Blue Clouds (16 page)

Pippa knew she'd been dismissed. She knew she should be content with what little he'd given her. It just wasn't in her nature to settle for less. Sometimes, she almost understood why Billy beat up on her. Sometimes, she could kick herself. But she couldn't just leave the topic where he'd dropped it.

“I think there may be a failure to communicate here,” she offered tentatively.

He ignored her.

“The people in town think
you're
standing in
their
way.”

He didn't raise an eyebrow.

This wasn't productive. Considering her alternatives, Pippa stood up and walked out of Seth's office. He didn't seem to notice her retreat.

Sitting down at her computer, Pippa. grinned. She'd never particularly liked computers. She was a people person. But she'd learned to manipulate machines to make them do what she wanted. She typed a few paragraphs, hit the send key, and waited.

The fax in Seth's office started chattering.

Maybe now was the time to take a lunch break. Crossing her fingers, Pippa casually strolled from her desk into the corridor.

Doug leaned against the wall in the foyer, his massive arms crossed over his chest as he idled away his time waiting for Chad's tutor. He looked up and blinked twice at her expression. “What you been up to now and do I need to get out of the way before he steamrolls over both of us?”

“You're seriously underemployed, my friend. You ought to be the one in that office dealing with him.” Pippa jerked her head in the direction of the doorway she expected Seth to emerge from any minute now. “I'll just go sit in the kitchen and admire the view. You can be the wall between us.”

Doug grinned in appreciation but caught her shirt collar before she could escape. “Uh-uh, baby. You started this, you finish it. I ain't up to bein' fired today.”

Pippa stomped on his sneaker-clad toe. “Brute force will get you nowhere,” she admonished as he howled and released her. “But sweet talk will take you far.” She backed away and grinned just as Seth slammed from the office, waving the fax calling him a coward.

“It's been nice knowin' ya.” Doug retreated to his position against the far wall and watched implacably as Seth advanced toward them.

Pippa made a face at Doug, pasted on a smile, and did her best sashay in the direction of the corridor to the kitchen, ignoring Seth.

“What the devil does this little essay mean?” he yelled after her. “Damn you, get back here!”

“It's lunchtime. Even slaves deserve a meal a day,” she called over her shoulder. “Care to join me? And by the way, I think you underestimate Doug. I bet if you sent him to the school board, he'd have them convinced he was you in no time.”

Leave 'em laughing, that's what she always said. She didn't dare turn around to see how Doug took that retort, but she figured Seth wouldn't laugh, no matter how humorous the joke, and that one was certainly well below par.

To her amazement, he didn't follow. Swallowing her disappointment that he didn't take her up on her taunt, Pippa slapped together a sandwich under Nana's disapproving gaze and wandered upstairs.

The place was a mausoleum. She would swear those were burial urns occupying the niches in the hallway. The person who had decorated the guest wing hadn't been given a free hand in the public areas. Or maybe someone had come along later and imposed their own morbid tastes. No wonder Seth had grown into a writer of macabre stories if he'd had to live here all his life. Someone really needed to drag him out of this funeral home and into the light of day.

If that fax hadn't angered Seth enough to drag him out, she didn't know what would. Maybe Doug could hit him over the head, and they could roll him out the door.

Grinning at that image, she popped into Chad's bedroom for some cheerful conversation. The school board meeting was tomorrow night. She needed to remember why she was sticking her neck out like this. If she wasn't careful, the hunters of Garden Grove would be using
her
for target practice.

***

Pippa nervously shuffled the papers in her hand and shifted from foot to foot as she stood in the hallway outside the boardroom. She could hear the rumbling of male voices as they discussed personnel issues. Just her luck, she'd run into a school board comprised only of men. And she'd thought Kentucky backward

“I don't see what you're so nervous about,” Mary Margaret whispered. “You have the authority to spend money without them having to raise a dollar. It's a shoo-in.”

Pippa shook her head. “Nothing is a shoo-in where Seth Wyatt is concerned. They'll ask questions I can't answer and then ask why Seth isn't here to speak for himself. Sometimes, I could strangle the man.”

Meg grimaced. “Want me to say ‘I told you so'?”

George hugged his wife's shoulders. “Don't make Pippa any more nervous than she is, sweetheart. That gym means too much to too many kids.”

Meg shot him a look of irritation. “You don't know Pippa, then. The angrier she is, the better she gets. She confronted her first school board at the age of fifteen when they wanted to move the junior-senior prom to the school cafeteria. Had some of them in tears before she left. She missed her calling.”

Pippa shrugged her shoulders nervously beneath her conservative shirtdress. She'd lost some of that fifteen-year-old scrappiness in the years since then. Life had a way of sapping strength and confidence, rounding off sharp edges, and carving at ideals. She really didn't want to fight other people's battles anymore. How had she gotten herself into this?

Someone opened the boardroom door and the public shuffled in to take chairs. Pippa glanced at the evening's agenda.

Her petition was last on the list. She still had time to cut and run.

But the image of Chad's and Mikey's expectant faces glued her to the chair. So, if she couldn't have kids of her own, she'd be everybody's old maid aunt. Bearding a school board in its den was a far sight easier than marrying and spending eternity with a male of the species. She was good at many things, but picking men wasn't one of them.

Sitting in the front of the room, straightening her shoulders, she waited while the discussion of new desks and new buses droned on around her. The audience coughed and twitched restlessly as one topic after another passed with little argument. Pippa began wondering why the dickens all these people were here. Not one of them had so much as chirped a protest about anything.

