She sighed and linked her fingers with his. “I’ve never owned anything. Nothing that actually mattered, nothing that meant any kind of roots or permanence. I believe in what we’re trying to accomplish here, and I’m not afraid to put my money where my mouth is. I promised I’d save your world, Campbell, and this was my best shot.”
He slid his hand up to cup her nape and pressed his brow to hers. “You humble me.”
“You should’ve heard the original speech I had planned.” She tipped her mouth up to kiss him briefly, before slipping away to reclaim her coffee and address the rest of the family. “And this concludes the warm and fuzzy good news portion of this morning’s meeting. Please collect your caffeine and breakfast pastry of choice and make your way to the kitchen table. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200.”
Cam watched the mask slide into place, the smooth, calm exterior over the spine of steel. “It’s like watching a Transformer when you do that. Why are you armoring up?”
“Because it’s how I survived the last two weeks.”
That ominous remark left him with a whole helluva lot of foreboding about whatever was coming next. What had he left her to handle alone?
He sat to her left, Miranda to her right, and the rest of them spread out around the big farmhouse table with considerably less commentary than was usual at a Campbell gathering.
She picked up a croissant. “I want to apologize for how I left, without talking to anybody.”
“Emergency protocols apply,” Miranda said. “We get that.”
“It was still rude. I’m not…good with family. Not your kind of family, where check-ins don’t require some kind of performance benchmark. And I’m not good with disasters. Or, to be accurate, I’m fantastic with other people’s disasters. I don’t have a lot experience with any of my own. So when this one hit, I didn’t necessarily handle it the best way possible.” This last she addressed to Cam, eyes full of the apology she’d already made.
He rubbed at her shoulders. “I didn’t win any awards for how I handled it either. Water under the bridge.”
“I’d thought that once I got up there, I’d be in a position to spin some damage control. My old intern got me copies of all the outgoing emails from Philip, so I knew some of what was out there. It’s…ugly.” Something flickered over her face, before the mask reasserted itself. “Apart from the allegations of professional misconduct, there were a number of more…personal accusations. Between the emails and the affidavits from some of my former coworkers, it was evidence enough for my attorney to file a lawsuit for defamation.”
“I’m sensing a gigantic ‘but’ in everything you’re not saying,” Mitch said.
She glanced up at him before returning to shredding the croissant in her hands, “But that’s about all I can do. I can’t stop what Philip started. I can’t undo the damage. Even if I win—and that’s an enormous if according to my attorney, because it’s a whole lot of he said, she said—there’s no putting the genie back in the bottle. My professional reputation is completely trashed. Most of my contacts wouldn’t return my calls, and those who did don’t want to earn Philip’s ire by taking my side. He has a helluva lot more social capital to burn than I do and no compunction about using i
t to knock me to rock bottom as payback for all the existing clients they lost when he fired me and the new ones who won’t go near the firm since I left.”
Alone. She’d been dealing with all of this completely alone because he’d been too full of his own imagined hurts to be what she needed. Guilt coated Cam’s throat, all but choking him.
If not for him and his cause, his town, she wouldn’t even be in this mess. “This is my fault.”
Her eyes flashed hot. “Don’t be absurd.”
“If I hadn’t—”
She cut him off. “No. Don’t you dare. I stayed of my own free will. I chose you, and I have no regrets.”
How could she not have regrets? “But you lost everything you worked for.”
“And gained everything that matters. My pride will heal, and I’ll figure out some means of earning a living—preferably sooner rather than later because my attorney isn’t cheap—but I’m not giving you up. Period. End of story.”
“Have you told your parents yet?” Uncle Pete asked.
Norah shifted her attention to him and Aunt Liz. “I just told the only ones who matter. Hell will freeze over before I give my father that kind of weapon.”
Knowing what Joseph Burke had said to her regarding what she’d unknowingly been involved with in Morton, Cam could only imagine how he’d twist this to try and bend her. For all the good he focused on doing in the world, how could he not see the damage he did to his own daughter with his expectations?
“What about Peyton?” Cam asked.
“Peyton?” Sandra asked.
Norah ignored that. “What about him?”
“Is the job offer still on the table after all this?”
“We haven’t talked about it since I approached him as an investor.”