Blue Clouds (21 page)

The more amazing sight was his mother on the other side of the table. Garbed in flowing turquoise silk, her artfully tinted white hair neatly coiffed, her ears and throat shimmering with heavy silver, Lillian Wyatt carefully applied self-sticking stamps to the envelopes Chad handed her. She then handed the envelope to Pippa, who applied address labels.

Neither Chad nor Lillian looked up as he entered, but Pippa did. Flashing him one of those Pollyanna smiles of hers, she gestured at her assembly line. “I thought it made more sense to do it ourselves than to send them out.”

Nothing made more sense. He didn't even know what they were doing. Didn't care. He had never—not ever—seen his mother sitting complacently at a table doing something besides playing cards and smoking. In the early days it might have been coffee instead of cards in her hands, but never had it been work of any type, manner, or form.

He didn't know how to react. He had an odd urge to take the remaining side of the table and join in the family fun. Once upon a time he'd glued himself to the television and watched old reruns of sixties programs where families sat around the supper table together and talked of the day's activities. At the time, he'd thought that was how families were supposed to work and resented the hell out of his for not meeting the norm. Since then, he'd learned differently, but that old ache remained. He wanted to be part of a real family.

Stupid, utterly irrational thought. His meddling assistant was simply playing another of her hocus-pocus tricks. Shortly, Lillian would grow bored and wander off in search of a cigarette. Chad would grow impatient with something that wouldn't go right, and he'd have a tantrum and fling the table across the room. Seth didn't want to be there when it all fell apart. He'd just store this idyllic image and run like hell before it exploded.

“Whatever makes you happy,” he muttered, striding for his office as fast as his legs could carry him.

“Coward!” Pippa called cheerfully from behind him.

Exactly. Seth closed the door and leaned against it. She was taking his entire universe and turning it upside down. He had to put a stop to this. Maybe Mac's father had died quickly instead of lingering. Maybe he could bribe his real assistant into returning immediately. Things had to return to normal or he'd start believing he belonged down this rabbit hole.

He snickered at the image of his mother as the March Hare and Chad as the Mad Hatter. He wished he could paint. What a scene that would make!

But he had business to conduct: a crisis in the Japanese plant, a pending merger in New York, and dozens of routine calls needing his attention. He didn't have time to imagine March Hares and Mad Hatters. If Lewis Carroll had spent more time tending business instead of rowing boats, smoking dope, and admiring little girls, he'd not have had time to create impossible worlds either.

Seth sank into his desk chair and attacked the mountain of paperwork waiting. Tonight, when all the phones stopped ringing and everyone went home, he could lose himself in the world of his imagination. That time was his and no Pollyannas could steal it.

Laughter rippled from the outer room. His attention half on the voice on the other end of the line and half on Chad's giggles, Seth forgot who he was calling. Shaking his head to clear it, he tried to focus on the conversation. Finally giving up on the details of the merger his CEO in New York was spelling out, he spat out a few curt commands and assigned the matter to his legal firm. He didn't give a damn who got what stock option.

His father should never have left him the business. He had no head for it, no desire for it, no ambition for it. He had the brains for it, maybe, but that was about it.

Picking up the phone to return the next call, he heard another round of laughter in the outer room. He still couldn't believe it. Pippa was definitely a sorceress of some sort. Or maybe they were keeping a pitcher of martinis under that card table. Firmly, he pounded in the proper numbers.

As soon as he hung up, his door opened and Pippa's head popped from behind it.

“Did you get those toffees away from Durwood?” she whispered over the chatter from behind her.

“I did.” Seth threw open his desk drawer and held up the box. “They even smell nasty. Why in the devil would he put the things in his mouth?” Relieved for this excuse not to think about the Japanese crisis, he opened the lid and offered her a sniff.

She shook her head and refused to enter his inner sanctum. “I'll take your word for it. But you'd better not leave them in your desk. Chad might take a fancy to them, or you might forget and pick one up. I think they're tainted. I've never heard of allergic reactions to toffee that resulted in intense vomiting.”

“Well, the syrup of ipecac you forced down him didn't help,” he reminded her. “The poor guy will have to eat for a week to make up for it.”

“He behaved more like a victim of poisoning than someone with an allergic reaction. It seemed like the sensible thing to do at the time. He was in pain. The doctor didn't see that because Durwood was feeling better after getting all that stuff out of his stomach. I just think it's awfully odd that you receive a box of candy with no return address and it made your gardener sick. Let me take it in to George. Maybe he knows someone who can do a chemical analysis on it.”

Seth grinned. “And I thought I was the one with the imagination around here. Who would want to poison me? My competition wanting to eliminate me from the bestseller list?” Even as he said it, he remembered the muggers at the bar, but he dismissed them summarily and continued, “My voracious instincts for business have annoyed one too many printing companies? My publisher thinks I'll start my own company and put them out of business?”

“In case you haven't noticed, this world is full of nuts. Humor me. Give me the box.” She stuck out her hand. “Then come have tea with us. We're having a party.”

Seth laughed out loud. He couldn't help it. The Dormouse had just invited him to tea. It felt good to laugh, as if someone had just filled him up with helium and let him drift. He couldn't remember the last time he'd really laughed. Maybe never.

Pippa wore a peeved expression and seemed prepared to slam the door on his rude reaction. Seth waved his hand to prevent it until he calmed down, handing her the candy as a peace offering.

“It's a private joke,” he sputtered finally as a tentative smile returned to her face. “I'm still trying to decide whether you're Pollyanna or the Dormouse.”

