And she’d clicked with Lincoln.

Whitney reached out a hand and stroked a tulip bud. “I don’t even know this guy, and it makes my heart hurt thinking about what he’s gone through. How’d you say she died again?”

“Pulmonary embolism,” Daisy said, reaching out and taking her friend’s wineglass, helping herself to a sip. “I guess it’s not uncommon for people who are mostly sedentary. A blood clot formed in her leg, which then broke off and got stuck in her lung. It blocked the flow of blood to her heart.”

“So it was fast?” Whitney asked quietly.

Daisy lifted her shoulders. “I hope so.”

Whitney studied her for several seconds before looking down at her watch. “You know what? I think I’m gonna go.”

“Really? I thought you were dying to meet him?”

“Oh I am. I so am. But I keep letting myself forget that he’s not a pretty toy. He’s a man who’s been hurt, and I don’t think my fab rack is what he needs right now. He needs a familiar face, maybe a bit of quiet.”

Daisy felt a rush of affection for her friend. Under all that noise and overt sexuality, Whitney was more sensitive than she ever let on.

“Come over on Tuesday like usual; by then he’ll be settled,” Daisy said, following her friend to the door as they made their way back to the main house.

The guesthouse was only a minute-or-two walk; far enough so that they wouldn’t feel like roommates, but close enough to be, well…close.

“How long’s he in town?”

“TBD. Cassidy said he was guessing about two weeks to get what he needs for the story, maybe clear his head a bit.”

“Two weeks,” her friend mused. “Not much time, but enough. Maybe.”

“Enough for what?”

“Nothing,” Whitney said in a singsong voice, shoving her half-full wineglass at Daisy and pulling her keys out of her purse. “Drink that. Also, text me later. Bonus points if you can catch a pic of him getting out of the shower, and text me that.”

“Absolutely,” Daisy said, sipping some of the rejected wine. “That’s been my plan all along. To take dick pics of the guy.”

“I don’t think a girl can take dick pics of a guy, I think he has to do it himself to make it a legit dick pic,” Whitney said through the open window as she started the car. “Ask him, will ya?”

“Good-bye, Whitney,” Daisy called over the starting engine.

After her friend drove away with a saucy wave, Daisy went back into her kitchen, deciding it couldn’t hurt to top off the wineglass.

Because Lincoln Mathis was coming here.

To stay.

And to date other women.

Not for real, Daisy reminded herself. It was just part of his story. The same thing he’d always done back in New York, interviewing women about dating, more than actually dating them.

She wasn’t sure why she let the distinction matter so much. Daisy did a load of laundry, then made a pitcher of iced tea. Then she rearranged the pink flowers she’d bought for herself when she’d bought the white ones for him, sipping her wine as she did so, very determinedly not looking at her watch, not glancing at the clock, not listening for the sound of a car…

She never did hear the sound of his car coming up her driveway, but she did hear a dog barking. A very small dog.

Kiwi.

Daisy couldn’t fight the grin as she went to the front door and opened it. She’d meant to go to his car, help him with his bags, but he was already there. Right there, standing on her front porch with a weekender bag in one hand, a small gray dog crate in the other.

For a moment they both froze, and there was something strangely electric about the moment, as though they were both poised on the precipice of something both epic and wonderful.

And then it passed, and they were just Daisy and Lincoln. Strange that there was such a thing as Daisy and Lincoln, with as little time as they’d spent together. But there was. And she’d bet anything he knew it too.

Lincoln’s eyes were shaded by his aviator glasses against the late-afternoon sunshine, but his smile was the same as she remembered.

“Hey, Wallflower.”

She grinned back. And for the first time since the early days of her marriage with Gary, she had the urge to wrap her arms around a man, and have his wrap around her. Instead she stepped aside and gestured him in. “Well, if it isn’t the city boy here to woo us country girls.”

Lincoln glanced around the lavish foyer and let out a low whistle. “Nothing country about this house.”

“I know, it’s a little ostentatious, right?”

The entryway was white marble, as was the wide, split staircase winding around a chandelier to meet up together on a second-floor landing.

Instead of answering, he pushed the sunglasses on top of his head and looked her over. “It’s good to see you.”

She felt a surprise wave of pleasure at the sincerity in his voice. She’d been terrified he’d been forced into this little venture.

“You too.”

With his glasses no longer hiding his eyes, Daisy saw that she’d been wrong when she’d thought he looked the same. This wasn’t the Lincoln she’d met in New York. Sure, same great jaw, same perfectly sculpted body, but the eyes, while no longer haunted and wary, were guarded and maybe a little cynical. The smile a little flat.

Their gazes locked and held, but before she could figure out what she was feeling, a pissed-off bark from the dog crate ruined the moment.