Conflict of Interest (The McClouds of Mississippi 2)

“Take care of yourself,” he said, his voice gruff.

And then he was gone.

Despite her best intentions, Adrienne found herself wiping tears as she turned toward the counter.

Chapter Fourteen

“Gideon, I want you to come to lunch. Your brother and sisters will be disappointed if you aren’t here—especially Isabelle.”

The telephone propped in the crook of his shoulder, his hands on his keyboard, Gideon answered rather impatiently, “I really can’t come tomorrow, Mom. You know I’m trying to finish this book.”

“Yes, and I know that you have to take a little time off to eat. We won’t expect you to stay long, but no one has seen you in weeks.”

“It hasn’t been that long. You’ve only been home from Aunt Wanda’s a week.” And Adrienne had been gone for three weeks, he added silently. Yet with all the solitude and freedom to write he’d had since, he still hadn’t finished this damned book.

“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.