Blue Clouds

by Patricia Rice

  “Maybe. But from where I stand, it looks like everyone is still hurting. I’m a nurse. I like healing wounds.”

  He nodded, reluctantly accepting that assessment. “It’s all childish nonsense, actually. It happened long ago and there’s no reason at all for it to carry on, but people here have long memories, and apparently, so does Wyatt.”

  “A man who’s been knocked down once too often tends to be wary of returning to the ring.”

  She thought she’d phrased that cleverly considering she knew nothing at all about it. Dawson’s snort of disagreement warned she wasn’t half so clever as she’d hoped.

  “Not Wyatt. Damn...” He hastily rubbed his mouth as if he could take back the word. “Excuse me, but even the memory of that summer irritates. I really don’t think we should go into it.”

  Pippa handed him a plate of cookies. Ronald Dawson looked like someone who appreciated food. He was remarkably well padded for a man his age. “If the memory irks you this much, just imagine what it does to Seth. And try imagining what would happen if we could erase it somehow. Maybe he’d even consider rebuilding the printing plant.”

  He contemplated the possibility but looked dubious. “I don’t know what he’s like today, but the kid I remember would have chewed nails before forgiving us. Damn, but he was the most obdurate, hardheaded...”

  Pippa shrugged cheerfully. “He hasn’t changed much. But he’s twice as smart as the average bear and is capable of learning.”

  “Now, that I can believe.” Giving up the fight, Dawson sipped his coffee and nibbled his cookie. “He used to hitch rides into town from that mansion in the hills. We didn’t know it at the time. He just showed up at a Little League ball practice one spring in a beat-up old produce truck. He was probably about nine. When the coach insisted that his parents had to sign before he could join the team, he argued until he was blue in the face.”

  A grin slipped across Dawson’s face at the memory. “I’m telling you all this after the fact. You’ve got to realize none of us knew it then. But Seth went into town and apparently bought himself a father to come sign him up for the team. I figure it was some drunk from the pool hall who needed a little cash. From that moment on, we all thought he came from the poor side of town, that his daddy was a drunk, and that his name was Bob Hill.”

  Pippa could almost see it. With all those unruly dark curls, garbed in his usual careless style, Seth would have looked the part he played without even trying. Add the smudges of dirt a nine-year-old collected, especially after walking and hitching for twelve miles... The pain and affection she felt at the same time terrified her. She wanted to pick up that lonely child and hug him. But Seth had honed himself into a formidable weapon no intelligent person would consider hugging.

  “Anyway, he didn’t know beans about baseball. He’d never held a bat, never thrown a ball. He got dumped onto the worst team in the league. Nobody wanted him. He didn’t care. He was so damned determined to learn that he fought with the coaches for a place, fought with anyone who tried to push him out, fought with anyone who looked at him crooked. And the boy couldn’t fight.” Dawson grinned and shook his head. “He knew about as much about fighting as he did baseball. We all creamed him at one time or another. He had a mouth on him that wouldn’t stop. You just wanted to punch it.”

  Pippa held her breath so as not to disturb the story, but the image of that tousle-headed little boy burned in her heart, and she could barely listen to the remainder of the tale.

  “He was small, which didn’t help. The bigger kids used him for a punching bag. He took a bite out of Taylor Morgan’s hide once, broke his nose another time, but Seth always lost the fight. Taylor was bigger and had more friends to jump to his rescue.” Dawson refilled his coffee cup. “But things started changing about midsummer. By then, Seth had learned the basics pretty well. He had an eagle eye for that ball. He didn’t have a lot of power behind the bat, but he could hit the blamed thing every time. He carried the worst team in the league into a respectable position. He still had a nasty mouth on him, but he didn’t get beaten up quite so often.”

  Pippa could imagine the young Seth insulting every kid crossing his path. She’d seen kids like that, ones who craved attention and found it only by riling others. He still carried a lot of that hostility and anger around with him. He’d learned to vent it in more acceptable ways perhaps, but it constantly simmered beneath the surface. In a child, it must have been explosive.

