Someone Like You Page 6

  His lips moved, whispering something in her ear before gently laying her back down and pressing a kiss to her forehead.

  Daisy lifted a finger to flick away a tear. “He really comes every month?” she asked Katie’s mother quietly.

  “Like clockwork,” Brenda said, her voice a little grim.

  “You don’t seem happy about it,” Daisy said.

  The other woman looked back at her with candid hazel eyes. “I think it’s lovely, but it’s not about me. It’s about Katie. And my daughter would never ever have wanted this for the man that she loves.”

  Chapter 8

  Daisy contemplated making happy, easy chatter as they walked back to the car, but she sensed he wouldn’t want that. Instead she let Lincoln have his quiet, understanding that sometimes the mind and heart needed a little buffer time to repair their walls.

  He opened the passenger door for Daisy, and closed it behind her before going around to the driver’s side. Neither said anything as he started the car and drove away from the woman he loved.

  It was a good twenty minutes before he broke the silence. “Thank you.”

  She looked over. “You’re welcome.”

  Lincoln caught her eye and smiled, and she was relieved to see that it was a real smile. Not flirtatious, but real all the same. As though he’d gone about the process of tucking Katie away somewhere safe. Until four Sundays from now when he’d do it all over again. The thought was as sweet as it was sad.

  He looked back at the road, drumming his thumbs on the steering wheel. “Daisy, listen. What you just saw…Nobody else knows…”

  She felt her stomach clench at his words. Nobody? As close as he was with Cassidy and Emma and the gang, she would have thought he’d need to share his pain with someone.

  And if not, why her?

  “I’m not going to tell anyone,” she said quietly.

  He didn’t smile or look her way. “I figured you wouldn’t.”

  Daisy turned and looked at the passing landscape. “How’s that?”

  “Because you understand the nature of secrets.”

  She looked out the window, considering this. “Is that why you brought me?”

  His thumbs drummed against the wheel again. “Honestly, Wallflower? I don’t have the faintest clue why I brought you.”

  She laughed a little at his honesty, then turned serious once more. “You know, if you ever want someone to talk to…”

  “Yeah,” he said, his voice a little gruff. “And likewise.”

  She felt a weird tingling at the thought of becoming Lincoln’s confidant. It felt…intimate.

  And appealing.

  “You know,” he said, glancing over at her and giving her a smile that echoed last night’s casual flirtatiousness, “it’s going to be hard for us to have those heart-to-hearts without each other’s phone numbers.”

  Daisy snorted. “Nicely played. All right, gimme your phone, I’ll put my number in it and yours in mine.”

  He jerked his hand toward the back. “In the pocket behind my seat.”

  Her nose wrinkled as she reached an arm around to fish for it. “I didn’t even see you put it away. What’s the story there?”

  His smile was gone once again. “So I’m never tempted. To look at it while driving.”

  Daisy understood immediately. A phone used while driving had destroyed more than just Katie’s life.

  “Want to give me your phone passcode, or should I just text you my number?” she asked.

  “Zero-one-one-five.”

  “Your birthday?” she guessed.

  “Hers.”

  Ah.

  “I didn’t know,” he said quietly, as Daisy added her name and number to his contact list.

  “Know what?”

  There was a moment of silence. “That she was on the road when I was texting her. We were joking about me hiding in her closet when she got home, trying to get a look at her dress before the actual day. We were just…I was so happy. I assumed she was texting me from the dress shop. Then she quit responding, and I assumed it was because she was driving. Then she called, and I picked up…”

  He braced his left elbow on the door and rubbed his forehead. “It wasn’t her. It was the first responder. Just the day before I’d changed my name in her contacts to Husband, joking that it would keep her from changing her mind, and that’s who the cop called. Her husband. Except I wasn’t. Not yet.”

  “Lincoln.” Daisy rested a hand just above his knee, the gesture instinctive and platonic, if perhaps a bit too personal. He covered it with his own and squeezed, as though grateful for the contact. She wondered if anyone touched him in a way other than teasing and uninvited. If he’d ever accepted comfort after what happened.

