Blue Clouds

by Patricia Rice

  He wanted to share the joke with Pippa. He wanted to tell her about meeting Oscar. She’d love hearing that the men were donating their labors. She’d laugh and say she’d told him so. He wanted to show her the plans for the new company, the one that would hire half the people in this town once it opened. She’d probably hug his neck, which could lead to all sorts of interesting activities.

  Somehow, he had to get Pippa back.

  ***

  Pippa glanced up in surprise at the knock on her apartment door. It was a very modest apartment. The whole place would fit into one room of the suite Seth had assigned her. But it was hers, she thought defiantly, and she wasn’t expecting anyone. She didn’t have to answer the door if she didn’t want.

  Just the freedom of having her own place and doing as she pleased with it gave her the ease to answer her own door. She’d called an auction company back home and told them to sell the house and contents. She didn’t have to live with her mother’s choice of furniture. She could afford her own. Sort of. Glancing around at the sparse contents of her small room before she opened the door, she straightened her shoulders and stuck her chin out. The apartment and its contents were hers and she was proud of them.

  Her haughty chin dropped the instant she threw open the door.

  “May I come in?” Seth asked.

  He looked wonderful, as if he’d stepped off a movie screen. He’d had his hair cut and styled. He actually wore shaving lotion—some sexy, outdoorsy scent that crept seductively around her as they stood practically toe-to-toe. His open-collared silk shirt was dark brown instead of black, but even that was a step in the right direction. She’d be drooling in half a minute.

  Pippa stepped aside. “Come in. How’s Chad?”

  Nervously, she showed him to a papa-san chair she’d bought for a song at Goodwill. She’d always loved the womb-shaped chairs, but there had never been room for one in her mother’s house. She’d bought a bright white cushion for it, which had cost more than the chair, but it brightened the whole room. She wanted a white rug next.

  Seth regarded the round seat dubiously, but lowered himself into it with all the athletic grace Pippa knew he possessed. She didn’t know why he was here. He would have called if anything was wrong with Chad.

  “Chad’s healthy, but he keeps asking after you.”

  Pippa held her tongue and didn’t comment. She wouldn’t let him use Chad as a weapon against her. “Would you like something to drink?”

  He debated that as if it were the question of the century, then finally shook his head. “I’d better not. I want a clear head for this.”

  Uh-oh. Pippa curled up on the canvas sling-back chair that was the room’s only other seating and doubled as a deck chair. She eyed Seth’s closed expression warily. He hadn’t tracked her down in the depths of L.A.’s suburbs without a fully orchestrated plan of attack. He hadn’t touched her or kissed her and he wouldn’t accept a drink that might lead to those temptations. Pippa had his number before he even opened his mouth.

  “All right, I’ll bite. Why do you need a clear head?”

  Seth took a deep breath and looked her directly in the eye. “I want you to marry me. It’s the best thing for both of us. Chad is crazy about you. You even get along with my mother. Durwood is chopping down trees without you to steer him. You know the sex between us is terrific. You can help me in dealing with the town. I’m building their damned plant, and already they’re arguing with how I want to do it.”

  Pippa fought the irrepressible urge to giggle. She would be rolling on the floor with laughter if she allowed herself a single cheep. Seth Wyatt, her six-foot tower of strength, sat there with his very best glower, demanding that she marry him because it was best for the town. He’d threaten her with something dire in another minute. Intimidation was a method of dealing with people that appealed to him. She wanted to shout with laughter and drag him into it, make the silly fool see what he was doing, but she feared she would hurt him if she tried. Seth didn’t take rejection well. He’d probably not like laughter much better. Oh, lord, how she loved this impossible man.

  “I’ll talk to Meg.” Pippa couldn’t bite back the smile. She really couldn’t. He looked so damned uncomfortable. Maybe she should lean over and pat his hand.

  Seth scowled. “What does Meg have to do with anything? You can talk to her all you like when you come home with me. We can get a marriage license here or go over to Vegas and get it done immediately, if that’s what you want.”