  Warily, Pippa eyed Seth’s mother sitting placidly on the other side of the room, sipping tea from Meg’s best china. What had his parents done to him?

  “Anyway, by the end of the summer, everyone pretty much accepted Seth as a wise-mouthed kid from the wrong end of town who could hit any ball thrown at him. Taylor and his crowd despised him, but they were on the best teams and their paths only crossed occasionally. Not until the tournament at the end of the summer when Seth’s team actually made the finals did it get really nasty.” Dawson grimaced. “I ought to leave it at that. I feel like I’m telling tales out of school.”

  Pippa shook her head until her hair bounced. “You can’t stop now. You’re just reaching the place that really matters. I don’t think Seth resents the fighting and getting beaten up. He simply took those lessons and learned from them. He took karate in college and picked up who knows how many other strange martial arts along the way. He’s taught me a few moves that would bring down King Kong.”

  “I don’t even want to think about Wyatt with actual combat training. He broke enough teeth and bones when he didn’t know anything.” Dawson glanced wistfully at the door but continued his tale. “There’d been a strike at the printing plant all summer. Seth’s father had refused to allow a union and had hired Mexican laborers when his employees walked out. Hostilities were raging. There’d been attempts to sabotage the plant and the trucks going in and out. Maxim Wyatt retaliated by pulling all his business out of the local banks and stores. Maxim Wyatt was one tough old man. He had no conscience at all that I could ever discern, even from a kid’s viewpoint. The town despised him. It wasn’t any wonder that Seth pretended he was a poor kid from the wrong side of the tracks.”

  He leaned back against the sofa with a sigh and glanced at Pippa. “Can’t you see where this is heading without me telling you?”

  “Oh, I can see where it’s heading all right. But I want to know the specifics. How many years have gone by since then? Twenty-five? More? And everyone is still suffering for it? No, I have to know everything.”

  “I can’t see how it will make a difference.” He shrugged and continued. “The first game of the finals and Seth’s team played Taylor’s. Taylor’s father actually showed up to watch him play. He never came to the other games. He sat out there in his fancy business suit and tie as if he were still in the bank’s boardroom. Most of our fathers worked at the plant or in one of the stores, so with the strike and all, they had plenty of time to attend games. None of them wore suits and ties. But we never thought it strange that Taylor’s dad wore suits. Kids have their own odd hierarchies. As far as we were concerned, Taylor’s crowd went to the country club and ranked highest. Seth didn’t have a crowd. He was on the bottom of the totem pole.”

  “Okay, I understand that only too well. My dad worked in a factory and I wore hand-me-downs most of my life. I get the picture.” Pippa hastened him on, knowing by the way conversation was dying on the other end of the room and gazes were cast their way that the meeting was about to break up.

  “So, Taylor’s dad watched Seth smash every ball Taylor threw him out of the park. Seth was either having a really good day, or he was so pissed at Taylor that fury alone gave him strength. Or both. Anyway, Mr. Morgan was about to strangle on rage by the end of the game. He kept asking everyone who Seth was, where he’d come from, and so on. I think he was trying to get him disqualified. But then, sometime in the last inning, he got a really good look at Seth, maybe when he slid into home and actually faced the crowd. Seth’s isn’t t
he kind of face one easily forgets.”

  Yeah, tell her about it. She could just see that wicked grin beaming up at the crowd, those light gray eyes shining from a tanned, dirty face, taunting people with his prowess. And the curls were a dead giveaway.

  “Morgan recognized him. Seth didn’t attend the public schools and no one from town ever got invited out to the Wyatt mansion, but Morgan was the town banker. Somewhere along the way, he’d been out to the house, and he’d seen Seth. He probably swallowed his teeth in shock, but he didn’t waste time in letting people know who the boy was.”

  “And that made a difference?” Pippa asked in amazement, even knowing the answer. People were so perversely inexplicable sometimes. He was just a kid. He wasn’t responsible for what his father did. But people wouldn’t see it that way.

