Conflict of Interest (The McClouds of Mississippi)

by Gina Wilkins

  The same inclination was mirrored in his heated green eyes when he finally lifted his head. “I really wish I hadn’t done that.”

  That was not what she had expected him to say. “Um, why not?”

  He set her firmly away from him. “Because I’m about to face another sleepless night, and, as you pointed out, we need our rest. If you hear anyone pacing the hallways before dawn, it’s only me. But keep your door locked, anyway.”

  He was trying to lighten the moment—or perhaps lessen the importance of the kiss—with a touch of dry humor. Attempting to respond in kind, she asked, “And if I leave the door open?”

  “That could be taken as an invitation,” he replied evenly.

  She studied him for a beat before nodding and stepping back into the bedroom. “I’ll keep that in mind,” she said, and closed the door firmly in his face.

  The bedroom door remained closed all night. Gideon knew because he checked. Several times. He just happened to be walking by, of course.

  It was probably for the best, since his life was complicated enough at the moment. But, judging from that all-too-brief kiss, it would have been worth some complications.

  To take his mind off what he could be doing with Adrienne, he turned his thoughts to Isabelle as he lay on the big couch in his office, staring up at the shadowy ceiling. He figured there was a good chance she would rebel against going to school again in the morning. For one thing, they had made it too pleasant for her to stay home today. And for another, they still hadn’t solved whatever problem she’d had in the first place.

  Adrienne’s plan hadn’t worked out. Isabelle had certainly enjoyed the movie, but it hadn’t relaxed her enough to open up about her issues at school. And that nightmare must mean that something was still eating at her. He was beginning to think a firmer hand was called for. The kid was only four, for crying out loud, and they had been tiptoeing around her as if she were the queen of England or something.

  He tried to remember what his own parents had done on occasions in his youth when he had decided he didn’t want to go to school. As he recalled, his mother had taken his temperature and if it had been normal, she’d simply informed him that he was going to school and she didn’t want to hear any arguments about it.

  No amount of griping or whining would get him out of it, but it would curtail his favorite after-school activities. Every ten minutes of protesting had earned him half an hour alone in his room without his stereo, his television or his old Atari game system. Once she had figured out he was perfectly content to stay in his room with his books or his notebooks, she had changed the punishment to time spent pulling weeds from her flower beds—a chore he had detested.

  He hadn’t missed much school.

  Lenore had been firm but fair, meting out rewards as generously as punishment. Stuart McCloud, on the other hand, had set standards that Gideon had found impossible to meet. It hadn’t been as tough for Nathan, who had been content to follow his father’s advice to enter law school. And Deborah could do no wrong in Stuart’s eyes, with the exception, of course, of getting involved with Dylan Smith, the only thing she had ever done in outright defiance of their father’s wishes.

  When that romance had ended badly, and painfully, Deborah had listened to Stuart’s I-told-you-sos and modeled herself into the dutiful daughter again—until Stuart had shattered her faith in him, and perhaps in all men, by betraying her trust in him.

  But even before the affair and divorce that had shattered the family, Stuart and Gideon had never gotten along. Nothing Gideon ever did was good enough, none of his dreams practical enough to suit Stuart, a man who had lived to lead and impress others, his eyes firmly focused on the governor’s mansion. He had expected his offspring to be ambitious, conformist and popular. For Nathan and Deborah, those things had come easily. But for Gideon—the moody, introspective, unsociable rebel—they were unbearable.

  Gideon’s choice to attend a public state university to study a liberal arts curriculum had been bad enough, in Stuart’s eyes. Dropping out in his junior year to live on a modest trust fund from his maternal grandparents and pursue a career writing pulp fiction had pretty much severed any remaining ties between them. Rather than encouraging his younger son’s dream, Stuart had belittled it, predicting failure, poverty and misery.

  As far as Gideon knew, Stuart had never read anything he’d published. And Gideon had always told himself he didn’t care.

