“She backed off.” He’d been relieved. The last thing he’d needed was to have to deal with the situation in the middle of all that chaos. She’d stopped calling and given him some space. It was only in the last couple of weeks she’d started being overly friendly again. Now that he really thought about it, he could see Roxie was right. Miranda had been slowly but surely trying to work her way back into his life. “She knew I needed to concentrate on Noelle.”

Lila shook her head. “You lucked out, Armie. You understand that if she cared about you she shouldn’t have backed off. On the romance stuff, of course. But you needed help. You needed support.”

The passion behind her words warmed him. She seemed ready to do battle with a woman she’d barely met. It was sweet and reinforced some of the things he’d learned about her. She was prickly, but not the kind of woman who folded when times got tough.

“I had support,” he said, wanting to reach out and hold her hand. “My dad had passed by then, but my mom rallied in those early days after the accident. So much of it’s a blur. I had to deal with the fact that my ex-wife died. She didn’t have any family left. I made arrangements for the funeral and handled her house in New Orleans. And there was Noelle. My mom was a rock. I swear she lived to see my baby get better. It’s weird to think about it now because those were terrible days.”

She was the one who reached out, covering his hand with her own. “And they were precious, too.”

Damn. He needed a moment because no one else had understood that. It had been days of mourning and pain, days when he wasn’t sure his daughter would live. And yet his momma had been right there. She’d gotten out of her bed, thrown aside her own grief, and supported him. He’d been certain he would lose her shortly after he’d lost his dad, but she’d lived months beyond the doctors’ estimates, and he knew it was all because she couldn’t leave him alone like that. Only when she was sure her son and grandchild were okay had she rested and joined the love of her life.

He thought his mom would like Lila Daley.

“Why did you come home? Was it your mom?” Lila asked. “You were a detective in New Orleans. It can be hard to leave that kind of adrenaline behind for some people.”