Conflict of Interest (The McClouds of Mississippi)

by Gina Wilkins

  “Gideon, you have to understand that it’s my job to help you market your work. If I think there’s something you can do to make your book more successful, I would be remiss not to tell you what I think.”

  “If I had wanted to create generic, marketing-driven, cookie-cutter products, I’d have gone to work on some factory assembly line.”

  She sighed and shook her head. “You’re overdramatizing a bit, aren’t you? I haven’t exactly asked you to prostitute yourself. I simply made a suggestion because you’re having trouble finishing the book.”

  “Of course I’m having trouble finishing the book!” He slammed the dishwasher door closed. “How can I write with so many people in my house? With toddlers having emotional meltdowns and my agent nagging me to write romantic drivel?”

  Elbows resting on the table, she propped her chin on her crossed hands. “Should I remind you that you invited me to stay the weekend? And that you asked me to read your manuscript and tell you what I thought?”

  Her calm, dryly amused tone seemed to douse his flash of temper. He stopped pacing, shoved a hand through his tumbled hair and gave her a look that might have held a faint touch of remorse. “I’m a little stressed.”

  She supposed it was as close as she was going to get to an apology. “I know. You’ve had a difficult week.”

  “It would have been even more difficult if you hadn’t been here to help me with Isabelle.”

  And that, she decided, was his way of saying thank-you. She smiled at him. “You’re welcome.”

  Stopping beside her chair, he reached down to catch her wrists and pull her to her feet. “There’s something else that has been distracting me from work this week.”

  Gripping his forearms to steady herself, she gazed up at him. “I—”

  He kissed the words back into her mouth.

  He wasn’t holding her tightly, but their bodies were pressed together from chest to knees. She remembered her first impression of him—that he was built like an athlete. Each time she felt him against her that impression was reinforced. He was lean but roped with muscle. All male. And her response was entirely feminine.

  He broke off the kiss very slowly, holding her gaze with his as he lifted his head. “I really should stop doing that.”

  She was still holding his arms, and she was in no hurry to release him. There was a definite possibility she would melt into a puddle at his feet if she did so. She cleared her throat. “Yes, you really should.”

  He kissed her again. And she tightened her fingers around his sleekly muscled arms, because she felt herself slowly beginning to puddle…

  “Are you sure you aren’t going to marry Gideon, Adrienne?” Isabelle asked curiously from the kitchen doorway. “Caitlin kisses Nathan all the time, and they got married.”

  By the time the child finished speaking, Adrienne and Gideon were several feet apart. Feeling her cheeks flame, Adrienne couldn’t look at Gideon. For those few, reckless moments she had forgotten all about Isabelle and she suspected that Gideon had, too. How could they have been so careless?

  “Come on, Isabelle, I’ll tell you another story,” she said hastily, holding out a hand that wasn’t as steady as she would have liked. “How about the story of Little Red Riding Hood? Would you like to hear that one?”

  It seemed an appropriate choice for her, as well. She needed to be reminded of the girl who had been distracted from her planned destination by a dangerously intriguing wolf.

  Gideon didn’t trust himself to pace the hallway outside Adrienne’s bedroom that night. This time he left the house altogether, moving outside to the lawn swing.

  It wasn’t exactly quiet out; frogs and other night creatures were in full voice this evening. It was a bit chilly. The slightly damp night air leached through his long-sleeved T-shirt, and his breath hung in ghostly puffs in front of him. Better than a cold shower, he decided, looking ruefully toward the darkened window of his bedroom, where Adrienne slept.

  He had been particularly antsy that evening, ever since Isabelle had caught him kissing Adrienne in the kitchen. He could still hear her innocent voice saying the m word. He’d been as shocked as if she had uttered an expletive.

  Couldn’t a guy kiss an attractive woman around here without someone mentioning marriage? And kissing wasn’t all he wanted to do with Adrienne Corley—not by a long shot. But whatever happened between them before she headed back to New York, he had no intention of letting it turn into anything more than a pleasant interlude between two unattached adults who happened to be attracted to each other.

