Blue Clouds

by Patricia Rice

  Exasperated by her train of thought, Pippa returned her attention to Chad, wrapping his fingers around the pool’s edge again.

  “Hi, Dad,” Chad piped nervously.

  “Are you listening to Miss Cochran?” Seth asked flatly.

  “He’s doing just fine,” Pippa reassured him. “It’s only three feet of water here. He won’t drown.” She’d say anything to get the man back in his chair and away from the edge of the pool.

  “He can’t stand,” Seth reminded her calmly. “He can drown in a bathtub.”

  “He has arms and a brain,” she snapped, frustration and a modicum of fear overcoming her usual good sense. “And I’m not likely to stand here and watch him drown.”

  Possibly to prove her point, Chad released his grip on the edge and promptly sank to the bottom.

  Pippa dropped below the water’s surface, grabbed the boy again, and hauled him upward, swearing mentally at the child’s perversity. Like father, like son. The two of them made a great pair. She really ought to have her head examined. Maybe she was a closet masochist.

  Flinging hair from her eyes as she stood up with Chad pressed tightly in her arms, Pippa nearly hit her head against Seth’s square jaw.

  Standing midwaist in the water, he hauled the boy from her arms and glared at her from so close that Pippa thought he might pierce holes in her skull with just the power of his eyes.

  “You’re fired,” he gritted from between clenched teeth.

  The anger radiating off all that bronzed, wet skin should have produced steam. Thick black hair molded his skull and dripped down his neck. He needed a haircut, Pippa thought irrelevantly. She crossed her arms to glare back at him but regretted the gesture instantly as Seth’s gaze dropped to her chest. She could almost feel his hands where his gaze rested, and a tingling she hadn’t felt in a long time took residence in her lower belly, irritating her even more.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” she snapped in an effort to distract him. “He’s fine. Didn’t you ever sit on the bottom of the pool when you were a kid?” Defiantly, Pippa reached for Chad.

  The boy hugged his arms around her neck and wriggled to escape his father’s hold.

  Seth’s expression darkened. “No, I never sat on the bottom of the pool when I was a kid. I never learned to swim when I was a kid. And I don’t see any particularly good reason why Chad should try now. I think it’s time we went in.”

  She couldn’t believe her ears. He had this grand mansion and enormous pool, and he’d never learned to swim? He had all the dreams she’d never had, and he’d never taken advantage of them? Was the man mad? Or was there something here he wasn’t telling her?

  She’d minored in psychology. She would figure it out sooner or later. Kissing Chad’s cheek, she set him in neutral territory on the pool’s rim.

  Then she confronted her nemesis. “Do you know how to swim now?” she asked.

  He blinked at the change of direction but recovered rapidly. “I taught myself the basics,” he admitted, watching her warily.

  “Fine, then I’ll teach you the rest. I had swim classes at the public pool, and the teachers said I was half eel. But I’ve not had the advantage of physical therapy classes, so I can’t do more than teach Chad the basics. Once we find a therapist, she can teach Chad and I can teach you. Agreed?”

  She knew she had a tendency to take bigger bites than she could chew. It came from never having enough while growing up. She got greedy sometimes. This time, she’d even managed to scare herself. But she wouldn’t let him know that. She put her hands on her hips and dared him to back down.

  He stood a head taller than she and probably weighed sixty pounds more. He could throw her over his shoulder and into the deep end of the pool without straining one of those well-defined biceps. For a moment, Pippa detected a gleam behind his relentlessly glaring eyes, but then his gaze dropped to the rise of her breasts above the swimsuit, and she remembered why she was really afraid of him. And it had nothing to do with his greater strength. The tingling sensation intensified, and she nearly turned tail and ran.

  “You will teach me to swim?” he asked as if he hadn’t heard right.

  “Breaststroke, crawl, whatever.” She tried to shrug offhandedly but she didn’t think she pulled it off very well.

  “Breaststroke,” he repeated, the amusement not quite lightening his tone. “In exchange for—what?” The inquiry was obvious in his voice.

