at the Wyoming Law Enforcement Academy in Douglas, but for a while there I had my eye on Glynco and the Marshals Service. Recruiter approached me while I was still in college.” He looked at Callie. “Same with you, right? You almost went federal.”
Callie stiffened slightly. “Yes.”
“So what changed your mind?”
“Circumstances,” she said tersely, but didn’t feel like elaborating. Those circumstances were sitting across the table from her.
Rusty gave her room to continue, but when he realized she was finished, he said to Harlan, “So anyway, I decided I’d rather stay local. No chance of being transferred across country, and I like Wyoming. Good place to raise a family. You got family?”
“Brother in California. That’s about it.”
“Have you always been in Colorado Springs, or do they move you around a lot?”
“I’ve bounced around a little, but Colorado seems to be the best fit. Been there five years.”
“They keep you busy, I guess. Transporting prisoners—that must be pretty interesting sometimes.”
“It has its moments,” Harlan said. “Especially when one of them smacks you in the head with your own weapon.”
Rusty smiled. “At least you’ve got a sense of humor about it.”
“One of my trainers at Glynco always said, you don’t find a reason to laugh, you might as well hang it up.”
“Amen,” Rusty murmured.
Callie was thinking that she could use a reason to laugh right now, when someone called out to Rusty—one of the fake-boobed, underdressed cop groupies who rolled in every evening looking for attention. She was standing near an available pool table, gesturing to him with the cue stick in her hand.
Rusty gave her a wave, then turned to Callie. “Citizen needs assistance,” he said. “Call me when the food comes.”
Callie rolled her eyes. She could just imagine the kind of assistance the girl needed, but this was Rusty’s chance to escape the torture and she couldn’t blame him. He quickly slipped out of the booth and left them alone.
Harlan watched him go. “I used to be that young once.”
Callie scoffed. “You’re what—thirty-five? Not exactly Jonah Pritchard territory.”
“It’ll happen soon enough. Goes by fast, doesn’t it? The past ten years are barely a blip on the radar.”
Callie had to admit he was right. She sometimes felt as if she had stepped onto a bullet train, the past decade an indistinct blur of joys and heartbreaks and not much in between.
She found herself thinking about the heartbreak that had torn them apart, when Harlan glanced at her left hand and asked, “You never got married?”
She stiffened again. Why was he asking her that? What difference did it make?
“Cops and marriage don’t mix,” she said.
He nodded. “I found that out the hard way.”
She felt a small stab of disappointment. She shouldn’t have cared, but for some reason she did. “You were married?”
“Thirteen months,” he said. “Lucky number.”
“When was this?”
“About a year after you and I split. But I don’t know what I was thinking. I knew it was a mistake before it even happened.”
“Why?”
His gaze locked on hers, those blue eyes enough to make any woman’s legs tremble. Even one who hated his guts.
“Because she wasn’t you,” he said.
HE DIDN’T KNOW WHY he’d said it.
The words came out impulsively, a surprise even to him. He could just as easily have told her that he and his ex simply hadn’t been in love. But he didn’t often think about his marriage, and until this moment he’d never realized that Callie was the reason it had been doomed from the start.
Because she wasn’t you.
The minute he said it he was plagued by regret, inwardly cursing himself for being so impulsive. He knew how Callie felt about him and she wasn’t likely to be receptive to such a statement.
It was no real shock when she sat up slightly, looking as if he’d slapped her across the face.
“What did you just say?”
“Forget it,” he told her. “That just slipped out. Don’t pay any attention to—”
“You say something like that and you think I’m suddenly going to fall all over you? ‘Oh, Harlan, it’s so good to see you after all these years. Oh, Harlan, I never should’ve—’”
“Stop,” he said. “This isn’t funny.”
Callie paused, studying him soberly. “What you did hurt me, Harlan.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“Didn’t you? These past ten years may have gone by fast, but they don’t change the fact that you’re the reason Treacher is dead.”
So there it was. The thing that had been simmering between them ever since he’d walked into that conference room. They’d both known it was there, but neither of them had been willing to say it out loud. Until now.
She still blamed him for the accident.
He and Treacher and Callie had been inseparable in college. The Three Amigos, everyone called them—a study group that had morphed into a solid, unwavering friendship. And for Harlan and Callie, it became something much deeper.
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