“You sold the place in Charlotte?”

She nodded. “I got an offer almost the second it went on the market. I probably could have waited longer, gotten a bit more, but I just wanted to be done. Plus, the buyer took all the furniture, which meant I didn’t have to deal with cleaning the place out.”

“You moved fast.”

“Easy enough when you cut and run,” she said, handing him a glass.

He searched her face as they clinked their glasses together, and he wondered if she’d chosen her words deliberately—reminding them both that not so long ago he’d cut and run.

But instead of ribbing him, she merely gave a pleasant smile and gestured to the couch before sitting cross-legged and facing him as he sat beside her.

“So what’s up?” She took a tiny sip of the whiskey.

He leaned forward, palming the glass between his hands, watching the amber liquid slosh gently from side to side. “I owe you an apology.”

“Okay,” she said slowly. “And you thought nine-thirty on a Monday night was the time to do it?”

“We’ve stayed up later than that before,” he said. “Together.”

“We have. But as you pointed out today, things were different then.”

“I don’t want them to be different.”

“Well, they have to be, Lincoln,” she said, her voice a tiny bit sharp. “Back then we were safe behind our walls. And then I came out from behind mine, and you stayed firmly behind yours. And I get it, I really, really get it, but you told me not to wait, you told me to be happy…I didn’t wait, and I am happy, but I get the impression you’re not.”

“I am,” he said through gritted teeth. “I only meant that I was wrong to leave the way I did. Without saying good-bye.”

“It was pretty lame,” she said, lifting a shoulder and sipping her drink. “But I’m over it.”

“That easily, huh?” He turned his head, gave her a rueful smile.

“What was I supposed to do, beg you to come back? You had things to take care of, I understood that. And you did. Costa Rica, right?”

He nodded, turning and staring straight out the window.

“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked softly.

He opened his mouth, prepared to tell her what he’d told Cassidy. That it had been therapeutic. That it had been the closure he’d needed.

But he realized he didn’t want to talk about it because he didn’t need to talk about it. Perhaps that was the thing about closure—once you got it, your brain started shifting toward other things.

Started shifting from Katie to Daisy.

From the woman who wasn’t here to the woman who was.

To the woman who was dating another man.

“No,” he said, tossing back the rest of his drink. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Well, what do you want?” she asked, repeating her question from earlier.

Earlier he’d taken the coward’s way out, gone to get coffee rather than answer. He took it now too. Lincoln lifted his glass in question.

She smiled, but it was forced. “Go ahead. Help yourself.”

Her disappointment in him was written all over her face, and Lincoln hated himself as he stood to pour more liquor he didn’t even want. He reached for the decanter, only to pause, and instead set his glass down quietly on the bar cart. “I should go.”

He heard her stand, set her glass on the table. “If you’d like. But I hate this uneasiness between us.”

Lincoln turned. “Yeah, well, as you said, things are different now. We’re no longer long-distance friends destined to see each other every few months or years. And you’re dating Nick.”

He wanted her to deny it, but she didn’t.

Damn it, man, be decent. Let her go.

Lincoln walked to the door, opening it as she followed to see him out. “So I guess I’ll see you tomorrow at work,” he said with a little laugh. “That’s new.”

“You’ll get used to it,” she said. “And if not, like I said, it’s temporary, and then I’ll be out of your hair.”

He frowned and braced one hand on the open door. “Is that what you think I want? Not to see you again?”

“I think you’re a man who’s had his life turned upside down and is finally ready to get it back together. I think that odd last night we had in Charlotte could complicate that effort.”

“Don’t turn me into a project, Daisy,” he snapped. “And odd wasn’t the word I’d use to describe that night.”

“Well, what word would you use?”

“Hot,” he growled before he could think better of it. “It was damned hot, and you know it.”

“I do know it. I also know you ran away from it.”

“Which I apologized for!”

“And I accepted!” she shouted back.

He let out an incredulous laugh, and rubbed a hand over his eyes before shaking his head. “This is ridiculous. I’m out. See you tomorrow after we’ve cooled.”

She nodded, her face tense and confused, as though anger was as unfamiliar to her as it was to him. “Goodnight.”

He turned and stepped into the hallway as she shut the door behind him, but at the last second he spun around, slamming his palm against the door and shoving it open with enough force to have her stepping back with a gasp of surprise.

Lincoln’s brain felt like a buzz of static, simmering with anger and hope and a hell of a lot of want as he descended on her.