  “A therapist who can teach Chad.” She couldn’t remember a man ever looking at her in quite that way before, as if she were a morsel he could gobble up in one bite.

  Recovering some of her equanimity, she slam-dunked the goal she’d had in mind from the first. “One who can teach all the kids. Here, if necessary.”

  That socked him between the eyes. He backed off immediately.

  “We’ll see,” he replied noncommittally, pulling himself up on the side of the pool and reaching for a towel.

  Chad grinned at Pippa. “Does that mean Mikey can come out here and learn with me?”

  “Yeah, kid, that’s what that means.’’ Triumphantly, Pippa met her employer’s threatening glare. Just let him deprive his son of this privilege. She dared him.

  “The breaststroke,” Seth replied evenly. “That’s what I want to learn.”

  He walked off, leaving Pippa to wonder who had won this particular battle.

  She had the awful suspicion it wasn’t her.

  ***

  “I wish to speak with my son, Miss Cochran,” the voice from the phone spoke haughtily. “And I will not be put off another minute.”

  Pippa glanced at the clock on the desk. After nine. Well, at least the woman wasn’t spewing steam. She sounded all too together, actually, as if she could casually whip Pippa’s head off through the wires. But Seth was working.

  Throwing a glance at the closed office door, Pippa hesitated. Considering the impassioned quality of the work that appeared on her desk every morning, she knew Seth needed this time to himself to create the brilliant nightmares that had made him famous. She didn’t want to disturb him.

  But she didn’t want to alienate his mother, either. She wished she knew the woman better. Chad needed a female in his life. A grandmother would do nicely. But the relationship between mother and son was obviously a rocky one. Of course, any relationship with a hermit like Seth would be rocky.

  “He’s writing, Mrs. Wyatt,” Pippa whispered into the phone. “I can’t disturb him.”

  “Nonsense. I only wish a minute of his time. I’ll not be put off again. My son will hear about it if you keep me from him any longer.”

  Pippa thought rapidly. She shouldn’t do this. She shouldn’t interfere. But shoulds and shouldn’ts had never stopped her before. “I really shouldn’t say this, Mrs. Wyatt,” she said confidentially, “but he’s scarcely had time to write lately, what with this business over the school board and physical therapists and all. That’s why he doesn’t have time to visit.”

  “Physical therapists?” The voice rang with disbelief.

  “The one he interviewed was extremely attractive,” she murmured mischievously.

  “Attractive.” Flat statement, followed by dry tones. “Perhaps I underestimated you, Miss Cochran.”

  “Everybody does,” Pippa replied cheerfully. “Shall I tell him you called?”

  “You do that.” Seth’s mother hung up.

  Wondering what dynamite charge she’d lit now, Pippa switched on the voice mail and answering machine, switched off the computer, and wandered off in search of a snack. Playing with dragons made her hungry.

  “Hi, Nana, got any milk and cookies?” she asked, discovering the housekeeper still puttering around the kitchen, her blue wig slightly askew. The formidable old woman intimidated her more than Seth ever had, but she tried not to show it.

  The cook snorted and cast her a knowing look. “Seems to me, someone already ate the cream.”

  All right, so Seth didn’t have the corner on enigmatic in this
household. Innocently, Pippa opened the refrigerator and removed the milk carton. “Cream is fattening. Low-fat milk will suffice.”

  “He does not like meddling,” Nana warned.

  “He doesn’t like meddling, he doesn’t like people, and he resents the hell out of me. So what else is new?” Well, at least the woman hadn’t bitten her head off yet. Pippa reached for the cookie jar.

  Nana slapped a slab of chocolate cake on the table. “You need more flesh on your bones. Men like their women to look like women,” she said with a slight German accent.

  Pippa stared incredulously at the thickly frosted cake. No one had ever told her she needed more flesh on her bones. Far from it. But the cake oozed temptation. “I’ll eat carrot sticks the rest of the week,” she promised fervently, reaching for a fork.

