He drew back slightly. She’d said it so lightly, like someone who’d had a major impediment removed. It had never once occurred to him that losing the career he’d worked for could have a bright side. He added that to the list of things he needed to think about, when he had time.

He belatedly became aware of something that had been going on for a while now, as they’d been talking; Cutter, making his guard duty rounds, circling the living room, pausing near the windows, then walking to the back door and pausing again, then going down the hallway to the bedrooms and office, but then coming back to watch them for a few minutes before starting again. This time Cutter just looked at them both, head tilted in a funny, quizzical way, looking decidedly self-satisfied.

“He really does look smug,” Mandy said.

“Yes.”

“Think it’s that matchmaker thing Quinn talked about?”

“Yes.”

She glanced at him then. He couldn’t get another word out. She looked back at Cutter.

“A matchmaking guard dog.” The dog sat and grinned at her. There was no other word for it. She turned back to look at him. And something in her gaze made him reach for her. She moved in the same moment he did, sliding her arms around him in a fierce hug. “Did he succeed?”

He knew what she meant. Knew what he had to, if not forget, at least let go of for this to work. But it would be like excising the last five years out of his life, and he wasn’t sure he could do it. Wasn’t sure he could overcome that swamping sense of guilt that buried him every time he thought of her father. He would have thought knowing she no longer blamed him would have done it, but he was beginning to realize that the real barrier was him blaming himself.

Cutter got to his feet again and began the same circuit. And that brought Adam back to the immediate reality, which had to take precedence over a potential future. A future he was afraid to even hope for.

“Let’s get through this first,” he said, watching the dog listening at the back door.

“All right.” His brow furrowed as she agreed easily. Too easily. And the moment she spoke again he knew he’d been right. “As long as we take advantage of this bit of peace we should have until tonight.”

That quickly his breath slammed out of him. It took all of his nerve to turn and look at her. When he did, the way she was looking at him made him wonder if he would ever breathe normally again. Because there was such heat in her gaze, such softness in her mouth as she looked back at him, lips parted, that he couldn’t seem to remember how.