Someone Like You Page 11

  “No,” Daisy cut in. “Do not tell.”

  Whitney complied with Lincoln’s request, as he’d known she would. “Well, it was a Taco Tuesday like this one—”

  “A Taco Tuesday without the tacos,” he interrupted.

  “Right! You get it! Anyway, Daisy here was glued to her phone, giggling like a schoolgirl with a crush—”

  “Um, no. Don’t embellish. I may have smiled—”

  “At him,” Whitney said.

  “At his text message,” Daisy clarified through gritted teeth.

  “Text messages. There were several. Weren’t there?” Whitney said, turning to Lincoln for confirmation.

  His eyes were locked on Daisy’s profile, the slight embarrassed pink of her cheeks. “I suspect there were several.”

  Back then, in those few blissful weeks, their text messages had numbered in the double digits. Dangerous, not because of their content, but because of the frequency. And the pleasure he derived from them.

  Still, seeing the way Daisy wouldn’t meet his eyes, he saw that she’d gotten pleasure from them too. And that perhaps him cutting her out might have been harder on her than she’d ever let on.

  “Anyway,” Whitney was saying, “I, of course, had to see the guy who could make my girl smile like that, so she dug up your picture from Emmy’s wedding.”

  “Did I pass muster?” Lincoln asked, forcing his gaze back to the meddling Whitney.

  She pursed her lips and waggled her hands. “You were okay. All in all, very unimpressive.”

  He laughed, enjoying her. Enjoying himself, he realized.

  “How long until you want me to put these on?” he said, tilting his head toward the steaks he had seasoned and ready to go on the state-of-the-art grill.

  “Oh let’s wait a bit, take our time,” Whitney said. She tapped her red nail against her margarita glass. “Daiz, if I have another of these, can I stay over in one of your dozen spare bedrooms?”

  Daisy blew a kiss at her friend and stood. “Of course you can. I’ll get us another round, and make sure the sheets are clean in your room.”

  “Damn right it’s my room,” Whitney called after her.

  Whitney’s smile slipped just the slightest bit when Daisy was gone, and she flicked a finger over Kiwi’s ear. “I’m always torn between hating that bastard for leaving her all alone out here, and thinking at least he was good for something, leaving this whole big mansion to her.”

  “Not a fan of…?” Lincoln broke off, realizing he didn’t remember Daisy’s ex’s name.

  “Gary,” Whitney all but spat.

  “You don’t like him.”

  “Do any best friends like the man who breaks their best friend’s heart?”

  “He didn’t break her though,” Lincoln said mildly.

  “No, he didn’t, and that’s good of you to notice,” Whitney mused. “But sometimes I think he got closer than she lets anyone realize.”

  Lincoln’s fingers tightened around the bottle. “Because he told her he didn’t want a family, and then started one with someone else?”

  Whitney’s gaze sharpened. “Told you that, did she?”

  He lifted a shoulder. “I shared something with her—something personal. I suspect she was trying to set me at ease.”

  “Yes, she does that. Likes to make other people comfortable. And yeah, Gary did knock up his secretary in the tackiest of all clichés, but I’ve always gotten the sense that was merely the straw that broke the camel’s back. She was so different even before she found out about that.”

  “Different how?” he asked, torn between guilt over blatantly snooping into Daisy’s ill-fated marriage and an unshakable need to know more about her.

  “Subdued. Quiet. Hell, she’s still not back to the Daisy she was before he put his stupid fat rock on her finger. She used to be the life of the party. Not as loud as me, but close. She’s slowly coming back to her old self, but she’s guarded in ways she never was before.”

  The back door slammed, and Whitney and Lincoln exchanged a quick look of understanding that their conversation would stay between them. Luckily for them, Daisy was too busy carrying a full tray to notice. “Okay, I’ve got a new pitcher of margs, a beer for Lincoln, some water, because none of us are twenty-three anymore and hydration’s important, and Lincoln if you wouldn’t mind adding these potatoes to the grill—”

  He was already maneuvering the tray out of her hands. “Easy there, hostess. You know you don’t have to do everything on your own, right?”

