Conflict of Interest (The McClouds of Mississippi) (15 page)

They paused beside the door to his bedroom. In a nervous gesture, Adrienne laced her fingers in front of her. “I might as well turn in. I didn’t sleep much last night, and we both need to be well rested when we face the morning.”

He studied her for a moment. “Back in the kitchen, before Isabelle interrupted us?”

She swallowed, remembering the moment all too well. Maybe he was going to caution her about not complicating their business association just to satisfy their curiosity. Or lust. Or whatever the heck was building between them. If so, the warning wasn’t necessary.

“Don’t worry,” she said, keeping her smile bright and her chin high. “I won’t give it another—”

His mouth was on hers before she could complete the lie.

It didn’t surprise her a bit that Gideon’s kiss was powerful enough to curl her hair. This was exactly the way she had imagined he would kiss—and she had been fantasizing about it ever since she had arrived here and gotten her first good look at him. Nor was her response entirely unexpected; she wanted nothing more than to grab his shirt collar and drag him into the bedroom behind her.
His
bedroom, in which she had been sleeping alone for too many nights.

The same inclination was mirrored in his heated green eyes when he finally lifted his head. “I really wish I hadn’t done that.”

That was not what she had expected him to say. “Um, why not?”

He set her firmly away from him. “Because I’m about to face another sleepless night, and, as you pointed out, we need our rest. If you hear anyone pacing the hallways before dawn, it’s only me. But keep your door locked, anyway.”

He was trying to lighten the moment—or perhaps lessen the importance of the kiss—with a touch of dry humor. Attempting to respond in kind, she asked, “And if I leave the door open?”

“That could be taken as an invitation,” he replied evenly.

She studied him for a beat before nodding and stepping back into the bedroom. “I’ll keep that in mind,” she said, and closed the door firmly in his face.

The bedroom door remained closed all night. Gideon knew because he checked. Several times. He just happened to be walking by, of course.

It was probably for the best, since his life was complicated enough at the moment. But, judging from that all-too-brief kiss, it would have been worth some complications.

To take his mind off what he could be doing with Adrienne, he turned his thoughts to Isabelle as he lay on the big couch in his office, staring up at the shadowy ceiling. He figured there was a good chance she would rebel against going to school again in the morning. For one thing, they had made it too pleasant for her to stay home today. And for another, they still hadn’t solved whatever problem she’d had in the first place.

Adrienne’s plan hadn’t worked out. Isabelle had certainly enjoyed the movie, but it hadn’t relaxed her enough to open up about her issues at school. And that nightmare must mean that something was still eating at her. He was beginning to think a firmer hand was called for. The kid was only four, for crying out loud, and they had been tiptoeing around her as if she were the queen of England or something.

He tried to remember what his own parents had done on occasions in his youth when he had decided he didn’t want to go to school. As he recalled, his mother had taken his temperature and if it had been normal, she’d simply informed him that he was going to school and she didn’t want to hear any arguments about it.

No amount of griping or whining would get him out of it, but it
would
curtail his favorite after-school activities. Every ten minutes of protesting had earned him half an hour alone in his room without his stereo, his television or his old Atari game system. Once she had figured out he was perfectly content to stay in his room with his books or his notebooks, she had changed the punishment to time spent pulling weeds from her flower beds—a chore he had detested.

He hadn’t missed much school.

Lenore had been firm but fair, meting out rewards as generously as punishment. Stuart McCloud, on the other hand, had set standards that Gideon had found impossible to meet. It hadn’t been as tough for Nathan, who had been content to follow his father’s advice to enter law school. And Deborah could do no wrong in Stuart’s eyes, with the exception, of course, of getting involved with Dylan Smith, the only thing she had ever done in outright defiance of their father’s wishes.

When that romance had ended badly, and painfully, Deborah had listened to Stuart’s I-told-you-sos and modeled herself into the dutiful daughter again—until Stuart had shattered her faith in him, and perhaps in all men, by betraying her trust in him.

