She noticed the bowl of water she’d put down for Cutter was low and refilled it as she waited for the coffee. Once it was done she poured four cups and set them and sugar and milk out on her small dining table. Quinn and Hayley thanked her—as did Cutter for the water with a wag of his tail—but Adam just glanced at her warily. As if he thought she might have poisoned the coffee in his particular mug.

That apology is going to have to be extraordinary.

“First,” Quinn said, with a smile at Amanda, “if you didn’t already know, your father’s friends are immensely proud of you.”

She blinked. “Proud?”

“Of what you’ve done, how you’ve taken what you went through and turned it into something good.”

She felt her cheeks heat, but she couldn’t deny the pleasure those words gave her. “I... Thank you for telling me that.”

“And I think there are several who would jump in in a hurry, if we need official help.”

She drew back slightly then. “Official?”

“If this turns out to be related to what your father was working on, we may need to turn it over to them.”

“Oh.”

“That said, none of them seemed to have any idea that he was working on anything special or big at the time. But they also agreed he was very careful, a step-by-step sort of guy who wanted all his ducks in a row before he took any action.” Quinn shifted his gaze to Adam. “Agree?”

“Absolutely. He was meticulous,” Adam said.

“‘Make sure of your landing before you jump,’” Amanda quoted.

Adam gave her a startled glance, and a split-second smile curved his mouth as she quoted her father’s oft-spoken words. And in that split second it hit her again, how attracted she’d been to the new partner her father had brought home. He’d smiled at her almost hesitantly then, and she’d found the nervousness over meeting his partner’s daughter charming. Not to mention those lovely gray eyes, with thick, dark lashes she couldn’t help but notice when he looked down rather shyly.

But then he looked down again now, staring into his coffee, as if he regretted his own reaction. And she was right back to staring at the dark semicircles of his eyelashes as she had that long-ago day.

“By the way, they all mentioned you, too, Adam. Wondered how you were doing.”

Adam made a sound that, if it was even a word, she didn’t understand.

“They were all sorry you couldn’t come back. And they knew how hard you tried to, even after the doctors said it could never happen.”