Blue Clouds

by Patricia Rice

  Glancing down at her own less than svelte figure, Pippa considered doing the same, then forgot about it as Chad shouted in triumph from the shallow side of the pool.

  “You’ve got it, cowboy!” she yelled back as he clung to the edge of the pool and shook water out of his eyes after traversing the width on his back under his therapist’s watchful eye.

  “That’s still not swimming,” Seth murmured as he reached her side.

  “Knowing how to float can save his life, and it uses muscles he wouldn’t otherwise be using. Besides, it gives him confidence. All children need to know they can accomplish what they set out to do.” Pippa focused on the child in the water and not on the: man beside her.

  “And how do we teach him to withstand the blow to his self- esteem when he realizes most children can do a great deal more than he can ever hope to do?”

  The bitterness in Seth’s voice surprised her into looking up at him. She had thought to see pleasure at his son’s accomplishment, Instead, his mouth had a grim set, and his eyes wore a tortured look she longed to erase. She didn’t know why he was beating himself up like this, and she had no business asking.

  She was an employee, and she’d better start behaving like one. If she could just treat Seth Wyatt like one of the doctors she’d scorned in her prior life, she’d be all right. But somehow, in her flight to California, she seemed to have lost that protective shield.

  “Breaststroke?” she asked in her best clipped nurse’s voice.

  “Good a place as any to start. Did you ever discover who sent those toffees?”

  With a clean, swift motion, he dived into the sparkling waters with every apparent expectation that she would follow him to continue their conversation.

  With his dark hair plastered to his sculpted skull and long neck, he resembled Errol Flynn in an old pirate movie. Maybe she should suggest he grow a mustache. Unable to dismiss the smile that image wrought, Pippa dived in after him, then stroked slowly in circles around him where he stood.

  “UPS only has the address of the package pickup in L.A. Who knows you eat the nasty things?”

  Seth shrugged and broke into a strong, if less then elegant, crawl across the pool. “Almost anyone who knows me. Lawyers, accountants, CEOs. I would have thought any of them would have had the presence of mind to include a note with their name on it. What’s the point of buttering up the boss if he doesn’t know who’s doing it?”

  “Someone probably has an inefficient secretary. And obviously insufficient knowledge of your habits if they sent the wrong brand. You need to find out who it is just so you can fire them.” Pippa grinned as her thoughts jumped one step ahead of his. She had begun to understand the demented man. Scary thought. As he caught up with her in the section of the pool where she could stand, she demonstrated the breaststroke.

  He repeated the motion carefully. “They’d have to have access to the place in England where I order them. Only my English associates recognize the brand.”

  “Ooo, so snooty you can’t eat the American kind,” she mocked, before striking out across the pool again, showing him the pattern of the kick and stroke.

  His natural coordination lent his awkward first strokes a certain grace as he followed her. Damn, but he was good, Pippa observed as the tight little knot inside her spiraled tighter. Muscles rippled beneath bronzed skin glistening with water diamonds, but it was the wary look in Seth’s eyes as he sought her approval that floored her completely.

  “You catch on quickly,” she admitted as he halted beside her. “I don’t know why you wanted me to teach you. You could probably swim an ocean without need of any fancy strokes.”

  For just a moment, his eyes lit from within, and then that wicked smile danced across his lips. “If you have to ask why I wanted you to teach me, you don’t deserve an answer.”

  That couldn’t be a come-on, not from Seth Wyatt. He didn’t know she existed as anything beyond one of his office machines. She stared at him incredulously until a shout from beyond the hedge jerked her back to reality.

  “Miss Cochran! You out here? Durwood’s come up real sick. Maybe you’d better take a look at him.”

  Bursting through a break in the greenery, Doug halted, sweating, at the pool’s edge. Finding Pippa, he gave her a hand and half hauled her from the water.

  “It’s those damned toffees you gave him,” he spurted. “The damned fool must have eaten half the box. He’s spewing his guts all over the place.”

