And offering to move to New York with her would be going slow? He felt himself being shoved into a corner and wasn’t sure how to get out.
Tony turned to him. “Look, Zep. I have to be brutally honest with you. Roxanne has wanted to do one thing her whole life.”
“Be a cop.” She’d told him. When other girls had played princess, she’d preferred taking the bad guys down herself. She’d never dreamed of a knight saving her.
“Yes.”
“She is a cop. She’s very important around here.” People had come to depend on her steadiness. He’d noticed in the last week that women opened up more around her about their problems. Moms would bypass Armie to complain to Roxie about their worries for their kids.
“It’s not the same here, and you know that very well. You have a department of what? Six people? Seven or eight if you count support staff. It doesn’t even compare to where she came from. There’s very little opportunity for her out here. Roxanne’s dream hit a hiccup, but it’s time to get her back on the right path. The question is, are you going to make this hard on her?”
He’d already made his decision about this. “No. If she takes the job and moves back to New York, I’ll support her.”
“Good,” Tony said. “But I need you to do more than that. I’m hoping she does the right thing for herself and her future, but I’m worried she won’t.”
“And what would that be?”
His gaze went steely with pure will. This was likely the look he had on his face when he was dealing with subordinates. “Break up with you. You can’t come with her. It’s clear you have a life here, and a long-distance relationship won’t work.”
“I think that decision is up to Roxanne.” He was willing to be reasonable but only to a point. It didn’t matter that he was already going over everything she’d done in the last day and a half looking for clues that she’d known her time here was almost up.
Hadn’t she told him what she’d wanted to do in the first place? Screw him out of her system. She’d been talking to Armie when he’d walked into the office today and it had been a serious conversation. Armie had looked upset.
Had she been telling her boss it was time to move on?
“My daughter is about to be offered a position that will lead her into the upper echelon of the world’s premiere police force. This job could open doors that will lead her to amazing places.”
“I get that.” He wanted to be excited for her, and he promised himself he would shove down his anxiety if she came out of this meeting bubbly with plans for her career. He wasn’t going to bring her down. “I think it’s great. She’ll be amazing at whatever job she wants to pursue. That’s just who she is.”
“Yes, I believe that as well. She’s always been serious about her career and she’s worked hard to get the opportunities she’s been offered. Which is precisely why I’m worried about this one.”
“I thought you had already set everything up. It seems like you did.”
“I can set everything up and it could still go wrong. She’s still got to interview and go through a vetting process. Do you honestly believe no one will vet her partner? Do you think having a convict for a boyfriend, or worse a husband, is going to help her? It’s not. It’s going to hold her back. It could even be an obstacle she won’t be able to overcome.”
He felt his gut twist. It happened whenever someone brought up his conviction. He should have known her father would look into his background, and there was no hiding the brief time he’d done.
Tony was right. What had happened in Arizona when he’d basically been a dumb kid didn’t mean anything here, but it could be a huge problem for Roxanne as she made her way up the ladder.
She was ambitious. She worked hard. Would he be the reason she didn’t get where she wanted to go?
“I can see you haven’t thought about this.” Tony’s voice was softer now, almost sympathetic. “You made a mistake a long time ago, and it seems like something you’ve gotten through. I admire that. But you have to understand that it wouldn’t matter if your conviction was thirty years ago. It would still hurt her. It could cost her a lot of opportunities. Do you think she won’t come to resent you for that? She divorced a man she loved because he hurt her career.”
“And then you brought him down here to see if he could do it again?” It was an irrational question, but he wasn’t really thinking. He was responding like someone had kicked him in the gut.