Adam Kirk. The man who had been her father’s partner that night, who should have had his back. Yes, he’d still been a rookie, but nearly off probation, and even he had said if he’d been quicker to realize what was happening, his partner might still be alive. And yes, he’d been shot himself, but only in the arm, while Quinn had been shot in the torso and still had managed to grab her father’s weapon and take the shooter down.

And on top of that, he was a quitter. He’d left the department after the killer’s trial, left town after that, and never come back. She had no respect for that, she who had been raised by the man buried here, who had taught her to never quit on anything she really wanted.

She stared at Adam across the distance between them, her jaw tight. She hadn’t seen him since the trial, and hadn’t spoken to him since the day she’d blown up at him in the hospital. She refused to feel bad about that, even now. He’d been there with only his arm bandaged while her father was down in the morgue. He’d had it coming, every bit of it. And he knew it. He’d never said a word back, he’d just refused to meet her eyes and taken it, so she knew he knew it.

She wished she could have hung on to that odd sort of calm that had come over her when Cutter, the Foxworths’ dog, had come to her. She didn’t like feeling this angry. And sometimes she wondered if her lingering anger had something to do with the fact that when she’d first met her father’s new partner, she’d practically drooled. Dark hair and gray eyes that made her question her usual preference for blue. That tall, lean body, that way of walking that wasn’t quite swagger, and made sense when she’d learned he’d grown up on a ranch. Which also made him the cowboy of her more girlish dreams, an image that had been sealed in her mind the day he’d shown up at the police-sponsored booth at the fair in Puyallup in a black cowboy hat.

And suddenly she was back to that day, looking up at him, wanting to make him smile so she could see that dimple in his right cheek flash. So she’d teased him that he was a police officer, he should be wearing a white hat now.

White hats get dirty too easily, Mandy.

She had allowed him the use of the nickname, a sign of her instant attraction she supposed. Of course she’d retracted that permission, furiously, that night in the hospital when she’d told him exactly what she thought of him.