But she wasn’t strong enough to make the break right this minute, not in this beautiful place, with Seth confidently guiding her toward the protected beach below. She could almost sense his pain as he hit his injured ankle at the wrong angle, knew his ribs ached, but he was doing this for her, offering her this gift in recompense for all that had happened, and she couldn’t reject him.
It wouldn’t last. Smiling slightly at that realization, Pippa let the wind blow away her sadness and accepted the moment as it was: beautiful and wild and carefree, no strings attached.
“No wonder the movie business developed out here,” she exclaimed in delight as they reached a cove protected on all sides by steep boulders, with a seal barking not yards away. “How could the imagination not soar with all this splendor at hand?”
Arm around her shoulders, Seth idly rubbed her upper arm and gazed over the crashing breakers. “It makes everything else look small, doesn’t it? If we’re nothing but specks of sand, why worry over past or future? Now is everything. I think that might explain the California state of mind.”
Pippa threw him an uncertain glance, then smiled as she realized he was smiling, too. “Not quite a joke, but close enough. You’re improving.”
The look in his eyes nearly melted her bones. Without the frost in them, those gorgeous gray eyes of his conveyed starry promises she would never be able to resist for long. She tried concentrating on the blunt, thick lashes instead, but she didn’t fool him. Long fingers traced the outline of her lips.
“I must be improving if you’re not nagging. Does this mean there’s some hope for me yet?”
“You have what it takes,” she admitted. “You just have to apply it.” Her toes curled, but not against the cold. Seth’s hand opened and spread against her jaw, caressing lightly with fingertips while holding her firmly. She read the kiss in his eyes before he offered it.
She thought he whispered “Teach me” before his mouth covered hers, but she couldn’t be sure. She couldn’t be sure of anything while her blood heated to boiling and bubbled madly everywhere except her brain. No man had ever succeeded in separating her head from her shoulders with just his kiss, but Seth could.
The strong fingers that had throttled a murderer and nearly broken Billy’s neck now caressed her breast with gentle strokes, asking and not demanding. He didn’t need the politeness. She would have thrown herself into his arms without a word or gesture. Pippa slid her hands around his neck and returned his kiss so thoroughly, even Seth couldn’t misunderstand. He murmured something appreciative against her mouth, and fingered her aroused nipple through the thin cotton of her blouse. She quaked at just his touch.
“You make this as simple and natural as the sun shining,” Seth said wonderingly, lifting his head long enough to locate the buttons of her blouse and unfasten them. He spread the cloth, pulling it from her jeans. He grinned when he discovered she wore nothing beneath.
“It’s not me.” The sun beat warm against Pippa’s bare skin, and Seth’s broad hand protected her from any wind that breached the rocks around them. She felt no shame or shyness beneath his admiring gaze. “It’s us, together. I never knew it could work this way.”
He lifted his head to search her face. She read the uncertainty reflected there, knew Seth wasn’t ready to accept what she knew with every cell of her body. She smiled, then tugged upward on the designer golf shirt she’d bought for him. He looked good in colors. He looked better with nothing on at all.
Grimacing at the tug on his ribs, he threw the shirt off, allowing her full access to the bronzed expanse of his chest, but giving her little time to admire it. With a hungry growl, he reached for her, pulled her against him, and devoured her mouth.
So, it wouldn’t be a gentle farewell, but an impassioned one. Following on the acts of violence and the adrenaline rush of earlier, this fierce release was what they both needed. Pippa threw herself into it, body and soul, fearing this would be the last time she would ever know this meeting of man and nature, this physical satisfaction merging with emotional desire. Recklessly, she threw caution to the wind and waves and gave herself as freely as the sun gave warmth.
Seth had dropped the blanket he’d brought from the car. Now he lowered her to it, spreading out the folds hastily with stray hands and feet, not releasing her from his grasp, as if afraid she’d escape. That tiny crack in his arrogance only made her love him more. She could explore this man’s psyche for a hundred years and never know him, but she would always love him.