  “It wasn’t your fault.”

  His laugh held no humor. “On some level, I guess I know that. The rational part of my brain tries damn hard to convince my heart. But the heart is…louder. The heart wonders. If I’d not texted her back, or if I’d just…”

  She squeezed his hand. “It’ll eat you alive if you go there.”

  He looked out the window, then straight ahead. “I think it already is.”

  Daisy said nothing, sensing that maybe the best comfort she could offer was silence.

  Several moments of silence passed before he spoke again. “I wanted to marry her. After.”

  She only nodded, not wanting to reveal that Brenda had already told her as much.

  “Her parents gently reminded me that it wouldn’t have been right. That you can’t marry someone who’s incapable of giving their consent. Katie wouldn’t have been able to say her vows. She wouldn’t have known I was putting a ring on her finger, much less been able to put a ring on mine. Hearing that is when I knew—when it sank in that my Katie was gone forever.”

  Oh Lincoln.

  “But I can’t leave the Katie she is now. I won’t.” His fingers squeezed hers harder as though indulging in one last lingering bit of contact before he replaced his hand on the wheel.

  “Do me a favor, Wallflower,” he said after a couple moments of silence.

  Anything. It was strange, how close she felt to this man she hardly knew.

  “Yeah?”

  He smiled and glanced over. “Change the subject? Talk to me. About anything else.”

  “On it,” she said, giving a playful, obedient salute, sensing he needed the mood lightened, and fast. “So, how’s this: I just got a text from Emma saying that she and Cassidy are hosting a last-minute dinner party tonight. Just an impromptu pizza get-together before they leave for Tuscany tomorrow.”

  “Am I invited?”

  She grinned. “Hypothetically, I may have seen a text come through from Cassidy when I was adding my number into your phone. So yes.”

  He sucked his cheeks in as he considered. “You going?”

  “To my twin sister’s post-wedding get-together? I’d say I’m sort of an auto-yes.”

  “We should bring the wine. Make up for ditching early last night?” he said.

  “Wine I can handle. As long as nobody says the words Jack Daniel’s to me or my liver for a good month or ten.”

  “What kind of wine is Em’s favorite? I can never keep the Stiletto ladies’ preference straight.”

  “Anything red is safe, although she’s been on a Syrah kick lately. Why?”

  “I figure wine’s my best chance of your sister not deballing me when she finds out you slept in my bed last night.”

  “Don’t worry,” Daisy said as she texted her sister back, confirming that both she and Lincoln would be there. “I already told her that yes, we left together, but I didn’t violate you.”

  “You say that because you didn’t see the Britney striptease.”

  Daisy glanced up, eyes narrowed. “Thought you said you kept your back turned for that.”

  “Ahh—”

  She reached over and punched his arm. “Mathis.”

  “I may have caught a glimpse before my Gentleman kicked in.
In my defense, you whipped that dress over your head fast.”

  She laughed as she returned to her text. “As long as I don’t find it on YouTube later.”

  “Emma’s going to ask what you did all day,” Lincoln said, his smile dropping just a bit.

  “Probably,” Daisy replied, sending the text and dropping her phone back in her purse. “I can’t wait to tell her about all the shopping I did.”

  “Cassidy can read people like a hawk. He’ll know we spent time together. And I don’t want you to outright lie to your sister on my behalf.”

  “I won’t have to lie,” Daisy said.

  “Not following.”

  “Well, I won’t lie to Emma, because I really will go shopping when we get back to the city. And when everyone asks if we spent time together, we can tell them yes—because you’re coming shopping with me. Hellooooo, platonic alibi, and your secret’s safe.”

  “Did you just trick me into shopping with you?”

  “Impressive, right?”

  He let out an incredulous laugh. “I don’t know whether to hug you in admiration or strangle you in irritation.”

  Daisy stiffened reflexively at his casual remark. She’d come a long way—now she was able to touch other people in affection or comfort without thinking twice. But having them hug her, no matter how platonic or well-meaning, felt…threatening.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “Totally.”

