She looked awfully tiny sitting there on his big couch. “If you need anything, just let me know, okay?”
“Okay.”
He practically bolted out of the room. His office had always been a retreat for him, but it seemed even more a refuge now. Unfortunately, he knew he couldn’t stay locked in there until his mother returned to free him.
Gideon had been sitting in front of his computer for half an hour when a sound from the doorway pulled his concentration away from the computer screen. To his frustration he’d managed to type maybe two sentences since he’d sat down, so he was frowning when he looked up.
Annoyance turned to consternation when he spotted Isabelle standing just inside the doorway, a stuffed white owl cuddled against her chest and a pitiful quiver in her lower lip. She looked to be on the verge of tears, which was enough to make Gideon panic.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, pushing away from the computer. “Did you hurt yourself?”
She shook her head. “I heard a noise outside the window. It scared me.”
Exhaling slowly in relief, he shoved a hand through his already disheveled dark hair. A brisk, mid-March wind was blowing outside, and he suspected she’d heard a tree branch tapping against the house. “There’s nothing scary outside, Isabelle,” he assured her. “Just a couple of trees planted next to the den windows. It isn’t even dark out yet.”
A fat tear rolled slowly down her cheek. “It’s lonely in the den.”
He supposed it was natural for her to be upset. The child had been through a great deal of trauma in the past year. She’d lost her parents in an accident, had been uprooted from her home in California and resettled in her oldest half brother’s home here in Mississippi and was now with a half brother she hardly knew. A brother who had no idea how to comfort an upset child.
“Can I stay in here with you?” Isabelle asked. “I promise I’ll be quiet.”
He glanced toward the writing desk he used for paying bills. “You can sit at this desk. Do you like to draw pictures?”
She nodded, her expression brightening.
“I’ve got the only refrigerator in town with no artwork stuck on the front with magnets. Maybe you can draw something for my fridge.”
She seemed to like that idea.
He dug out a stack of printer paper, several pencils and a box of colored markers from his supply closet and piled them on the desk after moving a teetering tower of unopened mail out of the way. He had no toys in the house, but plenty of art provisions, since he was seriously addicted to office supply stores. Isabelle settled into the big chair behind the writing desk, and Gideon returned to his computer.
True to her word, Isabelle was very quiet as she contentedly scribbled and colored, but Gideon still found himself unable to concentrate on his writing. He wasn’t accustomed to having anyone else in his house when he worked, much less in the same room with him. After writing and deleting the same sentence for the fourth time, he muttered a curse beneath his breath and punched a key to close the file.
“What’s the matter, Gideon?”
She had a unique way of pronouncing his name, he mused. Nothing he could pinpoint, exactly, but it sounded different when she said it. “Nothing’s wrong,” he lied.
“Are you writing another book?”
“Trying to.”
“Nate said you write good books, but they’re not for kids.”
She always shortened Nathan’s name so casually, but then, Isabelle had known Nathan all her life. He had been the only one of the three elder McCloud siblings to maintain a relationship with their father after the bitter divorce from their mother a few months before Isabelle’s birth. “No, I don’t write children’s books.”
“What are your books about?”
“Most people call them thrillers. They have elements of science fiction and fantasy in them and what has been referred to as dark humor.”
She blinked a couple of times in response to his dry description, then said, “I like Dr. Seuss.”
Her matter-of-fact statement made Gideon grin. “So do I.”
His smile seemed to take her by surprise. She studied his face a moment, then smiled back at him before returning her attention to her artwork.
Okay, Gideon thought. Maybe this wouldn’t be so tough after all. How hard could it be to keep an eye on an exceptionally bright and well-behaved four-year-old?
It was cloudy and dark by 7:00 p.m. on that Monday evening, and a cold drizzle had begun to fall, blown in on a strong northern front. Not a very experienced driver in the first place, since she rarely needed a car in the city, Adrienne struggled a bit with the unfamiliar rental car on the bumpy Mississippi road. She’d gotten lost twice before she found the town of Honesty, then had some difficulty finding anyone to give her directions to Gideon’s address.