Conflict of Interest (The McClouds of Mississippi)

by Gina Wilkins

  “And I haven’t laid eyes on you since I got back. Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “I’m fine, Mom. Just busy.”

  “Not too busy to eat. I’ll expect you at twelve-thirty tomorrow.”

  “Mom, I—”

  “And don’t be late. The rest of us will be hungry.”

  His next protest was met only by the sound of a dial tone.

  Slamming the telephone back into the receiver, he muttered a string of phrases he couldn’t have said if Isabelle had been there. Not that it did any good. He knew very well he would be at his mother’s for lunch the next day, whether he was in the mood or not.

  “So then I informed him that if he wants to continue to publish Stephen’s books under his imprint, he’s going to have to make it worth our while. I expect a new offer on my desk by tomorrow afternoon.”

  The smug satisfaction in Lawrence Corley’s voice was extremely familiar to his daughter; she had been hearing it all her life. She couldn’t remember him ever actually admitting that he had failed or handled any situation in a less than brilliant manner.

  There had been a time when she’d thought she had to compete with her father’s idea of perfection. Now she simply acknowledged it. “That’s great, Dad. I’m sure Stephen will be pleased with you, as always.”

  “Everyone knows Stephen is lucky to have Lawrence as his agent,” Melinda Corley, Lawrence’s thirty-year-old bride, murmured. The lights of the popular Sunday-brunch restaurant gleamed attractively on her perfectly blond tresses and illuminated the perfection of her buffed-bronzed-and-botoxed skin. “Lawrence is the best literary agent in the business.”

  Keeping her smile bright and bland, Adrienne stabbed her fork into a chunk of fresh mango. “The rest of us can only aspire to be half as good.”

  “By the way,” Lawrence said as if her statement had been a given that didn’t require a response, “has Gideon McCloud finished that book yet?”

  She kept her eyes focused on the sparsely-filled plate on the table in front of her. “Not as far as I know.”

  Her father pointed a spear of broccoli at her. “That young man is going to derail his career just as it’s getting into high gear, if he isn’t careful. Maybe I need to—”

  “I can handle my own clients, Dad.”

  “Not if you keep taking those long vacations,” he replied. It was one of his little jokes, said with a faint smile that left sharp little barbs just beneath her skin.

  In the past she would have felt the need to defend her choice to take her first vacation in such a long time. She might even have added that she had spent the first week of that vacation dealing personally with the very client he had mentioned. She might have reminded him that she had returned to work nearly a week sooner than she had planned, still limping on a swollen ankle.

  She wouldn’t, of course, have added that she had gone back to the office only because she couldn’t stand to spend a full day moping around her empty apartment and thinking about Gideon.

  “Good point, Dad,” was all she said instead. “The fruit is really good this morning, isn’t it?”

  “I wish Adrienne was here,” Isabelle lamented, over Lenore’s Sunday lunch of fried chicken, creamed potatoes and white gravy, fried okra, corn on the cob and tender turnip greens.

  It was one of Gideon’s favorite meals, but Isabelle’s artless comment made his appetite evaporate.

  “Have you heard from Adrienne since she went back to New York?” Caitlin asked from the other side of the table.

  “Of course I’ve heard from her, she’s my agent.” They had spoken exactly twice during the past three weeks—for a total of perhaps twenty minutes. Adrienne had used exactly the same tone with him that she had before her visit—briskly, professionally impersonal.

  Both calls had left him feeling irritable, restless and empty, pacing his house for hours before sitting down to stare fruitlessly at his computer.

  He wasn’t sleeping, wasn’t eating well, wasn’t satisfied with his writing—and he didn’t know what the hell to do about it.

  “I miss her,” Isabelle said.

  Gideon sighed. “Yeah, kiddo. So do I.”

  Eyeing his brother with speculation, Nathan changed the subject, for which Gideon would be eternally grateful.

  From her office window, Adrienne could see more office windows. Hundreds of them, filled with other people going about the business of making a living. She wondered how many of them loved their work. How many of them would go home this evening to a family who loved them or a personal life that fulfilled them.

  “Adrienne,” Jacqueline bustled into the room with a stack of outgoing correspondence in one hand and a bundle of incoming mail in the other. “Giselle Eastwood is on line two. She’s hysterical again, just wants you to sweet-talk her for a few minutes and assure her how wonderful she is. I told her you’re terribly busy, but she insisted that I tell you she’s on the phone.”

  Adrienne groaned. “I just spent an hour last week stroking her ego. She needs another fix already?”

  “Apparently, she’s had another argument with her editor over revisions. You know how she gets when anyone suggests changing her work.”

  That remark, of course, made her think about Gideon. She was doing better, actually. It had been at least ten minutes since the last time she’d thought about him.

  “Adrienne? What do I do about Giselle?”

  Recalled to her present surroundings, Adrienne blinked. “Oh. I’ll take the call, I guess. I’ll give her a quick pep talk and then you can buzz me so I’ll have an excuse to disconnect.”

