by Lauren Layne
“As the Oxford receptionist?”
“Well, no, this is temporary,” she said. “I’m grateful that Cassidy gave me something to do with my time in the short term, but I’m updating my resume. I’m thinking maybe something in event planning. Wedding planning, preferably.”
“You’d be good at that,” he said.
She grinned. “I know.”
“So you’re planning on staying then. Living here?”
“Sold my house. Well, Gary’s house. I realize now it was never really mine.”
“And you’re dating Nick Ballantine.”
“I’m…not sure.”
“You’re having dinner with him tonight,” Lincoln said, his voice just a little bit cold.
Daisy threw her hands in the air, exasperated. “Okay fine, I’m dating Nick Ballantine. Isn’t that what you wanted, Lincoln? For me to move on with my life? Find someone worthy. Be happy, Daisy, isn’t that what you told me?”
“Yeah, but you were supposed to do all that in North Carolina!”
“What difference does it make!” she started to shout, then lowered her voice. “Here, there, same thing.”
“No, it’s not the same thing,” he snapped. “When you were there, I’d have to think about it, but not see it. But this…this…”
“What do you want?” she asked steadily, daring him to be brave. Daring him to ask her out.
He glared at her, and she almost smiled, because he was obviously a man unaccustomed to frustration, and irritable Lincoln was kind of hot.
“I want coffee,” he ground out. “Right now I want coffee and fresh air, and I’m going to damned Starbucks.”
“All right—”
Daisy didn’t have a chance to finish her sentence. Lincoln was already storming out of the office, nearly mowing over Grace Malone, who was coming in as he was going out.
“Hey!” the pretty brunette said, beaming up at him. “You’re back! It’s so good to see you, we’ll have to grab lunch and catch up.”
Lincoln stepped back to hold the door for Grace and then growled a response Daisy couldn’t hear before going to the elevators and stabbing the button with an angry jab.
Grace walked backward to Daisy’s desk, breaking off a piece of the muffin in her hand and nibbling it as she studied Lincoln through the glass door. “What was that about? I’ve never seen him like that.”
“No idea,” Daisy said.
Grace turned and narrowed her eyes. “Really? Because you seem almost gleeful about his bad mood.”
“I think…” Daisy bit her lip. “I think he might have been jealous. He heard Nick Ballantine ask me out, and he got all…weird.”
“Jealous,” Grace said thoughtfully. “It would explain why I didn’t recognize it. I don’t know I’ve ever seen him jealous before. I mean, the guy didn’t even notice my chocolate chip muffin. The Lincoln I know…”
She broke off as Daisy cleared her throat loudly, just as Lincoln came marching back into the office.
Neither woman said anything as he stopped beside Grace. Then he bent to kiss her cheek. “Good to see you too, Mrs. Malone. Lunch sounds great.”
He glanced over at Daisy, and his smile disappeared. “We’re not done here, Wallflower.”
“Meaning what?”
He didn’t answer.
He plucked Grace’s muffin out of her hand, and walked out of the office once more, taking a bite as he did so.
“Well, well,” Grace murmured. “I have a feeling things are about to get interesting.”
Chapter 26
Lincoln pulled out his phone and double checked the Upper East Side address Emma had texted him, verified that the sparkling brand-new high-rise was, in fact, Daisy’s place of residence.
He should have figured. Manhattan was expensive, but Daisy’s house in Charlotte had been a behemoth. If she’d sold it, she’d be able to afford a swanky apartment in just about any neighborhood she wanted.
Another man might have been intimidated, but knowing that this lifestyle was Daisy’s reward for putting up with her asshat of an ex, he was damn happy for her.
But he’d be a hell of a lot happier if she wasn’t on a date with another man right now.
It had been surprisingly easy to coax Daisy’s address out of Emma. He’d fully expected Emma to go all mama-bear, lecturing him on leaving her sister alone, the whole bit, but instead she’d texted back with Daisy’s address, and only a Watch your step to go along with it.
He wasn’t sure if he was supposed to watch his step for his sake or Daisy’s. Probably both.
Hell, he wasn’t even sure what he was doing here. He told himself that it was because he needed to apologize for the way he’d left things back in Charlotte. And then he told himself it was because he wanted to tell his friend about the closure he’d gotten while in Costa Rica.
Both of those things were true.
But what felt even more true was that he wanted to be the last man she saw before going to sleep tonight. Him. Not Nick fucking Ballantine.
Lincoln checked his watch. Nine-thirty. Would she be home yet? New Yorkers were known to eat late, but it was also a Monday, and he knew Daisy to be an early riser, even if she was a groggy mess until she got her coffee.
Shit. What if Ballantine was there? Or what if she wasn’t because she was at the other man’s place? What if Ballantine was seeing her sexy lingerie right now, touching that smooth, tan skin…
Lincoln contemplated walking away, but he forced himself forward. He was damn sick of being on the sidelines of his own life.
The lobby of her building was lavish, combining the Old World glamour of marble floors and chandeliers with modern-day technologies—the resident mailboxes to his left had fancy electronic keyboards; a flat screen built into the wall discreetly notified residents when they had a delivery at the front desk.