  “It made a difference the way Morgan told it. That was the last game Seth played. He showed up for the next, but the coach wouldn’t let him play, wouldn’t even talk to him. The rest of us shunned him. Maybe we were just a little bit scared of him and all the power he represented. Maybe we were scared about how we’d treated him earlier. I don’t know how it all boiled down. I just know none of us spoke to him again, and his name was dropped from the roster. He sat there all dressed in his uniform—and who knows how he got it washed between games—and watched the game from the same bench as the rest of us, but he wasn’t with us, if you know what I mean. We shut him out. Completely.”

  Pippa sighed. “And he’s been shutting you out ever since in retaliation?”

  “Well, to be fair, he tried a few more times. We were the cowards, not Seth. It couldn’t have been easy. I don’t think his parents ever knew about his hitchhiking. He didn’t go to school with the rest of us, but I ran across him in a few places where kids hang out. He was always alone. But that wasn’t the problem.”

  He took a deep breath and looked troubled. “There was a fire at the printing plant, and another at the bank, and for whatever reason, people started looking at Seth with more than suspicion. When the police hauled him in for questioning, that was the end of that. His father found out and the next year he got shipped out to boarding school.”

  Pippa could almost understand Seth’s antipathy for Garden Grove. Even she was beginning to think twice about helping these narrow-minded morons. But all she had to do was remember Mikey and the other children, and she knew this stupid war had to end. Seth and Taylor were grown men now. They could put aside their differences for the sake of the children.

  “Thank you, Mr. Dawson, I appreciate your insight. I hope I’ll have your support when I try to make Seth see reason. I don’t think you carry the same hostility for the Wyatts as the rest of the town.”

  He set his cup down on the tray. “My father had no connection with the Wyatts, so I was pretty much an outsider in all this. My one regret is that I didn’t have the gumption to stand up to Taylor and his crowd. I still can’t. The school board depends too much on their wealth and support. Don’t expect too much from me, Miss Cochran.”

  “Well, that’s certainly honest. I can respect that. Maybe Seth is right and Garden Grove doesn’t deserve his help. But I have friends here. I’ll try.”

  She hoped she’d hit him where it hurt, but Ronald Dawson was too experienced at concealing his own opinions behind the bespectacled facade of schoolteacher. His loyalties lay with the school board and keeping his comfortable position. She really couldn’t condemn the man. She’d like to, but she wouldn’t.

  The meeting broke up shortly after that. Pippa waited for Doug to put in an appearance. He’d refused to be trapped into attending the meeting this time, using the excuse that he had to patrol the “perimeters” for the sake of caution. Though she looked over her shoulder for Billy whenever she left the house, she still despised the idea of being baby-sat every minute of the day. Lillian apparently took it with equanimity. She merely glanced at her diamond-studded watch and looked around for Meg.

  “I think the meeting was highly successful, don’t you, dear?” she said, addressing Meg as if she were a teenager.

  “I think we’re making progress, Mrs. Wyatt,” Meg answered cautiously. “We almost have agreement on the renovations so the contractor can give us estimates.”

  “Yes, I believe once my son sees how well this works out, he’ll be more agreeable to lending a hand in other projects. He’s terribly stubborn sometimes.” She said this in her loftiest tones, as if stubbornness were an attribute to be commended.

  Pippa grinned and winked at Meg. “That means he’s too busy to bother with anything that doesn’t interest him. It’ll work out. I’ll just push papers in front of him and demand his signature until the thing gets done.”

  “Phillippa!” Shocked, Lillian glowered at her. “That’s no way to conduct business.”

  “That’s how Seth conducts business.” Unrepentant, Pippa shrugged.

  “Then perhaps I should spend more time in the office. His father would never have done things that way.”

  “I could just about vouch that Mr. Wyatt never did things the way Seth does,” Pippa agreed with enthusiasm. “And I didn’t even know Mr. Wyatt.”

  “Well...”

  The door popped open and Doug filled the doorway. “Ladies, if you’re ready, I apologize for my tardiness.”

  Lillian didn’t even glance in the chauffeur’s direction as she gathered her bag and notes. Pippa, however, heard something in Doug’s voice she didn’t like. She scanned his impassive face, noted a slight puffiness in his jaw, sensed the tension in him, and balked.

