Apparently it was true, if he’d trusted him with the key to his code. Her father hadn’t made many mistakes about who he trusted. Only one, that she knew of. And he was sitting right here, studying his hands.

“I get he probably swore you to secrecy,” Quinn said, “but under the circumstances...”

Adam looked up then. But not at Quinn. At her. And then, slowly, he said, “It’s Amanda Catherine Bonner Aspen.”

Amanda nearly gasped aloud. Quinn looked at her. “Your full name and a significant location?”

She nodded a little numbly, even as she felt her cheeks heat. Her full name and where she had been conceived, on her parents’ first anniversary trip.

And one look at Adam’s face told her he knew the exact significance of that location. Her father had told him. Probably in that joking way guys had, about getting lucky that night or some such. Her father had been ever decorous around her, but he’d been every inch a man, and she’d heard enough of him with other friends to guess at this.

Belatedly—very, very belatedly—it struck her that Adam and her father had likely shared that kind of relationship, with the kind of joking that made women mostly roll their eyes. The kind that explained why he knew exactly what Aspen meant in the context of her life.

And she had no idea how that made her feel.

Chapter 7

Adam paced the room, occasionally stopping to look out the expansive windows. They’d moved upstairs to what was apparently the office space of Foxworth, contrasting with the homey setting below. It was a large room with a meeting table, some cubicles and cabinets along the side, and an impressive computer station on the back wall. The opposite wall was almost all window, looking out on the clearing the building sat in, across an expanse of meadow to a stand of thick trees with now bare maples stark against evergreens and a couple of madronas.

Those evergreens and the stylish, red-barked madronas were also among the few things he missed about this side of the mountains, where he’d also left behind the shattered remnants of his life’s dream.

He turned away from the window and resumed his pacing, glancing at the computer station where another of the Foxworth personnel, a guy Quinn had introduced as Liam Burnett, their local tech expert as opposed to the guy in St. Louis, had arrived and was looking at the file on the flash drive. Cutter, who had been restlessly pacing and refusing to settle, greeted him with delight, so obviously there was a big connection there.

“Hey, partner,” Liam had said, bending to scratch behind the dog’s right ear, which made the animal wiggle in delight. “Ria says Hi, and you’d better come over for some cookies soon.”