  “That won’t be a problem. I’m sure you’ll have a half dozen more calls come in by the time I get back to my desk.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know.” Sometimes Adrienne felt as though the telephone was going to attach itself permanently to the side of her head. She could certainly understand why Gideon had formed such an abhorrence for the instrument.

  And there she went, thinking about him again. With a sigh and a shake of her head, she picked up the receiver. “Good morning, Giselle. What can I do for you today?”

  Gideon stared out his office window and watched lightning streak across the midnight sky, creating an eerie strobe-light effect of the woods spread around him. Rain pounded against the roof above him and streamed down the panes of the window glass.

  Yet behind him there was silence and utter stillness, as if he stood in a solitary bubble within the storm. He could almost fancy himself a prisoner there, the doors and windows guarded by the ferocious force of the hovering thunderstorm.

  Stupid, he thought in sudden self-disgust, turning abruptly away from the window. Pushing a hand through his shaggy hair, he reminded himself that he was no male Rapunzel and there was no Princess Charming battling the elements to rescue him from his loneliness.

  Exactly the way he wanted it. He had, after all, chosen to live this way. Fairy tales fell apart when examined too closely, and dashing heroes—and heroines—all too often proved to have feet of clay.

  He would prefer to think of the storm as answerable to him—not holding him here but keeping away those who would disturb him, shatter his valued tranquillity or threaten the contentment he’d found in his sanctuary.

  It was a measure of his pensive mood that he was personifying the storm in the first place. He’d always been fanciful—he was a writer, after all—but it seemed that lately he’d been drifting more and more into his imagination. Pulling farther away from the rest of the world. As often as he assured himself he wanted nothing more, his isolation was beginning to worry him.

  Did he really want to spend the rest of his life this way? Was it already too late to change his course, even if he decided he wanted to try?

  Adrienne was having a really lousy day. It seemed as though it had been one battle after another, from tracing a missing royalty check for one client to fighting for a bigger advance for another. There was a rather terse parting of ways with another author, who b
lamed Adrienne for his floundering career, even though she had advised him several times that he’d been headed for trouble.

  By two in the afternoon she had a headache that seemed to spread all the way down into her shoulders.

  “Someday,” she muttered, rubbing her aching temples, “I really am going to quit this job.”

  “You might want to wait until tomorrow,” Jacqueline said from the open doorway. Her dark eyes were a bit wider than usual, and she had a hand resting on her heart as if to signify its pounding. “There is the most delicious man waiting out there to see you.”

  Adrienne frowned and glanced at her calendar. “I don’t have an appointment scheduled, do I?”

  “No, but I think you’ll want to work him in. The man is gorgeous—green eyes, dark hair, a face that should be on a billboard. Body to die for. All male, if you know what I mean—no having to ask yourself if this one is straight. And he’s got a sexy Southern drawl that I could listen to all afternoon.”

  Her own heart was pounding now. “Gideon is here?”

  Jacqueline chuckled. “Didn’t have any trouble recognizing the description, did you?”

  “Oh, my God.” With an instinct as old as woman, she raised both hands to smooth her hair.

  “Want me to tell him you’re too busy to see him?”

  Adrienne gave her grinning assistant a look. “I’ll see him.”

  “I thought you might.”

  Standing behind her desk, she was still trying to decide how to greet him—a smile, a handshake, an air kiss near his cheek?—when he entered her office. Looking as delectable as Jacqueline had described, in khakis and a forest-green shirt, he stopped on the other side of her desk and tossed a thick manila envelope in front of her. “I sent this directly to my editor, but I thought you might want a copy.”

  “You finished your book.”

  “Yeah.”

  She moistened her lips. “So you just decided to…bring me a copy?”

  “You know how I am about telephones.”

  “I can’t believe you’re here.”

  He glanced at the window, through which they could see all those other buildings. “I’m finding that a bit hard to believe, myself.”

  An awkward silence fell for a moment between them, and then Gideon said, “You look good, Adrienne.”

  “So do you.”

  “When can you get out of here?”

  “Now.”

  His eyebrows rose. “You don’t have a full calendar for the afternoon?”

  “Not anymore.” She picked up her purse and the envelope he’d brought her, leaving everything else where it lay.

  His rare smile flashed, and he crooked his arm to her. “Let’s go.”

  Electricity surged through her when she laid her fingers on his arm. Their eyes met, and she smiled, her skin feeling warm and tingly beneath her clothing.

  They had almost made it out of the office when her father stepped into the doorway, blocking their way. Peering at them over his half glasses, he raised his eyebrows. “What’s this?”

  Adrienne dropped her hand from Gideon’s arm. “Gideon McCloud, this is my father, Lawrence Corley.”

  Gideon raked the older man with a cool glance. “Nice to meet you,” he said, though his tone belied the words.

  Lawrence wore the smile he reserved for valued business associates. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. McCloud. I’m a great admirer of your work.”

  Mostly because that work had brought in a generous fifteen percent, Adrienne added in cynical silence.

  “Thanks. I attribute much of my success, of course, to my agent. She’s one of the most dedicated professionals I’ve ever dealt with.”

  “Thank you. I’ve trained her in the business from the time she was just a teenager.”

