Blue Clouds

by Patricia Rice

  “If you won’t listen to me, then take your son to doctors familiar with wheelchair-bound patients. They’ll tell you he needs interaction with other kids his age, that he needs physical activity suiting his age group. He’s a growing boy, and he needs stimulation you cannot provide in this mausoleum. You are doing him no favor by sheltering him from the slings and arrows of real life. Would you like to yell at me some more so you don’t have to listen to what I’m saying?”

  She could see his tension as he squeezed the door frame. She hadn’t been as polite as she could have been. She had thought him impervious to pain, but anguish flickered in his eyes. She turned away so she wouldn’t see it again.

  “Chad’s doctor says he is too frail for crowds. Exposure to a variety of germs would almost certainly make him ill, and he hasn’t the strength for fighting it. Are you telling me you know more than his doctor?”

  “I’m telling you that doctors come in a variety of capabilities. Doctors are not gods. If you’d like, I can call the physicians I know in Kentucky and ask for recommendations out here. Always get second opinions.”

  Still unable to look at him, Pippa straightened the contents of the suitcase. She remembered having this struggle when her mother first became ill. Had her mother gone to a competent physician in the first place, the cancer might not have advanced as far as it had. But her mother insisted on going to the doctor she’d gone to most of her life. Loyalty had its place, but not when it came to a person’s health. Pippa would like to scream that at the stubborn man behind her, but it wasn’t her business.

  “Chad’s doctor saved his life. If I can’t trust him, I couldn’t trust any other.”

  “How old was Chad when this doctor saved his life?” she asked wearily. She didn’t want this to hurt so much, but that frail boy needed a guardian angel.

  “Barely nine months.”

  She heard the pain this time, the agony just below the surface, and it ground into her, as it always did. She’d gone into hospital administration for just this reason. Tightening her lips, she searched for a suitable reply.

  “An infant of nine months is very different from a child of six. A physician who has the capacity for life-giving surgery is not necessarily a physician who understands a patient’s needs outside the operating room.”

  She didn’t want to lecture, but she figured she only had this one chance to make him see. “Wellness is affected by emotional health as well as physical health. You may be protecting Chad from physical illness but not emotional illness. He shouldn’t be getting colds sitting around here where he’s scarcely exposed to any germs at all, but he does. This isn’t necessarily because his health is delicate but because his mental and emotional health is depressed. Don’t rely on my advice. Find a new physician and ask him.”

  Seth’s silence forced her to look at him. The fury had finally seeped from his face. Briefly, he looked like a heartbroken father, until he saw her glance. Then he stiffened and went cold again. “Get me those recommendations. Then get dressed and down to the office. The blasted phone has been ringing off the hook all day.”

  He swung around and walked away.

  Pippa stared at the place where Seth had stood not seconds before. Had she imagined that last command? And if she hadn’t, did she want to obey it? Who in their right mind would continue working in a madhouse like this?

  Someone as insane as the inmates. Giving her suitcase a look of resignation, Pippa opened the nearly empty closet in search of a suitable working dress.

  Chapter 8

  Still making notes, Pippa set the receiver back on the hook, underlined a name on the list beneath her hand, and sat back to take a breath. The phone rang again.

  She eyed the jangling machine with disfavor. Sleek, black, and sporting half a dozen buttons, it epitomized the efficient monstrosity of Seth Wyatt’s operations. One line related to his printing businesses, another to the publishing houses, still another seemed designated for the editors, agents, and whatnot for his writing career. She’d become quite proficient with the hold button while manipulating those three lines. The last two unmarked buttons hadn’t blinked once since she’d sat down. One of them was blinking now.

  Shoving a strand of hair back, Pippa answered, “Wyatt Enterprises.” She had no instructions for this line, and Wyatt had expressly told her he didn’t want to be disturbed for anything short of a spurting jugular.

  “Seth? Where is Seth?” a woman’s irritable voice demanded. “Is this Miss MacGregor? Let me talk with my son.”

  Son. Uh-oh. Family line, Pippa concluded.

  Her next thought was one of amazement. The Grim Reaper had a mother. Unbelievable. Actually, if she thought about it, this one sounded every bit as impossible and annoying as Wyatt. And years of experience had taught her a great deal about voices.

