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may as well get it off his chest. “Meryl and I were engaged.”
    “Were?”
    “She dumped me.”
    “Because you followed your dream?”
    “That’s the long and short of it.” The country cliché was easier than admitting the truth. He’d loved Meryl. “I could have stayed, in fact I had the phone in hand to call Uncle Frank and decline his offer when I got the news she was already dating someone else and had been for a while. Hedging her bets, I think.”
    “I’m sorry. That had to have hurt.”
    “Yes.” He swallowed hard against the pain, which was lessening. Mostly it was the humiliation that troubled him now. “I made a crucial mistake, but I learned a valuable lesson. Never fall in love with someone who doesn’t love you the same way in return.”
    “I learned that hard lesson, too.” She bit her bottom lip, the only sign of vulnerability he’d seen her make. With her classic good looks, smarts and kind personalityhe couldn’t imagine she’d been through something similar.
    “Who had the bad form not to care about you?” he wanted to know.
    “Oh, he cared. Just not enough.” Ghosts of pain darkened her green eyes and she shrugged one slender shoulder, as if she were well over it. No big deal.
    He wasn’t fooled. “Who was he?”
    “My ice-dancing partner.” She tore her gaze from his and stared out at the horizon, where the jagged peaks of the Tetons seemed to hold up the sky. “Cliché, I know. Gerald and I spent eight to ten hours a day together either on the ice or in the gym every day since I was eighteen. We even took classes together at the nearby university.”
    “You were truly close to him.” He sympathized. He knew what that was like.
    “I was.” Shaky, she lifted the glass and sipped, still watching the white puffs of clouds in the pristine blue sky and the visual wonder of the Teton Range. Maybe she was trying to keep her emotions distant, too.
    “You had been together a long time?” A question more than a statement, but he wanted it to sound casual, as if his pulse hadn’t kicked up and he wasn’t eager to know why she’d been hurt.
    “We were friends for the first three years and then it turned into something more. Something really nice.” Maybe she wasn’t aware of how her voice softened and her expression grew lighter as if she’d had the rare chance to touch more than one dream. She sat up straighter and set her coffee on the nearby end table. “For a while it was sweet and comfortable and reassuring. He was there whenever I needed him, at least when we were skating partners.”
    “Sounds as if you two had a good bond.” He couldn’t say the same. He’d loved Meryl. He hated to admit he might still love her a little bit and against his will. But he’d never had that type of tie with her.
    “It was nice.” She might think she was hiding her sadness, but she would be wrong. “I guess some things aren’t meant to last.”
    “What happened?”
    “Are you telling me you can’t guess?” She rubbed at her knee in small circles before turning away from him to fetch her drink. He didn’t imagine the hurt in the silence that fell between them.
    A car accident, Cheyenne had said. But it was far more serious than that.
    “A drunk driver was going the wrong way on the floating bridge when I was coming home after a late night practicing for my church’s Christmas pageant. I saw the lights and I tried to avoid him. But I steered toward the right hand shoulder, what little there was of it, and he decided to do the same. I spent the next few months in the hospital and the next year in a rehabilitation center in Los Angeles.” She took a sip, letting the pain settle between them. “Gerald couldn’t wait, he had to keep training, so he found another skating partner. It turned out my injury and the distance between Seattle and L.A. were problems too big to overcome and our bond faded.”
    “I’m sorry that happened to you.” Sympathy, that was the only reason