  And he took full credit for everything she had become, Adrienne thought in resignation—despite her formal education and the years of hard work she had spent learning the business.

  “You didn’t tell me you were expecting Mr. McCloud this afternoon, Adrienne.”

  “She didn’t know. I dropped in without calling first.”

  “I see.” Lawrence’s expressive silver eyebrows rose again. “Then you were fortunate to find her in. We all have very tight schedules around here, you know.”

  “I can imagine. Now, if you’ll excuse me, we were just on our way out.”

  Adrienne rather enjoyed seeing her father caught off balance, if only for a moment. “You’re leaving?”

  “Yes.” Adrienne met his eyes, challenging him to protest.

  “You, um, don’t have anything pending?”

  “Jacqueline can take care of everything for me.”

  “But I needed to speak to you about—”

  “It can wait.” It was one of the first times in her life Adrienne had interrupted her father. It felt pretty good, actually.

  Lawrence was much too professional to show his displeasure in front of a client, but she knew he would express himself later, when they were alone. “When will you be back?”

  Gideon put his hands on her shoulders and guided her toward the doorway. “We’ll let you know.”

  It was probably the first time Lawrence had heard his daughter giggle since she was a teenager. She didn’t look around to see how he reacted. At that moment she only had eyes for Gideon McCloud.

  “I like your apartment.”

  “How would you know? You haven’t actually seen any of it.”

  His weight propped on an elbow as he loomed over her in her bed, he grinned. “Okay, then, I like your bedroom.”

  “Thank you.” They had barely made it through the front door before he’d swung her into his arms and carried her to bed. They hadn’t discussed their intentions after leaving her office, but had, instead, come straight to her apartment by mutual unspoken agreement.

  “I’ve missed you,” she said, rubbing her hand down his firm, bare arm.

  “I missed you, too.”

  It rather surprised her that he had admitted it, even though he wouldn’t have come if he hadn’t missed her. “I still can’t believe you’re here.”

  He slid his fingertips along her jawline. “You keep saying that.”

  “I know. I can’t help it. I simply never expected you to walk into my office today.”

  “It was sort of an impulse. I finished the book, and the next thing I knew I was reserving a seat on an airline. I walked into your office half expecting you to look horrified to see me.”

  She laughed and rubbed her cheek against his hand. “I’m sure you could tell I was delighted to see you.”

  “Actually, yeah, I could. And it was quite a relief.”

  “Did you really miss me?”

  “What do you want, Adrienne, flowery phrases?”

  His indulgent tone made her smile. “Yes.”

  “I missed you very much.”

  She laughed and tugged him down on top of her. “Well, it’s not exactly poetry. But it means a great deal more to me,” she added.

  He kissed her lingeringly. “I’m pretty mad at you, actually,” he murmured when he raised his head.

  If this was mad, she wasn’t complaining, just a bit curious. “Why?”

  “I had no intention of following you here. I was going to be perfectly content to go back to the way things were before you showed up on my doorstep.”

  She nibbled at his lower lip. “I messed things up, hmm?”

  “You could say that. You made me want…more.”

  She wasn’t sure what he meant by “more”—or if he even knew at this point. As he covered her mouth with his, she decided to just be glad that he was here now.

  It was hunger that finally drove them out of the bed. Dressed in a short, red satin robe, Adrienne made chicken salad sandwiches, which she served with baked chips and some leftover fruit salad.

  “How long can you stay?” she asked as they ate at the chrome-and-glass table in her airy, modern kitchen.

  He swallowed a sip of
iced Chai tea. “I’m not on any particular schedule. Thought I might stay through the weekend if that’s not inconvenient for you.”

  “Not at all. You’ll stay here, of course.”

  “I was hoping you would ask.”

  She nodded, mentally rearranging schedules and making lists of nonessential appointments she could cancel during his stay. “How’s Isabelle?”

  She watched as his face softened a bit. “She’s fine. I spent an hour at the park with her yesterday afternoon. She wanted me to tell you hello. She said she’d have sent you a drawing if I’d given her more notice that I was coming.”

  Pleased that he was still making an effort to stay in contact with his little sister, she smiled. “I have her other drawing hanging in my office.”

  “I know. I saw it. She’ll be tickled when I tell her.”

  “Have you ever been to New York before?”

  “Other than to change planes on my way to London a few years ago, I haven’t.”

  “Is there anything in particular you would like to see or do while you’re here?”

  He shrugged. “I’m not here as a tourist. I came to see you.”

  She laughed. “Do you suppose other people actually plan visits with each other—with advance notice and reservations and other minor details like that?”

  His eyes gleamed with shared amusement. “No one I know.”

  “I’ll have to go to the office for a few hours in the morning, and I have a meeting Saturday afternoon I can’t really get out of, but I should be free most of the weekend.”

  “Take care of your business. I’m perfectly capable of entertaining myself while you’re occupied.”

  And then what? Did he see this only as a brief visit—a reward to himself for finishing the book? A little rest, a little sex, a little fun before diving into the next project?

  Was he envisioning more encounters like this in their future? Brief visits a couple of times a year, perhaps, until one or the other tired of them and moved on?