Blue Clouds

by Patricia Rice

  “Cretins!” he shouted, as if she couldn’t hear.

  Well, at least he knew she was in the room. She took a seat at her desk. “Just very young,” she modified. “I dumped water on Chad and he survived. You would have had a conniption if I’d told you beforehand that’s how I’d shut him up.”

  Seth spun around and glared at her. “And I fired you. Why the hell didn’t you just leave then?”

  Good question. She should have. She really should have. But they both needed her so much....

  Dumb, Pippa. Seth Wyatt didn’t need anyone or anything. But Chad did. The old need-to-be-needed urge raised its ugly head. Pippa stuck out her chin. “I needed a job and Chad needed a friend. I couldn’t leave.”

  Seth’s glare didn’t waver. “I’m not buying that tripe. With your credentials, you could get a job anywhere. So help me, if I find out Natalie is paying you, I’ll have your reputation cut into mincemeat. I can do it with just a phone call.”

  “You’re such a pleasant person when riled, I do love talking to you. Will you just fire me and get it over with so I can get back to work?” Pippa didn’t flinch as Seth’s temper visibly flared. The mule-headed grouch had had his own way entirely too long, but she’d seen the fear in his eyes the day she’d arrived. Maybe he could beat the tar out of illegal hunters, but he couldn’t deal with the chaos around him alone. She had him over a barrel.

  And he knew it. She could see it in his eyes and the way he snapped his mouth shut on his first impulsive reply. He shoved elegantly long fingers through his thick mop of curls and tugged with frustration. “This isn’t working,” he snarled, not specifying to which this he referred.

  “It’s working very well; you just don’t like it,” she suggested, supplying her own definition. “We’ll find a therapist who has experience with children. Sometimes credentials aren’t everything.”

  “I won’t leave Chad with strangers,” he stated obdurately, returning his hand to his side and clenching it into a fist.

  “I’ll stay with him and keep watch,” she reassured him. “You can’t protect him from the world. It’s out there. He has to learn to deal with it.”

  “Children are too young. They’re not prepared to deal with it by themselves.”

  He said it with such emphasis, Pippa realized there was more to it than that. She’d been raised in a small town and had seldom known a stranger as a child. Seth’s experience had apparently been different.

  “Okay, tell me where you’re coming from.” She set her pencil down and waited for his explanation.

  He paced. He shoved his hand through his hair again. He glared out the window. Then he swung around and glared at her some more. But he didn’t scare her. She saw the pain in his clenched jaw, the uncertainty hidden behind the intimidating scowl. She wanted to stroke his face and tell him everything would be all right. The man was a menace to society and probably to himself. Why couldn’t she remember that?

  “Look, just take my word for it, all right?” Some of his scowl faded as she did no more than watch him patiently. “Kids need the protection of the adults they know. You can’t just heave them out into the cold world and let them fend for themselves.”

  He was speaking from experience. It was in every ounce of pain he held back. Thoughtfully, she nodded agreement. “We don’t have an argument there. They need to be certain of the adults around them so they can proceed with confidence on their own, knowing they have a fall-back position. Chad has you. He’ll learn soon enough that he has me. And once he gets to know the therapist, he’ll have still another person. The whole point is for him to gradually explore the world outside and learn which people he can trust and how to deal with others he doesn’t know about. Where’s the problem?”

  “I can’t trust you or any therapist,” he stated coldly. “I can’t trust anyone.”

  Pippa quirked her eyebrows. “Not even yourself?”

  For a moment, his glare blackened, and then it disintegrated entirely as he shook his head in sadness. “Not even myself.”

  With that, he stalked into his own office and slammed the door.

  Well, dammit, then, Pippa muttered to herself. She’d just have to place her trust in God or that poor kid wouldn’t have anyone.

  But she’d always believed God helped those who helped themselves, and it looked like Seth Wyatt and his son needed one whale of a lot of helping.

  Chapter 11

  “Look,” the detective’s voice replied over the phone, “I’ve got a couple of live leads, which is a hell of a lot more than I’ve had up till now. I’ve tracked the owner of the house on the hill where you went off, and the tow-truck driver who pulled the car out of the ravine. The thugs you laid out cold aren’t talking, but they’re out on bond and I’ve got tails on them.”