  He was sure he and Adrienne could explore that attraction for a few days without taking it too seriously. And after she returned to New York, they could return easily enough to the comfortably professional relationship they had shared before, maybe even consider themselves friends as well as business associates. He had remained on reasonably friendly terms with one or two ex-lovers. Though he had to admit with a wince that most had left never wanting to see him again.

  Adrienne was different from the women he had known before. Smart, sophisticated, competent, independent. She wouldn’t expect more than he could give her—hell, she probably wouldn’t want any more. Why should she? She didn’t need any man, especially a grouchy, self-centered loner like him.

  He still regretted the way he had snarled at her after dinner, simply because she had asked about his work. Not that she had seemed particularly offended. Probably because she didn’t care enough about him to let him hurt her feelings.

  Scowling, he gave the ground a vicious kick to set the swing in motion. The resulting creak of chains startled the night creatures into silence, so that his thoughts seemed unusually loud in his head.

  When could he kiss Adrienne again? Would there be any opportunity for more than kisses before she left?

  And would it really be as easy to say goodbye as he’d been reassuring himself it would be?

  Adrienne half expected Gideon to change his mind about attending the St. Patrick’s Day festival on Saturday. She wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d stayed in his office all day without coming out or even mentioning the festival again, leaving her and Isabelle to entertain themselves. Yet she wore her thin emerald sweater with her black slacks—just in case green was the color of the day.

  She was rather relieved when he appeared at breakfast, dressed in a white button-up shirt and jeans, his neatly-combed-for-a-change hair still damp from the shower. “So are we going to that festival downtown?” he asked gruffly.

  Still in her pajamas, Isabelle looked intrigued. “What festival thing?”

  “The St. Patrick’s Day Festival Officer Smith told us about,” Adrienne reminded her. “Everyone wears green and pretends to be Irish.”

  “Miss Montgomery decorated our classroom with leprechauns and shamrocks for St. Patrick’s Day,” Isabelle said. “But it’s not today, is it? Miss Montgomery said it’s Monday and we can wear green to school if we want to.”

  “Today isn’t officially St. Patrick’s Day,” Adrienne informed her. “I suppose the town is having the festival today because people have to go to work and to school on Monday.”

  “It’s just an excuse for the chamber of commerce to make some money from vendors and business exhibitors,” Gideon said. “For some reason, people will pay three-fifty for a hot dog and two bucks for a watered-down soda as long as you call the event a festival.”

  Isabelle eyed him questioningly. “You don’t want to go?”

  Adrienne watched him force a smile for his sister’s benefit. “Sure. Can’t wait.”

  Taking pity on him, she smiled. “I can take Isabelle to the festival, Gideon. That would give you a chance to work in peace today. My ankle’s so much better, I’m sure I could drive your truck—”

  “I said I would take you to the festival and I will.” The look he gave her just dared her to argue. She didn’t have the nerve.

  Instead she glanced at Isabelle’s empty cereal bowl. “I’ll help you get dressed,
sweetie. I bet we can find something green for you to wear, if you like.”

  “Gideon isn’t wearing green.”

  Adrienne couldn’t look at him, knowing she would laugh if she did. “It isn’t required. It’s only for fun.”

  “Okay. I’ve got a green shirt. I’ll wear that.”

  Following the child out of the room, Adrienne found herself almost as excited about attending the festival as Isabelle.

  She doubted that Gideon would have said the same.

  It was a beautiful day in Honesty, the sky a brilliant blue, the temperature climbing to a comfortable sixty-eight degrees after the chilly night. Whether it was because of the nice weather or the popularity of the event itself, a sizable crowd mingled on the streets of old downtown Honesty.

  The center square had been closed to traffic, so Gideon parked in a nearby church lot and they walked the final block. Gideon had insisted that Adrienne use the crutches, though she really hadn’t wanted to bother with them. Once again she wore her black loafer on her left foot and a black sock beneath the brace on her right.

