Conflict of Interest (The McClouds of Mississippi 2)

“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?”