  “This is Phillippa Cochran. Mrs. Wyatt?” She ended on a questioning note. In this day and age of multiple divorce and marriage, one could never be certain.

  “Where is Miss MacGregor? I want to speak with my son, Miss Cochran. Put him on now.” A hacking cough followed this command.

  Double uh-oh. The maniac gardener’s words as he rammed the BMW into the oak were strangely comforting, if not prophetic. Uh-oh covered it all. The lady already sounded furious. What did she do now?

  Remembering an uncle who had only called when angry, upsetting her mother often during her illness, Pippa chose the tactic that worked best on him. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Wyatt, he isn’t available at the moment. Could I have him call you back?”

  “I know perfectly well he’s sitting right there working on one of his wretched books, Miss Cochran. If you don’t put me through to him right now, I’ll have you fired. My son always takes my calls.”

  Well, the lady wasn’t dumb, at least. Pippa was beginning to understand where her employer had garnered some of his bad habits. Double checking her list of callers Wyatt would accept and finding his mother nowhere among the honored, Pippa clucked her tongue against her teeth and grinned. In for a penny, in for a pound.

  “I’ve already been fired three times since my arrival, Mrs. Wyatt. I suspect I’ll withstand another firing. I’ll be happy to pass on your message when he becomes available. Or is there anything I can help you with in the meantime?”

  “Miss MacGregor always puts me through.” The imperious voice developed a distinct whine. “What has this world come to if a mother can’t talk with her own son?”

  Pippa tipped her chair back, stared at the elegantly carved wooden ceiling, and wondered if her job description included counseling lonely mothers. “Well, Mrs. Wyatt, you know,” she drawled, stalling for an effective reply, “my mother never called me at work unless it was an emergency. She respected my need to do the best job possible while I worked, God bless her soul.”

  Silence.

  Pippa chewed the eraser tip of her pencil and listened to the rapid clacking of computer keys from behind Seth’s closed office door. He wrote his manuscripts in longhand. She wondered what he was doing if not writing. As she sat patiently waiting for the next bombshell to explode, she knew better than to think he would appreciate this little conversation she was having with his mother. She ought to get combat pay for working in his household.

  “Your mother is dead, Miss Cochran?”

  Her smoker’s sandpaper voice wasn’t much better than her whining one. Sighing, Pippa returned her feet to the floor. “Yes, she died this past year. She taught me a great deal about life, and I try to follow her maxims every day. ‘Smile and keep your chin up, Pippa,’ she used to say. ‘Stand on your own two feet and you’ll never have to beg,’ she told me. My mother was a very wise woman. Is there anything I can help you with, Mrs. Wyatt?”

  “Just exactly who are you, Miss Cochran?”

  Ha, at least imperiousness had replaced whimpering and whining. Pippa smiled at this progress. “I’m Mr. Wyatt’s temporary assistant while Miss MacGregor is on leave of absence.”

  The silence following her
declaration was shorter than the earlier one. “Have Wyatt send a car for me. I think I’m overdue for a visit.”

  Pippa wrinkled her nose in dismay. She had the distinct notion Wyatt would not be pleased with this development. “Of course, Mrs. Wyatt,” she purred, thinking rapidly. “Chad will be delighted to see you, I’m certain. He has a cold and he’s quite bored while confined to his room. Mr. Wyatt is on deadline and doesn’t have much time…”

  “Forget the car.” Abruptly, she changed her tune. “Simply tell my son that Natalie is on the warpath again. That should have him calling me.”

  The phone slammed in her ear. Charming family, Pippa observed, hanging up the receiver. From the way her employer had said the name Natalie earlier, she could assume his mother was quite correct. The invisible Natalie invoked violent emotion in Pippa’s already volatile employer. She wondered if Seth Wyatt ever experienced emotions of a pleasant nature.

  Even his sexual innuendoes—if that was what they were—had contained more insult and anger than pleasure or anticipation. She would have slapped any other man silly for his offer of money, but for some reason, Seth’s insult had seemed aimed at himself as much as at her. She hadn’t encountered that degree of self-loathing before.

