Читать книгу Conflict of Interest - GINA WILKINS - Страница 9

After the thirteenth unanswered ring, Adrienne Corley slammed her telephone into its cradle. She wasn’t the type to lose her temper very often, but Gideon McCloud could provoke a saint into a tantrum.

It was the fifth time in the past three days that she had attempted to reach him. His answering machine had broken several weeks ago and he hadn’t bothered to replace it, so she couldn’t leave a message. She’d sent e-mails, but apparently he hadn’t checked those in a while, either.

The worst part was that she suspected he was sitting right there beside the phone, listening to it ring and choosing not to answer.

“I do not need this aggravation,” she grumbled, glaring at the phone as if her scowl would carry through the lines to the man she had been trying to reach. “I could get an easier job, you know. Working in a bank. A library, maybe. Even digging ditches would have to be better than working with eccentric, temperamental authors.”

“Threatening to quit again?” Jacqueline Peeples, her administrative assistant, asked as she set a mountain of mail on Adrienne’s desk.

“Someday I’m going through with that threat.”

“Yeah, right. Tell that to your daddy.”

Adrienne transferred her glare from the telephone to her co-worker. “I’m not afraid of my father. If I choose to quit his literary agency, I’m certainly free to do so.”

“Mmm-hmm.” Jacqueline had heard that before, of course. She didn’t believe it any more than Adrienne did. “At least you’ve got your vacation coming up. If I’ve ever seen anyone who needs two weeks away from the office, it’s you. So don’t you let your father try to talk you out of it again.”

“I won’t,” Adrienne vowed. “I’ve earned this vacation—the first I’ve taken in three years—and I’m going to enjoy every day of it. I’m so tired of schedules and appointments that I haven’t even made any plans for the next two weeks. I’m going to act completely on impulse, take every minute as it comes.”

“That sounds like exactly what you need. But in the meantime, what are you going to do about Gideon McCloud?”

“I’m going to make him talk to me—even if I have to fly to Honesty, Mississippi, and break into his house.”

Jacqueline laughed, as Adrienne had intended. “Now that I would like to see.”

“Me, breaking into his house?”

“No. You in Mississippi.”

The more she thought about it, the more it seemed like a brilliant solution. Just the sort of gutsy, tough-guy move her father would make. Gideon McCloud was curt, blunt and reclusive, but he was a talented writer with a great future ahead of him, and she intended to grab a percentage of that future.

“Book me a flight,” she said without giving herself a chance to think about it. “Early next week, preferably. That will give me time to get everything here cleared away.”

Jacqueline’s eyebrows rose. “You can’t be serious. You want to go to Mississippi to meet with an author during your vacation?”

The more she thought about it, the better the idea seemed—though, of course, she was overworked and overstressed. She nodded slowly, her resolve strengthening. “It’ll only take a day or two, and I’ve never been to Mississippi, so I can count that as a vacation trip. Two birds with one stone. Let’s just see if Gideon McCloud can ignore me when I’m staring directly into his eyes.”