  Impatiently shoving those unwanted memories to the back of his mind, he rolled on the couch to check the time. Almost 5:00 a.m. Might as well get up and make a pot of coffee, maybe get a few pages written before it was time to wake Isabelle. Hell of a lot more productive use of his time than brooding over his father’s parental shortcomings.

  And what did the past have to do with anything, anyway? Gideon wasn’t trying to be a father to Isabelle—he’d failed to learn that particular skill along the way. He’d never even pictured himself with kids, considering he would be as lousy at the task as his own dear old dad had been. All he wanted to do now was be a reasonably competent big brother and baby-sitter until someone more qualified returned to take the responsibility off his hands.

  Chapter Nine

  Adrienne completely understood what Gideon was trying to do Friday morning. They had tried her idea of catering to Isabelle, in hopes that she would get over her problems at school, and it hadn’t worked. Now Gideon was trying the firm, serious, adult-in-charge approach.

  That wasn’t working, either.

  “I don’t want to go to school!” Isabelle shouted through a storm of tears. “I don’t want to.”

  “You might as well accept that you have to go to school,” Gideon answered flatly, his hands on his hips and a look of severely strained patience on his face. “Your nanna and Nathan are trusting me to take you to school, and I’m not going to let them down. And neither are you. Now, if there’s a problem at school, you can tell me about it and I’ll see what I can do to resolve it. If you refuse to tell me, you’ll just have to go and try to handle it yourself.”

  “You can’t fix it,” Isabelle muttered, hanging her head. She looked so miserable that Adrienne was tempted to pick her up and cuddle her and tell her she didn’t have to do anything she didn’t want to do, but all that would accomplish would be to undermine Gideon’s efforts.

  “How do you know I can’t fix it?” Gideon asked. “You haven’t given me a chance. I know I’m not Nathan, but I’m not entirely incompetent.”

  Isabelle only sniffled.

  Adrienne couldn’t stay silent any longer. “Sweetheart, won’t you please tell us what happened to upset you at school? Gideon and I want to help you, but we can’t if we don’t know what’s wrong.”

  Swiping the back of one hand across her nose, Isabelle seemed to consider her next words.

  Gideon produced a tissue. His tone was as firm as before, but perhaps a few degrees warmer. “Use this, and then spill it.”

  Though she obediently blew her nose, Isabelle looked a bit confused.

  “Tell us what happened,” Adrienne translated.

  It seemed like a very long time before the child spoke. When she did, her question floored both Adrienne and Gideon. “Was my daddy a bad man?”

  Gideon recovered first. “What are you talking about?”

  His sharp tone made Isabelle draw back, looking up at him nervously.

  Adrienne gave him a warning glance before speaking to the child. “Did someone say something about your father?”

  Inching a bit closer to Adrienne, Isabelle nodded.

  “Who was it?” Gideon demanded. “One of the kids?”

  Isabelle spoke so softly that they had to strain to hear her. “A boy named Danny. He’s having a birthday party this weekend, but he said his mommy wouldn’t let me come because my daddy was a bad man who hurt people. Danny said my daddy had to run away because nobody wanted him here anymore and they don’t want me, either. And another boy named Bryson said his grandma feels s
orry for Nanna because Nanna didn’t want me here, either.”

  Gideon’s jaw was so tight Adrienne could almost hear his teeth grind together. “Did you tell any of your teachers what the little bas—er, jerks said?”

  “No. ’Cause then they would have called me a tattletale, and everyone makes fun of tattletales.”

  “Hell, it’s no wonder you don’t want to go back there. It’s a school full of morons.”

  Her wet eyes going round, Isabelle looked uncertainly up at Adrienne. “Gideon said the h word,” she whispered.

  “Yes, dear. He’s upset because your feelings were hurt. Your brother doesn’t like it when people hurt his little sister.”

  Gideon’s eyes snapped green fire. “What’s Danny’s last name?”

  Isabelle shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “You can bet I’ll find out.” He reached for the truck keys hanging on a hook by his back door. “You stay home. I’ll go to the school.”