  Frowning at the idea of a grown man getting sick on candy, Pippa followed Doug, and Seth loped after them.

  Chapter 16

  “Toffee poisoning! That’s a new one,” the doctor scoffed as he scribbled a prescription. “He’s probably just allergic to something in the candy coating. Some people are. Give him this to settle his stomach. Don’t let him eat anything for a few hours. He really ought to be in an institution, I hope someone realizes. He’s dangerous to himself, if nothing else.”

  Pippa scanned the prescription the doctor handed her, grimaced, and shoved it into her purse. “If one looks at it the right way, he is in an institution. At least he’s gainfully employed and a useful part of society. We just can’t watch over him twenty-four hours a day.”

  “Neither can an institution,” the doctor agreed. He switched his focus from Pippa to the man beside her. “Good to meet you, Mr. Wyatt. Heard a lot about you.”

  “Don’t doubt that. How much do I owe you?” Seth replied without inflection, reaching for his wallet.

  “Heard about your proposal for the gym. You wouldn’t happen to have time for lunch some day this week, would you? I have a few ideas you might not have considered....”

  “I’m booked, but submit a proposal to my assistant, if you like. She’s handling the matter.” Brusquely, Seth laid out the required bills and strode out.

  Pippa shrugged at the doctor’s amazed expression. “If they’re suggestions for making money, forget it. He won’t be interested. If they’re suggestions for helping the kids, he’ll consider them. But I make no promises. He has a warped view of the world.”

  And she had some glimmer of why Seth’s view was so warped as the doctor nodded and left for his his next patient. Everyone wanted something from Seth. No matter where he went or what he did, someone had their hand out. Half the town wanted the printing plant back. Meg and George wanted the gym for Mikey. The first few therapists she’d found had wanted money, power, or sex, or some combination of them all. Even Doug and poor Durwood wanted the haven Seth’s estate offered. So did she, for that matter. When was the last time anyone had offered to give Seth something in return?

  She pondered that realization all the way back to the house, with Durwood groaning in the front seat beside Doug, and Seth beside her in the backseat, glowering beneath his black cloud. She’d never had much acquaintance with rich people, not of Seth’s standards, anyway. The doctors at the hospital had been wealthy far beyond her means, but even in their arrogance, they didn’t wield the kind of financial power Seth had. Doctors might dangle gewgaws in front of the nurses, but Seth could dangle clinics and printing plants and security for untold hundreds. Maybe more. She didn’t fully comprehend the extent of his wealth. But she was beginning to understand its limitations.

  “I’ll take Durwood to his room and see he takes his medicine,” she offered as the car stopped in front of the garage. Not that she would have called it a garage. It was bigger than the house she grew up in. She’d like to get her hands on that candy. Maybe George knew a chemist who could analyze it. “You go look in on Chad.”

  Seth merely shook his head, and opening the front car door, hauled the still groaning Durwood from the seat. “No, I want to make certain the rest of that candy gets thrown out somewhere he won’t find it, or he’s likely to eat it again. I can get the medicine down him.”

  “I still think someone ought to look at that candy....” she called after him. He didn’t turn around.

  He’d assumed his tough, arrogant pose ag
ain. He hadn’t had time to brush his hair as it dried, and a dark curl cascaded across his forehead as he practically carried his small gardener toward the stairs to the garage apartment. Had he lived on the streets as a kid, he would have been a gang leader. She’d have to get her hands on the candy some other way.

  The whining cries of Lillian Wyatt as Pippa entered the house reminded her of the other man behind Seth’s tough exterior, the one who couldn’t handle his own household. She could fix that. She could do something for him, even if he wouldn’t acknowledge it.

  ***

  Hearing his mother’s voice in his outer office, Seth almost swiveled on his heels and escaped out the front door. But the incident with Durwood and the clinic had put him well behind schedule. He needed to return to work.