  Gently, Pippa shook her head. “No, Seth, I won’t marry you so you can have a live-in assistant. Tell Chad I have a car now, and I’ll come out to see him when I get off work Sunday. Now, would you like that drink?”

  He looked stunned. He stared at her as if he couldn’t comprehend what she’d just said. Pippa almost felt sorry for him, but she felt sorrier for herself. She wanted more than anything to say yes—yes, she’d marry him regardless of how he proposed—but she couldn’t. For both their sakes, she couldn’t. A woman with a backbone wouldn’t accept a business proposal like that. And she was a woman with a backbone these days. Sort of. Kind of. It was a limp thing right now as she watched despair etch Seth’s eyes.

  “Pippa, I just asked you to marry me,” he protested. “Isn’t that what all women want?”

  The urge to giggle returned. This time, she did lean over and pat his hand. “You just ordered me to marry you, and no, that isn’t what all women want. I may love you, but I can survive without you. Unlike women of your mother’s generation, women today can live without men. Calamity, isn’t it?”

  He looked stunned, bewildered, and just a tiny bit hopeful. “I thought women married the men they loved.”

  She really shouldn’t have said that, but she couldn’t hold it back. He’d needed some reassurance, and she’d handed him what he needed. She would probably never overcome that weakness. But she would damned well learn to develop a spine. “Nope,” she responded cheerfully. “Love and marriage are a very nice combination when both parties are in agreement, but we’re oceans apart, and you know it. Maybe your mother or Miss MacGregor can learn to deal with the town for you.”

  Seriously disgruntled, Seth wrestled himself out of the pillowed chair. “I’m offering you a fortune, freedom to do whatever you want, and you’re too shortsighted to see what I’m asking. You can’t believe I’ll turn into another Billy.”

  Pippa leapt up after him. “Of course not. Your methods of bullying are much more effective. How’s Doug doing? Has he found a girlfriend yet?” Her heart yammered a protest as Seth walked toward the door, but she kept a cheerful face despite her terror that she might never see him again.

  “He’s helping shuttle some of the kids out to the pool a few days a week. I can’t swim in my own damned backyard half the time.” Seth curled his fist around the doorknob and watched her through shuttered eyes.

  “You didn’t swim in it anyway,” Pippa answered carelessly.

  “Maybe: I should take that drink you offered.” He waited, stiff and unbending, his face a mask of indifference.

  Caving only slightly, Pippa leaned over and kissed his cheek. “I’m rescinding the offer. If I’m not marrying you, I’m not falling into bed with you either. We’re entirely too careless when we get together.”

  A reluctant smile tugged at his lips. “Yeah, we are that. I don’t suppose I can hope you’re pregnant?”

  She shook her head. “You won’t win that easily. Go home, Seth. Hug Chad for me. And maybe try hugging your mother.”

  Laughter fled, and she fought tears as Seth scowled at her, hesitated, then stalked out without kissing her good-bye. She’d done it now. She’d developed a backbone and lost the only man she would ever love.

  ***

  Morosely, Seth sat beside the open door to his balcony and reflected on how Pippa had literally and figuratively opened all the doors and windows around here. She’d battered down all their old habits, forcing them to look at themselves from different perspectives,
and nothing would ever be the same again. Even his mother was a new woman, taking charge of the office and the construction of the new plant. She had Mac snapping to her orders.

  “I traced the toffees to a storefront candy shop in Burbank.”

  Dirk’s voice intruded upon his reverie, and Seth reluctantly turned back to the subject at hand. He hadn’t wanted anyone to hear if Natalie was involved in her husband’s villainy. She was still Chad’s mother. Seth waited for his hired detective to continue.

  Dirk sipped from the beer Doug had handed him. Doug didn’t drink the stuff anymore.

  “One of Golding’s former students makes candy and sells it for a living. He’s been boffing her off and on for several years. She didn’t think anything of it when he asked how toffees are made. Darius isn’t talking, but I figure he slipped the poison into the final coating. The girlfriend says he knocked the pot over and spilled it when they had a box done.”