  Seth grimaced and clenched his pen so hard it should have broken. He dropped the pen and tapped his fingers against the desk. The phone in the other room rang and he heard Pippa answer. The clatter of her computer keyboard barely halted long enough for her to pick up the receiver. He’d like to know how she did that. That unfathomable mind of hers apparently had different compartments for different tasks. He wished he could say the same.

  He was postponing making the decision Dirk was demanding he make. The horror of that night five years ago never stopped haunting his sleep. He had to solve it. He’d like to know who the bastard was who’d hired those thugs, too, but Natalie and her lawyers were in his face now. He had to strengthen his current position before he could indulge his fantasy of finding out what really happened that night. Chad’s present was more important than his past.

  Or was he rationalizing, avoiding what Dirk might uncover? That thought brought him up with a jerk. If Dirk could prove Seth wasn’t drunk that night, it would pave the way to unquestioned custody of Chad. But if Dirk proved the opposite? He could lose Chad forever.

  Choosing Chad’s future over his own need for justice, Seth reluctantly gave Dirk his orders. “If you have someone you trust, put them on those leads. I want you on Natalie’s case right now. They’ve set a court date for the custody hearing, dammit. There’s no way in hell I’m letting her have Chad. Have you made any headway in that direction?”

  “Not much. Her husband got sacked from that last consulting position. Far as I can tell, they’re living on future earnings and they’re up to the year 2100 by now. I’m not real sure she understands the debt outstanding. Their maid said she overheard Natalie asking him how come the restaurant wouldn’t take her charge card, and he told her he’d canceled it because the interest rate was too high. Is she that dumb?”

  Seth gritted his teeth and swiveled his chair to absorb the view of mountains in the distance, but they were obscured by morning fog. “She’s not dumb, just oblivious. And single-minded. She’s always had money, thinks it pours from faucets like water. I doubt if it has ever occurred to her that it can run out. And he’s deliberately keeping her in the dark. She’s focusing on getting Chad back, slandering me across half the state. If I walked into the country club down there, they’d probably draw and quarter me on her behalf.”

  Seth leaned his head back against the leather headrest and waited out Dirk’s silence. Dirk was damned good at what he did, but he was a detective, a man with a cop mentality and blue-collar middle-class values. He could practically hear Dirk’s brain ticking as he sought a polite means of telling Seth what he should do.

  “I don’t suppose it ever occurred to you to talk to her,” Dirk finally said.

  If he were capable of humor, Seth would have grinned at the predictability of Dirk’s reply. “Is it self-defense if I throttle her?” he asked facetiously.

  “Look, man,” Dirk replied with exasperation, “I don’t want to tell you how to live, but the woman ought to know she’s got bigger problems than that kid right now. If you don’t tell her, who will? You must have had something in common when you married her.”

  “My mother. We had my mother in common. She wanted me to get mar
ried, Natalie wanted to get married, so we did. It shut them both up.”

  Dirk snorted. “You’re a wimp. Big tough guy like you, and you’re a wimp with women. Get over it. Give the woman a clue. She’ll back off. She might even appreciate the favor.”

  Seth didn’t even think about chuckling over that one. With a sigh, he reached for his pen again. “Natalie won’t back off until I’m dead. She loathes me, she despises what I’ve done to Chad, and she thinks the world would be better if I fell off of it. If I told her that butthead husband of hers has blown her fortune, she’d accuse me of stealing it. I told you, the woman is single-minded. Just do what I told you to do and cut the pop psychology. You’re lousy at it.”

  Seth hung up the phone and tried to return to the business projections for the printing plants, but the conversation had shot his concentration to hell. On days like this, he wished he’d never heard of factories. If his father had run the presses instead of owning the plants, Seth’s life might have been a good deal more sane. But no, his damned ambitious father had married the factory owner’s daughter, expanded the company to international proportions, then died and left it all to him.

