Someone Like You Page 5

No, that wasn’t the right word.

  But some distant buzzing in the back of his brain was telling him that Daisy Sinclair was dangerous to the life he’d carefully constructed. Almost as though she made him want more…more than what he was allowed to have.

  “You don’t have any videos on your phone to use as blackmail later, do you?” she asked.

  “If I do, you’ll never know until I hand it over to Emma on your wedding day.”

  Her laughter died abruptly, and Lincoln winced. “Shit. I’m sorry. I know weddings aren’t your favorite topic.”

  “It’s all right,” she said, turning her head to look out the window again. “And actually, I misspoke last night. It’s not weddings that I don’t like. It’s marriage.”

  Lincoln told himself to leave it alone. To give her privacy. But considering where they were heading, he was feeling a little vulnerable. He needed something from her in exchange. Needed to balance out their vulnerability.

  “Why?” he asked.

  He fully expected her to clam up or give him some saucy evasion, but she turned her face back to him, and he felt her studying his profile.

  And then Lincoln had the strangest sense that she understood what he needed, because she let out the tiniest of sighs and then began to talk. “Gary and I dated for a couple years before he proposed. Then we were engaged a full year before we got married. During that time, we talked about all the things that modern couples are supposed to get out on the table. Prenups, careers, finances…children. We were on the same page with all of it. All of it,” she repeated softly.

  She fiddled with her watch before continuing.

  “Just a couple months after we married, I said that I was thinking about going off birth control. I know for some couples it takes a while, and I just figured…why not, you know? I wanted a baby, he wanted a baby…”

  Lincoln said nothing, although he clenched his hands hard on the steering wheel to prevent the strange and unacceptable urge to reach across and hold her hand for the next part of the story.

  “He didn’t,” Daisy whispered. “He laughed when I suggested it, and said I better not dare. And that if I tried to trick him and go off the pill without him knowing, he’d get a vasectomy, and I was just…I was just confused, you know? Like, we’d talked about it. Maybe I was a little more baby-crazy than him, but he never once said he didn’t want kids.”

  He looked over at her tense profile. “That must have felt like a betrayal.”

  She snorted. “It did. It was. But I could have handled it. I mean, he’s allowed to change his mind, right? Maybe he would have changed it back again, or maybe I would have changed mine. No, the real betrayal was him leaving me for his secretary…who was pregnant.”

  Lincoln’s fingers tightened around the steering wheel again, although for a different reason. This time, it was to stifle the urge to drive his fist into the face of a man who wasn’t even here. Who wasn’t even in the same state.

  “Bastard,” Lincoln muttered.

  Daisy merely shrugged. “He was.”

  Lincoln nodded, and though he was glad she’d confided in him, he was oddly disappointed. He was damn sure it wasn’t the full story. It was a piece of the Daisy puzzle, but not the last one.

  The rest of the car ride was silent, but not unpleasantly so.

  Lincoln thought about what she’d said about 95 percent of the time having to be some other person, and needing that 5 percent for yourself—to be you. He wondered if right now, in this car, counted toward her 5 percent. If by being with him, she felt free to be herself.

  Because he was alarmingly aware that being around this woman he barely knew counted toward his peaceful time. The first time in a long time when he didn’t feel the need to be “on.”

  And then it was over, because they were here. Truth be told, Lincoln wasn’t quite sure who he was on the last Sunday of every month. It wasn’t the charming, devil-may-care Lincoln that he was at work, but it wasn’t the real him either.

  It was some strange in-between place where his old life and new life converged in the most painful of ways. It was what might have been and what could never be, all rolled into one, and yet he couldn’t stay away.

  Wouldn’t stay away.

  Lincoln was grateful that Daisy didn’t say a single word, didn’t ask a single question, even though she must have seen the signs of the facility.

  She was patiently quiet as he signed them in. Lincoln Mathis and guest. Even that felt disloyal, but he shoved the guilt aside. It wasn’t as though he was bringing a girlfriend. He didn’t know what Daisy was.

  A friend, he supposed, although a record-fast one.

