Blue Clouds (17 page)

Beside Pippa, Meg yelled in joy. The audience clapped and talked excitedly. Almost everyone in the room surged to the rear of the room to have a word with Seth. Pippa didn't have to turn to know he was already gone.

“I trust you're content with the results of the evening,” Seth said frostily, dropping a stack of handwritten pages on the desk beside Pippa.

She didn't look up at him. Couldn't. He was throwing off vibrations so powerful that she could barely fasten her gaze on the computer screen. She couldn't determine if they were angry vibrations, but she'd rather not investigate the workings of this enigmatic man's mind. He was her employer. She needed to hold that thought.

“We made progress,” she replied evasively. She wouldn't ask why he'd left so suddenly. She wouldn't ask why the town thought of him as some sort of reclusive monster. She wouldn't even ask if hunters regularly took potshots at him. Her business was typing these pages.

“They're narrow-minded bigots.”

Obviously not prepared to let the subject drop, Seth paced restlessly behind her chair.

Pippa pursed her lips but refused to rise to the bait. Chad was asleep, and she wanted this time to catch up on some of the work she'd neglected while playing with him.

“If they choose the contractor, Morgan will see that it's one who will recommend the building be torn down,” he stated flatly.

That cinched it. Giving up on the computer screen, Pippa swung her chair around and glared at Seth Wyatt. “Then you hire the contractor. You're the one paying for it. Just call someone up and send him out there. There isn't a blamed thing they can do about it.”

He'd actually worn a shirt instead of a turtleneck to the board meeting. Even though the shirt was black silk and worn with jeans, he created an impressive, if not precisely businesslike, figure. He had long arms that he swung restlessly, when he didn't have them crossed over his chest, intimidating someone. Pippa had to admit that shoulders as wide as his, combined with biceps that bulged when tensed, were as intimidating as all get-out. But unlike Billy, Seth didn't use his strength to push her around. He didn't have to. He could look at her and scare her half to death.

And still she hadn't learned to keep her mouth shut. She wondered if stupidity ran in the family or if she was the only one blessed with it.

Seth's fingers formed fists, and Pippa eyed them askance, pushing her chair back as far as it could go before he finally stopped pacing. As he halted in front of her but said nothing, she got a grip and glanced upward.

The expression in Seth's eyes was curious, and wary. “Why do you keep watching my hands that way?”

Startled, Pippa blushed and almost turned away. Taking a deep breath, she forced herself to face him. He was entirely too observant. “I don't like it when people bigger than I am make fists. If you're really in the mood for talking, sit.”

He hesitated, towering over her as he did so. To her relief, he finally sprawled in an upholstered wing-back chair beside the desk. “Call a contractor in the morning. There should be a list in the Rolodex.” He glanced at his hands, then laced his fingers and rested them on his chest, sprawling his legs in a more relaxed position as he watched her. “You're afraid of me.”

“I am not,” she lied. Of course she was. She was afraid of everything right now. That was why she was here, behind the safety of his locked gates, where she was safe from Billy. The question here was, was she safe from Seth?

“Are too.” He challenged her with his look. “I don't hit women.”

Okay, she could do this. Billy had robbed her of something precious, but she wasn't entirely a cringing ninny yet. Her employer had the social graces of an overgrown twelve-year-old. She could handle that. “Fine, you only hit men,” she agreed with a shrug. “I'll remember that.”

“I don't hit men unless they hit me first.”

This was an idiotic conversation. Pippa tapped her pencil on the desktop. “Do men frequently hit you first?”

“Not frequently, no. I mashed Taylor Morgan's pretty nose once, though. I don't think he's ever forgiven me.”

Ahh, now they were getting somewhere. Wondering why he'd pursued the topic, Pippa left the path wide open. “Did you go to school together?”

Seth looked vaguely startled, then shrugged. The motion threatened the top button of his shirt, widening the V there. He didn't seem aware of it. “I had tutors. My mother didn't believe in public schools.”

That explained more than Pippa cared to examine. “Then why did you hit Taylor?”

“Because he hit me first. I told you that. At the time, I wasn't very good at it, but I made a lucky punch. Broke it. I think he's had plastic surgery since. His family blackballed me from the country club for years.” He grinned, a wolfish grin entirely alien to his usual demeanor.

He was leading her on, right down the old garden path. She'd had some infantile idea that he was opening up to her, trying to explain what was between him and the town. Instead, he was giving her the runaround. She sighed in exasperation. “All right, I'll bite. What did you do, buy the country club?”

“You're no fun at all, you know that?” He got up and started pacing the floor again. “You'd have to live in this town all your life before you'd understand the relationship between me and them. It's just much simpler if I leave them alone and vice versa. We don't mix. There's no point in trying.”

“I'm not asking you to mix. Rot here in your ivory tower if you like, I don't care. I just want that gym for Chad and the others, and I'll do whatever it takes to get it. But this silly feud is childish, if you ask me.”

“I don't remember asking you,” he growled, swinging around. “Just keep me out of any more of those performances. I don't want anything to do with them.”

“Fine, see if I care. I didn't ask you to come tonight. That was your own doing.”

“Right. And sending me a fax telling me I set a poor example of a father for Chad by playing the part of coward was supposed to keep me out of this.”

He hovered belligerently over her, but oddly enough, Pippa had lost her fear. She stood up nearly toe-to-toe with him. His proximity set her back, but not from fear. The physical electricity emanating from him jolted her as if she'd stuck a finger in a socket. She rested her hand on the desk, hoping to ground herself.