But even before the affair and divorce that had shattered the family, Stuart and Gideon had never gotten along. Nothing Gideon ever did was good enough, none of his dreams practical enough to suit Stuart, a man who had lived to lead and impress others, his eyes firmly focused on the governor’s mansion. He had expected his offspring to be ambitious, conformist and popular. For Nathan and Deborah, those things had come easily. But for Gideon—the moody, introspective, unsociable rebel—they were unbearable.

Gideon’s choice to attend a public state university to study a liberal arts curriculum had been bad enough, in Stuart’s eyes. Dropping out in his junior year to live on a modest trust fund from his maternal grandparents and pursue a career writing pulp fiction had pretty much severed any remaining ties between them. Rather than encouraging his younger son’s dream, Stuart had belittled it, predicting failure, poverty and misery.

As far as Gideon knew, Stuart had never read anything he’d published. And Gideon had always told himself he didn’t care.

Impatiently shoving those unwanted memories to the back of his mind, he rolled on the couch to check the time. Almost 5:00 a.m. Might as well get up and make a pot of coffee, maybe get a few pages written before it was time to wake Isabelle. Hell of a lot more productive use of his time than brooding over his father’s parental shortcomings.

And what did the past have to do with anything, anyway? Gideon wasn’t trying to be a father to Isabelle—he’d failed to learn that particular skill along the way. He’d never even pictured himself with kids, considering he would be as lousy at the task as his own dear old dad had been. All he wanted to do now was be a reasonably competent big brother and baby-sitter until someone more qualified returned to take the responsibility off his hands.

Chapter Nine

A
drienne completely understood what Gideon was trying to do Friday morning. They had tried her idea of catering to Isabelle, in hopes that she would get over her problems at school, and it hadn’t worked. Now Gideon was trying the firm, serious, adult-in-charge approach.

That wasn’t working, either.

“I don’t want to go to school!” Isabelle shouted through a storm of tears. “I don’t want to.”

“You might as well accept that you have to go to school,” Gideon answered flatly, his hands on his hips and a look of severely strained patience on his face. “Your nanna and Nathan are trusting me to take you to school, and I’m not going to let them down. And neither are you. Now, if there’s a problem at school, you can tell me about it and I’ll see what I can do to resolve it. If you refuse to tell me, you’ll just have to go and try to handle it yourself.”

“You can’t fix it,” Isabelle muttered, hanging her head. She looked so miserable that Adrienne was tempted to pick her up and cuddle her and tell her she didn’t have to do anything she didn’t want to do, but all that would accomplish would be to undermine Gideon’s efforts.

“How do you know I can’t fix it?” Gideon asked. “You haven’t given me a chance. I know I’m not Nathan, but I’m not entirely incompetent.”

Isabelle only sniffled.

Adrienne couldn’t stay silent any longer. “Sweetheart, won’t you
please
tell us what happened to upset you at school? Gideon and I want to help you, but we can’t if we don’t know what’s wrong.”

Swiping the back of one hand across her nose, Isabelle seemed to consider her next words.

Gideon produced a tissue. His tone was as firm as before, but perhaps a few degrees warmer. “Use this, and then spill it.”

Though she obediently blew her nose, Isabelle looked a bit confused.

“Tell us what happened,” Adrienne translated.

It seemed like a very long time before the child spoke. When she did, her question floored both Adrienne and Gideon. “Was my daddy a bad man?”

Gideon recovered first. “What are you talking about?”

His sharp tone made Isabelle draw back, looking up at him nervously.

Adrienne gave him a warning glance before speaking to the child. “Did someone say something about your father?”

Inching a bit closer to Adrienne, Isabelle nodded.

“Who was it?” Gideon demanded. “One of the kids?”

Isabelle spoke so softly that they had to strain to hear her. “A boy named Danny. He’s having a birthday party this weekend, but he said his mommy wouldn’t let me come because my daddy was a bad man who hurt people. Danny said my daddy had to run away because nobody wanted him here anymore and they don’t want me, either. And another boy named Bryson said his grandma feels sorry for Nanna because Nanna didn’t want me here, either.”

Gideon’s jaw was so tight Adrienne could almost hear his teeth grind together. “Did you tell any of your teachers what the little bas—er, jerks said?”

