Blue Clouds

by Patricia Rice

  A sound from the outer office roused him.

  Probably Pippa. Ridiculous name. He shoved away from the desk. He didn’t need her rattling around and disturbing his concentration.

  He found her examining the framed book covers Miss MacGregor had arranged around the room. He hated the things, but Mac regarded them as some sort of trophies. He suspected she considered herself two-thirds responsible for his success. Miss Cochran, on the other hand, seemed to regard the gruesome artwork with revulsion.

  Even though he’d slipped quietly behind her, she sensed his presence. Without turning around, she pointed at a particularly striking black cover with a mummy’s head eerily lit from the inside. “That’s physically impossible, of course,” she informed him coolly. “The skull would disintegrate if unwrapped and the wrappings would catch fire. They’re highly flammable, you know.”

  Seth had never given it any thought. “That book wasn’t even about mummies. The blamed cover artist just had a thing for them.”

  He’d told her not to wear perfume, but he caught a whiff of some elusive scent. He knew all the expensive fragrances, had learned to recognize the exorbitant French designer perfumes Tracey and his ex-wife favored. But he couldn’t identify the light, herbal scent wafting around him now. The fragrance was provocative, especially as she turned and gazed up at him with those devastatingly long-lashed eyes. He felt as if he stood on the edge of an unfathomable pool, teetering on the rim.

  “I won’t read them,” she announced firmly. “I’ll have nightmares. I can type without reading and run spelling and grammar checks with the software, but I don’t think I can edit them, as Miss MacGregor does. You didn’t mention anything about editing when you hired me.”

  That was because he preferred dissociating Tarant Mott from Seth Wyatt. Still, her declaration irritated him. He’d hired an executive assistant. Assistants did editing. “If you can work in the real-life nightmare of a hospital, Miss Cochran, surely you can manage my books. They’re only words, after all. They won’t hurt you.” It had taken him years, but he’d learned to be brutal with people. They would walk all over him otherwise. Still, he winced in regret as she stiffened at his words.

  “I quit working the emergency room for good reason, Mr. Wyatt. I’m incapable of developing the hard shell necessary for coping with that amount of human tragedy. It’s probably one of the reasons I ended up in administration instead of on the wards. If I have nightmares, I want combat pay.”

  The little gold digger meant to screw as much money out of him as she could. He hadn’t thought those big innocent eyes could hide that much greed, but she’d succeeded in driving her price up to exorbitant heights just by blinking her long lashes.

  Considering what else he might get for his money, Seth let his gaze drop from her face to the rest of her luscious little body. She wasn’t the willowy model type like Tracey. She stood barely higher than his shoulder. But the atrocious polyester suit curved in all the right places. Heated blood surged to his loins at the thought of peeling back that red jacket and finding what lay beneath. He hadn’t meant to approach her, but she offered major temptation to a starving man. And obviously, greed ran high on her list of priorities. He had lots of experience with scheming women. He could handle it.

  “What other services must I pay extra for, Miss Cochran?” he asked cynically, expecting her to name a price.

  Her eyes narrowed. “I think I have more than enough duties on my roster already, Mr. Wyatt. Continue looking at me like that, and I’ll remember everything I ever heard about the law against sexual harassment.”

  To Seth’s astonishment, she swung around and brushed right past him, walking out the door without another word.

  Damn, but he’d just been rejected by a hick from Nowheresville.

  That was just the inspiration he needed to create murder and mayhem.

  Chapter 7

  “She’s filing another custody suit, Seth,” the voice over the telephone warned. “I just received the papers this morning.”

  Seth buried his hand in his hair and pulled. “She hasn’t taken advantage of the weekends the judge granted her,” he said through clenched teeth. “What pretext can she use?”

  “We’ll find that out in court, but it sounds as if she must have new evidence against you to try this stunt again. Have you taken to drinking in public, picked up a gay lover, something I need to know?”

  Seth knew Morris meant to be funny. Someone should have warned him that lawyers shouldn’t tell jokes. Swinging around, he stared out the window at the front lawn. He’d seen the red Mazda spin up the drive half an hour earlier. He’d heard Chad’s howls of rage halt shortly thereafter. He hadn’t seen any sign of his new assistant arriving at her desk, but his gratitude for the silence had put him in a lenient frame of mind. He bit down on his pencil now as giggles floated through the hall outside.