Lincoln approached the reception desk, where two well-groomed men in suits gave him polite, if impassive, smiles.
“I’m here to see Daisy Sinclair.”
“Is she expecting you?”
Fuck no.
“She is not.”
“Name?”
“Lincoln Mathis.”
The man on the right nodded before picking up the phone and dialing a number.
A second later the man smiled. “Good evening, Ms. Sinclair. Roy here at the front desk…Yes, ma’am, I’m well thank you. I have a visitor here for you. A Lincoln Mathis…”
Lincoln resisted the urge to yank the phone from the man’s hand and demand that Daisy let him up now.
“…Yes, ma’am, very good. I’ll send him up.”
Lincoln breathed a sigh of relief. She was home. Now he only had to hope that she was alone. And that he’d figured out what he wanted to say by the time he got up there.
Roy hung up, and he gestured to his right toward the elevator lobby. “I’ll call the first elevator car on the right for you to take you to the forty-second floor. Ms. Sinclair’s unit is 42F.”
Lincoln nodded in thanks, followed his instructions until he found himself standing outside Daisy’s door.
She answered his knock almost immediately, and his breath came out in a whoosh. She was wearing tiny white shorts, a slinky white tank top, and an oversize fluffy blue cardigan that went down to mid-calf. “You’re ready for bed.”
Daisy laughed lightly and gestured him in. “I was planning to read in bed for a while. I was going to change but then I realized that we were practically roommates for a few weeks. You saw this exact same outfit in Charlotte while we drank coffee together.”
Yeah, but that had been different. For starters, the pajamas that had been merely cute in the morning hours were decidedly skimpy in the evening hours. And perhaps more important, things had been safe between them in Charlotte.
There’d been Katie’s ghost as a buffer, as well as her ex-husband’s gruesome legacy.
Here, though, was a fresh start.
Or maybe not.
“How was
your date?” he asked gruffly as she shut the front door.
She gave him a bland smile and crossed her arms across her chest. “It was good. You want a drink?”
How good? “Sure. Thanks.”
He followed Daisy into her living room. It was fairly plain—a lone couch, coffee table, and lonely bar cart—but then you didn’t need much when you had a high-rise view of Manhattan.
“I’ve only been here a couple weeks,” she said, walking to the bar cart, in the far corner of the room, and pouring them both something from a decanter. “I’ve got a few of the key furniture pieces, but I’m still trying to decide on accents.”
“You sold the place in Charlotte?”
She nodded. “I got an offer almost the second it went on the market. I probably could have waited longer, gotten a bit more, but I just wanted to be done. Plus, the buyer took all the furniture, which meant I didn’t have to deal with cleaning the place out.”
“You moved fast.”
“Easy enough when you cut and run,” she said, handing him a glass.
He searched her face as they clinked their glasses together, and he wondered if she’d chosen her words deliberately—reminding them both that not so long ago he’d cut and run.
But instead of ribbing him, she merely gave a pleasant smile and gestured to the couch before sitting cross-legged and facing him as he sat beside her.
“So what’s up?” She took a tiny sip of the whiskey.
He leaned forward, palming the glass between his hands, watching the amber liquid slosh gently from side to side. “I owe you an apology.”
“Okay,” she said slowly. “And you thought nine-thirty on a Monday night was the time to do it?”
“We’ve stayed up later than that before,” he said. “Together.”
“We have. But as you pointed out today, things were different then.”
“I don’t want them to be different.”
“Well, they have to be, Lincoln,” she said, her voice a tiny bit sharp. “Back then we were safe behind our walls. And then I came out from behind mine, and you stayed firmly behind yours. And I get it, I really, really get it, but you told me not to wait, you told me to be happy…I didn’t wait, and I am happy, but I get the impression you’re not.”
“I am,” he said through gritted teeth. “I only meant that I was wrong to leave the way I did. Without saying good-bye.”
“It was pretty lame,” she said, lifting a shoulder and sipping her drink. “But I’m over it.”
“That easily, huh?” He turned his head, gave her a rueful smile.
“What was I supposed to do, beg you to come back? You had things to take care of, I understood that. And you did. Costa Rica, right?”
He nodded, turning and staring straight out the window.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked softly.
He opened his mouth, prepared to tell her what he’d told Cassidy. That it had been therapeutic. That it had been the closure he’d needed.
But he realized he didn’t want to talk about it because he didn’t need to talk about it. Perhaps that was the thing about closure—once you got it, your brain started shifting toward other things.
Started shifting from Katie to Daisy.
From the woman who wasn’t here to the woman who was.
To the woman who was dating another man.
“No,” he said, tossing back the rest of his drink. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Well, what do you want?” she asked, repeating her question from earlier.
Earlier he’d taken the coward’s way out, gone to get coffee rather than answer. He took it now too. Lincoln lifted his glass in question.
She smiled, but it was forced. “Go ahead. Help yourself.”
Her disappointment in him was written all over her face, and Lincoln hated himself as he stood to pour more liquor he didn’t even want. He reached for the decanter, only to pause, and instead set his glass down quietly on the bar cart. “I should go.”