  She expected a rebuttal from Nana, but when she looked up, the old woman was gone. Damn, but this house was full of spooks.

  And the spookiest of them all joined her shortly after Nana’s disappearance.

  He’d crumpled his hair into a nest of curls, shoved his shirtsleeves above his elbows, revealing the powerful muscles of his forearms, and looked as if he’d just awakened from a bad dream. At the sight of Pippa, Seth glared. At the sight of her cake, his eyes widened.

  “Where’d you get that?”

  “Nana.” She licked the fork contentedly. She tried not to notice as his gaze focused on her mouth, but her stomach did a back flip and plummeted to her shoes. The man was definitely good for her libido, if not for her psyche. “I thought you were working.”

  “I’m out of coffee.” He glared at her as if it were her fault, then began searching cabinets for the cake.

  “Try the refrigerator. This stuff’s rich as sin.”

  “I’ve always considered poverty a sin, not riches.” Locating the cake in the refrigerator, he placed it on the counter and carved out a slice. Not bothering with a plate, he held it in one hand and bit into it. With the other hand, he produced the makings for coffee.

  “Interesting concept. ‘The meek shall inherit the earth’ doesn’t apply? Or ‘It’s more difficult for a camel to pierce the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the gates of heaven’?”

  “That’s not what I meant, and you know it.” He poured water into the coffeemaker.

  “My, cranky, are we? Maybe you’ve had enough coffee for the evening.” Pippa rose to put her plate in the dishwasher.

  Without any warning at all, Seth grabbed her wrist and hauled her toward him. Electricity arced between them. Seth’s eyes smoldered with the same heat pulsing through her, but fear simmered equally between them.

  “Don’t push me, Pippa. I don’t respond well to force.”

  “Neither do I.” Shaken, she snapped her wrist free. She’d been pushed around once before, and didn’t like it. Despite the electricity, she refused to believe this was any different. “Shall I leave?”

  Panic instantly replaced fire and Seth retreated a step. Awkwardly, he brushed his knuckles against her bare arm. “My mind’s still on that scene I’m writing. I apologize if I’ve offended you.” With what could have been embarrassment, he turned away and concentrated on the coffeepot.

  With surprise, Pippa tipped her empty glass into the dishwasher. He’d been writing a scene, not seeing her. She should feel relief, not this odd sense of disappointment. “That must be some scene,” she murmured, easing toward the door.

  “It is now,” Seth muttered under his breath. “One hell of a scene.”

  Chapter 12

  “Handle it. That’s what I pay you an exorbitant salary to do,” Seth replied dismissively, not raising his gaze from the computer screen. As graphics formed on the screen, he jotted notes with one hand and hit a keyboard command with the other. The graphics reformed into a different pie chart.

  “I’m just an employee,” Pippa asserted, but she could see he wasn’t listening. If she were two feet taller, she might be able to reach over his enormous desk and grab him by the throat, but without that physical advantage, she could only throw her voice. She understood why Chad resorted to temper tantrums.

  After the cake incident last night, she was more inclined toward tantrum than physical confrontation, too. Her skin still tingled. “What the hell are you afraid of, anyway?” she demanded. “That the school board is made of three-headed gorgons who’ll eat you alive if you show up?’”

  Seth snorted and hit the keyboard with a few more strokes. “Close enough. I haven’t got time to deal with this, Miss Cochran. It’s your problem, you handle it.”

  She had already learned that when he called her “Miss Cochran,” she might as well talk to a steel door. His vulnerability where his son was concerned had given her the impression that he might possibly be human and amenable to reason.

  But the man who sat behind the desk manipulating industries around the world had no such humanity. He was a walking, talking machine. She didn’t even want to consider his dark side, the one that created man-eating gophers on paper. The man was certifiable.

