Conflict of Interest (The McClouds of Mississippi) (2 page)

A tall, slender woman in her early sixties stood on his doorstep, holding the hand of a blond cherub with shoulder-length curls and huge blue eyes. A large, wheeled, red suitcase rested on the porch between them, and the little girl carried a bulging purple backpack. Gideon frowned at the luggage for a moment before slowly lifting his gaze to his mother’s face. “What’s going on?”

“If you would pick up your telephone, you would already know the answer to that.” Without waiting for an invitation, Lenore McCloud stepped past him into his entryway, dragging the suitcase with one hand and holding the little girl’s hand in her other.

Gideon closed the door behind them, then turned to face his mother. He was still unnerved by the sight of that suitcase. “Well?”

“Your aunt Wanda fell during the night and broke her hip. It was several hours before anyone found her, and she’s in bad shape now. Her neighbor called me a couple of hours ago, and I need to go there immediately.”

Because his aunt was the only surviving member of his mother’s immediate family, Gideon wasn’t surprised she felt the need to rush to Wanda’s side. “I’m sorry to hear that. I hope she’ll be okay.”

“Yes, so do I.” Lenore glanced down at the still-silent little girl. “Isabelle, sweetie, the den is right through that door. Why don’t you run in there and watch cartoons for a few minutes while I talk with Gideon?”

The child nodded obediently and disappeared into the den. A moment later Gideon heard the opening strains of “Scooby-dooby-doo…”

“Why is she watching cartoons in my den?” he asked his mother suspiciously.

“Isabelle’s going to stay with you until I can make other arrangements. I hope it will only be for a few days, but I can’t make any guarantees.”

Shaking his head, Gideon had both hands in the air before she even finished speaking. “No way, Mom. Forget it. You can’t leave her here.”

Lenore wore the stern, don’t-mess-with-me expression he remembered very well from his youth. “There really is no other choice. Nathan and Caitlin won’t be back from their honeymoon for nearly two weeks. Deborah went back to Florida yesterday. And I can hardly take a four-year-old with me to the hospital.”

“What about the housekeeper who watches Isabelle while Nathan’s working? Can’t she stay with her?”

“Mrs. Tuckerman left right after the wedding Saturday for a two-week cruise with her bridge club. It seemed like a good idea for her vacation to coincide with Nathan’s honeymoon, especially since I had volunteered to watch Isabelle. No one could have predicted Wanda’s accident, of course.”

Gideon could feel the cage bars closing around him, but he tried one last time to escape. “Surely there’s someone else. I have to work, and you know how I get when I’m past deadline. Leaving a four-year-old with me probably constitutes reckless endangerment of a minor or something.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. You’re perfectly capable of watching Isabelle for a few days. She’s a very well-behaved child, no trouble at all. She’s in preschool from eight in the morning until two in the afternoon, so you can work in your usual solitude during those hours.”

“And after two? What am I supposed to do with her then?”

“You’re an intelligent young man. You’ll manage.”

“I don’t
want
to manage. You can’t leave her here.”

“Fine.” Lenore gave him a wounded look. “Since I have no other options, I’ll take Isabelle back to my house. I’ll call my poor sister and tell her I can’t come to her when she needs me because it isn’t convenient for my son.”

He groaned. “Mother—”

She held up a hand. “It’s all right. I understand. You’re an important writer, and your time is very valuable.”

The cage doors slammed shut. Gideon was trapped, and he knew it. He sighed. “Go to your sister. I’ll watch the kid.”

If Lenore had harbored any doubt that he would eventually capitulate, it didn’t show in her expression. She pulled a folded sheet of paper from the leather purse dangling from her arm. “This is the schedule Nathan and Caitlin left for me with Isabelle’s preschool and dance class times.”

“Dance class?”

Ignoring his groan, she continued, “You also have the phone numbers for her school and her pediatrician, and a number where Nathan can be reached in an emergency. I’ve written a couple of numbers for myself at the bottom of the page, and you have my cell number, of course.”

“How long do you expect to be gone?”

“I’m not sure. I’ll let you know as soon as I can. Isabelle had lunch at school today, of course, and I gave her a snack after I picked her up. She’ll probably be hungry for dinner around six, and she should be in bed by eight. Try to make sure she eats healthily. Don’t let her have too many snacks or junk foods. Now I really must be on my way, since I have a two-hour drive ahead of me. I’ll just step in to say goodbye to Isabelle.”