  She looked up, met his gaze with those soft, whiskey-brown eyes of hers that reminded him of a mint julep on a porch on a summer’s night.

  He wanted that, he realized.

  Not the porch, not the drink. Her.

  Then he shook his head.

  That wasn’t for him. Not the vision, not the woman.

  Whitney’s cell phone rang—the ringtone some sort of country jingle Lincoln wasn’t familiar with. “Oooh baby,” she hooted. “Big-money client coming through. You guys care if I take this?”

  She answered the call before Daisy or Lincoln could respond, holding out her margarita glass for a refill and then stepping off the porch to roam around Daisy’s yard, her conversation punctuated with gusty laughter as Kiwi followed along adoringly at her ankles.

  “I like her,” Lincoln said, topping off Daisy’s glass with more of the margarita pitcher before taking a sip of the fresh beer she’d brought him.

  “Yeah, she’s good people,” Daisy said fondly, before gesturing at the tray she’d brought out. “So, okay, the potatoes have garlic butter inside, they just need to cook, and I already seasoned the asparagus, shouldn’t take long to grill, they’re pretty thin, and—”

  Lincoln grabbed her hand as it gestured over the food. “Wallflower. I’ve got this.”

  She lifted her eyebrows in challenge. “Do you, city boy? Because I’ve seen your apartment. The stove had a sort of ‘never been used’ look about it, the microwave had a very used look about it, and your cell phone has three different food delivery apps on it.”

  “Just because I don’t cook doesn’t mean I can’t.”

  Daisy fixed him with a look.

  “All right,” he admitted. “So I can’t cook. At all. But grilling is different.”

  “How?”

  He flexed. “Am man.”

  She laughed, then wiggled her wrist a little. “Think I can have this back now?”

  Shit. He was still holding her hand. He released it immediately, feeling the strangest urge to apologize. And an even stranger urge to take her hand once more, tug her forward and see if she tasted as sweet and spicy as she looked…

  What was with him? Lincoln Mathis didn’t do awkward schoolboy. Hell, he’d spent the past couple years being that guy who was perfectly comfortable around women—who’d perfected the art of making them comfortable around him.

  He’d never thought of Katie as a safety net, but he realized how that’s exactly what she had been. Not just that, obviously, but as long as his heart was carefully tucked away, his loyalty fixated on one woman, being around other women had been easy.

  Lincoln no longer had that buffer, and the absence of it was unsettling. For the first time in the five years since he’d first met Katie, he was allowed to be aware of another woman. His mind knew that it was too soon, his heart was screaming no fucking way, never again…

  But his body?

  His body was all too aware that it had been a long-ass time since he’d touched a woman. Really touched her.

  Daisy leaned a lean hip against the railing. She was wearing dark jeans, brown ankle boots, and a cream-colored sweater that looked soft and expensive.

  “You okay?” she asked, studying him over the rim of her drink.

  He opened his mouth to make some sort of lighthearted quip, but then, as it did so often around her, the truth slipped out. “Sometimes I wish I liked you less, Wallflower.”

  “Why’s that?”

  Becau
se then I could put my hands all over you, rip the Band-Aid off two years of celibacy, and we could both walk away from this unscathed.

  But he did like her. And his gut told him that if they crossed that line, things would get a hell of a lot more complicated than either of them was able to deal with right now.

  “Never mind,” she said quickly, with a breathless laugh. “Somehow I’m getting the impression that I don’t want to know.”

  Lincoln shook his head and took a sip of beer. No. She didn’t want to know.

  He opened the hood of the grill, made sure it was preheated, and plopped the potatoes on the back rack.

  “So what happens next for you?” Daisy asked, wisely letting her first question go unanswered. “How do you go about getting the material for your story?”

  “I’ve been staying in your guesthouse for all of two days and you’re already trying to get rid of me?”

  “Hardly,” she said with a smile. “I’m just genuinely curious how this works.”

  “Well,” he said, closing the lid to let the potatoes start cooking ahead of the steak and asparagus. “It’s a lot of interviewing. If it’s all right with you, I’d like to maybe pick Whitney’s brain when she’s done on the phone. You think she’d mind?”