She understood the moment the board president announced her name and everyone in the audience turned and stared at her. They were here because of her.

That didn't ease her nervousness. Not knowing whether they were here out of curiosity or opposition, Pippa stood up and read aloud her petition for renovating the old gym.

Someone coughed into the silence following her reading. She waited expectantly, scanning the group of men sitting at the table in front of her. The last time she'd stood in front of a school board, she'd known everyone in the room. This time, she recognized only the banker to whom Meg had introduced her. He was frowning.

“You say Seth Wyatt is willing to pay for the renovation of the gym to turn it into a facility for the disabled in the community?” The balding, paunchy board president looked at her with suspicion, as if she had just asked to hire a terrorist as teacher.

Pippa took a deep breath before replying. “The building is empty. A contractor would have to be hired to make certain it's structurally sound, but if it is, the renovation shouldn't be lengthy or too costly. And it would be a benefit to the entire community.”

“Miss Cochran, what Ronald is trying to say is: Why would Seth Wyatt bother doing anything for Garden Grove at this late date? He never has before.”

That was Meg's smooth-talking banker friend, Taylor Morgan, speaking. Pippa had already decided she didn't like him. “Mr. Morgan, did no one ever teach you not to look a gift horse in the mouth? Why question Mr. Wyatt's generosity? His son will benefit just as much as everyone else in the area.”

She heard the clucking of tongues but ignored them to the best of her ability. She really shouldn't have answered with irritation, but she was nervous. The last time she'd done this, she'd had a crowd of supporters around her. This time, she had only Meg and George. She didn't know how the rest of the crowd felt, but she could sense their agitation from the way they shifted in their seats and whispered behind their hands.

“So, in essence, Mr. Wyatt is willing to convert our gym for the benefit of his son?” Taylor asked with malice aforethought.

“In essence, Mr. Wyatt is generously giving the community a gift they can use for generations to come,” she countered.

Taylor Morgan had an ax to grind, and if he had to grind it on her before reaching Seth, it wouldn't cause him any grief. She despised people like that. She turned and faced the people sitting in the front row with her. “Can any of you see the harm in turning a worthless building into a community asset without any cost to you?”

A man at the end of the row shook his head thoughtfully. “It costs money to keep up a place like that. Heat, air, maintenance, whatever. Who's paying for all that?”

Oh, shoot. She hadn't gone that far in her planning. She had Seth's power of attorney for the renovations. She couldn't promise he would pay upkeep without asking his permission first. Well, in for a penny...

“I should think we would need an estimate of those costs first before any decision can be made. And I think it's up to the community to decide how to finance operations. Perhaps we could set a small entry charge or a monthly maintenance fee for those using it. That's a matter for the board to decide.”

The whispers became an instant uproar. The board president pounded his gavel until quiet fell again. He glared at Pippa. “I can't see how we can decide on a matter such as this without Mr. Wyatt's presence. We'll set the matter aside until...”

“Ronald, you're still avoiding decisions. You'd think after all these years, you'd have learned to make the simple ones,” a bored voice spoke from the back of the room.

The rustling and whispering erupted again, and Pippa swung around, realizing too late that the noise hadn't been because of her or the topic, but because of the man standing at the back of the room. He lifted a heavy eyebrow in irony now as he met her stare.

Seth. In public.

Heart dancing to a faster pace, Pippa returned a glare of her own, then swung back to face the disconcerted board. “I don't think there's any point in delaying the matter indefinitely. If the board has no other use for the gym, it can approve a recommendation for a contractor's survey, or it can vote to tear the building down. One will cost the board money. The other won't. The decision is yours, gentlemen. Use it wisely.”

She sat down. A smattering of applause followed. She didn't dare look to see what Seth was doing. For all she knew, he'd disappeared in a puff of smoke, just as he must have appeared. Taylor had slid down in his seat without a word. The board president frowned, but that seemed a perpetual expression for him.

She breathed a sigh of relief as one of the board motioned for the contractor survey and another quickly seconded it. A few members of the audience rose to protest any use of their taxes for a “haven for the wealthy.” George stood up and politely reminded them about Mikey and the other children who would have the use of it. Someone else recommended the building be torn down and the land sold. Taylor looked interested. The board president announced the sale of the land would scarcely cover the cost of the building's demolition.

Taylor rose to his feet and glared over the audience. “If you're interested in helping our community, Mr. Wyatt, why didn't you spend your money on renovating the printing plant and retaining a few jobs around here instead of sinking good money into an old gym?”

“Because the cost of maintaining that old plant was a constant drain on resources while renovating the gym is a onetime cost. Even a banker should understand that, Morgan. If you wanted to keep the plant open, why didn't the bank buy it when I offered?”

A gasp of expectation raced around the room, and all eyes turned to Seth. He stood in his favorite position, with arms crossed, leaning against the doorjamb. Pippa thought he looked a lot like Rambo waiting for the next blow, but she could see that others might not catch that implication. They'd see the long, dark hair, the defiant stance, the bunched muscles, and read distaste and rebellion into his posture. Stupid man. She could see why he ran his businesses over the telephone. Body language was definitely not his forte.

Shooting him a warning look, she stood up and addressed the board. “Perhaps you could vote on the matter at hand and save the other discussion for later, gentlemen?”

“I take it Miss Cochran has your full permission to act in your behalf on this matter, Mr. Wyatt?” the board president asked, glancing over Pippa's head to Seth.

“That's why she has my power of attorney,” he agreed, without inflection.

Pounding his gavel, Ronald called for a vote. Only Taylor Morgan voted against it.