  The look he cut her across the car said he knew she was lying.

  But his slight nod told her he understood and wouldn’t press her for answers.

  And even as Daisy told herself she was relieved, she couldn’t deny that she felt a pang of something that felt an awful lot like disappointment.

  Chapter 9

  Lincoln was pretty sure Emma wouldn’t make good on her threat to kill him for not staying away from Daisy, but he wouldn’t put money on it.

  The second he walked into Cassidy and Emma’s Upper West Side apartment, he bee-lined for the one person that would protect him from Angry Emma: Erin Elizabeth Compton, daughter of Riley and Sam Compton, and the closest thing he had to a niece.

  “Come to Uncle Lincoln, sweetheart,” he said, easing the screaming baby out of his friend Grace’s arms.

  Grace Malone leaned in and made a cooing, kissing noise against the baby’s face. “I’m only allowing this blatant stealing of my niece because I want a drink to drown out all that screaming. It’s like she doesn’t know how lucky she is to have all these fake aunts and uncles.”

  “Not fake. Just unrelated by blood. And I’m pretty sure I’m the favorite,” Lincoln said.

  Grace snorted, the sound at odds with the pretty brunette’s effortless classiness. “Really? Because I think she’s screaming louder.”

  Lincoln mock-glared at his friend. Like Emma, Grace had two connections to their little circle of friends. The first because she worked at Stiletto. The second because she was happily married to Jake Malone, one of Lincoln’s friends from Oxford.

  Honestly, if their group got any bigger, they’d need to start wearing name tags.

  Grace blew a kiss at either him or the baby—probably the baby—before wandering over to her husband, who was holding up a bottle of red in one hand and a bottle of white in the other and wiggling his eyebrows questioningly at her.

  “Hey baby girl,” Lincoln said, shifting his attention to Erin. The baby girl’s diapered butt rested on his forearm and his big palm around her tiny dark head, but the screaming didn’t stop.

  “What do you know,” Julie Greene, another friend from Stiletto, said, taking a sip of her white wine and brushing a finger over the pissed-off baby’s cheek. “The only single female on the planet that’s not instantly in love with Lincoln Mathis.”

  Not the only single female, Lincoln thought as he gave the baby a little bounce. Daisy Sinclair didn’t seem to be even remotely aware of him as a man. She’d made him go shopping, for God’s sake. Then somehow talked him into carrying her bags.

  Which…

  Lincoln hated shopping.

  Hated. Shopping.

  Not unusual, he supposed. Most men did. Sure, as a born and bred Manhattanite, he liked to dress well, but his fashion sense was 100 percent faked. Without his tailor and the cute blond stylist from Trunk Club who sent over new shirts and ties every few months or so, along with a note instructing him on what to wear with what, Lincoln would probably be more of an off-the-rack, white shirt/blue suit kind of guy.

  And even if Lincoln were inclined to go shopping, he sure as hell wouldn’t do it on a busy Sunday afternoon. Roaming around from window to window, shop to shop, right alongside the tourists?

  Nightmare.

  Except it hadn’t been. Not really.

  Lincoln told himself he’d gone along with it because he owed her, and because it would make a decent excuse as to why he and Daisy had spent time together today. But the truth was, hanging out with Daisy all day, buying her a late lunch, arguing whether eggplant was in fact delicious (his stance) or the most disgusting thing ever (her stance)…it had been fun.

  More important, it had been distracting. The first time ever that he’d come home from visiting Katie and not spent the afternoon alone feeling utterly broken.

  There hadn’t been even a hint of flirtatiousness from Daisy. Not from the moment he’d met her on Friday until the moment he’d dropped her off at her hotel a couple hours earlier to change for dinner. She was simply friendly. Comfortable. The other women he knew—excluding, of course, his happily attached friends at Stiletto—would have not-so-casually suggested that he pick her up before dinner as well, so they could arrive together.

  Daisy had merely lifted to her tiptoes, pecked his cheek, and told him she’d see him tonight without a backward glance.

