Blue Clouds (43 page)

As she started to leave, she heard a second voice respond.

“You want hunks, check out the multimillionaire in 305. Have you ever seen such sexy eyes? I thought I'd melt into butter when he asked me for more coffee.”

Sexy eyes. Right. The moron ought to see them when he was angry. Well, all right, so they were sexy then, too, Pippa admitted as she hurried away. The man had a corner on sexy. If he would exert himself to learn a modicum of social skills, he could have a harem.

Deciding she preferred Seth's raw energy and blunt honesty to a movie star's charm, Pippa gave up on herself and hurried back to his room. Dirk wouldn't have had time to install his lookouts yet. The police hadn't offered. Someone had to look after the idiot.

“Mrs. Wyatt? Mrs. Wyatt!”

Gradually recognizing the voice as that of the nurse who had walked in on them earlier, Pippa halted and turned around.

Puffing a little as she hurried up, the nurse caught her hand to her large chest and took a deep breath. “The doctor is examining your husband. He doesn't want to be disturbed. Why don't you go down and have a bite of breakfast until he's finished?”

Pippa supposed there were still some doctors who dragged themselves out of bed at an ungodly hour to make their rounds. She hadn't thought Seth's high society doctor one of them, but she supposed Seth was too valuable a patient to lose, Pippa thought cynically.

“I'm a nurse. I won't disturb them,” she promised, continuing down the hallway. She'd like to ask the doctor a few questions. Generously, she decided to refrain from asking that someone examine Seth's hard head.

“Oh, no, Mrs. Wyatt!” The big nurse hastened to cut her off. “They're prepping him for surgery. You really can't—”

“They're what?” Pippa shouted. Or tried not to shout. Panic edged into her veins.

“For the blood clot,” the nurse hastily explained as Pippa dodged past her. “There's swelling. Surely the doctor—”

There wasn't any damned swelling. She would have seen the signs. The doctor hadn't mentioned it last night. There hadn't been time to run a scan this morning. She didn't know what the damned doctor had told the nurse, but Pippa wasn't buying it. Blind obedience wasn't her style. She had to see this for herself.

The nurse caught her arm and tried to steer her away. Pippa halted and stared her in the eye. “Dr. Graham is Mr. Wyatt's doctor. Is that Dr. Graham in there?”

A startled expression spread across the nurse's broad face. “No, ma'am, it's the new specialist he's called in. I don't remember his name.”

The new “hunk” doctor. Panic threatened to leap full-blown into hysteria. She throttled it. There could be a mistake. She, better than anyone, knew mistakes happened.

The nurse holding her wasn't any taller than she was, but packed twice Pippa's weight in fat and muscle. Jerking her arm from the woman's grasp, Pippa placed her hands on her hips and threw on her best authoritative disguise. “That isn't Seth's doctor. If you aren't out of my way in ten seconds, I'll call my lawyer, the hospital administration, and the police. And I can tell you right now, I never back down on my word.”

The nurse moved. Any mention of hospital administration put the fear of God in staff. Pippa had thrown in the rest for fun.

She didn't enter the room gently. She slammed open the door, letting it be known far and wide that she'd arrived. The nurse behind her ran before she was blamed for the intrusion.

Garbed in the black silk pajamas Pippa had brought from home, Seth sat up against the pillows, the white bandage around his bronzed features appearing almost natural with the spill of rakish curls over it. She could tell that he was furious. He shot her a cursory glance at her abrupt arrival, then returned to arguing with the technician attaching the IV to his arm. Seth looked so damned sexy, Pippa almost lost track of her reason for storming into the room. But then she remembered the intruder had called himself a doctor, not a technician. Doctors did not attach IVs.

There was no good reason for anyone to attach an IV to Seth's arm. She'd read his chart. He was taking fluids. He didn't need more.

Marching in, Pippa grabbed the IV bag and read the contents. Sugar water. But remembering the poisoned candy, she dropped the bag and started to turn and glare at the man behind the surgical mask, prepared to add her arguments to Seth's. Before she could confront him, a strong arm caught her around the throat and jerked her head back.