  He’d successfully avoided any interaction with his mother for years. He could manage a stroll past her now. As Pippa said: Chad needed a grandmother. He couldn’t exactly remember her arguments as to why, but he could accept that kids needed grandmothers. He barely remembered his, but they were one of his more stable childhood memories. Maybe kids didn’t see things in quite the same manner as adults.

  Shoving open the office door, he thought to just nod and hurry back to his private sanctum. Instead, he halted in the doorway and stared at the amazing scene within. Had he encountered circus dogs and clowns, he could not have been more surprised.

  Pippa had set up a card table in the reception area. He didn’t doubt it had been Pippa who had done it. It would certainly never have occurred to his mother. On one side of the table Chad had parked his wheelchair. He sat there now, industriously sliding envelope closures over a damp sponge to seal them.

  The more amazing sight was his mother on the other side of the table. Garbed in flowing turquoise silk, her artfully tinted white hair neatly coiffed, her ears and throat shimmering with heavy silver, Lillian Wyatt carefully applied self-sticking stamps to the envelopes Chad handed her. She then handed the envelope to Pippa, who applied address labels.

  Neither Chad nor Lillian looked up as he entered, but Pippa did. Flashing him one of those Pollyanna smiles of hers, she gestured at her assembly line. “I thought it made more sense to do it ourselves than to send them out.”

  Nothing made more sense. He didn’t even know what they were doing. Didn’t care. He had never—not ever—seen his mother sitting complacently at a table doing something besides playing cards and smoking. In the early days it might have been coffee instead of cards in her hands, but never had it been work of any type, manner, or form.

  He didn’t know how to react. He had an odd urge to take the remaining side of the table and join in the family fun. Once upon a time he’d glued himself to the television and watched old reruns of sixties programs where families sat around the supper table together and talked of the day’s activities. At the time, he’d thought that was how families were supposed to work and resented the hell out of his for not meeting the norm. Since then, he’d learned differently, but that old ache remained. He wanted to be part of a real family.

  Stupid, utterly irrational thought. His meddling assistant was simply playing another of her hocus-pocus tricks. Shortly, Lillian would grow bored and wander off in search of a cigarette. Chad would grow impatient with something that wouldn’t go right, and he’d have a tantrum and fling the table across the room. Seth didn’t want to be there when it all fell apart. He’d just store this idyllic image and run like hell before it exploded.

  “Whatever makes you happy,” he muttered, striding for his office as fast as his legs could carry him.

  “Coward!” Pippa called cheerfully from behind him.

  Exactly. Seth closed the door and leaned against it. She was taking his entire universe and turning it upside down. He had to put a stop to this. Maybe Mac’s father had died quickly instead of lingering. Maybe he could bribe his real assistant into returning immediately. Things had to return to normal or he’d start believing he belonged down this rabbit hole.

  He snickered at the image of his mother as the March Hare and Chad as the Mad Hatter. He wished he could paint. What a scene that would make!

  But he had business to conduct: a crisis in the Japanese plant, a pending merger in New York, and dozens of routine calls needing his attention. He didn’t have time to imagine March Hares and Mad Hatters. If Lewis Carroll had spent more time tending business instead of rowing boats, smoking dope, and admiring little girls, he’d not have had time to create impossible worlds either.

  Seth sank into his desk chair and attacked the mountain of paperwork waiting. Tonight, when all the phones stopped ringing and everyone went home, he could lose himself in the world of his imagination. That time was his and no Pollyannas could steal it.

  Laughter rippled from the outer room. His attention half on the voice on the other end of the line and half on Chad’s giggles, Seth forgot who he was calling. Shaking his head to clear it, he tried to focus on the conversation. Finally giving up on the details of the merger his CEO in New York was spelling out, he spat out a few curt commands and assigned the matter to his legal firm. He didn’t give a damn who got what stock option.

  His father should never have left him the business. He had no head for it, no desire for it, no ambition for it. He had the brains for it, maybe, but that was about it.

  Picking up the phone to return the next call, he heard another round of laughter in the outer room. He still couldn’t believe it. Pippa was definitely a sorceress of some sort. Or maybe they were keeping a pitcher of martinis under that card table. Firmly, he pounded in the proper numbers.