  He hadn’t invited her to take a chair, but Pippa took one anyway. If she had to play the part of psychiatrist, she’d do it from a comfortable position. “The school board won’t take my word that you’re willing to spend a small fortune on a crumbling gym just so the physically challenged kids in the community can have therapy classes. They might buy it if I told them you simply didn’t want to be bothered with strangers out here, but I thought maybe I should get in a little PR and keep that side of you hidden. If I’m to act in your place, you’ll have to give me power of attorney.”

  Seth glanced up long enough to give her his cyclops stare. “Power of attorney? What the hell do you know about powers of attorney?” He went back to the computer before she could reply.

  Gee, it was a pleasure talking to the side of his head. Pippa considered throwing the tin of toffees at him to get his attention but decided irritating him wouldn’t accomplish her purpose. “I am a thirty-year-old hospital administrator. What do you think I know of powers of attorney?”

  That jerked his head back around again. She thought she almost caught a gleam of interest in his eyes.

  “Thirty, hmm? Old age creeping up fast, isn’t it? And if you’re such a damned good administrator, what are you doing hiding out here in the back of beyond?”

  That cut a little too close to the bone for comfort. Pippa ignored the sharpness of his perception. “I’m administrating. There’s a legal-forms program on the outer computer. I can check and see if there’s a form that would work. It’s just a matter of specifying how far my powers extend. Give me numbers. That’s all the board wants.”

  Seth crossed his arms on the desk and leaned forward. “Just wave my magic wand and produce money?”

  “This wasn’t my idea!” Irate at the sarcasm she recognized in his expression, Pippa lost her usual cool, again. She had definitely abandoned her Pollyanna persona working for this man. “You’re the one who won’t go in and talk to them. I don’t know what it would hurt for you to show your face at one meeting, shake a few hands, assure them that this is all legal and aboveboard, whatever. But if you won’t do it, you’ve got to give me power to do it. Or send your damned lawyer. He ought to have something more productive to do than hassle your ex-wife.”

  Uh-oh. She might have stepped a little far out of bounds with that one. Seth looked as if steam might emerge from his ears at any minute. Of course, with Seth, it would more likely come out of his mouth.

  “I can see why you lost your last job,” he said dryly.

  Well, that wasn’t precisely steam. Warily, Pippa sat back in her chair.

  He didn’t say anything else. He bounced his pen on his desk, apparently lost in thought. Or maybe it took time for Jekyll to replace Hyde.

  “No, I don’t see any reason I should have to deal with them,” he finally said. “They’ve never done anything but stand in my way or throw sticks and stones in my direction whenever they had a chance. I don’t see why
I should have to put up with their narrow-minded intolerance. I’ll have Morris draw up a legal power of attorney. You handle it.” He swung around and returned to his pie charts.

  Pippa knew she’d been dismissed. She knew she should be content with what little he’d given her. It just wasn’t in her nature to settle for less. Sometimes, she almost understood why Billy beat up on her. Sometimes, she could kick herself. But she couldn’t just leave the topic where he’d dropped it.

  “I think there may be a failure to communicate here,” she offered tentatively.

  He ignored her.

  “The people in town think you’re standing in their way.”

  He didn’t raise an eyebrow.

  This wasn’t productive. Considering her alternatives, Pippa stood up and walked out of Seth’s office. He didn’t seem to notice her retreat.

  Sitting down at her computer, Pippa. grinned. She’d never particularly liked computers. She was a people person. But she’d learned to manipulate machines to make them do what she wanted. She typed a few paragraphs, hit the send key, and waited.

  The fax in Seth’s office started chattering.

  Maybe now was the time to take a lunch break. Crossing her fingers, Pippa casually strolled from her desk into the corridor.

  Doug leaned against the wall in the foyer, his massive arms crossed over his chest as he idled away his time waiting for Chad’s tutor. He looked up and blinked twice at her expression. “What you been up to now and do I need to get out of the way before he steamrolls over both of us?”

  “You’re seriously underemployed, my friend. You ought to be the one in that office dealing with him.” Pippa jerked her head in the direction of the doorway she expected Seth to emerge from any minute now. “I’ll just go sit in the kitchen and admire the view. You can be the wall between us.”