Alana Matthews - A Wanted Man

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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