Blue Clouds

by Patricia Rice

  Maybe she should jog his memory just a little. “All right, but only on the condition that what happened last night doesn’t happen again. That was a mistake, remember. I don’t repeat mistakes.”

  Something danced in his eyes, but she didn’t know him well enough to trust it. For a moment, she thought she saw a flicker of regret around the corner of his mouth, but he nodded agreement.

  “If that’s the way you want it. I’ll do whatever it takes to keep you with Chad.” Again, something danced behind his opaque eyes. “But mistakes happen.”

  “Yeah, they get made. Don’t even think about it,” she warned, edging away as he raised his hand to touch her.

  He dropped his hand and grunted in disbelief. “How can I damned well not think about it?” he muttered, but obediently, he stayed put as she retreated behind her makeshift desk.

  Seth supposed he respected Pippa’s position. She had a professional reputation to maintain, and she was nothing if not a consummate professional. He watched as she bent over her work, jotting notes until her hair bobbed. All she needed was one of those jaunty little nurse’s caps to complete the image, although he really couldn’t see her wearing one. No matter how Pippa Cochran might dress, she couldn’t disguise the life and cheer brimming over in her eyes. It was that life and cheer he craved, like an addict craves crack. He was almost that desperate.

  But he wasn’t a weak man. He could resist temptation. She’d given him more than physical release last night. She’d given him back some measure of himself and an insight into how things could be, if he wanted to reach out and grab them. And he did. He wanted that circus she offered. He wanted laughter and jokes. And he wanted his son to share it, to live as he never had. Somehow, he would have it all.

  He wanted it all. That realization hit him by surprise, and Seth groped around the edges of it. Of course he wanted it all. Everyone deserved a little happiness and laughter. Nothing strange about that. He just hadn’t realized his life had been so bereft of them, that was all. And if it took Pippa to provide them, so be it. If he and Pippa hadn’t killed each other by now, they weren’t likely to later. Maybe he needed her constant needling to remind him of what he was missing. He could accept that. He wasn’t so narrow-minded as to reject all change.

  It was just a matter of planning, Seth decided. He could do anything if he applied his mind to it. Checking Chad and discovering he’d actually drifted into sleep, he smiled. The “witchy woman” had cast a spell over his son as well as over him. “I’m going down to the office for a while. Call me when he wakes.”

  Pippa nodded with evident relief. So much for his effect on the opposite sex. At least this one didn’t fawn all over him in a pretense of love just to get at his money.

  Not that Natalie had ever fawned over him, Seth thought with a mental snort as he took the stairs two at a time. She’d always complained he messed up her hair or her makeup, but then, she’d already captured him and hadn’t had to work at it.

  Wondering why his bewildering assistant didn’t play her advantages for all they were worth took Seth the final steps to the office. Any other woman of his acquaintance would have him wrapped and trussed in the tentacles of marriage after what had happened last night. He hadn’t even offered her protection. He’d never done that in his entire life.

  Alarmed at that thought, wondering if Pippa had been prepared and unable to believe she was the kind of woman who would have been, Seth stared at the tower of mail and packages on his desk. He couldn’t click his mind back to the work to be done. His thoughts spun like a gerbil in a wheel. She was a nurse. Surely she knew what she was doing. Hell, he knew what he was doing most of the time, but not last night. They must have both been drunk on wine, exhaustion, and relief. Or she was a scheming witch out to nail him with a paternity suit....

  He groaned and sank into his desk chair. He couldn’t think that of her. Yeah, he could, but he didn’t want to. There was no point in borrowing trouble, as Pippa would say. He groaned again. He was even beginning to think like her.

  Hell, if she threatened him with a paternity suit, he’d insist she marry him. That would serve her right. She could be trapped in this insane institution with him for the rest of her life.

  Satisfied with that solution, he reached for the first box. He liked opening boxes. The kid in him enjoyed seeing the first copies of his books off the press, or the cover flats or press kits or publicity gimmicks his publishers sent him. He’d start with the fun stuff before he started on the real work.

  Slicing through the top tape, Seth jumped at a resounding crash from the lawn outside. Reminded of the day Pippa arrived, he spun around and pushed his chair toward the window.

