She gave a start when the dog pawed at the middle book; she didn’t want it damaged. The books had all been gifts from her father, who had amusedly gone with her to the midnight release parties at the bookstore that was now, sadly, half the size it had once been. But she saw that Cutter was being very gentle about it, in fact he was more patting the book than pawing at it. Then he stopped, that paw atop the book, and looked up at Quinn.

“What have you got there, boy?” Quinn asked as he crouched down. He pulled out the volume the dog had been touching, the middle—and longest—book of the series. The moment he did Cutter sat. Quinn straightened, looked at the dust jacket of the hardcover. “Yours, I assume?”

“Yes.” She quickly explained about the books and their meaning to her, and the connection with her father.

Quinn gave her a steady look. “You ever go back and read these again?”

She colored slightly. They were children’s books after all. Supposedly. But she’d always found worth in them, even now. “Yes. I do.”

Quinn glanced around the room then. Nodded toward the desk in the opposite corner. “Your dad used this room as an office?”

“Yes,” she said, her brow furrowing now, wondering what that had to do with anything. Wondering even more what Quinn was finding so significant. “What is it? Does he smell something on that book?” She managed a faint smile. “I admit I tended to eat when I was reading them, because I couldn’t put them down for dinner.”

“You’re not the only one.” Hayley’s quiet voice came from beside her. “I remember reading those to my mom when she was sick. It was the only thing that gave her any enjoyment when it got really bad.”

Amanda smiled, and grabbed Hayley’s hand to squeeze it.

“Let’s see if we can find out what’s got him intrigued,” Quinn said.

Amanda appreciated how carefully he held the book, and it made her think he had probably done the same with his own father’s things one day in the past. She knew the basics of how Quinn and his sister had founded the Foxworth Foundation, in memory of their parents who had been killed in the terrorist bombing of an airliner when they had been just children. And that the foundation’s mission had been born out of their fury and frustration that the perpetrator had been released after a backroom political deal.