Conflict of Interest (The McClouds of Mississippi) by Gina Wilkins Read Free Book Online Page B

patrol car. “Your pretty little friend can sit in the back seat while you and I fill out the accident report in the front.”
    “Would you like to sit in the police car, Isabelle?”
    The child looked intrigued. “Okay.” She climbed obligingly into the car, leaning over the front seat to study the dashboard and radio.
    “I suppose I’ll need my identification and insurance policy number. Would you mind keeping an eye on Isabelle while I get my purse?”
    “Not at all, ma’am.”
    As Adrienne made her way across the slick pavement toward the crumpled car, she wondered if Dylan Smith deliberately tried to act the stereotype of a drawling Southern cop. She still didn’t know the root of his antagonism toward Gideon, or vice versa, since Gideon hadn’t mentioned the encounter again after leaving the diner, but Officer Smith had been pleasant enough to her. Apparently he didn’t hold her association with Gideon against her.
    She had just reached the front of the rental car when her foot came down on an oily pool of rain water. The slick sole of her loafer offered absolutely no traction. Her leg flew out from under her, and she felt herself falling.
    All she could do was brace herself for the impact with the hard, wet pavement.
     
    Gideon’s sneakers slapped hard against the floor tiles of the Honesty Medical Clinic. Staff and patients alike moved swiftly out of his path as he charged down the hallway to the emergency examining room. No one dared interfere with his progress.
    Sitting on a padded bench in the hallway outside the closed door of the examining room, Isabelle was happily listening to her own heartbeat through a stethoscope as a brightly uniformed young brunette hovered nearby. The child smiled broadly when she spotted her brother. “Hi, Gideon.”
    He knelt in front of her, his hand on her knee as he looked for injuries. “Are you all right?”
    She nodded. “We had a wreck, but nobody got hurt, and then Miss Corley fell down and Officer Smith brought us here, but Miss Corley’s going to be okay and Miss Nancy’s letting me listen through a stefascope.”
    “It’s a stethoscope, Isabelle,” the young woman corrected clearly.
    “Stethoscope,” the child parroted carefully.
    Nancy beamed at Gideon. “She’s so bright. I can’t believe she’s only—”
    “Where’s Adrienne?” he broke in, having reassured himself that Isabelle was unharmed.
    Nancy’s smile faded a bit in response to his curt interruption. “She’s in there with the doctor. But you can’t—”
    Gideon pushed open the examining room door and moved through it, leaving Nancy sputtering behind him as the door swung closed in her face.
    Wearing a hospital gown with a thin robe belted over it, Adrienne sat at one end of a paper-covered examining table, her bare feet dangling over the end. Her right foot was strapped into a black brace, her bare toes notably swollen. Two women stood at one side of the room studying a chart; Gideon recognized one as the doctor and assumed the other was a nurse.
    It was the uniformed police officer hovering very close to Adrienne’s side, smiling at her and being smiled at in return, who sent Gideon’s blood pressure soaring.
    He knew he was glowering when Adrienne looked his way, but she didn’t seem particularly intimidated by his forbidding expression. Her smile turned rueful. “I’m afraid I’ve done something stupid.”
    Gideon moved to Adrienne’s side, effectively stepping between her and Dylan Smith. “Are you all right?”
    She gestured toward her injured foot. “The good news is that my ankle isn’t broken, only badly sprained. And Isabelle is fine.”
    “Yes, I saw her out in the hallway. What happened?”
    “Someone ran a red light and almost caused a collision, then took off without stopping. I went into a spin and hit a streetlamp pole.”
    “That’s when you hurt your foot?”
    Glancing down at her hands, she cleared her throat. “No. I, er, slipped and fell on the