She grinned. “Dormouse? I've heard the Pollyanna bit, and I promise you, I am very definitely not Pollyanna. I've seen the bloody side of life too often to believe everything will always come up roses. But Dormouse?”

He assumed his best stoic executive expression. “Or Pippi Longstocking. Quite possibly Pippi Longstocking. She had a definite mischievous bent to her actions.”

“Larcenous is more like it, so I don't thank you for the comparison. Will you have tea with us or not? Nana has made chocolate chip cookies.”

“Those are the only kind of cookies Nana knows how to bake.” Seth followed the path of least resistance. Tea and cookies—even with his mother—seemed much more appealing than a paper crisis in a Japanese printing plant.

Of course, some niggling voice at the back of his mind said tea and cookies with Pippi Longstocking was an even stronger attraction.

Sometime, when he had the time, he would have to see if Pippa was seducible.

The possibility added an extra edge to the day, a certain anticipation he hadn't felt in a long time. He knew better than to seduce an employee, of course. He would never really do it. But just the
thought
of it would keep him occupied for hours. He had lots of experience in imagining what he would like to have. He had limited experience in obtaining it, since very little of what he wanted could be bought for coins.

As he sat down at a shabby card table littered with envelopes and sipped at weak tea, nibbling cookies with his son while his mother looked on approvingly, Seth wondered if he'd just reached one of his imagined goals: sitting down at the table with his family.

Glancing askance at his impish assistant and finding her contentedly licking chocolate off her finger, he felt the impact of an unexpected blow to the gut.

It had taken Pippa Cochran to open a door he'd thought long since sealed shut. It had taken his nuisance of an assistant to make one of his dreams come true.

“I think we need a committee, Pippa.” Meg sipped her coffee with an unusually serious expression. “We don't want Seth pulling the strings and then cutting them.”

“He's not like that,” Pippa insisted with irritation, fanning herself with a magazine. Meg's air-conditioning had quit and the dry breeze through the window scarcely stirred the air. Already, she longed for the cooler air of the evergreens and hills of Seth's mansion. When she left this job, she would have to make certain she took another one in the hills. She definitely did not like the valley.

Nor did she like thinking about finding another job.

“Seth has so many things to do at once. He just can't keep up with them all. That's why he needs me. I won't let the strings drop. But maybe community input would help. I don't like the word ‘committee.' In my experience, they hinder more than help.”

Meg pondered that for a minute. Then wiping her brow with a paper napkin, she shrugged. “I don't know how you can get community input without a committee. Let me get together a few people. Some of the parents, maybe Taylor Morgan, and the mayor—if he's interested—people like that. Taylor and the mayor will know about grants and stuff. And we'll need a representative from the school board since they own the building.”

Pippa grimaced. “Taylor will give you a hard time. Seth broke his nose once.”

For the first time that morning, Meg perked up. “Really? How? Why? Tell all.”

“Accidentally, I suspect. Seth's not very communicative. But I think the bad blood goes both ways. You didn't grow up here any more than I did, so you probably don't know the half of it. Maybe it's up to outsiders to bring the town and Seth together again.”

Meg brushed a wisp of frizzy hair from her face and stared at the ceiling as if listening for some sound from the children above. Shaking herself from her reverie, she sipped at her coffee again, but her smile had disappeared. “It may be too late, Pippa. George is applying for positions all around the state. It's breaking his heart to leave his daddy's store, but we've got expenses we can't meet, and the kids come first. It's always been his dream to come back here and take over that store. Those visits with his father every summer were what he lived for as a kid. I hate seeing him like this.”

Pippa's heart sank. Meg was her best friend. She loved George and the kids like family. She'd been driven from the one home she'd ever known and now her adopted one was about to crumble under her. She couldn't let it happen, not if there was any way of preventing it. There had to be a way.

“Don't give up, Meg,” she urged. “Better things will come along if we work at it. Let me loan you some of this ridiculous salary Seth is paying me. I don't need it. I just pried it out of him out of spite for what he's done to you. So, in a way, it belongs to you.”

Meg almost smiled. “There's Pollyanna speaking. Thanks, Pippa, but you've earned every bit of that money putting up with him. And you might need it someday. He's likely to turn you out with a bad reference.”

“He's not like that.” Really cross now, Pippa stood up and paced the tiny kitchen. “He puts on this ugly face to drive people away, but underneath, he's this scared little boy. I don't think he was ever allowed to interact with other children when he was a kid. And I suspect he had some pretty unpleasant experiences once he was thrust into the real world.”

She swung around and glared at Meg. “We may have grown up poor, but by golly, we grew up happy, with loving families and friends. Money can't buy that, you know.”

Meg stared at her in astonishment. “You aren't falling for that man, are you? Phillippa Cochran, you have the worst taste in men I have ever seen. Positively self-destructive. You need a psychiatrist.”

“Yeah, I know that.” Filling a glass with water from the sink, Pippa took a long pull. “But not because I'm ‘falling' for Seth Wyatt. I need to have my head examined for trying to save the world when most of the time, the world doesn't want to be saved. Let me start some kind of fund for the kids. Isn't that what a godmother is for?”

Meg shook her head, but she was smiling again. “You're a case, Pippa, and that's a fact. Okay, we'll leave Taylor off the committee. Anyone else I should blackball?”

Pippa swirled the water in her glass and watched it slosh to the edge. “Did George do anything about that candy?”

Meg raised her eyebrows. “You were serious about that? I thought it was some kind of joke. Durwood's quite capable of eating poppy seeds until he hallucinates. It doesn't take poison to do him in.”

“The candy was intended for Seth,” Pippa reminded her. “I may be overreacting, but if so many people hate Seth, wouldn't it be possible someone would wish him ill?”