He heard her stand, set her glass on the table. “If you’d like. But I hate this uneasiness between us.”
Lincoln turned. “Yeah, well, as you said, things are different now. We’re no longer long-distance friends destined to see each other every few months or years. And you’re dating Nick.”
He wanted her to deny it, but she didn’t.
Damn it, man, be decent. Let her go.
Lincoln walked to the door, opening it as she followed to see him out. “So I guess I’ll see you tomorrow at work,” he said with a little laugh. “That’s new.”
“You’ll get used to it,” she said. “And if not, like I said, it’s temporary, and then I’ll be out of your hair.”
He frowned and braced one hand on the open door. “Is that what you think I want? Not to see you again?”
“I think you’re a man who’s had his life turned upside down and is finally ready to get it back together. I think that odd last night we had in Charlotte could complicate that effort.”
“Don’t turn me into a project, Daisy,” he snapped. “And odd wasn’t the word I’d use to describe that night.”
“Well, what word would you use?”
“Hot,” he growled before he could think better of it. “It was damned hot, and you know it.”
“I do know it. I also know you ran away from it.”
“Which I apologized for!”
“And I accepted!” she shouted back.
He let out an incredulous laugh, and rubbed a hand over his eyes before shaking his head. “This is ridiculous. I’m out. See you tomorrow after we’ve cooled.”
She nodded, her face tense and confused, as though anger was as unfamiliar to her as it was to him. “Goodnight.”
He turned and stepped into the hallway as she shut the door behind him, but at the last second he spun around, slamming his palm against the door and shoving it open with enough force to have her stepping back with a gasp of surprise.
Lincoln’s brain felt like a buzz of static, simmering with anger and hope and a hell of a lot of want as he descended on her.
“Why New York?”
Her fingers lifted to her throat nervously before dropping to her side once more as she backed up. “What?”
“Why New York?” he asked again, continuing to walk toward her. “All the places in the country, in the world, and you chose to get your fresh start here.”
“I’m hardly the first person to have done so,” she said impatiently. “It’s New York. It’s what people do.”
“That’s not an answer,” he said softly, as her back bumped the wall behind her. Slowly he lifted an arm, resting his forearm just above her head as he crowded her. “Why. New. York?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered. “Emma, I guess.”
“I think you’re lying,” he said, his other hand coming up to rest gently against her neck, his eyes tracking the movement of his thumb along her jaw.
“All right, I’ll play,” she said. “Why do you think I came to New York?”
Lincoln’s eyes flicked up to hers. “I think you came for this.”
And then, for the first time in nearly three years, Lincoln dipped his head and kissed a woman like he meant it.
Chapter 27
Daisy’s mind went blank at the touch of his mouth on hers, only to be filled a half second later with more emotions that she even knew how to register.
Among the top contenders?
Shock.
Happiness.
And a lust so acute she thought she’d die from it.
It was the last she decided to go with.
The kiss was both demanding and gentle, as though he desperately wanted her to need it but was prepared to back off if she didn’t. She felt his restraint in the way he held his body back from hers, even as she felt the command of his mouth.
Daisy’s hands lifted to the front of his shirt, fingers digging in and pulling him forward. She needed him.
Take, she silentl
y commanded.
He did. The second he had her answer, Lincoln groaned against her mouth, leaning all the way into her as the arm above her head slid down around her waist, his palm hot and insistent against her back. His lips nudged hers apart, his tongue claiming the inside of her mouth as though every part of her was his.
Daisy was already his, maybe had been since the very first night.
She couldn’t seem to get close enough, her arms winding around his neck, holding him as close as she could get him, terrified that he’d change his mind.
Lincoln slid his hands up to her hair, tugging her head back gently so he plundered her mouth before gentling slightly, his mouth moving along her jaw.
A little gasp escaped from her as his teeth nipped her earlobe, the gasp turning into a full-on moan as his mouth opened warm and wet over the sensitive skin of her neck.
His hands slipped under her shirt, his palms hot on her bare waist as his breath came in labored pants against her neck.
“I should go,” he said in a harsh rasp.
Daisy’s arms tightened reflexively around him. “Why?”
“Because if I stay, I’m going to take you to bed, and I should at least take you on a date first.”
“We’ve been on lots of dates,” she said, running her hands down his back. “We just didn’t call them that.”
He let out a little laugh. “I don’t think you fully understand, Wallflower. I haven’t been with a woman since before Katie’s accident. I won’t be gentle. I don’t think I’m capable of it.”
“I don’t want gentle,” Daisy said, even as she mentally did the math on how long it had been. Three years. He hadn’t touched any woman since then. Her heart rejoiced.
“You deserve it,” he said, laying a hand along her cheek and gazing down at her with so much intensity she burned from the inside out. “After what you’ve been through with your ex…I see the way you shy away from men, the way you hold yourself apart—”
She lifted her hands, skimmed her fingertips over his perfect cheekbones. “I’ve been cautious, yes. And it takes me a bit longer to feel safe around men, true. Perhaps that will always be the case. But I’m not afraid of you, Lincoln. I never have been.”