  “I don’t even leave Chad with a baby-sitter, for pity’s sake. Listen to me! I don’t even swear anymore. I gave up smoking. I don’t drink. I’m with my son more than any other parent in the entire country. She can’t say I’m an unsuitable father. There’s not one blamed thing she can pin on me. She must have someone willing to falsify evidence. Get a mole in her lawyer’s office, Morris. Find out what’s going on.”

  Seth tried to control the red rage throbbing through him as the lawyer continued the conversation. He turned back to his computer screen and scanned his e-mail. He clenched and unclenched his fist around the pencil. He reached for a toffee and crunched it in two as soon as it hit his tongue. He still wanted to punch something.

  She couldn’t have Chad. No lying, scheming, two-timing bitch would get her hands on his son. She had no proof that he’d had more than one drink that night. She had no proof that his recklessness had driven that car over the cliff. But he had proof enough that Natalie and her layabout new husband needed his money, that they had lied and schemed to get Chad before, just as they lied and schemed to do it now. His ex wanted revenge, but that bastard of a husband of hers wanted money. Seth wondered if Natalie knew how much of her funds her lover-boy had gone through. He’d kept close watch on them over the years. One thing his father had taught him, never take your eyes off the enemy.

  As he hung up the phone, Seth heard screeches from the front lawn, and he swiveled in his desk chair to look outside again.

  A bathing-suit-clad nymph cavorted on the lawn with an equally scantily attired Chad. Seth dropped the pencil in his hand as his son swung his wheelchair on the paved drive, aimed his water gun, and sent a shrieking Miss Cochran running after him with a similar gadget. She must have stopped and bought a water gun of her own.

  For a few seconds, Seth sat there in blank incomprehension. He’d never seen Chad racing his wheelchair across concrete before. He’d never seen him in just shorts, his skinny arms wielding a toy gun like a professional while he punched the electronic buttons of the chair with a dancer’s skill. Seth blinked in pure disbelief before his temper wrapped a stranglehold on him, and he jumped from his chair, roaring.

  ***

  Pippa saw the Grim Reaper flying through the front doors first. Wearing his usual daytime attire of black shirt and chinos, he didn’t look quite so dangerous this morning. With a grin, she yelled to Chad, “Here comes Bad Bart! Bust him, Buster!”

  Shrieking with manic glee, Chad swung his chair and sprayed a tidal wave across his father’s broad chest while Pippa charged up from the side and aimed for her employer’s head. Within seconds, the Reaper looked more like a drowned rat than a dangerous monster. A mad drowned rat.

  “What the devil do you think you’re doing?” he roared, more at Pippa than his son.

  Unstoppable, Chad squirted him again, smack in the belly this time. Pippa tried not to admire the result of soaked cotton clinging to a taut abdomen.

  “The hose, Bart!” she yelled. “Secure the hose!”

  Not too slow for a man obviously clinging to his last shred of temper, Wyatt dashed for the hose they
’d used to refill their guns and shot it full blast at Pippa. To Chad’s shrieks of delight, Pippa d6dged and fled behind the wheelchair. Heaven only knew what the water would do to the electronics, but exhilarated, she didn’t care. She’d accomplished what she’d set out to do—made Chad laugh.

  Chad shrieked and tried swinging the chair in circles so he could chase Pippa off, but she danced around behind him, using him as a shield.

  “Don’t let Bad Bart get me, cowboy! I’m just a helpless female, remember? You’re obliged to protect me.”

  A burly black man appeared from the rear of the house, and the maniac gardener materialized, cackling, from the shrubbery. To their amusement, Chad got off a head shot, hitting his father squarely between the eyes.

  “We win! He’s deader than a doornail. Bury him on Boot Hill, pardners!” Pippa called to their audience. She thought she might need their protection shortly. Obviously, plain ordinary old water didn’t cool her employer’s hot head.

  “Haven’t you ever heard of water shortages, Miss Cochran?” Seth asked ominously as he dropped the hose and stalked closer.