  Chad’s chatter in the outer office diverted Seth’s perverse thoughts. Chad had never ventured into that office while Miss MacGregor ruled it, but Pippa turned every one into pets. Pippa, ridiculous name. She’d even turned his recalcitrant son into a trained lapdog. Seth didn’t like the idea, but it certainly made things a hell of a lot more peaceful.

  He couldn’t hear the words, but he recognized the pleading whine in his son’s voice as Pippa admonished him about something. All right, so maybe she hadn’t made the boy into a lapdog yet. Seth was just projecting his vivid imagination on her, creating the illusion of a fairy godmother who would turn this haunted castle into a home and the toads back into princes. On the other hand, maybe it was witches who did those things.

  Rising from the desk, Seth strolled into the outer office. He couldn’t think anyway. He might as well see what entertainment was to be had in the rest of his small world.

  “Dad!”

  Chad visibly brightened at his approach, and that one tiny soft spot left in Seth’s heart melted. He couldn’t afford any more soft spots than this one, but he indulged it—and his son—with regularity. “I thought you were studying.” He quirked his eyebrow, not wholly giving in to his urges to pamper the boy.

  Chad grimaced. “It’s spring. Other kids get spring breaks.” He threw a hasty glance at Pippa, who was busily making notes while talking on the phone, then lowered his voice. “I wanna go swimming. Pippa says I can learn.”

  Seth’s temper shot upward until he noted the frown between his assistant’s eyes and the accusing pencil she pointed at his son while still managing the phone conversation. Chad’s guilty look forced Seth to wait for further explanation.

  She hung up the phone and punched the voice mail button.

  Before she could speak, Chad interrupted. “I wanna learn to swim. I’m old enough. You said I could.” He glared at Pippa.

  Seth raised his eyebrows and waited for her reply. To his surprise, she leaned back in her chair and grinned at him. That mop of red hair swung down in her face and her cheeks bunched into pink apples and her wide lips opened invitingly over neat rows of pearly teeth. The urge to take a bite out of her covered up a baser urge. Growling at the unwelcome stirring below his belt buckle as his thoughts took a wayward path, Seth crossed his arms and continued waiting.

  “He is old enough,” Pippa agreed with Chad cheerfully. “You want to teach him?”

  “He’s supposed to be studying. He has homework to do before his tutor arrives. And I’m damned well not a swim coach.” He stepped around the real problem. How in hell did she think she could teach a kid to swim without the use of his legs? That everyday reality ground into Seth’s soul like fine glass beneath a boot heel.

  Pippa shrugged. “Neither am I. And he’s right. He’s six-years old and other kids his age get spring breaks. I’ll admit, I think school should be year-round, but on a modified basis. Study in the mornings, learn other things in the afternoon, maybe.”

  She didn’t look at Chad for his reaction. Seth shifted his shoulders uneasily beneath her steady gaze. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw his son hunching up for a tantrum. He didn’t need a tantrum right now. He really wanted to finish the damned book, but that was too much to ask.

  Before Seth could respond to either his assistant’s challenge or his son’s frustration, Pippa swung her chair around and pointed her pencil at Chad again. “One word, and I’ll dunk you in the pool headfirst. Let me handle this, okay?”

  Chad’s pointed little face glowered back at her. He crossed his skinny arms in unconscious imitation of Seth’s stance. But he shut up.

  Amazed, Seth almost smiled at the standoff. If he couldn’t see the pencil in her hand, he’d think she held a gun on the kid. Maybe she was a witch. Aware that her attention had switched to him, Seth crossed his arms tighter until the muscles of his shoulders strained at his shirt seams. He knew his effect on women. With satisfaction, he watched her gulp and glance away. So, witches weren’t totally immune to human nature. She was as aware of him as he was of her. That soothed his temper appreciably.

  “You were saying?” he asked pleasantly.

  She shot him a glare that said she not only knew what he was doing, but she didn’t intimidate easily. “I’m saying it wouldn’t hurt to take him out to the pool and teach him to float. You’ve got all that expensive concrete out there for some reason. You might as well put it to use.”