“You drive me mad without even trying,” he murmured against her ear as he sprawled across her, pinning her to the blanket. “I want to be inside you, and on top of you, and roaming around in your head, all at once. I want all of you, Pippa. Everything. Open for me, Pippa.”
Since she didn’t even have her jeans off, she knew he meant more than the obvious, but she had no way of promising what he didn’t know he asked. She threaded her fingers through his hair and tried to bring his mouth to hers, but he’d already moved on, finding her breast and kissing it until her cries joined those of the gulls overhead.
They shed their remaining clothes hurriedly, not noticing the chill of the air in the steam of their bodies. Seth’s tongue claimed territorial rights she relinquished eagerly. His exploring fingers took full liberty, until her body quaked and opened for him, offering further uncharted territories. Pippa gripped his hips as he covered her, lifted herself to his thrust, and urged him to delve as deep as he could.
She gasped as Seth reached deeper than she thought possible, then withdrew and slammed deeper still. She lost track of her hands, his mouth, the position of the sun, and the gravity of the earth. She spun on Seth’s axis, entered his orbit, became one with his molecules. She flew with him wherever he took her, spiraling higher into the sky, spreading her wings, and exploding into golden dust motes as they touched the sun’s core.
Breathless and barely conscious, she lay beneath the heavy blanket of his body, absorbing the sound of waves mixed with the beat of Seth’s heart, the thin film of sweat oiling their joined bodies. She could imagine doing this every hour of her life. This was life as it was meant to be, and Seth had given it to her.
He stirred and gradually lifted his weight off her, propping himself on his elbows as he smiled sleepily down at her. “We may be getting the hang of this. A little more practice, and we could be perfect.”
Pippa’s heart thumped wildly. For one brief moment, she imagined that sexy smile hovering over her for the rest of her nights. She had whirling images of Seth taking her into his arms at dawn, of their racing across the pool in the sunshine, of the three of them laughing together at a fair somewhere.
And then he abruptly rolled away and the images burst into dandelion dust, floating away on the breeze.
“We’d better get back before they send the cops looking for us.” Seth brushed a kiss across her forehead, then covered her with her blouse, but his tone was brusque.
Pippa knew what he was doing. He was building that wall again, shutting her out, cutting off all hope and emotion. She understood. But she could never live with it, not knowing what she did about the man behind that wall, the loving, vulnerable man who craved a human touch as much as she did.
Cursing to herself, she dragged on her shirt while he reached for his trousers. The expensive fabric was wrinkled and coated with sand where they’d rolled over it.
She eyed the crashing waves cautiously. “I don’t suppose we could swim in that?”
“Not unless you want to freeze your fanny and risk your immortal soul,” he answered carelessly, not looking at her.
She thought she might just do that rather than suffer what lay ahead, but she’d discovered a new determination. Maybe she’d already started growing that backbone.
She realized that standing on her own two feet could include fighting with Seth until she tore down his defensive barriers. Of course, with Seth, it couldn’t be a normal fight. He would just close himself off and disappear
rather than argue. She had to drag him out, expose him before the world, smack him into opening his eyes. And if all that failed, what had she lost? Only what she couldn’t have in the first place.
As she pulled her panties on over the stickiness they had made between them, and she recognized that once again they had taken chances they shouldn’t have, an odd reassurance flooded through her. Maybe she was mule-headed and blind.
Maybe she was about to make a fool of herself. But what they could have was worth taking that chance. This would be the first challenge she’d face on her own. She had to be strong.
Tucking in her shirt and buttoning her jeans, she watched Seth briskly shake out the blanket and fold it up. She could see him withdrawing before her eyes. She could reach out, pull him back, tease him into lightening up for a little while longer, but she wouldn’t. He had to learn to do it by himself.
Without waiting for him, Pippa turned on her heel and began the climb up the rocks on her own.
***
Seth ground his teeth and snapped his pencil and didn’t look at Doug lingering in the doorway. “I tried, dammit, I tried. She won’t listen to reason.”
“Yeah, women have a habit of that,” Doug agreed laconically.