  Deciding her job didn’t include psychoanalysis of her rigid employer, Pippa picked up the list of names and numbers she had compiled before Mrs. Wyatt interfered. She nibbled on the pencil, glanced at the closed door, and decisively picked up the receiver and punched out the first number. For the kind of money Wyatt paid her, she would be the best damned self- directed administrative assistant in the country.

  Half an hour later, with the information she needed and a faxed parental consent form in hand, Pippa penciled in the appointment on her calendar, underlined the doctor’s name, and smiled with satisfaction at a job well done.

  The closed door to Wyatt’s office slammed open, and the Grim Reaper stalked through. Thick dark hair standing on end, a day’s beard shadowing the harsh lines of his jaw, he appeared ready to behead the first unfortunate crossing his path.

  As he turned his bleary glare on Pippa, she cheerfully passed him the fax.

  He scribbled his consent without reading it. “Have you read the manuscript yet?”

  “I told you I would type it but I won’t read it.” Pippa sat back in her chair—a wonderfully supple leather with lumbar support and heated massage—picked up the stack of paper on her right, and dropped it on top of his messages. “Here’s yesterday’s work for your approval.”

  “Yesterday’s work was crap.” He viciously plowed his hand through his hair, stalked up and down the narrow office floor, then slammed his fist into the wall, until the framed covers jumped. He swung his furious gaze back to Pippa. “How in hell am I supposed to talk plot with you if you haven’t read the damned book?”

  “I’m a nurse, Mr. Wyatt, not an editor. You knew that when you hired me. I am a very efficient administrator. I have typed up your scribblings, edited and formatted them, I’ve answered your phones, opened your mail, paid your bills, filed your invoices, and dealt with your irate mother.”

  She twined her fingers together and rested her elbows on the chair’s broad arms. “I’m perfectly prepared to sit here and let you throw slings and arrows at me if that will help. Why don’t you tell me what the problem is, rather than make me read the gore?”

  “It’s not gore.” He gave her a disgruntled look, paced up and down some more, then decided to explain. “I write horror, not gore. The world is full of horrifying things, and people want the thrill of experiencing them as well as the triumph of controlling them. I can give them in the pages of a book what they cannot have in real life.”

  “Mad gophers?” Pippa asked, raising a satirical eyebrow.

  “Ha! So you did read it.” He swung around and glared at her, bristling with male rage and pride. “I’ve dug myself into a hole...”

  “...a gopher hole,” Pippa murmured unrepentantly.

  Seth ignored that. “A hero, by definition, must act heroically. He can’t run, he can’t cry, he can’t wait for someone else to solve his problems. But in yesterday’s pages I dug my hero in so deep he cannot possibly dig himself out. What do I have him do, carry explosives in his back pocket? That’s patently ridiculous.”

  She really hadn’t read the pages. The reference to a gopher had briefly caught her fancy, but the material was far from whimsy, and shuddering, she had shut off her brain as she typed after that. But Seth’s talk about heroes rescuing themselves struck another chord.

  “Must heroes stand alone?” she asked diffidently, not at all certain of her thoughts. “Aren’t heroes more heroic for having friends they can call on? Like Jimmy Stewart in It’s a Wonderful Life. Alone, he was helpless, but with his friends—”

  Seth flung the telephone book against the wall, quite a feat given the size of the tome, Pippa noted with admiration.

  “I don’t write sentimental claptrap, Miss Cochran. I write about the dark forces that inhabit this earth. About the only thing that could save my hero at this point is if an equally dark force...” Clenching his fists, he stopped in midpace and stared blankly at the wall. “That’s it. An equally dark force. I can do that.”

  Distracted, he swung back to the desk, riffled through the newly typed manuscript pages, and idly picked up his phone messages. “Where’s Chad?”

  He was reading the messages and Pippa didn’t think he was listening, but she answered anyway. “He’s resting. Mr. Brown is reading him a story.”

  She was mistaken. Wyatt’s shaggy head jerked up and his cold glare fixed on her at once. “Doug is reading him a story?”