  “Are you offering?” The argument wiped all thought of Dirk and Natalie from Seth’s mind. His uncontrollable imagination flashed images of his assistant cavorting about the swimming pool in a bikini. Without a bikini. He was a damned sight more human than she gave him credit for. Maybe she could turn her libido off upon command, but he couldn’t. Since Pippa’s arrival, his baser urges had edged out his concentration to the extent that he’d even included a sex scene in his book.

  She shrugged. “I can keep him from drowning, in any event. I can’t promise more than that. The next candidate for therapist is coming tomorrow. We can ask her if she teaches swimming.”

  Seth frowned as he imagined the blond Amazon from the other day cavorting about his pool in a bikini. The image had a strange tendency to wear leather and carry whips and chains.

  “Can I, Dad, please? Please?”

  Chad’s eager plea dispelled any further evocative fantasies. Seth rolled his eyes upward, then had a stroke of genius. Just to prevent Pippa from realizing he was enjoying this, he nailed her first. “How do you plan to answer the phones while cavorting about the pool?” Damn, he hadn’t intended to let that part about cavorting slip.

  It didn’t arouse her suspicions. She pointed at the voice mail button. “Your calls can survive an hour without me. We’ll need to wait until the fog burns off anyway. No one calls at lunch. I can take the cordless out if you want to yell at me for anything.”

  “You don’t think I’ll trust you with my son in a swimming pool without my supervision, do you? I don’t remember lifeguard training on your resume.”

  Ha! Score one for him. She glared at him as if she wished he’d drop through the floor and straight to hell. Seth had perfected his implacable facade decades ago. Her glare bounced right off it. Inside, he smiled in satisfaction. He’d get away from the phones, from the confounded business plan, and take his writing pad and sit in the sun for a while. And drive his assistant as crazy as she was driving him.

  All things considered, the day had taken a promising turn.

  ***

  Pippa refused to let her employer’s glowering presence annoy her. In fact, with a little manipulation, perhaps she could turn him to her own purposes.

  It would be much simpler if she could just sit here in the warm California sun, basking in the heat off the lovely cobalt-blue tiles, soaking up rays like a sponge, but she was well paid to work a
million hours a week. So, work she would. Sort of. She could still enjoy the sun and sparkling water and Chad’s delighted laughter.

  Beneath the concealment of the rippling water, she adjusted the position of her hide-all, one-piece bathing suit. She’d never had exhibitionist tendencies. She’d always had more male attention than she needed, and deflecting it was second nature to her. But Seth’s masculine interest aroused a self-consciousness she’d never before experienced. She’d seen his frown when she’d appeared in her knee-length cover-up. She wasn’t certain if her unfashionable attire or her less than twiggy build had inspired that scowl, or if it was just his usual ill humor. She just knew that frown awakened an awareness of the size of her breasts and hips that she didn’t like to acknowledge.

  So she stayed in the pool at Chad’s side, where Seth couldn’t see her. As she showed Chad how to hold his breath and put his face in the water, she caught a glimpse of her employer scribbling furiously in his notebook. She would breathe a sigh of relief except she knew she had to have his attention to accomplish her goal.

  Talk about your conflicting emotions. Pippa grimaced, held her nose, and floated facedown so Chad could see what she wanted him to learn.

  Chad yelped, and she shot back to her feet again.

  “Idiot!” she scolded, grabbing him by his armpits and pulling him back up again. “Wait until I’m looking before you try that.” She held him over her arm and pounded his back until the water he’d swallowed spurted back up.

  Chad squealed and lashed his arms in protest until a shadow blotted the sun. He hastily shut up and Pippa sighed. The Grim Reaper had a bad habit of dampening high spirits.

  Squinting, she glanced up at the figure towering over the pool, then realized she really shouldn’t have done that. Now that she had her head craned upward, she couldn’t look away. Gad, in that brief swimsuit, Seth Wyatt looked like something off a movie screen. Wide, bronzed shoulders, lean torso, taut abs—mentally, she skipped the part encased in spandex and admired muscled legs that went on forever. With legs like that he could have been an Olympic skier or runner....