As she crumpled, Pippa heard Seth's roar of rage.

Rack up one more mistake against her.

Fury roared through Seth as Pippa's eyes rolled back in her head and she crumpled to the floor. Red, murderous rage drove his arm from his side until he'd grabbed the so-called “doctor's” neck.

The surgical mask fell away as Seth tried to throttle him. Even then, Seth didn't immediately recognize Pippa's attacker. The billowy surgical cap covering his hair and the malevolent expression warped any familiar demeanor, and Seth's fury blurred his view of the world.

Only as his assailant spoke did Seth recognize with whom he struggled.

“You're supposed to be dead, you bastard!”

Darius
.

Seth tightened his stranglehold, but reaching up from a bed wasn't an ideal position. And Darius had a hypodermic in his free hand. Seth didn't want to contemplate what the needle contained, the needle Darius would undoubtedly have stuck in the IV and let drip while he escaped. Seth damned well wouldn't let Darius off easy this time. Keeping one hand on Golding's jugular, he tried to grab the needle.

Darius jerked free, and the hand with the hypodermic shot out. “We'll do this the hard way, damn you!” he growled, grabbing for Seth's arm.

Caught in the covers, Seth couldn't kick his leg freely. He rolled over, groaning as he hit the bed bar against his cracked ribs, but the covers pulled free with his movement.

Darius dived across the mattress after him. “This is all your own damned fault, you realize,” he said as he grabbed Seth's arm again.

“Isn't it always?” Using what leverage he possessed from a prone position, Seth caught Darius's wrist and twisted downward. The hypodermic hovered between them, twisting in their deadly arm-wrestling match.

“You must have nine damned lives. Why didn't you die in that car!”

Seth didn't ask which car and which time. The point was moot if he couldn't get the needle out of Golding's hand. He tried to slide out of the far side of the bed, but the damned railing got in his way. He should have had Pippa lower it.

Pippa
! Darius had throttled her. What if he'd killed her?

Not Pippa. Not Pippa of the shining smile, the sunbeam who had converted his son from screaming monster to laughing child. He couldn't let anything happen to her. And Seth knew as certainly as he knew his own name that if Darius killed him, he'd have to kill Pippa, too. No way.

With another roar, Seth twisted his assailant's arm so fast he could feel the bones snap in Darius's wrist. Darius screamed in agony, then screamed again and instead of pulling away, tried desperately to clamber up on the bed.

Holding his antagonist pinned against the bed in hopes of preventing escape, Seth found himself in the awkward position of backing away before Darius landed on top of him. “What in hell?”

“Call her off! She's twisting them off!
Aagghhh
!” At Darius's high-pitched scream, footsteps pounded down the hall.

“Pippa?” Still holding Darius pinned against the mattress, Seth awkwardly maneuvered into a sitting position so he could see the floor beyond him.

“I've got him by the balls just like you taught me,” Pippa replied calmly from the floor. “Should I let him go?”

A grin tugged at the corners of Seth's mouth as he watched Darius struggle and scream. He couldn't help it. For what the bastard had done to Chad, he'd see him nailed to a bed of fire ants. “Twist a little harder, just for good measure.”

The door popped open as Darius's scream reached fever pitch.

“What the hell is going on in here?”

Seth looked up at the short, mustached security guard and the portly black nurse behind him and wasn't entirely reassured reinforcements had arrived. He twisted Darius's arm a little harder. “Get the cops. And if you have handcuffs, use them.”

“Demerol, Nurse,” Pippa quipped from the floor. “I suspect he's in significant pain.”

Seth snickered. “Have you made a eunuch of him yet?”

“I need more wrist strength,” she replied reflectively. “You'll have to teach me some exercises.”

“I can't dispense medication without a doctor's orders,” the nurse replied hesitantly.

“I haven't got cuffs,” the guard said at the same time.