  “We’re pumping it from the pool,” she replied indignantly. “Just ask Mr. Brown. He set it up for us. If we can’t swim in the blamed thing, we might as well use it somehow.”

  “I want to go swimming, Dad.” Chad chose that moment to throw his challenge into the ring. “Pippa says she can teach me.”

  “Her name’s Miss Cochran, and she’s supposed to be sitting at her desk right now, working.” Seth swung around to confront their audience. “Just like the lot of you. I’m not paying you to stand there gawking.”

  The big man crossed his arms over his massive chest and glared back. “You fired me, remember?”

  “So, you’re rehired. Go unplug this blasted hose. Then you can take Miss Cochran back to town when she’s finished packing.”

  Uh-oh, Pippa crossed her arms over her chest in imitation of the chauffeur. Chad instantly set up a howl that should have alerted half the valley of an approaching storm. She knuckled him on the head to shut him up, and he shot her a resentful glare over his shoulder.

  “It’s only a little after one, Mr. Wyatt,” she informed him coldly. “I made good time getting back from the airport. If I choose to use my lunch hour playing with Chad, you have no reason for complaint. Besides, I finished your chapters this morning.”

  She had a moment of triumph while the mighty Seth Wyatt regrouped. Then his menacing eyes narrowed and his cutting voice ended her brief victory. “Chad is highly susceptible to pneumonia. Overexertion, overexcitement, and cold water on top of a chest cold will have him in the hospital. You’re a nurse, Miss Cochran. You should know better.”

  “If he exercised more, his lungs wouldn’t be so weak,” she retorted. Knowing she was right in this didn’t quite ease her guilt. Yes, Chad should exercise. But she probably hadn’t chosen the best time or place. She did know better. She was just too wrapped up in making the child like her.

  Chad prevented any further reasonable confrontation. “I want to swim!” he screeched. “I want to swim! I want to swim!”

  His face contorted into the red rage of an infant, and his hands bunched into fists as he pounded the controls and sent his chair flying toward his father. Hitting the edge of the pavement, the chair tipped, propelling Chad outward. Seth leaped to his rescue, catching him just before he hit the ground. Oblivious to his near disaster, Chad pounded at his father’s shoulders, screaming at the top of his lungs. Deep-set eyes glared their rage at Pippa as Seth lifted his son and endured the pounding without a flinch.

  “You have half an hour to pack and get out of here, Miss Cochran.”

  “You and Chad have the rest of your lives to suffer, Mr. Wyatt,” she retorted. She had nothing to lose now. She might as well say everything that needed saying. “I’m a licensed professional. I’ve had ten years’ experience in nursing. I have seen children in wheelchairs. I have seen grown men in wheelchairs. They are not cripples. They do not need to be wrapped in cotton batting. They can swim, play basketball, enter races, do almost anything anyone else can do. Your treatment of him is the next best thing to child abuse.”

  She spun on her heel and stalked up the drive before he could lambaste her with any further tirades. If she had to surrender, she would do it with all flags flying.

  * * *

  Chad’s high-pitched shrieks of outrage reached renewed heights.

  Seth hung on to his twisting, squirming, screaming son while he watched Miss Cochran’s bewitchingly curved rear end clothed in spandex parade up his front stairs and into the house. She probably dripped a trail of water across Nana’s neatly polished floors, but his mind wasn’t focused on that any more than it was on his son’s screams or Pippa’s bathing suit. Only her last words had registered fully, and his thoughts gnawed on them furiously now. Child abuse. She had accused him of child abuse.

  “Anything else you need in town when I go in?” Doug asked dryly from behind him. “Or am I packing my bags, too?”

  The child in Seth’s arms wept openly now, clinging to his neck and sobbing as if his heart would break. She’d accused him of child abuse. He’d watched over Chad every single day of his life, hired the best tutors, bought the most-recommended educational toys, provided Chad with everything a child’s heart could desire. How could she possibly accuse him of child abuse?

  Seth wanted to wring someone’s neck. He didn’t know how else to react to the emotions raging through him. He needed to punch something, kick something, fire someone. Anything to release the frustration threatening to explode through his skin.

