Blue Clouds (5 page)

“It's twelve miles,” he said gruffly, ignoring her predicament. Wiping his son's tears, he looked past the woman to Nana, who had quietly watched the entire scene without offering a word or hand. Efficient as usual when called upon, she stepped forward to take the boy from Seth's arms.

At Chad's vehement protests, Nana dropped him into his wheelchair and lifted the watering can over his head.

The annoying female snickered. Frustrated, irritated beyond all redemption at his inability to control any portion of his household, Seth caught his new employee's elbow and steered her toward the door. “We'll discuss this in my office.”

To his surprise, she jerked her arm from his grasp and stalked out the door ahead of him. “We will discuss this on the front steps while we wait for my ride, which you will summon now,” she informed him coldly.

He didn't deal with women much anymore. Natalie had effectively killed any illusions he'd once possessed about the female gender. But he'd never lacked confidence in the effect his looks and wealth had on women. He didn't expect this female to fawn all over him immediately, but a respectful “Yes, sir; no, sir,” accompanied by a lingering smile would have sufficed. That's why he endured the battle-ax, MacGregor. Sixty and carved from granite, she couldn't flirt if she tried. But this leprechaun...

It didn't matter. She wouldn't suit. He couldn't have an appealing female prancing around the house day and night. Even if Chad wouldn't throw a tantrum every time she crossed the threshold, Seth didn't have the patience for withstanding temptation of this sort. He definitely didn't need one more uncontrollable force in his life.

Sometimes, Seth believed this monstrous fortress of his childhood was built to keep the inmates in, instead of keeping the world out.

He followed her past the hall leading to his office and out the front door before pulling his thoughts up short. This particular female didn't want to stay. She'd laughed in his face and walked out the door without a single backward look. And she'd shut Chad up within minutes, instead of the usual hours. Furthermore, he had absolutely
nobody
to fill MacGregor's shoes.

The possibility of enduring the anarchy he'd just suffered for weeks, maybe months, drove Seth to run after her.

“We got off on the wrong foot,” Seth apologized as he nearly fell over her in his haste. He grabbed the post and regained his balance while searching for the best means of intimidating her.

Scanning the magnificent view from the porch, Pippa paid her host little heed. The isolation out here appealed strongly to her need for escape. The locked gate at the bottom of the drive offered badly needed security. This fortress would be protection beyond her wildest dreams. She liked this place. The towering cliff she had seen beyond the balcony appealed to her sense of the dramatic. She could push Billy off it if she liked.

“I'm certain we can come to terms, Miss Cochran,” the terrifying man beside her said. “I'll send my regular driver in for you every day. If you can give me eight hours a day, I might survive. I'm prepared to pay you well.”

He certainly would if her job entailed taming that spoiled wildcat inside. The kid would have been a stubborn handful if healthy. Caged by his useless legs, the child had become a volcano of raw energy ready to explode at any excuse. She didn't relish finding an outlet for that energy. And she didn't relish working for a man who bullied his employees.

“We discussed a thousand a week,” she replied absently, still debating the wisdom of this move. Actually, they'd discussed nothing of the sort. His original offer had been considerably lower. That had been before the maniac driver and volcanic kid.

“Of course, but I'll need you seven days a week,” he countered.

“Even God took a day off.” Shocked by his easy acceptance of her outrageous proposal, Pippa turned to him with a wry look. The expression on those dark, brooding features should terrify her. She couldn't find an ounce of kindness in the grim set of his mouth, or compassion in the forbidding stance of muscular arms crossed over powerful chest. He'd grabbed her arm and tried physically hauling her around. Experience screamed for her to run like crazy.

That he still stood there discussing her ridiculous demands showed his desperation. She could understand his point. Trapped in that madhouse all day, she'd want some form of comic relief, too.

“Fine, Sundays off, then.” He waved his hand impatiently. “How soon can you start?”

