Only to find that John Brewer had been an even bigger sonofabitch than he had already known.

“Her name was Laurel,” Dani said abruptly, jerking his attention from the numbers he’d been scowling at for the past hour. “LJM. The ‘L’ is for Laurel.”

Diesel looked up from his laptop. Face cupped in her hands, Dani sat with her elbows propped on the kitchen table, staring at the list of more than eighty LJM companies she’d written out longhand.

They’d worked in silent harmony after Meredith had taken her leave, with breaks for hot tea or for Dani to stir a pot of chili she had cooking on the stove. Or for her to check on Joshua as he napped, or to drape a blanket over Michael when he’d fallen asleep, clutching Hawkeye as desperately as he’d clutched Diesel.

It was so domestic, it almost hurt. Because Diesel wanted this so much. Wanted the homey kitchen, the dog, the kids, the quiet Sunday afternoon with Dani Novak. He wanted her. He wanted it all.

“Okay,” he said simply, unsurprised that she’d figured out the med student’s name. “How do you know?” Because they were still waiting on Jeremy O’Bannion to give them a lead on medical students with those initials.

“Laurel is the only name that appears multiple times. ‘Laurels Awards & Trophies,’ ‘LaGrange Lacrosse Laurels,’ and ‘Laurels Lilies, Rosemary & Poppies.’” She leaned back in her chair. “The first few times I read over these names I took ‘laurel’ to mean either an award or a plant.”

“So did I.”

“Well, one of the businesses does refer to awards—the ‘LaGrange Lacrosse Laurels.’ They must have won some kind of championship. I guess my brain put in commas instead of apostrophes for the other two businesses. These two actually refer to ‘Laurel’s,’ as in the possessive.”

His chest warmed with pride. “Nicely done, Doctor.” He leaned forward to kiss her cheek, but she pulled away, her back going stiff.

Her head dipped once, but she didn’t smile. Her eyes had become colder, her expression remote. Something had changed since that morning and he didn’t like it. They were back to the way they’d been all those months after she’d told him to find someone else.

“Thank you,” she murmured politely. “If Jeremy can’t find her, I figure we can dig into the records from her high school to get her last name. If she graduated from college two or three years ago, she must have attended high school four years before that. And if she did play lacrosse we can get her name. She may have been on the dance squad, so we can cross-check.”