  The universe exploded around him.

  Screams. He heard screams. Unable to focus, Seth shook his head, trying to clear his oddly blurry mind. The screams paralyzed him. Needing to seek the source of those screams, he struggled to stand, only to discover he was lying flat on the floor.

  How in hell had he landed on the floor?

  The office door burst open just as it dawned on him that he was lying beneath the debris of his desk. Pens still rolled across the floor. A shard of something that could only be his computer lay on top of his chest. A sharp pain on his forehead warned he hadn’t escaped unscathed. He just couldn’t figure out what he’d escaped. Or if he had.

  The explicit curses roaring over his head told him Doug had arrived. Doug had an extremely colorful vocabulary when aroused, Seth thought idly as he brushed the computer shard off his chest. He ought to write some of those phrases down. Never knew when they would come in useful.

  “You stay right there. I’m callin’ the medics.” Doug stepped on Seth’s hand and held him pinned to the floor.

  Seth chuckled at Doug’s idea of aiding the injured. Twisting his wrist to grasp Doug’s ankle, he jerked.

  The big man stumbled and almost fell, but he caught himself and glared downward. “I’ll get you for that.”

  “Get Pippa instead,” Seth ordered. “I haven’t decided how many pieces I’m in. What the hell happened?”

  “How the hell should I know?” Doug grumbled, righting himself. “You’re the one covered in ’puter dust. Did the damned thing finally explode in your face?”

  Seth thought about it. He couldn’t remember turning any of his machines on.

  The women burst through the door then. He remembered the screams and struggled to sit up again. This time Pippa came along and practically sat on his chest. Seth eminently preferred her round rear end to Doug’s fat foot. He stayed put.

  “Get me a towel or cloth to stanch this bleeding,” she commanded, without any preliminary questioning.

  “Businesslike as always,” Seth muttered.

  “Shut up or I’ll think you’re delirious.”

  But he could see her quick grin as she applied the clean kitchen towel Nana handed her. He couldn’t be dying if Pippa was grinning. Her cheeks bunched up like a little cherub’s when she looked at him like that. He probably was delirious, but he kind of liked it. He didn’t have to think if he was delirious. He could just lie here and enjoy her cool fingers against his head. Maybe there was something more to this male/female business than an exhausting tumble in bed.

  Then those cool fingers ran over the rest of him, and Seth had an entirely different response. He nearly jumped from the floor in a mighty leap. One part of him made it.

  Pippa blushed and tapped his chest warningly. “I’m just checking to make certain you haven’t broken anything else. You’ll survive the broken head. You don’t use it anyway.”

  Oh, God, it hurt to laugh. He’d bruised every damned rib in his body. He’d done it before, so he knew how it felt. He took a deep breath but didn’t discover anything broken. Pippa’s skilled fingers did a definite number on his libido however. He was rapidly shedding his conviction that what they’d done last night had been a mistake. Hands like that could drive a man to ecstasy and back. Maybe pretending it had never happened was th
e mistake.

  “Can you move your toes?” she asked.

  “If you haven’t noticed how much of me is moving already, then you’re no damned nurse,” he answered gruffly, pushing himself up on his elbows. He had to escape this exquisite torture somehow.

  She held up her hand in front of him. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

  “Two too many. Stick with the middle one next time. I’m all right. Will someone just tell me what the hell happened?”

  He groaned and grabbed his ribs as he finally sat up. Maybe one was a little more than bruised. Glancing around at the destruction of his office, Seth fought a moment’s panic. The manuscript. He pulled himself to his feet to check the damage beyond his desk as he remembered Pippa had a copy on her computer.

  “Doug, tie him to a chair or I’m calling an ambulance.”

  Discovering the damage appeared to be only in his office, Seth willingly accepted Doug’s offer of aid. The leather recliner in the corner remained intact, and he sank into it with gratitude. He noted his mother’s worried face hovering in the doorway, Nana right behind her. He wasn’t used to being the recipient of so much concern. It embarrassed the hell out of him.

