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.”