The only thing making her feel slightly better was that at least Lincoln wouldn’t be out with another woman. He’d finished up all the notes for his article, and had declared his last three days in North Carolina a work-free vacation zone.

Three days.

That’s all they had left.

It wasn’t as though it was a surprise. She’d known from the moment Emma had called her to pitch the idea that he’d be staying two weeks and then heading back to New York. Heading back to his real life, while she was left with her life.

A life that was feeling increasingly empty.

Daisy wondered if this was a normal part of the healing process. That as you healed from your emotional wounds, as your hurts scarred over, you were faced with a crushing emptiness where the pain had once been.

She was debating among lipstick colors—trendy nude, classic red, or flirty pink—when she felt the wet nudge of Kiwi’s nose a split second before a knock at her bedroom door.

She scooped up the dog and walked out of the bathroom to see Lincoln standing in the doorway of her bedroom

Daisy couldn’t help it. Her stomach flipped. For starters, the man looked gorgeous. He always looked gorgeous, but tonight’s black T-shirt and well-worn jeans screamed man in the most appealing of ways.

And he was at the threshold of her bedroom.

The dog was no stranger to the upstairs of Daisy’s house, but Lincoln never had been there and his presence was strangely intimate.

Made even more intimate by the way his eyes flicked to her bed.

Daisy’s stomach clenched with a desire she hadn’t felt since long before her divorce. Back when she thought Gary’s controlling tendencies were chivalrous rather than misogynistic, back before sex had become merely a ploy to keep him happy, his anger at bay.

Even after all that, Daisy missed sex.

She didn’t know if that was normal or not, after what she’d been through. If someone had asked her years ago if, as an abused woman, she’d ever want to be touched again, she’d have guessed no.

And though she was certainly wary of men, she was also quite certain that with the right man, she’d relish the touch. Crave it.

Lincoln’s gaze came back to her, although it flicked back to the bed almost as quickly, and she wondered if he was experiencing the same dangerous thoughts that she was.

Wondered if he knew just how much she longed for him to be the man who taught her how to want again.

Who was she kidding?

He already had.

After her divorce, Daisy had kept the massive, expensive mattress, but she’d gotten rid of the cherrywood four-poster bed Gary had picked out and had ditched the heavy red bedspread her ex had insisted on. In its place was a simple platform bed with a gray tufted headboard and aqua-and-gray bedding, which she thought feminine, but not fussy.

“Hey!” she said, finally breaking the silence. Her voice came out too false, and too bright.

“You know, right, that you only have sappy movies? Is there a single non–romantic comedy?”

“You don’t like the classics?”

“Sure. Godfather. Rocky. Mighty Ducks.”

She laughed. “The Mighty Ducks is not a classic.”

“Is too. What’s your idea of a classic?”

She gave a happy sigh as she put in earrings. “Pretty in Pink. The Proposal. Oh, and of course Say Anything.”

“Say what?”

She gave him a look to call him out for the lame joke, but he missed it because he was staring at her bare legs.

“Sorry to intrude,” he said quietly. “I called out, you didn’t hear me. Kiwi showed me the way.”

“Not a problem,” she said as she ran a hand over the dog’s head. “What’s up?”

Instead of answering, his blue gaze raked over her, and she felt the tingle from head to toe.

“You look nice.”

Was it her imagination, or was his voice a little gruffer than usual?

Her feet were still bare, and she shifted, putting one foot on top of the other, feeling oddly vulnerable. “Thanks. I’m a little…nervous.”

He leaned one shoulder on the doorway and crossed his arms. “Yeah?”

Daisy shrugged. “I’ve been on dates since the divorce, but this one feels different.”

“How so?”

She licked her lips. “With the others, I think I knew nothing would happen—knew that I had no intention of giving the men a chance.”

His gaze seemed to darken. “But this one, you’re going for it?”

“Well, I don’t know,” she said with a little laugh. “I’ve talked to him for all of fifteen minutes, but I feel different somehow. Ready. Ready to move forward with my life.”

He swallowed, and she saw that damn sexy Adam’s apple bob.

Get it together, Daisy!

“I’m glad. Happy for you,” he said.

It wasn’t the answer she wanted. Damn it. She could no longer deny that whatever she felt for Lincoln Mathis was a hell of a lot more complicated than friendship.

She wanted him to say that he was ready too. That he wanted to be the one she moved forward with.

But he wasn’t. It was obvious in the way his arms were crossed protectively across his chest, his jaw tense. He liked her. Cared about her. But his heart belonged to someone else. Someone he’d lost.

“You needed something?” Daisy asked, bending to set a squirming Kiwi on the ground, only to have to pick up the dog once more when it became clear she wanted up on the bed and couldn’t get there on her own.