Free Answering to Him (Old-Fashioned Husband) by Dinah McLeod Page B

side of the road? Decide to take a cat nap?”
    “No.” When she moved her leg, I saw her wince. “I sort of tripped.”
    I looked around and saw that on this side of the trail, there were a pair of jagged rocks partially hidden beneath the dirt. Any other woman, and I’d have my doubts, but knowing that my sweetheart was clumsy and paid scant attention to where she was going, I believed it. “Can you move it?”
    “I don’t think so. I tried earlier, and…”
    “Try,” I urged her. “I’m right here, I’ll help you.”
    She nodded, gritting her teeth, and I crouched beside her, helping her to lean against me. She tried to stand, and cried out, falling into me.
    I caught her easily, whistling. “It’s sprained, at the least. I’d go get the car, but…”
    “I know,” she said, wincing again. “My fault. I should have listened to you.”
    Damn right she should have! I was going to be making sure that in the future, she most certainly would. Given the current situation, I decided to keep the thoughts to myself for the time being. She was in enough pain. “Well, we’ll make do. Lean on me, OK? I can take it. Let’s head to the camp office. We’ll call Triple A from there, and they can tell us where the closest hospital is.”
    “ Ow,” she groaned pitifully. “I don’t want to ruin our trip, Oliver.”
    “It’s not ruined,” I assured her. “I caught two fish earlier.”
    She grinned at me, but it quickly turned into a grimace as we kept walking. It was like a game of “Mother May I”—we were only allowed tiny baby steps forward. “That’s great, honey,” she said, referring to the fish.
    “Speaking of, since when do you go fishing?”
    She laughed at my question. It was one of my favorite hobbies, and I’d asked her along more times than I could count, but she’d never been interested. “I thought I’d give it a shot.”
    “Where’d the pole come from?” I asked, my arm wrapped around her waist as we limped along.
    “I went to the camp store and bought it. I was headed your way when I fell.”
    “You should pay more attention,” I scolded gently.
    “I know,” she replied.
    “I thought you’d gone back to sleep,” I commented.
    “Probably should have,” she muttered, and we both laughed. “I guess I’m just full of surprises.”
    “Hmm,” I replied, striving to sound noncommittal. She wasn’t the only one, though she didn’t know it yet. I wondered how she’d react when we got home and talked about it. I was going to tell her that things couldn’t keep going as they had been. I loved her, and we had a good marriage, but it would be even better with the few changes we would make, that I would enforce.
    “I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you,” she surprised me by saying. “I should have called about the car. I’m really sorry.”
    “It’s OK,” I replied, readily enough.
    “It’s not,” she insisted. “If I’d done what you asked, we wouldn’t be in this mess. Aren’t you mad?”
    I gave her a surprised sidelong glance. “It’s hard to be mad when you already know what I’d say.”
    “So why don’t you say it, if you’re thinking it?”
    I thought about that one for a minute. “I guess because I thought you had enough on your plate without me nagging you about something you can’t change.”
    “But you never get on to me,” she observed.
    I stopped, pulling her against me and turning to look into her eyes. “Are you complaining?”
    “I wouldn’t say I’m complaining , exactly…but yes, I guess I’d like to know if I do something that bothers you.”
    I shook my head at her. Who was this woman? “Wouldn’t your girlfriends kill for a husband who doesn’t hound them? Who doesn’t tell them what to do?”
    “Oh, they think you’re amazing.”
    “And what do you think?”
    She dropped her eyes to stare at the ground before she answered, hesitantly, “I think that… I think that if you… if you were to hold me accountable for the