  He turned and glared at Doug. Doug had been his friend since college. As much of a friend as he’d ever had, anyway. He didn’t have real friends. They’d shared drinks together. Seth had helped Doug cheat so he could pass a course and stay on the team. Doug had given him free passes to the games. Seth had pulled Doug out of the gutter, cleaned him up, and given him a job after he’d lost his NFL position. Doug quit once a week. Seth fired him every day in between. They never talked about their problems. Men didn’t.

  Seth dropped Chad into Doug’s arms. “Dunk him in the pool, then take him back upstairs.”

  Giving Seth a doubtful look, Doug took the sobbing boy, threw him over his shoulder, and jogged down the path around the house. Seth could trust Doug with the boy. He wasn’t so certain he could trust Miss High-and-Mighty Cochran.

  Stalking toward the house, belatedly realizing he was soaked from head to foot, Seth headed for a showdown.

  ***

  Pippa jumped a foot as the door behind her slammed open. Still furious, she had only gone so far as to locate her suitcase and throw a drawer of newly purchased underwear into it. Too blind-mad to think, she hadn’t bothered dressing, hadn’t even thought about it. Until the door snapped open and Seth Wyatt stood there.

  That was all it took to make her realize she stood in his stylish mansion, in his impressive suite of rooms, wearing nothing but a dripping bathing suit. Unaccustomed to that kind of awareness of herself, Pippa debated turning around. Maybe if she ignored him, he would go away.

  Not bloody likely. Grabbing her polyester nightshirt, the one that imitated silk, she jerked it over her head, blessing Meg for making her buy it. Setting her jaw, she swung around.

  She could see rage in the way Seth’s black brows pulled together in a straight line and his jaw clenched so tightly that the muscle jerked over strong cheekbones. She couldn’t imagine why he was here unless he meant to dismember her personally and ship her back to town inside her suitcase. But he clung to the doorknob as if it were a life raft and remained where he was.

  “What do you mean, child abuse?” he roared.

  Pippa blinked. She couldn’t remember throwing that particular insult, but she supposed she might have. She’d been too angry to think clearly. As he was now. Warily, she threw open another drawer and removed her new collection of shorts. She’d sent for her old clothes. She wondered what wou
ld happen if they showed up on Seth’s doorstep long after she was gone.

  “People who tie their children to beds and don’t let them out of the house are child abusers. They’re arrested in any state that I know of,” she informed him coolly.

  “That’s ridiculous!” His roar should have rattled the windows, but they had obviously been built for men like Wyatt. Not a single pane shivered. “He has a chair. He isn’t tied to the bed. I had the house remodeled for the chair. Where in hell else would he go that he can’t get there with the chair’.’”

  Pippa stopped and stared at him. “Is that really what you think? That he has everything he needs right here in this house? Where did you grow up, Mr. Wyatt? Inside a computer?”

  “I grew up here! It’s a perfectly normal home. If it was good enough for me...”

  She shook her head. “...it’s good enough for your son. And here I thought California had progressive thinkers. You make me feel right at home. Go away, Mr. Wyatt. I’ve got to get dressed if I’m leaving here in half an hour.”

  “If Natalie is paying you to spy on me and tell the court that I’m abusing Chad, so help me, I swear I’ll see you never work again in any state in this country!”

  This was well beyond her patience or ability to understand. Pinching her eyebrows together in an effort to quell the headache that threatened, Pippa said politely, “I have no idea what you’re talking about, and right about now, I don’t care. I just want out of this madhouse before I make a bigger fool of myself. Leave me alone so I can go in peace.”

  “The devil if I let you go so you can take my son away from me! Whatever she’s paying you, I’ll pay you more. Just tell me what the hell you mean about child abuse. I’ve given Chad everything I know how to give. What else can I possibly do?”

  Somewhere behind the roars of rage Pippa thought she actually detected a note of pain. Surprised, she glanced at the man in the doorway again. He still looked like the Grim Reaper, like an iron man untouched by any human emotion except anger. She must have imagined the plea in his voice because she wanted to hear it. He was just seeking some means of controlling her or his son or the person called Natalie. She knew better than to fall for those tactics. Still, if there were any chance...