  Gideon stayed close to her side as they joined the crowds on the sidewalks. As if she might tumble onto her face if he wasn’t there to catch her, she thought in exasperation. He instructed Isabelle to hold his hand to make sure she didn’t get separated from them. Though he was gamely going along with this outing, he didn’t look like a man who was prepared to have a good time, Adrienne couldn’t help noticing.

  The festival was a casual event, with jeans and T-shirts being the uniform of the day. A great deal of the green being worn for the occasion came in the form of camouflage print, she observed with a smile.

  Vendors’ booths and open-sided tents lined the streets. She and Isabelle paused to study each one, while Gideon waited patiently behind them. Ceramics, woodwork, needlework, handmade toys, dolls and musical instruments. Sunglasses and T-shirts, hunting and fishing gear, costume jewelry, candles and potpourri. Adrienne and Isabelle were intrigued by it all. What they didn’t see were products that had anything to do with Ireland.

  “Um, this is a St. Patrick’s Day festival?” she asked Gideon, studying a display of wild game seasonings and camo caps and T-shirts.

  “So they claim. Surprisingly enough, it’s very much like the Fourth of July festival. And the Labor Day festival.”

  She laughed and they moved on to the next block. She was aware that people watched them, and that—thanks to the local gossip—most of them probably knew who she was. She supposed it was natural that there would be some curiosity about Gideon’s New York agent, who had been sleeping in his house for the past week.

  Several people greeted Gideon, and she could tell by his tone whether they were people he liked. He introduced her to a few of them, and she was warmly greeted. It seemed like a pleasant town, despite the usual drawbacks of small-town gossip, which Isabelle had already had to face.

  Though it was a little early for lunch, the tantalizing scents from the numerous food vendors piqued their appetites. The offerings included hamburgers and corn dogs, pizza, barbecue, fried chicken, Cajun dishes, turkey legs, cotton candy, funnel cakes, kettle corn and taffy. A stand in the center of the square had been festooned with big, cut-out shamrocks, and dispensed disposable bowls of corned beef and cabbage.

  Amused by that token homage to Ireland, Adrienne decided to sample foods from the local area, instead. At Gideon’s recommendation, they fell in line at the popular Cajun food stand. Gideon ordered crawfish gumbo, Isabelle requested fried catfish nuggets with French fries and Adrienne selected a shrimp PoBoy sandwich with a small side order of red beans and rice. The “gator-on-a-stick” was intriguing, but she wasn’t quite brave enough to try it.

  Numerous picnic tables had been set up in the food area, and Gideon efficiently commandeered one that had just been vacated, ignoring the disgruntled scowls from a group of teenagers who had spotted it at roughly the same time. He carried Adrienne’s food for her, set it on the table, then returned for the drinks they had ordered—iced tea for the adults and lemonade for Isabelle.

  Their casual meal was accompanied by a cheerful cacophony of festival sounds: laughter and conversation, babies fussing and toddlers whining, tinny music from the rides that had been set up in the next street. Several yards behind her was a stage for local entertainment—a magician, a couple of garage bands and a procession of karaoke singers, some pretty good, others a bit painful to hear, but all eager to perform.

  Isabelle was almost too busy watching the activities around them to eat. Adrienne had no trouble concentrating on her food. It was delicious.

  “There’s a kids’ area, Gideon,” Isabelle said, pointing. “They’re doing face painting and giving away balloons. And there’s a game where I can win prizes by picking a rubber duckie out of a wading pool. Can we go there next?”

  “Yeah, I guess we—”

  “And can I ride the merry-go-round? I want a black horse, because they’re the prettiest. And maybe later we can have some cotton candy?”

  “Sure,” he said, visibly resigning himself to spending a while longer at the festival. “Why not?”

  Leaving the table for other diners, they moved toward the children’s area, Isabelle leading the way. Expressing concern about her overtaxing her sprained ankle, Gideon parked Adrienne on a bench with a good view of the festivities. “I’ll let Isabelle play for a while. You sit here and people watch. You seem to enjoy that.”