  Daisy rolled her eyes. “Seriously? She’d love it.”

  Lincoln had figured as much. “Figure she’ll be a good place to start on what the dating scene is like down here. What women look for, how many dates it takes to seal the deal, whether you’re more likely to score with a home-cooked meal or a fussy dinner out, and so on.”

  “You haven’t asked me any of that,” she said, taking a sip of her drink.

  He cut her a glance. “Didn’t get the impression you were out there in the dating world.”

  “I told you I’d gone on two dates,” she said, her voice just a touch prickly.

  “Yeah. Two,” he said with a little smile.

  She didn’t smile back. “Just because I don’t date as frequently as Whitney doesn’t mean I’m not looking to find someone again.”

  He was a little surprised by this. “Sorry, Wallflower. Back in New York I got the impression you were sort of over the happily-ever-after scene.”

  Just like me.

  Daisy set her margarita on the staging area next to the grill and turned so she was facing the backyard, both arms braced on the railing as she watched Kiwi chase after a still-chatting Whitney. “I don’t know. I go in waves. Like, most of the time I think that I don’t ever want to set myself up for that kind of hurt. And then all of a sudden, I start to feel like a jaded hermit, and I tell myself to get back out there. But then being out there totally sucks, and so I go back to being a recluse. The whole process makes me feel kind of…broken.”

  He shifted, mimicking her position, his beer bottle dangling between his fingers as they both looked out at the impending twilight, Whitney’s chattering mingling pleasantly with the sound of birds.

  “This is where you’re supposed to tell me I’m not broken,” she said, nudging his arm with hers.

  He took a sip of beer. “Well, shit. I’m not sure I’m the person to know what’s broken and what’s not. I’ll tell you this, though…nothing wrong with being confused.”

  “Are you confused?” she asked.

  Hell yeah.

  Instead of answering, he tilted his head back, wondering how long it would be before the stars she’d promised him that night in New York would show up in the sky.

  He liked it here.

  Despite the overly sculpted perfection of the front yard, her backyard was more comfortable. There was a fancy pool, yes, but the water feature provided a constant stream of ripples rather than looking still and pristine.

  Similarly, the lines of her perfectly mowed lawn contrasted nicely with the slightly overgrown bunches of bright flowers bordering the yard. A yellow birdhouse hung from a tree branch, and a quaint bench next to a fountain looked like the perfect place to sit down with a book on a warm summer day.

  The backyard, more than anything else about the property, felt like Daisy. As though it’d been the one place that she’d been allowed to do as she liked. Or perhaps it had just been the first thing she’d gotten her hands on when she’d gotten rid of her asshole ex.

  “Tell you what,” he said. “How about as I work on this damn article, you tag along?”

  “Scared you can’t handle us Southern girls?”

  “Protect me?” he said, playing along.

  Daisy laughed. “Please. I’ve seen you in action. You’re the most skilled person I know in deflecting unwanted attention without anyone feeling rejected.”

  “Come along for your own sake then,” he said. “I write about women, but I write for men. I know how they work. I can help you weed out the bad ones.”

  “To what end?”

  “To whatever end you want. No expectation beyond helping you feel less confused.”

  “Why?” she asked, her narrowed eyes showing her skepticism.

  “You want to say no, just say no, Daisy.”

  “No,” she said.

  “All right then.” Lincoln straightened, noticing that Whitney had finished up her phone call and was making her way back to the deck. “How does everyone like their steak?”

  “Say I did tag along,” Daisy blurted out. “You could tell me how to spot the jerks?”

  “Sure,” he said easily, lifting the lid off the grill. “Any trait in particular you want to avoid?”

  “Mean,” she said quietly. “I’d really like to avoid the mean ones.”

  Chapter 16

  “You’re sure about the suit?” Lincoln asked as Daisy flipped through the limited tie selection he’d brought with him to Charlotte.

  “Positive,” she said, holding up a purple-and-silver-striped tie alongside a solid black one, trying to pick her favorite.