  “What happened?” she demanded.

  Doug sent her a scathing look. “Let’s just get in the car, all right?”

  “Not until I know what happened.”

  He wrestled internally with the problem, but he wasn’t the complicated man that Seth was. He spat out the answer without hedging it.

  “I got your old boyfriend locked up.”

  Chapter 28

  Gulping from his coffee cup, Seth stared at the words on his computer screen with disbelief. He couldn’t believe he’d written that. He had definitely never intended for the story to take that turn, but the damned characters had grabbed an opening and run with it. The really damnable thing about it was that it made sense. He’d have to go back and rewrite the beginning, add a scene in the middle, shuffle some chapters around....

  Shit.

  Slapping down the cup, he stood and paced the Oriental in the outer office. Now that he didn’t have a computer, he perversely wanted to write on one, and Pippa’s was the only one available besides the one he hadn’t unpacked upstairs. She must have sprayed hers with her perfume. He could smell the herbal fragrance everywhere.

  Pippa. It was all her damned fault the book had done a hundred-eighty-degree about-face. He’d hired her to simplify his life, not complicate it. He should have known better. Hell, even Chad had known better. Or rather, Nana had. A young, attractive female in the house was bound to be an unwanted distraction. A complication he didn’t need.

  He glanced at his watch and cursed again. Where the hell were they?

  How long could a blasted meeting last? He’d sent Doug with them. What could happen between here and town?

  Remembering a night when he’d driven from his mother’s house toward home and nearly lost everything, Seth battled a moment’s terror. The police would have called him if there’d been an accident, wouldn’t they?

  Maybe he should get out the Jag and hunt them down. But he couldn’t leave Chad alone. Nana slept too soundly at the back of the house. He could wake her. But if he did, it would mean he was succumbing to a panic attack.

  What the hell was she doing to him?

  Phillippa Cochran was just a secretary, an assistant, a nobody who would go away once her job here was done. He’d never worried if Miss MacGregor didn’t show up on time.

  Miss MacGregor had never been late.

  Shit. Double shit. Seth looked at his watch again. Five minutes later than the last t
ime he’d looked. He glared at the glossy cover with the mummy’s head on the wall. Pippa had stuck a mustache on it. A mustache.

  He grinned. He couldn’t help it. She had the sense of humor of a wicked child. Irrepressible, irreverent, hopelessly unsophisticated. He couldn’t imagine either Tracey or Natalie even looking at these macabre covers, much less vandalizing them. Miss MacGregor would have heart palpitations.

  Pippa Cochran had stuck her tongue out at him and his pretensions.

  She’d thrown open the doors and cleared the air with fresh mountain breezes.

  She was making him crazy, and not just with lust, although that would do it faster than anything else. His damned hormones had gone into overdrive, and he still hadn’t finished the book. The deadline was only a week away.

  How could that be? Had Pippa been here over a month already?

  The quiet sound of expensive tires cruising up the drive relieved his temporary insanity. They were home. He could go back to work. He had enough adrenaline pumping through his blood right now to rewrite that opening chapter. To hell with women and their complications.

  He heard her open the office door a few minutes later, but he was burning up the keyboard with a heroine screaming bloody murder and chasing the gopher. He couldn’t look up.

  She slipped quietly away without disturbing him.

  Which disturbed the hell out of him.

  Seth battered the scene into shape, inserted a few more adjectives for good measure, resisted her pull for as long as humanly possible. He printed the chapter, scanned the page, scribbled some marginal notes for Pippa to fix in the morning. He backed up his work, sipped his cold coffee, and scanned the office for something else to occupy his mind.

  Cartons of debris lined the walls, waiting to be hauled out by the construction workers in the morning. The glass on one of his art prints had shattered and no one had bothered taking down the print for repairs. He let his mind roam back to the package, searching for the label. He couldn’t remember one. He’d just assumed it was from his publisher because all unopened packages on his desk were from his publisher. But this time, there’d been one for Pippa. Which one had he opened?