  It had been refreshing.

  And somehow unsatisfying.

  He pushed away the treacherous thought before it could take root, even as his gaze idly scanned the room for Daisy.

  “She’s not here yet,” Julie said, taking another sip of wine.

  He’d already known that, of course. Somehow he’d known it the second he walked in the room.

  He played dumb.

  “Who?” Lincoln asked, giving her a wide grin.

  Julie rolled her eyes. “Daisy. And don’t pretend that you weren’t just looking for her.”

  Lincoln bounced the baby, grateful to have something to look at besides Julie’s prying gaze. Of all his female friends, he’d have thought bubbly, carefree Julie would be the least likely to bust his balls about him and Daisy leaving together last night, but apparently not.

  The blonde leaned toward him, brown eyes sparkling with mischief. “Oh man, Emma’s going to killllll you. Can I watch?”

  “Where is the darling bride?” he asked, scanning the room once more.

  “Last I checked, making out with Cassidy in the kitchen.”

  Lincoln glanced toward the kitchen, where, sure enough, his boss had his new wife backed against the counter.

  “Do you think either of them even remember we’re here?” he asked Julie.

  “Who cares? They ordered pizza.”

  “I don’t know why they did that,” Julie’s husband said, coming up beside his wife. “They could have just had you whip up one of your frozen pizza specialties.”

  “All right,” Julie said, holding up her hand and glaring at Mitchell with a mixture of irritation and adoration. “There has got to be a statute of limitation on that little mishap.”

  Mitchell looked over at Lincoln as he adjusted his glasses. “Mathis? What say you?”

  “I say someone above the age of twelve putting a frozen pizza in the oven with the plastic still on definitely deserves a lifetime of reminders on said mishap. And my God, does this baby never stop crying?”

  “No, never.” This from Sam Compton, father of the crying baby. “Want me to take her? Free you up to grab a drink?”

  “Maybe,” Lincoln said, swaying the
baby a little from side to side in an attempt to get her to quiet down. “Did you bring any of the good stuff?”

  Sam had his own distillery in Brooklyn—and what had started as a hobby and a passion had turned into one of the most highly acclaimed whiskey producers in the country.

  “Depends,” Sam replied, tilting his own glass back and forth, watching the amber liquid slip from side to side. “How do you feel about barrel-aged rye with just a hint of maple?”

  In response, Lincoln promptly extended Erin to her dad. “She looks more like Riley every time I see her. Acts like her too, with all that noise.”

  Sam winced. “Please don’t say that. You forget that I knew Riley all through high school. I don’t think I can handle if my daughter has even a tiny sliver of her mother’s spirit.”

  “Spirit,” Julie said. “Is that what we’re calling it?”

  Riley Compton walked up and slid an arm around her friend’s neck. “What would you call it?”

  “Um…vigor?” Julie said, with a toothy grin.

  “Vaguely sexual,” Riley said. “I like it.”

  Riley reached a hand out to stroke her daughter’s tufts of black hair even as her laser blue eyes fastened on Lincoln. “Mathis. Care to explain your behavior last night?”

  “Not without a drink,” Lincoln said, backing away, just as Grace and her husband Jake wandered over, no doubt to hear what had gone down—or not gone down—with him and Daisy last night.

  Lincoln liked his friends. He did. It was a tight-knit group, despite the fact that it seemed to be ever growing. There were Cole, Penelope, Jackson, Cassidy, and Jake, all whom were Lincoln’s colleagues at Oxford.

  Then there were the Stiletto women—Julie, Grace, Riley, and Emma, half of whom were attached to the Oxford guys.

  Rounding out the group was Jackson’s girlfriend Mollie, Julie’s husband Mitchell, and Riley’s husband Sam—the only three not technically a part of the Stiletto/Oxford family, and yet every bit as important to the group’s odd dynamic.

  Sometimes he felt like he was part of some plus-size Friends episode, and he was damn glad for it. He was lucky to have friends like these—friends who, despite their ribbing and teasing, were fiercely loyal.