Page 25 of Hearts on Ice
“Do you like him?”
She lifted a shoulder. “Doesn’t matter if I do or don’t. I don’t see her very often anyway.”
He imagined the two of them had seen enough of each other when her mother was pushing her to be a professional ice skater. He had wondered, for a while, if he was just a part of Colby rejecting everything ice skating, if she had left him because he reminded her of all the time and effort she’d sunk into the sport. They could have talked about it, though, instead of her walking away. They could have adjusted their goal, or set an end date for when they’d stop skating and move on to the next thing, but she’d just…left.
But now she was back at it, and he was too, so maybe that wasn’t the reason. Maybe he’d never know.
“What about your parents? Are they still in town?” she asked when the waitress delivered their drinks—her coffee and his soda.
“No, they moved back to Arizona when Evan was in college, but he had fallen in love with Meghan by that point, and her family is from here, so they stayed.”
“And now they have their little family. So Evan has forgiven you for disrupting his life?”
Declan spread his hand before him on the table. “More or less. He still hates the cold.”
“Which explains why his kids haven’t learned to skate yet.”
“That’s more of a, he doesn’t want them to have the lives you and I had, stressed always, scheduled. He wanted them to have more of a chance to be normal kids.”
She let out a breath and stirred her coffee, though she had added nothing to it. “I wonder who we would have been, if we’d been normal kids. Who we would have grown up to be.”
“I like who I’ve grown up to be,” he said, and as he said the words he realized how true they were. “I’m pretty happy with my life. Are there some things I would have changed? Sure. But overall I’m happy with where I am.”
She met his gaze then and offered him a full smile. “That makes me very happy. I’m sure I’m one of the things you would have changed, but I’m glad you’ve come out on the other side a happy person.”
He should just keep his mouth shut. He’d put that clause in the contract for a reason, but…”There are things about the two of us I would have changed, but not the whole experience.”
Her eyebrows shot up at that. “Really? Because I got the feeling you wish you could erase those years.”
He shook his head, and this time he did keep his mouth shut. He had loved her like crazy. And she’d been a huge part of his life for some of the best years of his life.
She closed her hands around her mug and stared into it. “So are you…are you involved with someone? Someone you like to go skiing and camping with?”
He should have known those comments would raise questions. Colby had always noticed details when she wanted to. He had been the one to miss out on clues.
He shook his head again. He hadn’t been involved with anyone in months. “Not right now.” Though Monica had introduced him to the joys of camping, and Diana to skiing, and Layla to wine tasting. None of those relationships had lasted more than a year, because of the woman sitting across from him right now. He wasn’t a hundred percent sure if it was because she’d hurt him, or because he still loved her.
Whatever the reason, he had to get over it and look ahead. He wanted a life like Evan’s and he was getting to the point where he needed to get serious about it. Mid-thirties.
He didn’t ask Colby the same questions, not because he didn’t want to know, but because the tabloids had kept him informed. She’d been involved with an actor a month after she left him, and that relationship had been a couple of months, only to be replaced by another actor, a football player, and another string of actors and reality stars.
Then she’d been on that reality show looking for love. He hadn’t watched, but he’d seen the ads, and every one had been a twist in the gut. He’d been glad when she was eliminated.
She’d done a little better in the dancing reality show, and he had watched a few clips of her dancing. She’d always been so graceful, so athletic, but the sight of her in another man’s arms, well. Even knowing that man had no ties to her, no interest in her. More gut punches.
She’d been a judge in another dancing show for a short time, like maybe half a season, and he heard she left because she didn’t get along with one of the big name stars. He could imagine that. Colby had an ego and she wasn’t afraid of anything.
Those high profile jobs had led to higher profile romances, and her picture appeared on the tabloids a lot there for a while.
Not so much lately. He wanted to know the reason why, and he didn’t. But he had a feeling that whatever had happened was the reason she was back here.
CHAPTER10
Colby wished she didn’t feel so uneasy in front of the person she had known longest and best in her life. She ordered a salad but then realized there was no dainty way to eat a salad. She never would have cared about this ten years ago. He’d seen her eat messy meals for years. But now she felt like he was waiting for her to make a mistake so he could judge her on it.
She supposed it was fair. He would want her to fail to prove she had been wrong about leaving him, especially wrong about the way she left him.
She admitted to having a knot in her stomach also, because she wasn’t a hundred percent sure how she was going to pay for these unexpected expenses, and even though she only ordered a salad, it cost ten dollars. She knew the right thing would be to offer to pay for their meal, but her budget was on the shortest of shoestrings right now.