She liked the feeling of having a bully under her thumb for a change. The man truly was desperate. No matter how he tried hiding it, she could see it in the way he avoided her gaze.

With a sudden sense of mischief, she stared over his immaculately landscaped lawn and replied in her best Kentucky accent. “Way-el-l-l, Ah guess Ah could start oncet I get muh trailer up here. Cain't see makin' that drive ever' day.”

Shock glazed his eyes, and Pippa noted that they were shades of gray and not shards of stone. He recovered rapidly, and frost froze his features and coated his words. “A trailer is completely out of the question. It's against building codes.”

Liar
, she murmured spitefully to herself. According to everything she'd heard,
he
determined the building code around here. If he wanted an entire trailer park on this mountain, not a soul would object. Aloud.

“Way-el-l-l, that's a pity. Don't cotton to sharin' a room with a kid lahk Ah'm doin' now. Don't much cotton to ridin' with none of yer crazy drivers either. Looks like we reached an impasse, Mr. Wyatt.”

A hint of something resembling humor momentarily warmed his expression before he schooled his harsh features into coldness again. “I don't much cotton to my son talking like a hick either, Miss Cochran. If this is your strategy to get out of an unpalatable job, you didn't reckon on my determination.”

Unpalatable. She liked a man who could throw words like that around. She grinned at his bad mimicry. “I don't suppose you cotton to teaching your son manners either, Mr. Wyatt. Not that you have many to teach him. Let me introduce myself.” She held out her hand. “I'm Phillippa Cochran. Nice place you have here.”

He glanced suspiciously at her hand, back to her cheerful grin, and very, very reluctantly unbent sufficiently to shake her fingers. “Miss Cochran, I'm Seth Wyatt. I apologize for your rude reception.”

“Very good, Mr. Wyatt. Your mother did teach you a thing or two, then.” She waited patiently, still smiling.

He hesitated. Gradually, his gaze drifted from her implacable smile to the smashed auto in the drive, then back to the sprawling house behind them.

“If it would not be an imposition, you might take one of the rooms in the guest wing,” he suggested stiffly.

“One at least a mile away from you and your son,” she agreed. Meg would kill her. Pippa thought she had possibly breathed in too much California air and lost her mind. She had the distinct feeling she was selling her soul to the devil.

Still, this hell of his was damned attractive from her perspective, considering what she'd left behind.

“You know, it's always those men who live alone, the ones neighbors describe as loners, who end up blowing away their families or bombing buildings. Look at the Unabomber, and the guy who blew up the federal building in Oklahoma.”

Sitting at a table in the local cafe after a shopping expedition that had probably maxed out Meg's credit cards, Pippa listened as the local banker speculated about Garden Grove's favorite subject—the Wyatt family. She supposed that if Seth Wyatt closed the town's main industry, the bank would be left with any number of uncollectible loans.

“I think it's only
poor
loners who blow up buildings,” Pippa offered magnanimously in her new employer's defense. “Rich ones buy armies and blow up countries.”

Taylor Morgan shifted his California-bronzed, golden- haired head in her direction. Until now, he'd concentrated on Meg and his wife, who were apparently good country club buddies. His glance wasn't particularly friendly, and Pippa gave him her best Pollyanna smile. She might not much like men right now, but she knew how to charm them. The man seemed to defrost slightly.

“I don't think you fully understand the relationship between the Wyatts and this town, Miss Cochran. Maxim Wyatt came here during the Depression, bought up every acre of land he could lay hands on, and successfully prevented any meaningful economic development for decades.”

“He wouldn't use Taylor's bank,” Meg whispered in explanation from behind her fingers.

The banker continued. “After Maxim Wyatt bankrupted the remainder of the valley's inhabitants, he used them as slave labor to build that monstrosity of a house out there. People had to put food in the mouths of their children somehow. They took whatever he offered. Wyatts have controlled this town ever since, kept us in poverty and repression simply by their ownership of every valuable piece of land in the county.”