  Seth sought Pippa and almost caught the scowl of worry on her brow before she donned her professional mask of pleasantness. “Where’s Chad?” he demanded.

  “He slept through it all.” Pippa turned to the women in the doorway. “Somebody had better check if he’s still sleeping. And if there’s a first-aid kit in the house, I need it.”

  Once she scattered the onlookers, she turned back to him, and Seth saw her troubled look reappear.

  “Do you want me to call a doctor?” she asked carefully. “That rib might be broken.”

  “First, tell me what happened.” He didn’t like doctors hovering over him. He didn’t like this constant invasion of his privacy. Doug knew that. It looked like Pippa might understand it, too. He breathed a little easier.

  Pippa glanced to Doug for explanation. Doug shrugged his massive shoulders. “Durwood cracked the lawn tractor into the redwood. Then all hell broke loose.”

  Maybe he’d hit his head harder than he’d thought. Rubbing it where it ached, Seth glanced around his office again. The window behind his desk had shattered. His chair lay on its side, broken in two. His desk had a hole the size of a meteor crater in the center of it. His computer lay in shattered pieces all over the room, along with everything else that had been on his desk. The place looked like a blizzard of paper had struck overnight. “Lawn tractor?”

  Pippa glanced out the broken window. “The tractor is pretty much part of the tree right now, but the tree’s still standing. Where’s Durwood?”

  “He ran for the gate when the place started showering glass. We’ll probably have to send the police after him. He gets lost in the woods every time he goes through that gate.” Doug glanced uncertainly to where the phone should have been. “Maybe we ought to call the police anyway.”

  They all stared at the crater in the desk. Damn, Seth groaned to himself as he leaned his head back against the chair. The box. Cautiously, he opened his eyes and glanced around, trying not to move his aching head too much. He saw no sign of the box, unless that tattered piece of cardboard hanging from the overhead light was it. He saw no sign of books or bookmarks or anything else that might have been the contents either.

  The box. If he wasn’t mistaken, he’d just been mail-bombed.

  Chapter 22

  “You didn’t happen to notice the address label before you opened it, did you, Mr. Wyatt?”

  The police officer asking didn’t wear the traditional blue uniform, but khakis and a denim shirt. Grimacing under the ice pack Pippa had insisted on applying, Seth shook his head. “Cut the ‘Mr. Wyatt’ crap, Bert. You used to whale the devil out of me and call me ‘sissy.’”

  Bert moved his shoulders uncomfortably beneath his shirt and jotted a note on his pad. “Yeah, well, I can be a lot more imaginative these days, so be thankful for what you get. Just answer the question.”

  “No, I don’t remember the address label. I assumed it was from my publisher. Pippa doesn’t open any packages from them. She just stacks them on my desk.”

  “She opens your other packages?”

  “Doug does. I do exercise a certain degree of caution. He’s taken some bodyguard classes.” Seth wished his head didn’t hurt so much. He couldn’t think clearly. Why hadn’t he noticed the label?

  “I’m going to call Doug in here. You haven’t had any disagreements with him recently, have you?”

  Seth gave a morbid chuckle. “If you mean have I fired him lately, probably not. I’ve been otherwise occupied.”

  “You fire him regularly?” Bert jotted another note across his pad.

  “I fire everybody regularly. They just don’t take the hint. You’ll probably find the lot of them outside the door, hovering like vultures.” Like guardian angels, more like it, but that was too embarrassing to admit. He liked it better when he could snap and growl without compunction, but lately, a certain administrative assistant had changed his outlook. Even his mother was beginning to look human. If it weren’t for Chad, he’d toss the lot of them out. Life was much simpler when lived alone.

  Before he realized Bert had opened the door, Pippa was hovering over him again, and Doug was barking surly replies. Just for the hell of it, Seth looked up and winked at her. She pinched his arm.

  He could rely on Pippa to keep him in his place. Grinning inwardly and feeling more grounded now, Seth tuned in on Bert’s questioning. He didn’t like the direction in the least.

  “Lay off him, Bert. If Doug wanted to cream me, he wouldn’t have to build a bomb to do it. Have you got men searching for Durwood? I don’t want him out there at nightfall. He hasn’t the sense of a six-year-old. He’ll fall off a cliff.”