“I offered her more money. I offered her a job overseeing the gym renovation. I told her I’d open a damned clinic in town if she wanted to go back to hospital work. She wouldn’t even talk about it.” Seth spun his chair around and glared out the newly replaced window behind him. The expanse of lawn revealed the same emptiness as the last time he’d looked. No cavorting nymph in a bathing suit, no twirling dervishes. Miss MacGregor had driven Pippa into L.A. that morning.
“Woman who’d turn all that down ain’t got no brains in the first place,” Doug said.
Seth detected a note of derision, but he ignored it. “She said she’d be back on the weekends to see how the gym was progressing. She’ll want to see Chad again. Maybe I can talk to that friend of hers and see what it is she needs to be persuaded to come back.” Seth watched as Durwood ambled toward the damaged oak by the drive. It seemed to have survived the crash with the BMW. He wished he could say the same for himself.
“Why bother?” Doug sneered. “All women are alike. Just hire yourself a new one. There’s plenty out there.”
Seth recognized sarcasm when he heard it; he just didn’t bother acknowledging it. Pippa had treated Doug as her best friend, and Doug had responded to the treatment with absurd eagerness. He was probably hurting right now. He could let the man vent. Seth narrowed his eyes as he tried to discern what kind of gardening tool Durwood was producing from his box. Damned if it didn’t look like a saw.
“What is Durwood doing?” he asked with a degree of anxiety.
Doug grudgingly stepped farther into the room to look over Seth’s shoulder. “Sawing down a tree, looks like to me.”
Two phones rang at once, and Seth cursed. Miss MacGregor was still in town and his mother was manning the outer office. She didn’t like answering phones. The last he’d seen, she’d been pulling together some complicated set of numbers involving expansion of the printing plants with the new computerized equipment his new company would build.
Keeping one eye on his maniac gardener, Seth reached for the phone and hit a button. Morris spoke into his ear.
“Natalie is willing to settle for every other weekend and a month in the summer,” his lawyer informed him without preamble.
“That’s what she had in the first place and she never took advantage of it.” Seth glared at the second blinking light on the phone, then returned to the surreal scene outside his window. His gnome of a gardener was applying a rusted old carpenter’s saw to the broad rough trunk of the towering oak.
“She swears that was Darius’s fault, that he always scheduled activities when he thought she would bring Chad home. Seems he had an aversion to the kid.”
“Yeah, I can imagine he did.” Not eager to savor that knowledge, Seth glanced up as his office door bounced open. His mother stood there, impatiently waving a stack of papers containing colored graphs. She’d taken to computers like a duck to water.
Deciding when his brain degenerated to using clichés, he’d better shoot himself, Seth agreed to Natalie’s terms, providing she accepted any nurse or tutor he sent with Chad. He had Pippa in mind, but that was foolishness. Pippa would have either turned Natalie into her next best friend or taken Natalie’s head off. And Pippa wasn’t coming back.
The pain of that acknowledgment hit Seth hard. He’d been fighting it, pretending all was well for hours now. But all wasn’t well. Pippa had been gone for half a day, and already the place was falling down around his head. And he couldn’t deal with it. Wouldn’t deal with it. He damned well wanted her back here, where she belonged.
Which was the stupidest thought he’d had in a long time. Employees came and went. They didn’t belong here for long.
Pippa did.
Agony that had nothing to do with his bruised ribs ground through him.
He could do this. He’d suffered worse. All he had to do was remember the screaming fights of his parents, their careless disregard of his existence, the beatings he’d taken at the hands of the town bullies, the appalling pain of Natalie’s hatred and Chad’s injuries, and he would wipe out any piffling wound Pippa might inflict. Time would heal all wounds. He’d had other women before. They all went away eventually. He’d lived.
Pippa hadn’t been just sex. The sex was great, better than anything he’d ever known or could hope to know again. But it wasn’t the sex.
Groaning, Seth slammed down the phone, pushed past Doug and his mother, and headed for the front lawn and his demented gardener.