“Oh, well.” Shrugging, Seth rolled up a fist and plowed it into Darius's chin just as Dirk and one of his cronies burst in. “I've been wanting to do that for a long time.”

***

Seth glanced anxiously at the door through which Pippa had departed earlier. She'd given her statement to the police, then wandered off to find clothes for him. He'd still been talking to police, doctors, and lawyers when she returned. He'd tried to tell her to stay, but she'd only given him an odd look and disappeared again. He wasn't much good at reading body language, but hers didn't appear very welcoming. He couldn't imagine what he'd done wrong this time, but he wanted to rectify it as soon as possible, if only these damned people would get out of his face.

“Look, I don't have any idea if Natalie is involved. I doubt it, but at this point, even I wouldn't rely on my judgment. If I'd died in that first accident while we were still married, she'd have inherited everything. This time around, she's out of the picture. Chad gets it all. But if she had custody of Chad...” Shrugging, Seth glanced from the door to the police detective. “Either way, Darius would gain control of another fortune to throw away.”

Impatiently, he turned to his doctor. “Shouldn't I be resting or something? Can't you throw them out of here?”

From against the far wall, Dirk spoke up. “You've got reporters downstairs looking for you. My guy steered them wrong, but they'll be back.”

Oh, hell, just what he didn't need. The nasty media coverage after his accident and breakup with Natalie had soured him for life on the press.

“Find Pippa and bring your car around. I'm breaking out of here.” Seth reached for the blue linen polo shirt Pippa had bought for him. Blue. Who did she think he was? Tom Cruise? At least it didn't require a necktie.

Gradually, the room cleared. The doctor signed Seth's release after being persuaded Pippa was a registered nurse and that Seth would get considerably more rest in the privacy of his home than in the fishbowl of a hospital room. Now, if he could only find Pippa.

Where in hell could she have gone? Dirk knew what she looked like, but he couldn't search everywhere at once. Seth had described the car Pippa drove, and Dirk had found it in the lot, parked practically in the emergency lane, where she'd left it yesterday in her haste to reach Seth. He didn't want to imagine how frightened she'd been to park the car so carelessly. Pippa usually took good care of Mac's car.

He didn't want to imagine Pippa frightened because of him. It was a lot easier dealing with the kind of dispassionate concern someone like Mac displayed. Even his mother hadn't bothered calling, although Seth had heard Pippa talking to her on the phone, reassuring her, and he figured she'd done that throughout the time he'd been unconscious. If he could pretend Pippa was doing her professional duty by driving into L.A.—-a city she knew nothing about—locating the hospital, and sitting by his bedside day and night, he could accept her attention a little easier. But Seth knew Pippa better than that.

That scared the hell out of him.

He would be more comfortable complaining about those damned expensive—charcoal gray—trousers she'd bought than realizing Pippa actually cared enough to fly to his side the instant he needed her. And he'd needed her, all right. He wasn't entirely certain he would have bothered regaining consciousness this time if it hadn't been for Pippa's nagging. She'd erased the nightmare he'd lived with all these years, replacing it with a panicky concern that had dragged him right out of wherever he'd been.

Shaking his head over the perversity of his nature, Seth buckled his belt, located the duffel bag Pippa had brought from home, and tossed his stuff into it. He'd been lying in the hospital bed with a cracked head, and he'd been worried about worrying Pippa. Just exactly what did that signify? Insanity?

Where the devil had she gotten to?

Annoyed that she hadn't returned, worrying over why, worrying if he was nuts for worrying, Seth checked the hallway. He didn't want reporters tracking him down, but he didn't want to leave Pippa either. Stupid thought. She had a car. She could find her way home.

But he wouldn't leave without her. In his entire life, he'd never given a damn about anyone but Chad. He'd gone his own solitary way, forged a life requiring no one, and he'd considered himself safe and content compared to the nightmare of his childhood. Now here he was, opening himself up to disaster again, letting someone else in besides Chad. Would he never learn?