Without warning, the door swung open and Dirk stalked through, his dark gaze scanning the situation, registering it correctly.
“At least find his shoes, Miss Cochran,” he said dryly, without further greeting. “We wouldn’t want him breaking any toes if he decides to use those weapons of his.”
“I hate early risers,” Seth grumbled at the interruption, grabbing the back of the hospital gown and limping toward the bathroom.
He ached in every muscle, but the one that ached the most had nothing whatsoever to do with the accident. A cold shower would take care of that one. He didn’t know what the hell he would do about the woman causing it.
Somehow, he had to get her out of here before Pippa became still another victim in the list of disasters his life had become. It irritated the hell out of him that he couldn’t pound his fickle memory into line, but he was determined to remember that voice.
Finally, he accepted the knowledge that someone was out to kill him. Now all he had to do was figure out who.
He wasn’t a mystery writer but even he could assume that the person with best motive was a prime suspect.
Chapter 34
“They’d have hired some young street punk to leach the brake line. That’s probably why they picked that bar the first time. The punks there know how to do that sort of thing.” Dirk shoved his hands in his pockets as he theorized. “This time, they chose a snazzy end of town where everyone plays ‘See no evil.’ No one will have noticed the kid or remembered him. Damn, I wish we had fewer people with motives, but I figure we can eliminate most of the women. They wouldn’t know that bar.”
Wrapped in only a towel, still dripping as he dried his hair, Seth limped out of the shower. “Clothes, Pippa, find me some clothes. I want to get back to Chad.” He’d ripped off the wet ankle bandage.
“Yes, sir, Mr. Bossman, sir.” Instead of snapping to attention, she blatantly admired the wide masculine chest revealed above the towel. Seth Wyatt had the social skills of an orangutan but the form of a Greek god. She watched a trickle of water seep through the narrow band of dark curls on his chest, dimly aware that she’d shut him up.
At his silence, she glanced up and caught him returning her hungry look. He wanted her, but judging by his clenched jaw, he wasn’t too happy about it. Throwing the uncomfortable detective an apologetic look, Pippa relented.
“All right, I’ll find your clothes, but you’d better make it clear to the doctor it was against my better judgment.” She pushed out of the chair and waited expectantly for Dirk to move.
He didn’t. He balled his hands up in his pockets and glanced from Pippa to Seth. “If you really want to catch this guy before he seriously hurts someone, you’re better off staying here.”
Pippa froze. She knew instantly what Dirk was saying. He wanted Seth to act as bait for a trap. But Seth was in no shape for baiting traps. The man had just suffered a concussion and had been unconscious for twelve hours. He belonged in bed. She’d fully intended to bully him back to bed once they returned home.
“You don’t really think the jerk will show up here?” Seth asked incredulously. “Whoever it is believes in keeping his lily-pure hands out of it. He’s not likely to make a personal appearance now.”
“The way I look at it, the guy has to be desperate. He’ll figure you’re helpless here, and hospitals offer tons of opportunities for creative killers.”
Pippa slid into the chair as she watched the two men concoct a recipe for disaster. Except for the towel, Seth was naked. She could see the muscles rippling beneath bronzed skin. She could also see the livid bruises along his ribs where the air bag or steering wheel had punched him. Unconsciously, he favored his injured leg. She’d seen how he kicked with that leg. Normally, he could spin a sandbag with blows from that foot. He could barely stand on it now. The man was an idiot.
“Feeling suicidal this morning, are we?” she asked as Seth dropped the towel he’d used on his hair and ran his fingers through the still damp mop while he contemplated Dirk’s suggestion.
Both men turned and glared at her. She glared back. “He’s not Superman.” She gestured at Seth’s bandaged ankle. “He’s not made of steel. How in heck do you keep a desperate man from killing him?”
Seth turned to Dirk. “You’ll get her out of here?”
“Oh, that does it, that really snatches the prize. I’m the nurse. I’m the one who belongs here. And you want to send me away? I’m the only one with any brains in this party. If you think I’ll quietly disappear so some maniac can murder you in your sleep, you have more dust upstairs than my granny’s attic.”