  Pippa shrugged. “It’s better for him than moping around in his apartment feeling sorry for himself. Everyone needs to feel useful. And Chad’s quite thrilled.”

  “Doug reading storybooks,” Seth muttered, wandering toward his office. “The NFL’s best linebacker reading bunny books. I swear...” The door slammed after him, cutting off any further commentary.

  “And thank you so much, Miss Cochran,” Pippa mocked, glancing at the closed door. “Job well done, keep up the good work.”

  The phone rang. Swearing, she picked up the other unmarked line, and heard Mary Margaret on the other end.

  “Wow, Pippa! I found the number in the book but didn’t think I’d actually get you. Why haven’t you called? I’ve been worried sick.”

  “Did you think he ate me for dinner?” she asked wryly. “No one’s tried to push me in the oven yet.”

  Mary Margaret laughed. “I’d think it far more likely if you pushed Wyatt in the oven. Have you?”

  Pippa grinned. “You’ve always known me too well. It’s been entertaining, to say the least. I’ll tell you Sunday when I come to town. How are the kids?”

  “They’re fine, full of questions, but fine.” She hesitated, then asked cautiously, “I don’t suppose you’ve heard if he has any plans for rebuilding the printing plant, do you?”

  Understanding the importance of the question from Mary Margaret’s hesitation, Pippa sought some reassuring reply, but there wasn’t any. “He’s working on something else right now. I don’t think he’s given thought to anything beyond that.” Uncertain as to whether the town knew of Seth’s alter ego, Pippa refrained from mentioning book deadlines.

  “Oh, well, it was only a thought. The plant was archaic and probably needed tearing down before someone got seriously hurt. We just hoped he might...”

  “I don’t think he’s given to altruism,” Pippa offered dryly. “If he tore down the old plant, he had a reason; it’s just not uppermost in his mind right now. I’ll let you know if I hear anything else.”

  After making plans for Sunday and hanging up, Pippa decided her duties included checking on Chad at regular intervals. Hearing only silence from behind the closed door and concluding Wyatt was writing, she turned on the elaborate voice mail system and hurried up the flagstone stairs. Why in the world anyone would make a foyer of wood,
and stairs of stone, was beyond her comprehension, but she wasn’t an architect.

  She reached Chad’s room just as Doug Brown tiptoed out, closing the door. The sight of a six-foot, two-hundred-something-pound man tiptoeing should have boggled her senses, but he did it with a certain degree of grace. She grinned as he looked up and caught her watching. “Did you tie him up and gag him?”

  Doug eyed her uncertainly. “Nah, the cold medicine knocked him out pretty much. And he insisted on hearing one of his dad’s books. That had him snoring quick enough.”

  Pippa raised her eyebrows in surprise. “I should have thought one of those would have had him up with nightmares for the rest of his life.”

  Doug shrugged. “They ain’t exactly kids’ literature. He didn’t understand half the words.” Shifting from foot to foot, obviously uncomfortable in her presence, he blurted out another topic on his mind. “Did you do something about calling them other doctors you talked about? That kid needs to get out of here.”

  Pippa beamed. “I surely did. I’ve even made an appointment for the day after tomorrow. Do I take him in Miss MacGregor’s car or will you drive?”

  “The Beamer’s still in the shop, and the Jag’s too small for Chad’s chair. I can clean up that old Rolls, if you like. Kinda been wantin’ to take it out for a spin.”

  “A Rolls? He has a Rolls?” Pippa rolled her eyes in delight, then grinned mischievously. “I don’t suppose he’d let me drive, would he?”

  “No, sirree, ma’am,” Doug answered emphatically. “Ain’t no way. That old car belonged to his daddy and ain’t nobody touches it. I figger I’ll have to get down on my knees and crawl before he’ll let me get it out. And he’ll probably give me a sobriety test before he hands over the keys.”

  Pippa wrinkled her nose. “One hint of alcohol on your breath, Mr. Brown, and you’ll not even come close to Mr. Wyatt. I have a nose for liquor better than any test mankind can develop. And as much as I disliked it, I worked enough emergency room shifts to recognize drugs when I see them, so don’t bother with those either. This is a family outing, and if you need sedation for a family outing, we don’t need you.”