  Apparently prepping for his first “date” in Charlotte was a group affair, with Daisy picking out his tie and Kiwi appointing a pair of his socks her new favorite chew toy. The scene didn’t feel the least bit weird, and Lincoln refused to let himself dwell on why it felt so normal.

  It was Wednesday, one day after the Taco Tuesday with Whitney that had actually been steak Tuesday. Steaks that he’d pretty much mastered, if he did say so himself. They were in the master suite of Daisy’s guesthouse, which was about twice the size of his entire apartment back in New York.

  Better decorated too. Like most guys, Lincoln didn’t give two shits about things like accent pieces and bedspreads, but he had to admit the room was comfortable. The floor was a dark wood, punctuated with sage green area rugs. The bedding was plain white but thick and soft, the bathroom well-appointed with a walk-in glass shower, jetted tub, and marble vanity. For a guest bathroom.

  Daisy Sinclair was loaded. Or at least her ex-husband had been.

  “Strictly speaking I don’t have to wear a suit,” Lincoln said, turning to face the full-length mirror. “I mean, I’m going out on the town for work, but it’s not actually work. I need to blend in.”

  “You will blend in,” Daisy said. “Downtown Charlotte isn’t small-town USA with one road and exactly two local watering holes. It’s a city. Not big like New York, but big enough that a man in a suit won’t be out of place at five o’clock on a Wednesday. At least not in the bar we’re going to.”

  “So you decided to come then?” Lincoln asked as he finished buttoning his white shirt.

  She bit her lip and then sat on the bed. “I don’t know. Won’t it be weird?”

  “Well, seeing as my three prearranged meetings are all friends of yours, I shouldn’t think so. It’s just me talking to them. Asking what they look for on the dating scene.”

  “They’re not friends, exactly,” she clarified. “More like…friends of friends. My actual friends are all married. Except Whitney, of course.”

  Lincoln thought there was just the faintest note of sadness in her voice as she made this proclamation—or perhaps it was jus
t resignation. He wanted to tell her that there was no shame in being in your thirties and single, or single at any age, but he supposed that for Daisy, it had a lot less to do with her relationship status itself so much as the fact that she was lonely.

  He knew all too well the feeling of being the odd man out in a group of friends.

  He didn’t know what would be worse—never having the opportunity for your best friends to get to know the woman you love, or having your friends see you as part of a couple, only to find yourself on the outside when the relationship crumbled.

  “These friends of friends know it’s not an actual date, right?” Lincoln asked, reaching for his suit jacket hanging on the back of the closet door.

  “Um.”

  He stilled. “Daisy.”

  “I told them it was more like a Bachelor group date.”

  “A what?”

  “You know. One guy, multiple girls…”

  “An orgy?”

  She laughed. “Don’t sound so hopeful. No, just…trust me. It’ll be fine. Fun, even.”

  “I’d trust you more if you’d come with,” he said.

  Daisy smiled and put the black tie back in the travel case, apparently having decided on the silver-and-lavender option. “Lincoln Mathis, are you nervous right now?”

  “About?”

  “About crashing and burning with us North Carolina girls. You’re afraid your New York charm won’t translate.”

  “I know it won’t translate,” he said, meeting her eyes in the mirror.

  “How’s that?”

  He watched as she stood and walked toward him. He turned to face her. “Because not counting Whitney, who I don’t know well enough yet, I know two North Carolina women, who look an awful lot alike, neither interested in the legendary Mathis charm. The first never even saw me, too wrapped up in my boss. The other…”

  She lifted her eyebrows. “The other?”

  “The other had me friend-zoned the moment she saw me.”

  “Which is lucky for both of us,” Daisy retorted, not bothering to deny it. “Seeing as you’re unavailable.”

  Unavailable.

  Present tense.

  She hadn’t said he had been unavailable, past tense.

  He supposed he should be relieved she thought of him that way. He was unavailable. He still felt too raw from the loss of Katie to even think about starting something with Daisy or anyone, but he couldn’t deny the ripple of displeasure that went through him at her early dismissal.