Seth’s irritation defrosted slightly with a quirk at the corner of his mouth. “Your granny’s attic?”
“Shut up, Seth,” she grumbled, sinking farther into the chair and crossing her arms protectively over her chest. “It’s not funny.”
“Yeah, well, I haven’t got time to referee this argument,” Dirk said impatiently. “You want me to send someone up here to keep an eye on things? You’ll need an outside witness, if nothing else.”
Dirk had already assumed Seth was staying. He assumed right, apparently, Pippa realized as Seth made the arrangements for one of Dirk’s toadies to perambulate the halls. Dirk not only assumed Seth would stay, he assumed Seth could handle the situation with no more help than a lookout.
“What do you plan to do, shoot him with a hypodermic?” she asked, interrupting their scheming. “Why don’t you just let the police handle it?”
Dirk grunted and reached for the door. “I’ll have someone send up clothes. You’re so good with women, Wyatt, you handle her.”
“You’re supposed to take her with you, dammit!” Seth shouted as Dirk headed down the corridor.
The detective apparently had a pithy reply to that. Pippa was glad she couldn’t hear it. She remained where she was, plugged into the bedside chair, arms crossed, glaring at Seth in hopes he’d return to his senses. The accident must have addled what remained of his brains.
“Pippa, go home,” Seth said wearily, lowering himself to the side of the bed. “I’m not in any danger from someone who hires people to do his dirty work.”
“Yeah, you’re in more danger from yourself. Get back in bed. I can hear breakfast coming. You wouldn’t want the nurses to think you’re better and send you home so you’d miss all the fun, would you?” she asked sarcastically. Standing, she snapped his sheets back into place and punched up his pillows.
“Pippa,” he said warningly, but breakfast arrived in the company of the cheerful LPN, and he wasn’t given the opportunity to finish his sentence.
Figuring him safely occupied for the next half hour, Pippa stood up. She needed time to herself. She’d thought him nearly dead, and now here he was, asking to get killed. She didn’t know why she should care. It was his damned life. He made it obvious she had no say in it. She had given him that freedom. Stupid.
Grabbing her purse, she nodded at the dresser. “I brought your pajamas and toiletries. They’re in the drawer if you want them.”
She stalked out over his shout of protest. He’d have nurses in and out taking his temperature, blood pressure, filling water pitchers, and giving medicine for a while yet. If anyone wanted to kill him, they’d have to fight the staff to get at him. She had better things to do than watch other people do her job.
Standing in the corridor just outside Seth’s room, watching nurses and interns in white-soled shoes hurrying about their tasks, Pippa wondered what other things she had thought she should be doing. She didn’t work in a hospital anymore. She didn’t have any charts to complete, any medications to dispense. She didn’t belong here. She was an outsider, a visitor the staff must work around.
Even Seth didn’t need her. He’d hired her to take care of Chad. That was what she should be doing now, instead of standing here worrying her stomach into a knot over a man perfectly capable of taking care of himself.
Why couldn’t she be sensible and do what other women did—fin
d a nice man at school or church, someone with whom she shared common interests, marry, settle down in the suburbs, and have 2.3 children? But no, she had to fall for abusive police officers and bestselling authors who thought she was a professional nanny. Damn.
All right, so she was a head case. She’d have to learn to deal with that. She sure as hell couldn’t deal with it while panting and exchanging drool with her employer. That was a road to nowhere if she ever saw one. She’d already lost enough self-respect over her fall for Billy. She didn’t need to lose the remainder as Seth’s live-in convenience.
Oh, hell, that would mean leaving Chad, as well as plans for the gym, in Lillian’s uncertain hands. She’d have to leave Garden Grove and Meg and the kids. She didn’t want to. She didn’t have much choice.
She could go down to the personnel office here and put in an application. She didn’t know what it cost to live in L.A., but she wasn’t ready to return to Kentucky. From here, she could visit Meg, see how the gym was progressing, hear about Chad occasionally. She didn’t want to hear about Seth. That would only be rubbing salt in raw wounds. She had a feeling this wound wouldn’t heal easily.