His footsteps dragging, Gideon followed Lenore into his den. Isabelle sat curled on one corner of his suede-leather sofa, the cartoon she had selected playing on the television across the room. She looked away from the screen when they entered, her expression uncertain. “I’m staying here?”

“For a few days,” Lenore agreed, giving the child a bracing smile. “You’ll be fine, sweetie. Your big brother will take very good care of you.”

Because he wasn’t used to thinking of himself as Isabelle’s big brother—after all, he’d met the child for the first time less than four months ago—it took him a beat to realize that his mother expected him to say something then. “You’re welcome to stay here, Isabelle.”

He didn’t blame her for looking less than enthusiastic. She was probably well aware that he was completely ill-equipped to care for a small child. Though he knew she was gregarious and talkative with other people—even total strangers—she had been rather reserved with him during the few occasions they’d been together. She had treated him with a somewhat wary shyness that had told him she didn’t quite know what to make of him, and since he’d never decided quite what he felt about her, he’d been content to leave things just that way between them. Distantly civil.

He’d certainly never expected to find himself babysitting her.

“I have to go, sweetie. Be good for Gideon, okay? And be patient with him,” Lenore said a bit wryly. “Sometimes he’s a slow learner. But he’ll be very nice to you,” she added, giving her son a meaningful look.

Isabelle wrapped her arms around Lenore’s neck. “Goodbye, Nanna. I hope your sister gets all better soon.”

Gideon still found it strange to hear his half sister refer to his mother by that grandmotherly nickname. It hadn’t been very long ago when Lenore hadn’t even wanted to acknowledge the child’s existence. Now here she was taking full responsibility for her ex-husband’s kid while her oldest son, the orphaned child’s legal guardian, was away on his honeymoon, and hugging her as affectionately as if she really were Isabelle’s grandmother.

It was no wonder, Gideon mused with a shake of his head, that most people in this town tended to think of Lenore, a tireless, generous community volunteer, as a near saint. They had no such illusions about
him,
however.

Ten minutes later he found himself alone with a four-year-old who gazed up at him expectantly, waiting for him to say or do something. He didn’t have a clue where to begin.

He glanced at his watch. It wasn’t even 4:00 p.m. yet. Too early for dinner. Four hours away from her bedtime. “So, uh, do you want a drink or something?” he asked awkwardly. “I have some soda, I think. And fruit juice.”

She shook her head. “No, thank you.”

“Oh. Well.” He looked around the room, which was decorated in Southwestern style with leather, distressed woods, pottery, western paintings and Remington bronzes. The walls were lined with shelves almost filled to over-flowing with hardcover and paperback books. It was a guy’s room, and there was nothing in it to entertain a child except the television she had been watching.

“I need to finish something in my office,” he said. “Will you be okay in here watching TV?”

She nodded gravely. “I’ll be okay.”

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.

She should have known, she thought as she carefully negotiated a winding gravel road, that Gideon would live well outside of town. She was definitely forming a mental picture of a crusty hermit who was more comfortable with the characters in his head than the people in the real world.

She had never met him—had never even seen a photograph of him—but she’d talked to him several times on the telephone during the past two years since he had signed with her father’s literary agency. Mostly, their communication had been through letters and faxes. She loved his books, but she hadn’t been able to get to know him very well through their limited contact.

Based strictly on his behavior, she had formed a mental image of him that wasn’t particularly flattering. She guessed that he was in his late thirties or early forties. A bit geeky, most likely. Probably a real oddball. He wouldn’t be the first talented writer she had met who was downright strange.

He
was
the first she’d bothered to track down this way—something she couldn’t explain. She had decided her motives were a combination of wanting to impress her father with her professional cleverness and the fact that she absolutely loved Gideon McCloud’s books.

His house looked normal enough—a neat frame bungalow tucked into a woody hillside. The lot was naturally landscaped with mulch and ground cover, which would require a minimum of effort to keep it looking nice. And it did look nice, she had to admit. She’d bet it was really pretty later in the spring, when the trees and bushes would be in full bloom, and in the fall when the surrounding hillsides would be ablaze with color.