  Bert punched his radio and after an exchange of static, nodded and turned it off. “They found him down in a corner of the property. He couldn’t locate the gate, apparently.”

  Doug snickered, but at Bert’s glance, quickly stiffened. He’d been in trouble with the law one too many times to be comfortable with cops, Seth knew. He didn’t like seeing his friend intimidated by a small-town bully. “Doug, there were several boxes on the desk when I came in. Were they all from publishers?”

  Doug frowned. “I only brought in one I didn’t open. But things been kinda crazy ’round here these last few days. Durwood brought some up the other day. I looked through them before he brought ’em in here. There’s that FedEx from Japan, the one from your publisher I didn’t open, a package from Kentucky for Pippa, and a couple of junky things from people trying to sell you something. I reckon Pippa left most of ’em on the desk since I told her they ain’t nothin’ to worry about.”

  Behind him, Seth felt Pippa stiffen at the mention of the package to her. Her fingers tightened on his shoulder. He wanted to reach up and grasp them, to ease whatever had bothered her, but he wouldn’t let Bert think dirty thoughts. Carefully, he asked, “Did you get your box, Pippa?”

  “I forgot about it,” she whispered. “Doug told me it was down here, but you know how things have been. I just forgot about it.”

  Odd, he heard terror in her voice. Why should she be terrified that she hadn’t opened a box addressed to her? Surely there weren’t maniacs out there threatening nurses? Or had she been threatened because of him?

  Feeling a sudden rush of anger at that thought, Seth worked even harder not to betray his thoughts. “Where did you put Pippa’s box?” he asked, ignoring Bert’s frown.

  Doug shrugged. “I didn’t. That was one of them Durwood carried in. I was on the way to get more Coke for the kid.”

  Bert interrupted. “Let me get this straight. The only people with access to the mail are Mr. Brown, Miss Cochran, and the gardener?”

  “And Lillian,” Pippa mentioned quietly. “She’s been helping while Chad was sick.”

  “So any of the four of you could have put that box
in here?” Bert asked in a voice spilling suspicion.

  “No member of my household would deliberately plant a bomb in my office,” Seth declared adamantly. He refused to think it. Couldn’t. Not now, anyway. Without turning, he asked Pippa, “The box from Kentucky isn’t in your office?”

  “No,” she whispered. “Durwood must have brought it in here. I doubt he can read.”

  “Is there any reason to believe someone might address a mail bomb to your assistant in hopes of harming you?” Bert asked sternly.

  It didn’t make sense. Seth waited for Pippa to say something, but she remained ominously quiet. Pinching the bridge of his nose, Seth admitted he didn’t want to think about it any longer. That was what he had Dirk for. He’d better call Dirk as soon as he got Goody Two-shoes out of here.

  “I can’t think of any good reason for this. Maybe it was a harmless prank that went bad. I still can’t believe it was actually a bomb,” Seth said. “Can’t other things explode if they get too hot or are left too long or something?”

  “I’m no bomb expert. That’s why we called in the state police. They’ll tell us more in a few days. But it would help tremendously if we had the return addresses of all the packages that arrived here.” Bert glared at Doug again. “I don’t suppose you remember whether these were mail or UPS or whatever, do you?”

  Doug glowered back. “I told you, the one from Japan was FedEx. The junk was post office. Pippa’s and the publisher’s came UPS. Can’t you trace those UPS things?”

  “We’ll do that.” Bert flipped a page of his notepad and turned to Pippa. “Now, Miss Cochran, were you expecting anything from Kentucky?”

  “That’s my home,” she murmured. “A friend picks up my mail. She forwards anything important. And...”

  Bert leapt in with the question that Seth wanted to ask. “Why didn’t you have the post office forward your mail?”

  Again, her fingers tightened on Seth’s shoulder. Her voice shook slightly as she replied. “I didn’t know how long I’d be out here. I didn’t think about it before I left and didn’t think I could do it from here. Besides, I didn’t want to clutter up Seth’s mail with my personal correspondence. It just seemed easier.”