Conflict of Interest (The McClouds of Mississippi 2)

“How can such a brilliant writer be such a stupid man?” She tugged at her arm. “Let me go.”

“Just wait a minute, will you? I’m trying to figure out what you’re so mad about. Is it because I’m leaving or because I thought about staying?”

“It’s because you’re so arrogant that you never even discussed the possibility of staying with me! And because you’re either so selfish or so cowardly that you refuse to share any part of yourself with me—or with anyone else who cares about you, for that matter.”

Now he was the one who was angry, his emerald eyes flashing with temper. “That’s garbage.”

“You pride yourself on being such a self-contained loner, and you act like you’re doing everyone else such a favor when you let them into your life for a little while. You pretend you don’t really need anyone, rather than admitting how lucky you are to have such a nice family, who have been much too patient and indulgent with you, in my opinion.”

He had finally released her arm. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t I? You claim New York is too crowded for you, when the truth is that you simply like living in Honesty. You like the people there, even though you treat them so shabbily, and you don’t want to live so far away from them or from the family you ignore so shamelessly. So you’ve been hurt a few times, well, who hasn’t? What gives you the right to treat other people this way just because you’re afraid of being hurt again?”

“I am not a coward.”

She was angry and hurt enough to be reckless. “Really? Have you read your father’s letter yet?”

His eyes narrowed to furious slits. “My father has nothing to do with this.”

“Doesn’t he? What about his second wife? Isabelle’s mother? Your girlfriend, I understand.”

“Who told you that?”

She didn’t recoil from the sharpness of his question, but it took an effort to hold her gro

und. “Not you, obviously. You didn’t let me into your life that much, but you thought about moving here to grace me with your company for a little while. And then you accused me of trying to change you, just like your father did. Well, I never asked you for anything, including clarifications of some of the rumors I heard while I was in your hometown, and I damn well resent being lumped with everyone in your past who let you down.”

“Let me make something clear—Kimberly was never my girlfriend. I dated her a few times, casually, before she got involved with my father’s campaign and my father. I wasn’t seeing her at the time she started dating him, hadn’t been interested in seeing her for several months, and the only reason I cared that he was sleeping with her was because his selfish behavior was so devastating for my mother and my sister. I’ve never held any of those circumstances against Isabelle, and I haven’t carried a torch for her mother. Is there any other gossip about my past you’d like to discuss?”

She wasn’t angry now. Just sad. “Don’t you see, Gideon? I didn’t want to force you to tell me those things. If you expected me to be an important part of your life, you should have wanted to share your thoughts and your feelings with me. You should have been willing to take a few emotional risks.”

“What would you have said if I had taken a risk and asked you to move back to Honesty with me?” he challenged her.

Though her heart clenched, she lifted her chin defiantly, knowing he still didn’t fully comprehend what she had said. “You’ll never know, will you? You were too stubborn to ask.”

He hesitated long enough to make her wonder if he was going to ask now, but then he turned and picked up his bag. “I’ll get a cab to the airport,” he said. “I’m sorry everything turned out this way. I hope it won’t interfere with our working relationship.”

She might have laughed at that, if she could have found even a trace of bitter humor inside her. “I don’t see why it should. I’ll take a lesson from you and lock my personal feelings inside where no one else can see them or examine them too closely. It seems to work so well for you.”

“Adrienne—”

“I’ll have my assistant give you a call next week about those contracts you need to sign. We’ll express them to you so we can get the next project underway without much delay. Your publisher will be in contact with you about the details of the promotional events you’ve agreed to. If there’s anything else I can do for you, feel free to send me an e-mail or give Jacqueline a call.”

He didn’t seem to know how to respond to her brusquely professional tone. On one hand, it must have been a relief to him that they were no longer treading on dangerous emotional ground, but the way he was looking at her told her that he hated leaving this way.

Maybe it was best that it had happened like this. Clean and final. She wouldn’t be left wondering when he might show up on her doorstep again, waiting for calls that might never come, hoping for something that would never happen. They should never have confused their business relationship with a physical element, and she should never have let her heart get involved when she’d known all along that he kept his own locked tightly away.

“I’ll call you,” he said finally.

She did laugh then, a sound that was painful even to her. “I wonder how many women you’ve said that to as you walked away. And I wonder how many of them were foolish enough to believe it.”

Muttering something she couldn’t hear—and didn’t try to—he turned and left the room, his shoulders stiff, his bag gripped in a white-knuckled fist.

She had no doubt that he was hurting a bit. After all, he’d cared enough to think about moving here, she reminded herself as she sank numbly to the edge of her still-tumbled bed. But he would get over it. He had so much more practice than she did at creating a safe new world for himself.

Adrienne wasn’t in a good mood on Monday morning. She snapped at her father, was impatient with her assistant, snarled at an editor. When she realized what she was doing, she made herself take a deep breath and force a smile onto her face. It wasn’t fair of her to take out her pain and anger on other people, she reminded herself.

That was the sort of thing Gideon McCloud would do.