  Adrienne reacted hastily. “Isabelle, go watch TV or something. I need to talk to Gideon.”

  “You’ll keep an eye on her until I get back, won’t you?” Gideon was moving toward the door even as Isabelle left the room. “I don’t expect to be gone very long.”

  “Gideon, wait. We need to discuss what you’re going to say. You need to calm down before you go charging to the school.”

  He didn’t pause. “I know exactly what I’m going to say.”

  Adrienne stepped between him and the door, placing herself so that he would have to move her aside to leave. “Stop.”

  He studied her through narrowed eyes. “What?”

  This was not the man who had kissed her so warmly and thoroughly last night. The man she faced now was coldly, dangerously furious. Focusing only on the present moment, she shook her head. “You can’t go to the school when you’re this angry. You don’t even know the last names of the children who said those things.”

  “I’m damned well going to find out.” He took another step forward, but she stood her ground, leaving them almost toe-to-toe.

  “I agree that the administration should be made aware of what happened. But you don’t want to cause so much trouble that you make things worse for Isabelle when she goes back.”

  “If she goes back. Why the hell should she stay in a school that allows her to be subjected to that?”

  “But that’s not really your decision to make, is it? Isn’t Nathan Isabelle’s legal guardian?”

  That made him frown. “I’m as much her brother as Nathan is. In his absence, it’s up to me to make sure she’s well treated.”

  As much as she admired his determination to defend and protect Isabelle—coming from Gideon, that seemed quite a concession—she wasn’t sure he was thinking clearly enough to be logical and rational.

  “Nathan is her legal guardian,” she repeated. “You really shouldn’t make any drastic moves without discussing them with him first.”

  Her reasoning finally seemed to get through the haze of anger that had gripped him. Scowling, he squeezed the back of his neck with one hand. “Damn it.”

  She took that as a reluctant admission that she was right. “Maybe you should call your brother before you speak to someone at the school.”

  “I guess you’re right. I shouldn’t be dealing with this, anyway. As you said, Nathan’s the one who brought Isabelle here and made himself responsible for her. I never agreed to get involved.”

  “But you are involved, aren’t you?” She gave him a sympathetic smile. “You love her.”

  His scowl deepened. Visibly uncomfortable with the emotionalism she had just expressed, he backed off a step. “She’s a good kid. She doesn’t deserve to be hurt that way.”

  “No, she doesn’t. You should go in and talk to her.”

  What might have been a touch of panic flashed across his face. “I should talk to her?”

  “Of course. This concerns your family history. She needs to hear the story from someone who cares about her, rather than the gossip she’ll overhear around town.”

  “Maybe it would be better if Nathan has that talk with her. After all, he stayed on speaking terms with Dad.”

  “Oh, now you want to wait for Nathan.”

  He looked downright sheepish then—an expression that didn’t sit particularly well on him. “He’s better at that sort of thing. Heart-to-heart talks, I mean.”

  “Whereas, you feel perfectly qualified to go to Isabelle’s school and raise hell.”

  “Well…yeah.”

  “I see.”

  He looked toward the kitchen doorway, a muscle working in his jaw. “How am I supposed to tell her the details of her parents’ clandestine courtship?”

  “What has she already been told?”

  “I’m not sure, exactly. I assume she knows my parents divorced and that she was the product of our father’s second marriage.”

  “You can explain to her that there are always painful emotions when a marriage ends. That your mother, her nanna’s, feelings were hurt, but she got over it and she’s grown to love Isabelle very much.”

  He thought about it a minute, then nodded. “I can tell her that stuff, but I would have thought she already knew it.”

  “Maybe she simply needs reassurance that her father wasn’t a bad man, and that your mother was looking forward to having Isabelle with her this week. And you should remind her again that your parents’ divorce and your father’s remarriage is no one else’s business.” She couldn’t keep the indignation out of her voice when she added the latter.

  “You can bet I’ll tell her that.”

