Page 112 of Summer with the Single Dad

“I’m not sure. Maybe Dom needs help in the restaurant? Or Wyatt in the kitchen? I might not be a professionally trained pastry chef, but my cake decorating skills aren’t too shabby. The girls were impressed.”

She was right. Her cake decorating skills were impressive, and Wyatt would absolutely hire her to help out in the kitchen. But that wasn’t the point here. The point was that she was a fucking doctor. A goddamn surgeon, for Christ’s sake. She couldn’t just walk away from that. From all those years of education and such a finely-honed skill. There were more pastry chefs in the world than cardiothoracic surgeons. She needed to return to her field. To the job she trained to do. Right?

“Ooh, look at this one. It’s so cute. It has a deep soaker tub outside. A little chilly in the winter, to get in and out of it, but it’d be so lovely to sit there with a glass of wine and look up at the stars in the evening.”

“Justine, I don’t think you’re thinking this through.” He didn’t want to squash her good mood or her dreams, but they both knew she wasn’t dealing with the main issue here. She was simply running away from her problems.

Pulling her gaze away from the laptop screen with reluctance, her brows made a tight “V” as she met his eyes. “What do you mean?”

“You’re acting rashly right now. You’re feeling good and you don’t want to lose this high, so you’re chasing it. It’s like a drug. But you’re just running from your problems at this point. Eager not to go into withdrawal. You want to keep this good feeling going. You want to keep the high.”

Her laptop slammed closed, and she reared back. “Excuse me?”

Shit.

Exhaling loudly, he set his beer on the sofa-back table behind the couch and turned to face her. She wore a scowl now and her nostrils flared like a wild animal getting ready to either pounce or run. He wanted her to do neither. He just wanted her to listen.

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Sure seemed like you meant what you said.” She crossed her arms in front of her, her laptop on her lap. “You compared me to an addict and said I’m running from my problems. When in reality, my problems found me here. You’re giving my problems the wedding of their dreams. I just took a vacation. I’m not afraid of Tad and Ashli. I just don’t want to see them.”

For such a brilliant woman, she was so deep in denial she was about to get bit by a croc.

“I’m not talking about Dumb and Dumber. I’m talking about your career. Practicing medicine.”

She went stiff and her eyes narrowed even more. A muscle along her jaw ticked in time with her accelerating pulse, and those nostrils just kept flaring, reminding him of a bull in the ring gearing up to gouge the idiot matador. And in this case, the matador was him waving a stupid red flag and taunting her.

Great. Now he’d just compared her to cattle—even if it was only in his head.

Pinching the bridge of his nose, he bowed his head. “This is coming out all wrong.”

She stood up in a huff. “Then maybe I should leave you to sleep on things and we can try again in the morning.” She made her way around the coffee table and headed toward the front door with her laptop under her arm and the beer in the same hand.

He leaped up from the couch and met her halfway to the foyer. “Justine, I didn’t mean it like that.”

She faced him, staring up the bridge of her nose into his eyes. “Then what did you mean it like?”

“It just feels like you’re rushing things. You’ve been here a week and already you’re talking about moving here. About selling your condo and building a tiny house. We only have the trailer for the duration of your cabin rental—unless you move into cabin five after the renovations—”

“I’ll never stay in that cabin after those two stay in it.”

Fair enough. He couldn’t blame her vehemence there.

“Okay, so you stay in the trailer. We only have it for the duration of your stay. Maybe we can get it for longer, but if not, where will you stay while the tiny house is being built? And we don’t even have Bonn Remmen’s land yet. And we may not get it. A lot of other people want it, and their dreams are just as valid as ours. So if we don’t get it, then where will you build your dream house?”

Her ire deflated as he spoke, but that gave him very little reassurance that he was out of the doghouse.

“And if we do get Bonn Remmen’s land, it’ll be at least a year before we break ground or do anything with it. The island Elders’ Council has reserved the right to take as long as they need deliberating over who gets the land. And given the speed most of them operate these days, it could even be more than a year. What will you do until then?”

Her frown morphed into a pout, and his chest constricted.

“I’m not trying to kill your dream, Justine. I’m not. I swear. I just don’t think you’ve thought this through.”

The fire reignited in her eyes.

In for a penny, in for a pound. Or whatever they say.

“I also think you need to really consider what moving here would do to your career,” he went on, caution in his tone. “I know you’re deep in guilt and grief right now, but you are working to get out of it and you’re making great strides. But making a decision to leave medicine entirely seems really impulsive. I don’t know you that well, but to me it feels like a decision you will end up regretting. And again, although I don’t know you that well, none of this behavior seems like you.”

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