“I know, I know, you shouldn’t have taken the clerk’s word as anyone would have, you should have stayed outside even though your partner and superior told you to go in, should have been somehow magically sensed that the already escaped robber’s partner had for some inexplicable reason lingered until it was too late to escape. Don’t ask much, do you?”

Adam was stunned into silence as she presented what had happened that night in an entirely different light. She’d not only made what he’d done—and not done—seem reasonable, she’d made what he kept telling himself he should have done sound unreasonable. Impossible, even.

She tugged on her sweater to wrap it more tightly around her. He seized at the chance to end the uncomfortable discussion. “You should go inside. It’s cold out here.”

“Which perfectly explains why you’re out here,” she retorted. Then, more softly, she asked, “Missing home? Open spaces?”

He glanced around then. “This isn’t bad.”

“It was a lot better when we first moved here. Now the city’s kind of spread until we’re in it.”

“You sound like you don’t care for it.”

“I don’t. I’ve been thinking of moving.”

“Leaving this house?” He was startled at the thought. “Your dad’s house?”

“It’s not like he won’t come with me, if I do,” she said, in the tone of someone who’d had this discussion with herself many times. “But sometimes I want...to not have it so close around me. Does that make sense?”

It did, to him. Perfectly. Going home, to those open spaces, was the only thing next to his family that had kept him from eating a bullet in those horrible early days.

I never wanted you to be a cop.

His father’s words, spoken the day he’d come home, weak, wobbly, his shattered arm still held together by bolts that looked like something out of a horror movie.

It was the only thing his father had ever said about it, and from that day on he’d treated Adam as if he was there because he wanted to be. It had made it easier and more difficult at once.

I warn every cop off her. Not a life I want for her.

Greg’s words followed his father’s through his mind. The memory was sharp, jagged. But what could slice him to bits if he lingered on it for an instant was the thought that followed, which was his own.

He wasn’t a cop now.

Chapter 28

Except for the kiss, this was the closest they’d come yet to having a normal conversation. Yes, there were undercurrents, but then there always had been between Adam Kirk and her.