“Everything you do sets an example for Chad. Try remembering that the next time you get the urge to bop Taylor Morgan in the nose.” Pippa edged past Seth and the chair, toward the door. She wasn't equipped for these games right now. Seth Wyatt made her damned nervous, and she didn't intend to examine why.

“And now you're a child psychologist?” he taunted as she reached for the knob.

She swung her head so hard, her hair bounced in her face.

“And just exactly who are you emulating when you bray like a pompous jackass like you're doing now?”

“As,” he muttered as she stalked out the door, “
as
you're doing now.” But she was gone and didn't hear him.

Deflated and depressed, Seth paced the floor a few more times. He hadn't realized until tonight that Pippa was afraid of him. He glanced guiltily at the hands that had already curved into fists again. He cursed and unclenched his fingers. She had every right to be afraid of him. Sometimes, he was a monster, just as Natalie claimed. He had no business around normal people. He just hadn't thought it mattered to his defiant, courageous pest of an assistant. He'd thought they'd reached some understanding: He'd growl and she'd bark. He could live with that. He couldn't live with the nagging guilt of her fear, or the darker desire flowing hotly beneath it.

The office had gone empty and silent with Pippa's departure. As long as she'd been here, he could block out the banshees of doubt, but their howls haunted the chambers of his mind now. Alcohol would blot them out, but he'd given up that solution years ago.

He should never have gone to the town meeting. He should never have exposed his uncertainties to Pippa. A man in his position was supposed to be self-assured, competent, in control—not a freaking adolescent.

Damn.

Slamming into his own office, he grabbed pen and paper and cranked his chair back. At least the freaking adolescent could shatter his demons on paper.

***

Sitting on the pool's edge, kicking her feet in the cool water, watching Chad with the grandmotherly therapist Seth had finally hired, Pippa tried to let her mind float. She'd read about people who could achieve a Zen state beyond the conscious mind. She wished she could do it. Instead of a state of peace, she merely achieved a headache blocking out thoughts of Seth and the town and the gym and the always hovering fear of what Billy might be doing now.

She'd talked to a friend back home. Billy had taken a leave of absence from the police force.

Maybe he'd checked into a psychiatric hospital for counseling.

Fat chance.

So she sunned herself on the tiles, listened to Chad's irate screams of protest, admired the therapist's patient admonitions, and considered means of bringing Seth and the town together. If she had to concentrate on something, it might as well be a worthwhile project. There was nothing productive about conjuring images of Seth's fists and anger. The potential might be there in his simmering anger and greater strength, but she had no right confusing Seth with Billy.

She knew the moment Seth walked through the open French doors. There was definitely no comparison with Billy. In her mind's eye, she could see the gleaming bronze of his chest, the curl of dark hairs there and on his arms....

She stopped herself. She could admit that her employer was a handsome man. Sort of handsome, she amended. His features were more striking than pretty—sharp, angular, with planed surfaces instead of curved. But he had the personality of a poisonous serpent. She didn't need any more psychotic men in her life, thank you very much.

“I believe you owe me a swimming lesson, Miss Cochran.”

She admired the long elegant bones of his tanned feet as they stopped beside her. “Shouldn't we wait until Chad is through with his lesson?” she inquired, with what she hoped was composure.

“He's in the shallow end. We can use the other side. I want to keep an eye on Chad, and it will be a more efficient use of time if we work on my lessons now.”

Right. And it would be damned smarter to do this with an audience. Taking a deep breath, Pippa swung her legs from the water. A tanned, long-fingered hand reached down to help her up.

She didn't want to take it. It would be akin to wrapping her fingers around a live wire. She was perfectly aware that libido and brains had nothing to do with each other, and hers were working at opposite purposes. But she couldn't refuse him. She just didn't have it in her to be rude.

Gingerly, she lay her too-white fingers across his palm. His hand closed around hers and he drew her up in one powerful surge. She tried not to focus on long legs or broad chest or any of the other things practically sliding under her nose as she reached her feet. But she couldn't ignore the knowledge that whatever she thought of her employer's rotten disposition, she was drawn to his body entirely too much.

“Cat got your tongue, Miss Cochran?” he taunted.

He knew what he was doing to her, the cursed man. Reaching deep down inside herself for the confident teenager she once had been, Pippa boldly straightened the shoulder strap of her swimsuit, drawing Seth's attention to her breasts, then strolled toward the other side of the pool, fully aware that she now had his complete attention. It was childish. Everything about this—relationship—was purely adolescent. She hadn't felt anything like this since she was sixteen and enamored of the college lifeguard at the public pool. She was thirty years old and fifteen pounds heavier now, yet her toes curled and her heart raced faster knowing she held the attention of Seth Wyatt. And she deliberately rolled her hips in response.

“Very impressive performance, Miss Cochran,” Seth murmured as he strolled up beside her.

“One more crack like that, Mr. Wyatt, and I'll hit you with a sexual harassment suit,” she replied with equanimity. For years she'd defended herself against randy interns and doctors who should have known better. She knew how to post “Hands Off!” signs. She was just doing a damned poor job of it around Seth.

“Charming. I apologize. I should have known better.” His tone turned as frosty as his usual glare.

Insanely, she wanted to take it back, to comfort him, to tell him—what? That it was perfectly all right to admire her as much as he wanted? That she liked knowing she wasn't completely over the hill? That she liked it even better that he thought her attractive? She had the brains and morals of a rabbit.

The shrill ring of a phone intruded upon the pleasant lap of water and music of birdsong.

Seth cursed.

Returned to the mundane business world, Pippa dared to look at him again. “You turned on the voice mail, didn't you?”

“That's the house phone. Doug's calling me.”