembled Errol Flynn in an old pirate movie. Maybe she should suggest he grow a mustache. Unable to dismiss the smile that image wrought, Pippa dived in after him, then stroked slowly in circles around him where he stood.

“UPS only has the address of the package pickup in L.A. Who knows you eat the nasty things?”

Seth shrugged and broke into a strong, if less then elegant, crawl across the pool. “Almost anyone who knows me. Lawyers, accountants, CEOs. I would have thought any of them would have had the presence of mind to include a note with their name on it. What's the point of buttering up the boss if he doesn't know who's doing it?”

“Someone probably has an inefficient secretary. And obviously insufficient knowledge of your habits if they sent the wrong brand. You need to find out who it is just so you can fire them.” Pippa grinned as her thoughts jumped one step ahead of his. She had begun to understand the demented man. Scary thought. As he caught up with her in the section of the pool where she could stand, she demonstrated the breaststroke.

He repeated the motion carefully. “They'd have to have access to the place in England where I order them. Only my English associates recognize the brand.”

“Ooo, so snooty you can't eat the American kind,” she mocked, before striking out across the pool again, showing him the pattern of the kick and stroke.

His natural coordination lent his awkward first strokes a certain grace as he followed her. Damn, but he was good, Pippa observed as the tight little knot inside her spiraled tighter. Muscles rippled beneath bronzed skin glistening with water diamonds, but it was the wary look in Seth's eyes as he sought her approval that floored her completely.

“You catch on quickly,” she admitted as he halted beside her. “I don't know why you wanted me to teach you. You could probably swim an ocean without need of any fancy strokes.”

For just a moment, his eyes lit from within, and then that wicked smile danced across his lips. “If you have to ask why I wanted you to teach me, you don't deserve an answer.”

That couldn't be a come-on, not from Seth Wyatt. He didn't know she existed as anything beyond one of his office machines. She stared at him incredulously until a shout from beyond the hedge jerked her back to reality.

“Miss Cochran! You out here? Durwood's come up real sick. Maybe you'd better take a look at him.”

Bursting through a break in the greenery, Doug halted, sweating, at the pool's edge. Finding Pippa, he gave her a hand and half hauled her from the water.

“It's those damned toffees you gave him,” he spurted. “The damned fool must have eaten half the box. He's spewing his guts all over the place.”

Frowning at the idea of a grown man getting sick on candy, Pippa followed Doug, and Seth loped after them.

“Toffee poisoning! That's a new one,” the doctor scoffed as he scribbled a prescription. “He's probably just allergic to something in the candy coating. Some people are. Give him this to settle his stomach. Don't let him eat anything for a few hours. He really ought to be in an institution, I hope someone realizes. He's dangerous to himself, if nothing else.”

Pippa scanned the prescription the doctor handed her, grimaced, and shoved it into her purse. “If one looks at it the right way, he is in an institution. At least he's gainfully employed and a useful part of society. We just can't watch over him twenty-four hours a day.”

“Neither can an institution,” the doctor agreed. He switched his focus from Pippa to the man beside her. “Good to meet you, Mr. Wyatt. Heard a lot about you.”

“Don't doubt that. How much do I owe you?” Seth replied without inflection, reaching for his wallet.

“Heard about your proposal for the gym. You wouldn't happen to have time for lunch some day this week, would you? I have a few ideas you might not have considered....”

“I'm booked, but submit a proposal to my assistant, if you like. She's handling the matter.” Brusquely, Seth laid out the required bills and strode out.

Pippa shrugged at the doctor's amazed expression. “If they're suggestions for making money, forget it. He won't be interested. If they're suggestions for helping the kids, he'll consider them. But I make no promises. He has a warped view of the world.”

And she had some glimmer of why Seth's view was so warped as the doctor nodded and left for his his next patient. Everyone wanted something from Seth. No matter where he went or what he did, someone had their hand out. Half the town wanted the printing plant back. Meg and George wanted the gym for Mikey. The first few therapists she'd found had wanted money, power, or sex, or some combination of them all. Even Doug and poor Durwood wanted the haven Seth's estate offered. So did she, for that matter. When was the last time anyone had offered to give Seth something in return?

She pondered that realization all the way back to the house, with Durwood groaning in the front seat beside Doug, and Seth beside her in the backseat, glowering beneath his black cloud. She'd never had much acquaintance with rich people, not of Seth's standards, anyway. The doctors at the hospital had been wealthy far beyond her means, but even in their arrogance, they didn't wield the kind of financial power Seth had. Doctors might dangle gewgaws in front of the nurses, but Seth could dangle clinics and printing plants and security for untold hundreds. Maybe more. She didn't fully comprehend the extent of his wealth. But she was beginning to understand its limitations.

“I'll take Durwood to his room and see he takes his medicine,” she offered as the car stopped in front of the garage. Not that she would have called it a garage. It was bigger than the house she grew up in. She'd like to get her hands on that candy. Maybe George knew a chemist who could analyze it. “You go look in on Chad.”

Seth merely shook his head, and opening the front car door, hauled the still groaning Durwood from the seat. “No, I want to make certain the rest of that candy gets thrown out somewhere he won't find it, or he's likely to eat it again. I can get the medicine down him.”

“I still think someone ought to look at that candy....” she called after him. He didn't turn around.

He'd assumed his tough, arrogant pose again. He hadn't had time to brush his hair as it dried, and a dark curl cascaded across his forehead as he practically carried his small gardener toward the stairs to the garage apartment. Had he lived on the streets as a kid, he would have been a gang leader. She'd have to get her hands on the candy some other way.

The whining cries of Lillian Wyatt as Pippa entered the house reminded her of the other man behind Seth's tough exterior, the one who couldn't handle his own household. She could fix that. She could do something for him, even if he wouldn't acknowledge it.

***

Hearing his mother's voice in his outer office, Seth almost swiveled on his heels and escaped out the front door. But the incident with Durwood and the clinic had put him well behind schedule. He needed to return to work.

He'd successfully avoided any interaction with his mother for years. He could manage a stroll past her now. As Pippa said: Chad needed a grandmother. He couldn't exactly remember her arguments as to why, but he could accept that kids needed grandmothers. He barely remembered his, but they were one of his more stable childhood memories. Maybe kids didn't see things in quite the same manner as adults.

Shoving open the office door, he thought to just nod and hurry back to his private sanctum. Instead, he halted in the doorway and stared at the amazing scene within. Had he encountered circus dogs and clowns, he could not have been more surprised.

Pippa had set up a card table in the reception area. He didn't doubt it had been Pippa who had done it. It would certainly never have occurred to his mother. On one side of the table Chad had parked his wheelchair. He sat there now, industriously sliding envelope closures over a damp sponge to seal them.