much to ask? He didn’t have to ask her to balance his books every day, schedule his appointments, buy birthday gifts for his staff, for his family…. He wouldn’t have even remembered his own parents’ anniversary had she not stuck a card under his nose and placed a pen in his hand to sign it.
“Don’t you think you’re being a little unfair, Jillian?”
“Unfair? I told you about this interview a week ago. I mentioned it again at the house this morning. And I reminded you before I left the office. How many reminders did you want?”
Emotions played across his handsome face, beginning with a startled hurt and working quickly to anger. He was wrong. He knew it. And he didn’t like it.
“Is that why you left your phone in your purse, so I couldn’t reach you?” he asked. “Did you want me to worry?”
“Did you worry?”
The exact wrong thing to say. She’d known it as the words had formed in her head, yet she’d let them out anyway.
Michael’s expression darkened into a scowl that transformed his face into a stranger’s. She’d known her good-natured husband most of her life but always found herself shaken by the heat of his anger when it reared its head, which wasn’t often.
They didn’t argue.
They discussed. They negotiated. They compromised.
But there didn’t seem to be any compromise with Camp Cavalier.
Michael liked to think he was the perfect husband. He always felt bad whenever he didn’t live up to his expectations. Unfortunately, she was too angry about his tardiness, and his disinterest in her mammogram appointment—not to mention a host of other things she usually dismissed—to let him feel no guilt. She should have reassured him. Reassurance would have taken so much less energy than this argument.
“Michael, I’m sorry I asked you to come tonight.” She didn’t make much of an effort to tone down her resignation. “I know it’s difficult for you to know exactly when you can get out of the office. I do understand.”
But there was no retreat from the road they’d started down. Especially not with such a half-hearted attempt.
“Jillian, the problem isn’t me getting out of the office. It’s you taking on this camp.”
Ouch. He’d made it clear from the start he wasn’t gung-ho about the whole idea, yet hearing him toss it out in anger still stung. “I know you had concerns, but I thought you loved this place as much as I do.”
“Not enough to run it.”
She came to a stop and stared. “It’s not as if I’ve asked you to do a whole lot. You make it sound as if you don’t think I can handle it alone.”
“Camp Cavelier is a full-time job. You’ve already got one of those. So do I—a practice and more patients than I know what to do with.”
“Now there’s the truth. It’s a catch-22. We shouldn’t work all the time, but you know as well as I do that if we didn’t work together, we’d never see each other.”
He arched a dark eyebrow in a look that she’d once thought was sexy. Now the expression only cut his point deep. “You don’t call running this camp work?”
“Not once we get good people hired and a feel for what needs to be done. I was hoping to renovate Bernice and Carl’s cottage. Then we’d have a great weekend getaway. We’ve wanted one for a while but have been too busy to find one. The camp is the perfect compromise. It’s an easy drive from the office. We won’t have to maintain the place, or a boat or a stable. All that’s already here. Yet, we’ll still be able to do all the things we enjoy and don’t have time to care for.”
“We’re caring for the whole damn camp, Jillian. A boat doesn’t sound like such a big deal by comparison.”
She didn’t know why she was trying to sway him to her side, but couldn’t seem to stop. “What about our children? Shouldn’t we make the effort to preserve history for them? I’d hate for them not to spend their summers at Camp Cavelier.”
“What children? We didn’t have time to make any even before we bought the camp.” He gave a sharp laugh. “But you’ve solved that problem. You’ll have kids swarming all over this place in a few weeks. How many are coming this season—eighty, ninety?”
One hundred and three, but she managed the impulse control not to admit it. Not when Michael was looking all inconvenienced and superior, as if he’d been the one doing all the work around here when he couldn’t even make an interview on time.
“I admit this place gets crazy in the summer, but the campers are only here for two months.” She tried to interject reason into a subject that didn’t feel reasonable tonight. “We still have the rest of the year. Spring and fall are gorgeous. Winter can be, too. Can you imagine celebrating Christmas here?”
“I can imagine celebrating selling this land to a development company and making a fortune. Then you can spend Christmas on that Tahitian island you’re always talking about.”
“I haven’t mentioned visiting a Tahitian island since we were planning our honeymoon. Are you saying you’d actually leave your office long enough to take a vacation?”
He scowled harder and didn’t answer.
She scowled right back. Of all the low blows…
“I can’t believe you’d even bring up developing this land. You know I promised Bernice and Carl. That was the whole reason they sold it to me for the price they did.”
“There’s nothing in the contract prohibiting us—”
“It was a verbal agreement I took seriously. Bernice and Carl trusted us to bring the camp into the twenty-first century. They had enough heartache losing their only son in the Vietnam War. Doesn’t trust mean anything to you?”
Her reminder fell flat between them. She could see Michael trying to rein in his anger, recognized how much effort it took, effort that felt as hurtful as his whole uncaring attitude.
What did he have to feel angry about?
She hadn’t asked anything of him except for a little support. She’d honestly thought he’d come through. And not the half-hearted, whenever-it’s-convenient efforts he’d been making. Not when she’d always done her one-hundred-and-ten-percent best to support everything he’d ever wanted.
Why else would she have given up a full ride to Duke if not to accompany him to college?
Why would she have crammed her course load into half the time if not to accompany him to dental school?
Why would she have turned down so many job opportunities if not to start up his practice?
Folding her arms over her chest as if that would help her keep her mouth shut, Jillian glared at him.
“Camp Cavelier is a life calling, not a hobby,” Michael said through clenched teeth. “Look at the Virgils. Look at Ike. Unless you want to close my practice and relocate here to do this job right then developing this land only makes