Lost in morose thoughts, she didn’t pay attention to where she was going. She had some vague notion of finding something to eat, but she really wasn’t hungry. Seth might think the big strong macho male tactics would save him from a murderer, but someone had nearly killed him yesterday. If Seth had been in the hills instead of on the freeway, he could still be lying out there now.
And the murderer had no way of knowing that Seth was awake and had notified the police that someone was trying to kill him. After five years of going scot-free for what he’d done to Chad, he must be feeling pretty confident. The bastard.
Finding herself just outside the nurse ‘s break room, Pippa contemplated running in, grabbing some coffee, and heading back to Seth. The surly, arrogant bastard didn’t deserve her company, but he didn’t deserve to die either. So, she would let him mess with her mind a little longer. He already had her damned silly heart. She didn’t think she’d ever get that back. From experience, she figured she was better off without it.
“Did you see that new doctor? Isn’t he a hunk?”
A nurse obviously new to the business. Pippa snorted as she turned away from the break room. Doctors ranked right up there in temperament with Seth Wyatt—steel-armored tankers and nary a hunk among them. But then, what did she know? She’d almost married Billy.
As she started to leave, she heard a second voice respond.
“You want hunks, check out the multimillionaire in 305. Have you ever seen such sexy eyes? I thought I’d melt into butter when he asked me for more coffee.”
Sexy eyes. Right. The moron ought to see them when he was angry. Well, all right, so they were sexy then, too, Pippa admitted as she hurried away. The man had a corner on sexy. If he would exert himself to learn a modicum of social skills, he could have a harem.
Deciding she preferred Seth’s raw energy and blunt honesty to a movie star’s charm, Pippa gave up on herself and hurried back to his room. Dirk wouldn’t have had time to install his lookouts yet. The police hadn’t offered. Someone had to look after the idiot.
“Mrs. Wyatt? Mrs. Wyatt!”
Gradually recognizing the voice as that of the nurse who had walked in on them earlier, Pippa halted and turned around.
Puffing a little as she hurried up, the nurse caught her hand to her large chest and took a deep breath. “The doctor is examining your husband. He doesn’t want to be disturbed. Why don’t you go down and have a bite of breakfast until he’s finished?”
Pippa supposed there were still some doctors who dragged themselves out of bed at an ungodly hour to make their rounds. She hadn’t thought Seth’s high society doctor one of them, but she supposed Seth was too valuable a patient to lose, Pippa thought cynically.
“I’m a nurse. I won’t disturb them,” she promised, continuing down the hallway. She’d like to ask the doctor a few questions. Generously, she decided to refrain from asking that someone examine Seth’s hard head.
“Oh, no, Mrs. Wyatt!” The big nurse hastened to cut her off. “They’re prepping him for surgery. You really can’t—”
“They’re what?” Pippa shouted. Or tried not to shout. Panic edged into her veins.
“For the blood clot,” the nurse hastily explained as Pippa dodged past her. “There’s swelling. Surely the doctor—”
There wasn’t any damned swelling. She would have seen the signs. The doctor hadn’t mentioned it last night. There hadn’t been time to run a scan this morning. She didn’t know what the damned doctor had told the nurse, but Pippa wasn’t buying it. Blind obedience wasn’t her style. She had to see this for herself.
The nurse caught her arm and tried to steer her away. Pippa halted and stared her in the eye. “Dr. Graham is Mr. Wyatt’s doctor. Is that Dr. Graham in there?”
A startled expression spread across the nurse’s broad face. “No, ma’am, it’s the new specialist he’s called in. I don’t remember his name.”
The new “hunk” doctor. Panic threatened to leap full-blown into hysteria. She throttled it. There could be a mistake. She, better than anyone, knew mistakes happened.