“We could put in an industrial park where he tore down the printing plant,” Lisa, Taylor's wife, added, “but Seth won't sell the land. There's good farm acreage out there, but he just rents it to sharecroppers. He has an absolute stranglehold on the economy. I think he enjoys holding an ax over our heads.”

“A scythe,” Pippa muttered to herself, but the others were so engrossed in their topic that they didn't hear.

“He's dangerous,” Taylor said. “You really should reconsider your decision, Miss Cochran. They say he keeps his only son a prisoner, and his few employees are all slightly deranged. That black driver of his terrifies the shopkeepers. They only accept Mrs. Jones because she's been around forever. She once broke a chair over a man's head. Seth has had the grounds wired and runs the current so strong that some of the kids have received severe shocks. They kept the court session quiet, but his wife countersued in the divorce for abuse. I've friends down in Orange County, where they used to live. They say she's a broken woman.”

Pippa stirred her Coke with a straw. “Mrs. Jones?” she asked casually, wondering if he could possibly mean the stooped old lady she'd met yesterday.

“The housekeeper.” Impatiently, Taylor scraped his chair back from the table. “I have to get back to the office. It was good meeting you, Miss Cochran. I wish you well on your search for employment here, but I recommend that you don't accept Wyatt's offer.”

Fat chance. As if she could turn down an offer of a thousand a week with free room and board. Pippa bit into her hamburger. The driver she'd seen looked like a nutcase, but he wasn't black in any coloring book she knew. Maybe Seth Wyatt was the kind of man around whom legends grew. Admittedly, she found him physically terrifying, but in her present frame of mind, she didn't like Taylor Morgan all that much either.

“I understand Mr. Wyatt is an attractive man,” Lisa Morgan said conversationally after her husband's departure. If Pippa was any judge of character at all, the light in the other woman's eyes was almost predatory as she opened this topic. Wearing a chic fawn silk tunic top to complement her blond good looks, she dangled more gold jewelry than Pippa had seen in the Gold Nugget back home.

“If you like Grim Reapers, I suppose,” Pippa replied offhandedly. She was used to gossip. She was just uncomfortable discussing a man she'd barely met, a man who looked dangerous but defended his son with all the ferocity of a wild wolf.

“Pippa doesn't notice men,” Meg offered in explanation for her friend's reticence. “I swear, in high school, she had half the football team breathing down her neck, and you know what she did with them? Set them to decorating the gym for the prom. And she went to the dance with the class nerd.”

“He owns his own software company now,” Pippa offered with a shrug. “And except for the receding hairline, he's quite handsome. He started working out in college while the football team filled up on beer and got paunchy. I'm not entirely stupid when it comes to men.”

“If you're not stupid, why didn't you marry him?” Meg demanded, pursuing one of her favorite topics.

Pippa grinned and wiped the ketchup off her fingers with a paper napkin. “He didn't ask me. He wasn't stupid either.”

Meg laughed but Lisa merely looked bored.

“Well, I'll leave you two to catch up on old times. If you do decide to accept Mr. Wyatt's offer, Phillippa, I hope you'll do everything in your power to make him see reason. If he'd only come into town and talk with us, we might make some progress around here.”

Pippa smiled automatically and waved farewell. Like, sure, an ant could move a mountain. She'd do well to avoid being crushed by runaway boulders.

As soon as Lisa departed, Meg's expression changed to a worried frown. “I don't like this, Pippa. If you must take the job, at least stay in town. With that much money, you could buy a car and rent an apartment.”

Pippa couldn't explain why she felt safer in a madman's fortress than in the openness of her friend's community. Billy had stolen something from her she couldn't get back so readily—security.

“I like it out there,” she answered carelessly, scraping up the last French fry. Both Meg and Lisa, in their California health- consciousness, had been appalled by her choice of meal. She hadn't explained she'd needed the familiarity of comfort foods right now. Once she adapted to this odd new world, she'd learn their ways.