  Because it was exactly what she liked most about this sort of event, she smiled, propped her crutches against the armrest of the bench and settled down for an interesting voyeuristic session. “I’ll be just fine here.”

  Gideon allowed himself to be towed away by his excited little sister. He looked at Adrienne over his shoulder as he disappeared into the crowd, and she had to laugh softly at his lamb-led-to-the-slaughter expression. This outing was good for him, she decided. He needed to get out among people more. He was too young to be an eccentric recluse.

  Not that Gideon’s personal life was any of her business, of course.

  “Hey, Miz Corley. Remember me?”

  The woman’s stiffly teased gray hair and kindly eyes were immediately recognizable. “Of course. You’re Carla, from the diner.”

  Pleased to be remembered, Carla grinned and motioned toward the two fifty-something women who accompanied her. “These are my sisters, Gloria and Patsy. Girls, this is Gideon McCloud’s agent from New York. I told you about meeting her at the diner.”

  From their avid nods, Adrienne suspected that Carla’s sisters had heard about her in great detail. She spent the next ten minutes answering questions about New York, her job and Gideon’s next book, which she told them they would just have to wait and read for themselves. No, she answered patiently to one arch question, she wasn’t married, and then added that she and Gideon were friends and business associates, nothing more.

  “Well, of course you aren’t,” Gloria—or was it Patsy?—said with a roll of her eyes. “What sane woman would want to get involved with Gideon McCloud? Sometimes I think that boy just isn’t right.”

  “Now, Gloria,” the one who must be Patsy chided, “you know artists are just different, that’s all. Sure, he’s a little…odd, but that’s because their brains just don’t work like ours.”

  The sisters were still arguing about whether Gideon was an eccentric genius or a spoiled bachelor after they bade Adrienne goodbye and moved on.

  Adrienne was both amused and a bit bothered by the exchange. Why had Gideon cut himself off so determinedly from his neighbors? Was it only because of the pain of his father’s scandal or was there more to it than that? She didn’t accept the eccentric-author excuse—she knew too many writers who were sociable and well adjusted, despite their individual quirks.

  “Excuse me, but you’re Gideon McCloud’s agent, right?”

  A forty-something woman with flame-red hair, trendy glasses and a vivid green caftan worn with sandals stood at one end of the bench
, eyeing Adrienne with an expression she knew all too well. “Yes, I am.”

  “I’m so excited to meet you. I just saw Gideon standing on the merry-go-round beside his little sister’s carousel horse—a lot of people looked pretty surprised to see him there, I can tell you—and I figured you must be around somewhere, since I’d heard you were in town. My name is Yolanda Krump, and I just know that fate has brought us together like this.”

  Only if fate had a really twisted sense of humor, Adrienne thought with a silent groan, knowing exactly what was coming next.

  “You see,” Yolanda continued, leaning companionably against the end of the bench. “I’ve written a book. I’m sure if I just had a good agent, I could get it published. I just know the book would be a bestseller.”

  “Well, I—”

  “I’ve sent it to several publishers already, but they returned it with rejection letters. Probably never even read it, since I don’t have an agent and I live in Mississippi.”

  Living in Mississippi had nothing to do with it, of course. Editors had no particular bias against a writer’s hometown. But Adrienne didn’t try to argue. “I would be happy to look at a sample of your writing,” she said politely, pulling a business card out of the small shoulder-strap purse she’d brought with her. “Feel free to send me a query letter and your first three chapters, and I’ll get to them as soon as I have a chance.”

  “Don’t you want me to tell you about my story? It’s a saga about four generations of women in a cursed family. It’s told mostly in vignettes and flashbacks, and a lot of it is autobiographical, since I’ve led a rather fascinating life. It—”

  “I really can’t make any decisions without seeing a sample of your writing. Send me the chapters and I’ll read them very carefully, I promise.”

  “Yes, I will. But let me tell you what happens—”

  “’Afternoon, Miz Corley. Yolanda.”

  Dylan’s familiar drawl was a welcome interruption. Adrienne looked around with a smile. “Officer Smith. How nice to see you.”