The nurse holding her wasn’t any taller than she was, but packed twice Pippa’s weight in fat and muscle. Jerking her arm from the woman’s grasp, Pippa placed her hands on her hips and threw on her best authoritative disguise. “That isn’t Seth’s doctor. If you aren’t out of my way in ten seconds, I’ll call my lawyer, the hospital administration, and the police. And I can tell you right now, I never back down on my word.”
The nurse moved. Any mention of hospital administration put the fear of God in staff. Pippa had thrown in the rest for fun.
She didn’t enter the room gently. She slammed open the door, letting it be known far and wide that she’d arrived. The nurse behind her ran before she was blamed for the intrusion.
Garbed in the black silk pajamas Pippa had brought from home, Seth sat up against the pillows, the white bandage around his bronzed features appearing almost natural with the spill of rakish curls over it. She could tell that he was furious. He shot her a cursory glance at her abrupt arrival, then returned to arguing with the technician attaching the IV to his arm. Seth looked so damned sexy, Pippa almost lost track of her reason for storming into the room. But then she remembered the intruder had called himself a doctor, not a technician. Doctors did not attach IVs.
There was no good reason for anyone to attach an IV to Seth’s arm. She’d read his chart. He was taking fluids. He didn’t need more.
Marching in, Pippa grabbed the IV bag and read the contents. Sugar water. But remembering the poisoned candy, she dropped the bag and started to turn and glare at the man behind the surgical mask, prepared to add her arguments to Seth’s. Before she could confront him, a strong arm caught her around the throat and jerked her head back.
As she crumpled, Pippa heard Seth’s roar of rage.
Rack up one more mistake against her.
Chapter 35
Fury roared through Seth as Pippa’s eyes rolled back in her head and she crumpled to the floor. Red, murderous rage drove his arm from his side until he’d grabbed the so-called “doctor’s” neck.
The surgical mask fell away as Seth tried to throttle him. Even then, Seth didn’t immediately recognize Pippa’s attacker. The billowy surgical cap covering his hair and the malevolent expression warped any familiar demeanor, and Seth’s fury blurred his view of the world.
Only as his assailant spoke did Seth recognize with whom he struggled.
“You’re supposed to be dead, you bastard!”
Darius.
Seth tightened his stranglehold, but reaching up from a bed wasn’t an ideal position. And Darius had a hypodermic in his free hand. Seth didn’t want to contemplate what the needle contained, the needle Darius would undoubtedly have stuck in the IV and let drip while he escaped. Seth damned well wouldn’t let Dari
us off easy this time. Keeping one hand on Golding’s jugular, he tried to grab the needle.
Darius jerked free, and the hand with the hypodermic shot out. “We’ll do this the hard way, damn you!” he growled, grabbing for Seth’s arm.
Caught in the covers, Seth couldn’t kick his leg freely. He rolled over, groaning as he hit the bed bar against his cracked ribs, but the covers pulled free with his movement.
Darius dived across the mattress after him. “This is all your own damned fault, you realize,” he said as he grabbed Seth’s arm again.
“Isn’t it always?” Using what leverage he possessed from a prone position, Seth caught Darius’s wrist and twisted downward. The hypodermic hovered between them, twisting in their deadly arm-wrestling match.
“You must have nine damned lives. Why didn’t you die in that car!”
Seth didn’t ask which car and which time. The point was moot if he couldn’t get the needle out of Golding’s hand. He tried to slide out of the far side of the bed, but the damned railing got in his way. He should have had Pippa lower it.
Pippa! Darius had throttled her. What if he’d killed her?
Not Pippa. Not Pippa of the shining smile, the sunbeam who had converted his son from screaming monster to laughing child. He couldn’t let anything happen to her. And Seth knew as certainly as he knew his own name that if Darius killed him, he’d have to kill Pippa, too. No way.
With another roar, Seth twisted his assailant’s arm so fast he could feel the bones snap in Darius’s wrist. Darius screamed in agony, then screamed again and instead of pulling away, tried desperately to clamber up on the bed.
Holding his antagonist pinned against the bed in hopes of preventing escape, Seth found himself in the awkward position of backing away before Darius landed on top of him. “What in hell?”
Blue Clouds Page 31