  Lincoln wondered if it was that fast friendship that had motivated him to ask her to come with him, when he hadn’t asked it of even his closest friends. Almost as though his and Daisy’s warp-speed connection had ensured that he didn’t have time to slow down and think.

  For the first time in a long time, he was being impulsive, and it was as freeing as it was unnerving.

  They took the elevator to the second floor, Daisy following just a step behind him down the squeaky clean hallway.

  He stopped outside the last door on the right—a private room overlooking the garden. A nurse looked up, smiling when he saw Lincoln. “Mr. Mathis. Good to see you.”

  Lincoln smiled back. “Chuck, for the last time, I’ve been coming here every month for two years. Call me Lincoln, man.”

  He walked forward as Chuck murmured a greeting to Daisy before slipping out the door, leaving Lincoln to his privacy as he always did.

  Slowly Lincoln lowered himself to a squatting position in front of the chair in the center of the room.

  It was a new model. One especially designed to move limbs that couldn’t move themselves, to prevent atrophy in muscles that would never otherwise be moved.

  “Hello, sweetheart,” he said quietly, reaching forward and taking Katie’s hand. He squeezed her fingers. She didn’t squeeze back. He kissed the back of her hand. He thought maybe her eyes glanced over him registering his presence, but maybe not. He swallowed the lump. It got him every time. Every damn time to know that she didn’t know him from Chuck. Didn’t know Chuck from his mother. Didn’t know this chair from her old chair, from the bed, from the floor…

  Lincoln swore softly, the grief swamping him, even as he tried to fight it, head dipping forward before he forced it up to look at Katie again. “I brought a friend to meet you,” he said. “I think you’ll like her. She likes Britney Spears too.”

  And then he gathered his courage, shifting his attention toward Daisy, who stood nearby. He was relieved to see that there was no panic in her eyes, no pity. Only patience.

  “Daisy Sinclair, this is Katie Lyons. My fiancée.”

  Chapter 7

  Daisy told herself she wasn’t escaping when she’d volunteered to go get coffee for her and Lincoln, but the truth was she needed a moment to process everything.

  Lincoln Mathis was engaged.

  She didn’t know what had happened to Katie—how long the other woman had been unaware of the world around her—but the reality was heartbreaking. Both for Katie and for Lincoln.

  Daisy had figured that perhaps some of the sadness hidden beneath all Lincoln’s charm had come from the death of or abandonment by a loved one, but this…

  Daisy took a deep breath as she punched buttons into the coffee vending machine—two mochas, one for her, one for Lincoln—then rested her forehead against the machine as she tried to gather her thoughts.

  She didn’t regret that he’d brought her, but she had to figure out what he needed from her. Was it just companionship? Understanding?

  Or was it as simple as the quiet need to share his pain with someone, and he’d figured that a woman flying out to a different state tomorrow was a safe option?

  Daisy wondered if Emma and Cassidy knew—if anyone knew. She didn’t think so. His friends, good-natured as they were in their ribbing of Lincoln, seemed to genuinely believe
that he was a flirtatious ladies’ man. A playboy ever adept at dodging relationships. The truth was infinitely more complicated.

  She’d suspected last night that he didn’t sleep with all of the women he flirted with, or even most of them.

  But now she knew—she knew—that he didn’t sleep with any of them.

  Lincoln wasn’t a playboy. Hell, he wasn’t even looking for a date.

  The quiet commitment and loyalty to Katie had been written all over his face when he’d taken his fiancée’s hand. In Lincoln’s mind, he was an engaged man. Even if his bride didn’t know it.

  That sort of loyalty…that sort of love…

  Daisy felt her eyes water as she reached for the coffees. She took a sip of hers, even though it was too hot. She burned her tongue but barely noticed.

  She walked slowly back to Katie’s room, taking in the facility with fresh eyes now that she knew what it was—what it was to Lincoln.

  It didn’t feel like a hospital. It was clean, yes, but there was a warmth to it: friendly paintings, soothing sage green color on the walls. There were people going in and out of the rooms, doctors and nurses in scrubs, but it lacked the urgency of a hospital.