  “Pin the mail bomb on him, too, and I guess I can assume he’s the only murderer around,” Seth replied lethargically. He’d like to see Darius fry because of Chad, but his mind had left the past and moved on to contemplate his increasingly bleak future.

  “Done that. Tied it to the thugs who tried to beat you up at the bar. Apparently Darius has still another vice—drugs. When the money started running out, he had to deal to cover his debt. We tracked his supplier to the bar. The supplier has some pretty tough connections. He recognized you the night you were there and figured he’d be a wealthy man if he knocked you off for Golding. When that didn’t work, he suggested the mail bomb.”

  Seth raised his eyebrows and silently waited for Dirk to continue. Drugs. Natalie should have known, but she was too self- absorbed to pay attention.

  Dirk gave him a cautious look but continued. “Apparently your mother isn’t too circumspect about your security precautions. She complained about them to Natalie, who probably told Darius. Natalie admits she has some old boxes of your books in the house with your publisher’s labels on them. It wouldn’t take much to use a computer to duplicate them. I don’t think she’s involved any more than that, if that’s any help.”

  Seth grimaced and took a deep sip of his iced tea. Maybe he ought to help himself to one of Doug’s beers. “So much for security. I suppose now I’ll have to hire you to plug all the holes around here.”

  Dirk shrugged and took a long haul on his bottle before replying. “The bastard got around my men in the hospital with that stolen ID and doctor getup. No one can guarantee perfect security. You’d do better to cut down on your list of enemies.”

  Right. He’d wave his magic wand and turn a whole community into happy little elves. That was the kind of thing Pippa did.

  Pippa.

  The agony where his heart should be had nothing to do with his damaged rib.

  ***

  Seth stood in front of the open windows in his room where he and Pippa had stood that evening so many weeks ago, the evening that had shattered so many of his self-delusions. He’d thought himself a controlled and unemotional man like his father. Pippa had caused him to lose all control and revel in the passion of the moment. He’d thought happiness some ephemeral quality that people merely talked about. Pippa had taught him to laugh at the smallest things. He’d quit allowing people into his life because they brought only pain. Pippa had brought joy.

  How could he go on knowing all those things were out there—joy and happiness and passion—and never know them again? He needed Pippa to open his eyes and keep them open, or he would gradually slink back into the former shell of himself. But she’d refused him.

  His old cynical self would say that she’d never really cared, that she’d merely used him as a safety net while her old boyfriend roamed the streets, but the self Pippa had unearthed knew better. Unfortunately, Pippa hadn’t uncovered enough of it. He couldn’t figure out what he’d done wrong, what he needed to do next. He hadn’t learned his lessons well enough.

  Pippa cared. Pippa had said she loved him. But she wouldn’t marry him. Why?

  The quiet sound of rubber wheels rolling across the carpet interrupted Seth’s reverie. He’d had all the thick rugs and padding ripped off the floors up here so Chad would have easier going for his chair.

  Seth turned and attempted a smile for his son’s worried gaze. “Come to get trounced at checkers?”

  Chad didn’t smile back. “Pippa isn’t coming back, is she?”

  So, the boy had put two and two together, probably with Nana’s help. He ought to retire the old woman. She was a pestilent nuisance. But an efficient one.

  “She was here last Sunday, wasn’t she?” Seth replied evasively.

  “I mean really coming back.”

  From beneath a tumble of black curls, Chad shot him an impatient look that Seth figured mirrored one of his own. The boy was too damned much like him. He needed a softening influence Natalie couldn’t supply.

  Sighing and running his hand through his hair, Seth settled into a chair beside the fireplace. There was no point in lying to the boy. Chad was too smart to accept lies.

  “I asked her to marry me, and she said no. I don’t know what else to do. It’s me she’s mad at, not you,” he hastened to add at Chad’s crestfallen expression.

  Chad wrinkled up his brow in childish thought. “Maybe if you gave her something she really wanted? Kinda like letting me go to school with Mikey, but something Pippa wants?”