  As soon as he hung up, his door opened and Pippa’s head popped from behind it.

  “Did you get those toffees away from Durwood?” she whispered over the chatter from behind her.

  “I did.” Seth threw open his desk drawer and held up the box. “They even smell nasty. Why in the devil would he put the things in his mouth?” Relieved for this excuse not to think about the Japanese crisis, he opened the lid and offered her a sniff.

  She shook her head and refused to enter his inner sanctum. “I’ll take your word for it. But you’d better not leave them in your desk. Chad might take a fancy to them, or you might forget and pick one up. I think they’re tainted. I’ve never heard of allergic reactions to toffee that resulted in intense vomiting.”

  “Well, the syrup of ipecac you forced down him didn’t help,” he reminded her. “The poor guy will have to eat for a week to make up for it.”

  “He behaved more like a victim of poisoning than someone with an allergic reaction. It seemed like the sensible thing to do at the time. He was in pain. The doctor didn’t see that because Durwood was feeling better after getting all that stuff out of his stomach. I just think it’s awfully odd that you receive a box of candy with no return address and it made your gardener sick. Let me take it in to George. Maybe he knows someone who can do a chemical analysis on it.”

  Seth grinned. “And I thought I was the one with the imagination around here. Who would want to poison me? My competition wanting to eliminate me from the bestseller list?” Even as he said it, he remembered the muggers at the bar, but he dismissed them summarily and continued, “My voracious instincts for business have annoyed one too many printing companies? My publisher thinks I’ll start my own company and put them out of business?”

  “In case you haven’t noticed, this world is full of nuts. Humor me. Give me the box.” She stuck out her hand. “Then come have tea with us. We’re having a party.”

  Seth laughed out loud. He couldn’t help it. The Dormouse had just invited him to tea. It felt good to laugh, as if someone had just filled him up with helium and let him drift. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d really laughed. Maybe never.

  Pippa wore a peeved expression and seemed prepared to slam the door on his rude reaction. Seth waved his hand to prevent it until he calmed down, handing her the candy as a peace offering.

  “It’s a private joke,” he sputtered fina
lly as a tentative smile returned to her face. “I’m still trying to decide whether you’re Pollyanna or the Dormouse.”

  She grinned. “Dormouse? I’ve heard the Pollyanna bit, and I promise you, I am very definitely not Pollyanna. I’ve seen the bloody side of life too often to believe everything will always come up roses. But Dormouse?”

  He assumed his best stoic executive expression. “Or Pippi Longstocking. Quite possibly Pippi Longstocking. She had a definite mischievous bent to her actions.”

  “Larcenous is more like it, so I don’t thank you for the comparison. Will you have tea with us or not? Nana has made chocolate chip cookies.”

  “Those are the only kind of cookies Nana knows how to bake.” Seth followed the path of least resistance. Tea and cookies—even with his mother—seemed much more appealing than a paper crisis in a Japanese printing plant.

  Of course, some niggling voice at the back of his mind said tea and cookies with Pippi Longstocking was an even stronger attraction.

  Sometime, when he had the time, he would have to see if Pippa was seducible.

  The possibility added an extra edge to the day, a certain anticipation he hadn’t felt in a long time. He knew better than to seduce an employee, of course. He would never really do it. But just the thought of it would keep him occupied for hours. He had lots of experience in imagining what he would like to have. He had limited experience in obtaining it, since very little of what he wanted could be bought for coins.

  As he sat down at a shabby card table littered with envelopes and sipped at weak tea, nibbling cookies with his son while his mother looked on approvingly, Seth wondered if he’d just reached one of his imagined goals: sitting down at the table with his family.

  Glancing askance at his impish assistant and finding her contentedly licking chocolate off her finger, he felt the impact of an unexpected blow to the gut.

  It had taken Pippa Cochran to open a door he’d thought long since sealed shut. It had taken his nuisance of an assistant to make one of his dreams come true.