“What else?” she asked, enjoying the silliness more than she ever would have imagined. This was the Adam she remembered, the Adam she’d first met and been so attracted to.

“It’s bad luck to wear a hat backward.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Lot of boys missed that one.”

“I don’t think it applies to baseball caps.”

“Lucky for them,” she said. “Are there more? Do they all apply to luck?”

“Most,” he said. He seemed about to say something more, then caught himself. “We should get back to this,” he said, and his voice was once more the flat, lifeless thing it had been until now.

And all trace of the younger, happier Adam Kirk had vanished.

Chapter 25

Adam stared at the whiteboard, not quite able to believe how close he’d come to quoting that other superstition, that it was also thought to be bad luck to put your hat on the bed.

Talking about beds in any way to Amanda Bonner was near the top of his list of things never to do. But damn the way she’d smiled at him, even grinned at him...how was he supposed to take that?

I should have known cowboys have been a thing with women for so long for a reason.

He hadn’t really thought of himself as a cowboy lately, although he rode, herded cows when necessary and wore the hat. His father called himself a rancher, but he owned the place. So what was he?

A failed cop. That’s what you are.

He stared at the whiteboard. He wasn’t really focused on the two columns, one in blue, one in a noxious shade of yellow brown, the blue one topped with what they knew—Pix—the other with what they didn’t, who or what Pix was. He didn’t have to focus; he thought he had it all memorized by now. But it kept his gaze off Amanda, which was his wisest course just now. Because the memory of the way she’d looked at him that very first time kept haunting him.

And it was not, he told himself firmly, because the way she looked at him now reminded him.

Back then, the immense impediment of her being his partner’s daughter had kept him sternly in line. That was a complication his fledgling career as a cop hadn’t needed.

And now you’ve got a complication your entire life didn’t need, and it’s here for good.

He clenched his right hand into a fist, as tightly as he could. Tried to be grateful he could do that at all; they’d done an exquisite job of keeping those nerves intact. Except for his little finger, the hand worked fine, it just didn’t go where he needed it to half the time.