  Seth bit back a sad smile. “We’ll talk about school later, after we see how the gym works out.”

  Chad clenched his chair arms in frustration. “I don’t care about the school. That was just an example.” He threw out the word as if it were one all six-year-olds used. “Couldn’t we give Pippa something she really wants so she’ll come back and live with us?”

  “I don’t think money will buy Pippa,” Seth said gently. “If the gym and the new company won’t do it, nothing will.”

  With the energy of youth, Chad refused to give up. “She likes blue clouds and circuses and clowns and Ferris wheels,” he insisted. “She told me so.”

  “Blue clouds?” The other suggestions spun wheels in Seth’s head, but he asked the obvious in distraction.

  “Blue clouds, like after thunderstorms. She says they have them in Kentucky. The sky lights up all blue and pink and yellow, better than a rainbow. She says it’s God’s promise of a better day. I’d like to see them someday,” he added wistfully.

  “Well, I’m not certain I can arrange blue clouds,” Seth answered haltingly, his mind racing over new scenarios. “But maybe we can arrange clowns and Ferris wheels. Do you think that might help?”

  Chad sat up and grinned. “Yeah, that should do it. Pippa loves circuses. She’ll love us if we can give her one.”

  Out of the mouths of children.

  She’ll love us if we can give her one. Pippa already loved them. Seth believed that with whatever confidence he still retained. Pippa wasn’t a Tracey, throwing herself into his arms for what he could offer. Pippa had come into his arms and given herself because she loved him. Love. Foolish word, one he didn’t know much about. But Seth wagered Pippa knew a lot about it. And craved it as much as he craved her.

  He would have to give Pippa what she wanted. A circus brimming with clowns and Ferris wheels was a cinch compared to what Pippa really wanted. Even blue clouds might be easier.

  Chapter 38

  Sitting curled in her papa-san chair, tears streaming down her cheeks, Pippa stroked the loose pages of the manuscript Lillian had sent her. She couldn’t believe Seth had written such a touching story. Not Seth, the inhuman monster.

  But the vulnerable Seth, the wary, unprotected creature hiding behind the hard shell of the monster, that Seth could have written this story.

  She was amazed at how he’d transformed an entire book with a few simple changes. He’d cracked open the carapace, exposed the tender insides of his protagonists, and let them emerge as whole new creatures. Utterly amazing. The man had talent.
Amazing talent.

  Of all kinds. Sinking deeper into the cushion, Pippa contemplated that sorry thought. His talent for lovemaking would bar her from ever enjoying another man. She’d thought him incapable of loving. But he wasn’t. The book proved that. He simply wasn’t capable of expressing love. No one had ever taught him how.

  And she’d blown it, utterly. Blown the chance to teach him how to express love. Blown the chance to know his love-making every night. Blown the right to tease him and watch him grin every day.

  The manuscript had arrived with a note from Lillian. Pippa suspected Seth’s mother of matchmaking again. Well, this time she’d hit the right chords. It had just happened too late.

  The phone rang and Pippa pried herself out of the chair to answer it. It rang far too seldom for her tastes. L.A. was a huge town, full of people with other lives and interests beyond hers. Maybe she’d been too hasty in selling the house in Kentucky. At least there, people knew her and she had friends. She didn’t know how she’d make friends in the immensity of the city.

  “Pippa!” Chad’s excited voice in the receiver had her smiling. “We’re gonna have a carnival! It’s Dad’s birthday, and the carnival is coming here!”

  Pippa’s brow furrowed in disbelief, but she didn’t let Chad hear her doubt. “That’s marvelous, Chad. Are you and Mikey going?”

  “Yeah, and Dad and grandmother. And Doug said he’d take Mrs. Deal. She’s Holly’s mother.”

  Pippa hadn’t the vaguest idea who Holly or her mother were, but she was happy Doug had a friend at last. “That should make a wonderful birthday party,” she agreed enthusiastically. “Is it there in Garden Grove?”