  “The only thing I don’t understand is why other people are so vicious about the divorce. I’m sure there was some gossip at the time, but it’s not as if divorce is all that uncommon, even around here, surely.”

  “It is when a gubernatorial candidate leaves his wife and family for a pregnant campaign volunteer half his age.”

  “Good lord.” She stared at him. “Your father was a candidate for governor?”

  He nodded grimly. “Probably would have won, if he’d have kept his pants zipped for a few more months. He was ahead in the polls, a real favorite of the media.”

  “You father was almost governor of Mississippi.” She was stunned that she hadn’t heard about this before, but then, she hadn’t really talked to many locals during her time here. She had been focused almost entirely on Gideon and Isabelle.

  He massaged the back of his neck. “Needless to say, the people who had donated countless hours of their time and generous chunks of their paychecks to support his campaign were not happy with him for throwing it all away so late in the game. His party had to scramble to find a replacement candidate—who lost, by the way—and the media had a field day with the gossip. My mother was humiliated, my sister was devastated and many of the locals acted as betrayed as his family felt. It was fairly ugly.”

  He had never sounded more lazily Southern, which meant, she decided, that he was hiding a great deal of emotion behind that detached drawl. “I’m sorry, Gideon. That must have been a horrible time for all of you.”

  Looking away, he shrugged one shoulder. “We got through it. It wasn’t as hard for me as it was the others, I think, because I was already estranged from my father. And already accustomed to being the subject of local gossip.”

  She didn’t entirely believe him. His father’s defection had probably been just as hard for Gideon. He had spent all those years struggling in vain to fit an image of perfection outlined by a man who had been revealed to have major weaknesses of his own. And then Stuart had died before Gideon could resolve any of the issues between them.

  How many times had he mentally said goodbye to his father prior to that last, final farewell? And had he grieved each time or had the estrangement been a series of blows that had left permanent scars on his heart?

  Because she knew he would resist any offers of sympathy concerning his father, she concentrated on Isabelle instead. “There are people
in this town who still harbor so much resentment against Isabelle’s parents that they would reject an innocent child?”

  “Frankly, I was concerned about that when Nathan brought her here. I knew she would hear the gossip eventually, though I never thought it would come this soon. Most of the townspeople took their cues from my mother. At first she was violently opposed to Nathan taking Isabelle in. I think she saw it as a betrayal of his loyalty to her—a painful reminder that he hadn’t cut Dad off after the divorce, the way the rest of us had. She worried that Nathan was making too great a sacrifice by taking responsibility for Isabelle. At the time, Nathan and Caitlin hadn’t become an item yet, and Mom thought Nathan would be raising Isabelle on his own, which he seemed perfectly willing to do.”

  “I don’t suppose he felt as though he had any other choice.”

  “Actually, he gave some thought to putting her up for adoption when her guardian in California was no longer able to care for her. At the time there seemed to be few other options, and Nathan wasn’t sure he was qualified to take her. But when it came right down to decision time, he couldn’t give her up.”

  Just the thought of little Isabelle being turned over to strangers made Adrienne’s stomach clench. “Of course he couldn’t. You would have made the same decision.”

  Gideon looked a bit surprised. “I don’t know about that.”

  Glancing toward the empty doorway, Adrienne lowered her voice. “Be honest, Gideon. If you had to make a choice right now of taking full responsibility for your sister or giving her up to strangers, never to see her again, you would make the same choice your brother made.”

  Obviously, his first instinct was to disagree. She watched as the realization slowly hit him that she was probably right. Now that he had spent time with Isabelle, had grown to know her and care about her, he wouldn’t find it easy to walk away from her.

  He wouldn’t like admitting—even to himself—that he’d let his little sister become that important to him. Gideon seemed to view love as a bond and he allowed very few people to have that sort of tie to him. Maybe that was why he’d backed off so quickly after kissing her—not that the kiss had had anything to do with love, she added quickly. He simply didn’t welcome any emotional entanglements, even…well, whatever had spurred that kiss.