  If most of their patients were like Katie, Daisy figured that the focus here was on long-term aid, not urgent care. She didn’t know much about these types of things, but she was guessing it was expensive. Katie’s room had a view of bright gardens and a pretty forest just beyond, and though there’d been a utilitarian hospital bed with a number of machines nearby, someone had obviously tried hard to make the room as homey as possible with coordinating blankets and throw pillows. Lincoln? She thought of his apartment, the carelessness of it, and wondered if this was why. If he poured his energy here instead of his own home.

  Daisy’s footsteps slowed further as she saw a woman standing outside Daisy’s room, arms crossed as she looked through the glass to where Daisy had left Lincoln reading aloud the newest Dan Brown book to Katie.

  The woman was middle-aged, her chin-length bob a mix of blond and white, her makeup skillfully applied to disguise the telltale signs of age at the corners of her eyes and lips.

  Her expression was unreadable as she watched Lincoln and Katie, but Daisy felt the sadness radiating off the other woman.

  She turned as Daisy approached, looking a little startled, her eyes making a quick once-over, taking in her coffee in hand and lack of scrubs. Her hazel eyes narrowed slightly, as though trying to place Daisy.

  “Hi,” Daisy said with a small smile. “I’m Daisy Sinclair. A friend of Lincoln’s.”

  The other woman’s eyes went wide, a thin hand coming to her throat and playing with the dainty open necklace around her throat. The woman was well-dressed in a matching coral sweater set and black pants. She had the look of someone who occasionally lunched at the country club with girlfriends but also didn’t mind getting her hands dirty in her vegetable garden on sunny Saturday afternoons.

  But none of that was what struck Daisy the most—it was the wide, cat-shaped hazel eyes. Katie’s eyes, although Katie’s had been vacant and staring, whereas this woman’s were shrewd, although not unkind.

  Daisy knew even before the woman introduced herself who she was.

  “I’m Brenda Lyons,” she said, dropping her hand from her necklace and extending it to Daisy. “Katie’s mother.”

  It took a bit of juggling, but resting one coffee atop the other, Daisy shook Brenda’s hand and wondered what the protocol for such things was. She wasn’t here as a girlfriend, obviously, but what must Brenda think?

  “I—”

  “He’s good to her,” Brenda interrupted, turning back to face the glass, before Daisy could say anything to explain her presence in what was obviously a family moment.

  Daisy stepped up beside the other woman and looked in on Lincoln, seeing what Brenda was seeing. Lincoln and Katie were as she’d left them.

  After talking to Katie for a while in her chair, Lincoln had picked up her small frame and moved her to the bed with an ease and familiarity revealing he’d done it hundreds of times before.

  Then he’d settled into a chair and pulled a book from a drawer in the bedside table, telling Katie all the while that she’d better not have read ahead without him, before opening the book to the bookmark.

  Lincoln had gestured for Daisy to pull a chair closer, but she’d babbled some crap about needing a second hit of caffeine and left the room. Lincoln had likely seen right through her, and she was a bit ashamed, but she knew him seeing her eyes fill with tears would have been far worse for both of them.

  “He obviously loves her very much,” Daisy said quietly.

  “Yes.” Brenda’s hand lifted again to the necklace. “Katie loved him too. Quite desperately.”

  Loved. Daisy was a bit surprised at Katie’s mother’s use of past tense.

  “I lost my daughter two years ago,” the woman said in the quiet monotone of someone who’d recounted this story often, if only to herself. “There was a car accident. Katie was—” Her voice cracked a bit. “She was coming back from her final dress fitting.”

  Daisy’s heart squeezed. “Her wedding dress fitting?”

  Her mom nodded once. “It was two days before the wedding. Katie was…she was texting Lincoln.”

  Daisy’s heart squeezed harder.

  “You see all those statistics,” Brenda said, her voice a whisper now. “About the dangers of texting while driving, and it just doesn’t feel real. You think drinking and driving, falling asleep at the wheel, but you don’t think a split second of looking at your phone when you should be watching the road…She veered just a little to the left, and her little Honda was no match for the big SUV. My only daughter. Gone.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Daisy said. Ineffective, insufficient words, but true. Daisy was sorry. Sorry that it had happened to Katie. To Brenda. To Lincoln.