“No. ’Cause then they would have called me a tattletale, and everyone makes fun of tattletales.”

“Hell, it’s no wonder you don’t want to go back there. It’s a school full of morons.”

Her wet eyes going round, Isabelle looked uncertainly up at Adrienne. “Gideon said the
h
word,” she whispered.

“Yes, dear. He’s upset because your feelings were hurt. Your brother doesn’t like it when people hurt his little sister.”

Gideon’s eyes snapped green fire. “What’s Danny’s last name?”

Isabelle shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“You can bet I’ll find out.” He reached for the truck keys hanging on a hook by his back door. “You stay home. I’ll go to the school.”

Adrienne reacted hastily. “Isabelle, go watch TV or something. I need to talk to Gideon.”

“You’ll keep an eye on her until I get back, won’t you?” Gideon was moving toward the door even as Isabelle left the room. “I don’t expect to be gone very long.”

“Gideon, wait. We need to discuss what you’re going to say. You need to calm down before you go charging to the school.”

He didn’t pause. “I know exactly what I’m going to say.”

Adrienne stepped between him and the door, placing herself so that he would have to move her aside to leave. “Stop.”

He studied her through narrowed eyes. “What?”

This was not the man who had kissed her so warmly and thoroughly last night. The man she faced now was coldly, dangerously furious. Focusing only on the present moment, she shook her head. “You can’t go to the school when you’re this angry. You don’t even know the last names of the children who said those things.”

“I’m damned well going to find out.” He took another step forward, but she stood her ground, leaving them almost toe-to-toe.

“I agree that the administration should be made aware of what happened. But you don’t want to cause so much trouble that you make things worse for Isabelle when she goes back.”

“
If
she goes back. Why the hell should she stay in a school that allows her to be subjected to that?”

“But that’s not really your decision to make, is it? Isn’t Nathan Isabelle’s legal guardian?”

That made him frown. “I’m as much her brother as Nathan is. In his absence, it’s up to me to make sure she’s well treated.”

As much as she admired his determination to defend and protect Isabelle—coming from Gideon, that seemed quite a concession—she wasn’t sure he was thinking clearly enough to be logical and rational.

“Nathan is her legal guardian,” she repeated. “You really shouldn’t make any drastic moves without discussing them with him first.”

Her reasoning finally seemed to get through the haze of anger that had gripped him. Scowling, he squeezed the back of his neck with one hand. “Damn it.”

She took that as a reluctant admission that she was right. “Maybe you should call your brother before you speak to someone at the school.”

“I guess you’re right. I shouldn’t be dealing with this, anyway. As you said, Nathan’s the one who brought Isabelle here and made himself responsible for her. I never agreed to get involved.”

“But you are involved, aren’t you?” She gave him a sympathetic smile. “You love her.”

His scowl deepened. Visibly uncomfortable with the emotionalism she had just expressed, he backed off a step. “She’s a good kid. She doesn’t deserve to be hurt that way.”

“No, she doesn’t. You should go in and talk to her.”

What might have been a touch of panic flashed across his face. “
I
should talk to her?”

“Of course. This concerns your family history. She needs to hear the story from someone who cares about her, rather than the gossip she’ll overhear around town.”

“Maybe it would be better if Nathan has that talk with her. After all, he stayed on speaking terms with Dad.”

“Oh,
now
you want to wait for Nathan.”

He looked downright sheepish then—an expression that didn’t sit particularly well on him. “He’s better at that sort of thing. Heart-to-heart talks, I mean.”

“Whereas, you feel perfectly qualified to go to Isabelle’s school and raise hell.”

“Well…yeah.”

“I see.”

He looked toward the kitchen doorway, a muscle working in his jaw. “How am I supposed to tell her the details of her parents’ clandestine courtship?”

“What has she already been told?”

“I’m not sure, exactly. I assume she knows my parents divorced and that she was the product of our father’s second marriage.”

“You can explain to her that there are always painful emotions when a marriage ends. That your mother, her nanna’s, feelings were hurt, but she got over it and she’s grown to love Isabelle very much.”