Pippa was the welcoming smile he’d never known, the laughter he’d never shared, the window on the world he’d never experienced. Damn her, she was the fountain of his imagination. Images and ideas crowded his brain, demanding attention, screaming for release, and he couldn’t focus on any of them without her.
Crossing the lawn in a few strides, Seth grabbed Durwood’s collar, jerked him back from the tree, and tore the saw from his hand. With one swift knee jerk, he broke the metal blade in two.
He would have to get Pippa back.
Chapter 37
“I miss Pippa,” Chad grumbled as Seth pushed him through the new automatic door of the gym.
“We all do. She’ll be back to visit soon,” Seth replied absently, avoiding the stab of pain brought on by the sound of Pippa’s name.
“I just talked to her last night,” Meg said brightly. “She has a lovely apartment in L.A., and she visits the children in the hospital every evening after work. She says to tell you hi, and she’ll see you as soon as she finds a car and gets some time off work.”
Seth ignored Meg’s curious look. He checked the construction under way, frowned at a gaping hole in the floor, and wandered off to investigate the locker room. It looked to him as if the doorway needed widening to allow for larger wheelchairs.
He tried to ignore the contractor idling in his direction, but Pippa had taught Seth to see far more than he wanted to see. He’d almost learned to accept Meg’s mixed looks of adulation and disparagement. Somehow, Meg had become an extension of Pippa, and he could deal with her. But he wasn’t accustomed to dealing with anyone else yet. He still didn’t like coming to town. But if he would ever have any chance of getting Pippa back here where she belonged, he’d have to learn to handle things like the gym, at least.
“Mr. Wyatt.” The contractor tugged on his billed cap respectfully.
“Oscar Hamble, right?” Seth remembered the scrawny kid who used to play on the same team with him. He’d once envied Oscar because Oscar’s father came to every game.
The contractor grinned. “Didn’t think you’d remember.”
Seth grunted. “I remember every damned last one of you.”
That had the guy trembling again. Oscar, like all his teammates, had turned his back on Seth once they’d learned his iden
tity. He’d thought Oscar a friend until then. He hadn’t bothered with friends after that.
The contractor straightened his shoulders and glared back at him. “Maybe you don’t remember everything so good, then. Maybe you don’t remember my daddy used to work for yours. He told me he’d lose his job if your old man ever found out we’d encouraged you to play with us. We didn’t have a whole lot, but my dad put food on the table. We wouldn’t have had nothing without that job.”
Seth twitched his shoulders to ease the tension. He didn’t want to hear this. He didn’t want to be reminded of any of it. That was half the reason for avoiding the damned town in the first place. He saw no point in reopening old wounds. He’d moved on with his life. Why hadn’t they?
Or maybe he hadn’t moved on. He could almost hear Pippa taunting him. Maybe he’d harbored that wound so long it had festered. Damn, but he ought to write a book.
Sighing, Seth held his hand out. “How’ve you been, Oscar?”
Oscar slapped his palm across Seth’s and grinned. “Much better now that I’ve got that contract for building your new plant.”
Oh, hell, now he was in for it. He didn’t know the contractor he’d signed on was subcontracting to local firms. They would probably delay the project until it ran into millions of dollars of overruns, just to get their revenge on him. He really was losing it.
Oscar slapped him on the back. “After we got that contract, I talked my men into donating their time for the gym. Seems like if you can give up the money for these kids, we can’t do less. Come over here; I want to show you what Jimmy dreamed up. He’s got a kid with a bum leg....”
In utter astonishment, Seth tagged after the carpenter. Oscar hadn’t grown more than a few inches since those long-ago days. The towering first baseman he’d once thought him now rolled along like a drunken sailor on short legs. He couldn’t believe the man had dismissed all the years between now and then and slipped right back into his old commanding ways. He’d forgotten how Oscar used to boss him around because he was a year older and a foot taller. He hadn’t changed—an inch, Seth thought with a furtive grin and racked up another one for Pippa.
Blue Clouds Page 33