  “I lost my daughter that day,” Brenda said again. “I know that sounds callous, and I don’t mean that I don’t love the Katie that’s in this room right now with every ounce of my being. But the little girl I raised, the woman who couldn’t wait to marry Lincoln. She’s gone. I love this Katie no less, but I don’t pretend that she knows me from the nurse, or the nurse from Lincoln. Or night from day, or even waking from sleep.”

  Daisy glanced down at her forgotten coffee cup. “Surely she knows—”

  “No,” Brenda said, cutting Daisy a kind but firm look. “She doesn’t. We’re fortunate she didn’t lose the ability to breathe and swallow on her own. It gives her a certain amount of freedom throughout the day from machines, but beyond responding reflexively to loud noises, she’s not aware of her surroundings. Doctors are quite clear on this, but more important, I know it in my own heart.”

  Daisy shuffled the coffees again to free up a hand, and rested her fingers on Katie’s mom’s arm with a comforting squeeze, knowing no words would offer comfort.

  Brenda Lyons looked down in surprise at the touch, before she studied Daisy’s face more carefully. “He wanted to marry her, you know. After the accident. Even after the diagnosis, when it was clear she wasn’t going to come back to us. Said love was eternal, and he wouldn’t walk away because she’d suffered a trauma.”

  “Mrs. Lyons,” Daisy said, “you don’t have to warn me off. I promise you I don’t in the least have a romantic interest in Lincoln. We’re friends, and not ones that know each other that well.”

  “I wasn’t warning you off,” Brenda said, looking back at Lincoln and Katie. “I merely…you’re the first woman he’s ever brought here. The first person he’s ever brought here, although his parents stopped by occasionally in the early days.”

  As though finally sensing that he was the topic of conversation, or perhaps wondering where Daisy had gone off to on her overlong coffee run, Lincoln looked over his shoulder, jolting a little in surprise as he observed Brenda and Daisy speaking.

  Daisy watched as Lincoln stood, saying something to Katie, touching her hand befor
e he came toward the open door.

  “Brenda! I’m so glad you came, I haven’t seen you in a couple months.” He wrapped her in a warm hug, and Daisy felt the now familiar lump in her throat as she watched Lincoln embrace the woman who would have been his mother-in-law.

  Lincoln looked at her and smiled, then down at the coffees. “One of those for me?”

  Daisy handed it over. “It’s a mocha. I took a gamble that maybe you liked your coffee as sweet as your cocktails.”

  He laughed. “Says the woman who matched me shot for shot of Jack Daniel’s last night. But yeah, you’d be right on the coffee.”

  Daisy shot a nervous look at Brenda out of the corner of her eye, but while the other woman seemed to be studying them, there was no judgment in her eyes. No accusation.

  “Where’s Glen hiding?” Lincoln said, glancing around.

  “He came by yesterday. There was a big golf tournament at the club today. He said to tell you hello.”

  Lincoln nodded. “Give him my best. You guys are okay?”

  “We are,” Brenda said, with a warm smile for Lincoln. “We’re happy.”

  Daisy didn’t think she was imagining Brenda’s slight emphasis on the word happy. Almost as though she was giving Lincoln permission. No, more than that. Like she was urging him to be happy.

  There was a moment of awkward silence, and Daisy, ever the peacemaker, cleared her throat. “Shall we see what happens next in that story?”

  Lincoln glanced down at her. “I think Katie’s had enough. I’ll just say good-bye, and then we can head back to the city?”

  “I’m not in a hurry,” she said, rushing to reassure him. It was bad enough that she’d escaped to go get coffees so as not to cry in front of him. The last thing she wanted was for him to think she was eager to leave.

  His expression was distant as he looked toward the bed where Katie lay unmoving, then shook his head as though to clear the devastating thoughts. “I’m good. I’ll just be a minute.”

  He stepped back into the room, going to Katie’s bed. Daisy meant to give them their privacy, she really did, but it stole her heart, the way he was with his fiancée. She watched as he gathered the other woman’s body to him in a hug, cradling her head carefully with his palm.