The Cinderella Deal

by Jennifer Crusie

  Linc turned away to look out the window. “It’s a very common reaction to stress.”

  “I didn’t think you even had stress,” Daisy said. “It doesn’t seem in character.”

  “It isn’t,” Linc said shortly. “That’s why I breathe. Can we talk about something else?”

  “Sure.” Daisy cocked her head at him. “If you’re not worried about the speech, why are you stressed?”

  “Look,” Linc began, planning to tell her to mind her own business, but then he realized she was right. He was wound so tight, he was going to be breathing through his hair at any minute. “I think it’s the lying,” he said finally. “I’m not a liar. I’ve never lied before. And now I not only lied, I dragged you into this whole mess and you’re lying too. It’s not right.”

  “It’s not a lie,” Daisy said. “It’s a story.”

  Linc looked at her, exasperated. “That’s semantics. They’re the same thing.”

  “No, they’re not.” Daisy scowled at him, and Linc remembered too late that she told stories for a living; he’d just called her a professional liar.

  “I didn’t mean to insult you—”

  “Lies are untrue,” Daisy said with all the sureness of Moses laying down the law. “Stories are unreal, but they’re true. They’re always true.”

  Linc shook his head. “I still don’t see the difference. I’m sorry, but—”

  “Listen.” Daisy leaned forward and gripped his arm to hold his attention. “If you tell a lie, you’re deliberately telling an untruth. If you’d told them you’d published six books, or that you’d taught at Yale, or that you’d won the Pulitzer, that would have been a lie. You’d never tell a lie. You’re too honest.”

  “Daisy, I told them I was engaged to you. That was a lie.”

  “No.” Daisy shook her head emphatically. “You didn’t tell them anything about me. You told them you wanted to get married and settle down in Prescott and raise kids.”

  “Well, that’s a lie,” Linc said, but he could see where she was going. “I told them what they wanted to hear.”

  “Yes, but it was what you wanted to hear too.” Daisy settled back in her seat. “Sometimes stories are just previews of coming truths. I bet you really do want that deep down inside your repressed academic soul. I bet your subconscious just wormed its way to the truth and laid it all out when you were too stressed and preoccupied with breathing to keep an eye on it.”

  “Very cute,” Linc said. “Would you like to explain the Alizarin Crimson, the daisy ring fiasco, and my brother from Jersey now?”

  Daisy shrugged. “Sure. Annie is an original cat, definitely one of a kind, and she’s reddish, so telling Guthrie she was an Alizarin Crimson was true in its own way. And you were treating me like a child bride in the store, not letting me pick out my own ring, so I became one. That one was really your story, not mine. And the brother part …” She looked up again, a little shy. “I think I just wanted somebody to rescue me, you know? Howard was being such a louse, and I just wanted somebody to stick up for me, the way a brother would. I get really tired of fighting my own battles. And then you came in, and I knew you’d stick up for me. I just knew you would. And you knew it too. That’s how I know it’s true, even if it isn’t real. You walked right into my story.”

  Linc pulled back. “I did not know it.”

  “Yes, you did.” Daisy leaned her head back on the seat. “You could have denied everything, or told me to shut up, or dragged me from the store, or walked out. Really, you could have done almost anything.” She turned her head to meet his eyes. “Instead, you were my brother from New Jersey. You knew it was true too.”

  “I’m still not buying this,” Linc told her, but he was irrationally cheered. Maybe he hadn’t lied. Maybe it had been a glimpse of the future. Maybe—

  The plane hit another air pocket, and Daisy clutched his hand. “How much longer to Prescott?”

  “About fifteen minutes to the Dayton airport. About another forty-five to Prescott by car.”

  “Are we renting a car?”

  “No, Crawford said he’d come pick us up.”

  “The dean? You must really rate.”

  “Not me. I told him all about you. He can’t wait. He calls you ‘Little Daisy’”

  Daisy closed her eyes. “Oh, no.”

  “So this is Little Daisy!” Crawford beamed at her. “Even sweeter than I’d pictured her!”

  He looked like an anti-Santa Claus, leering instead of beaming, and Daisy disliked him on sight. So this was what she had to impress so Linc could get the job. Just her luck. She ducked her head and smiled, and Crawford almost fell over backward from the wattage.

  “Lincoln, you are one lucky dog.” Crawford put his arm around Daisy, who stifled a shudder.

  Linc smirked. “Thank you, sir.”

  Crawford’s hand slid down over her hip.

  Daisy wanted to kill them both. This is what happens when you let other people tell the story, she told herself. Don’t do that again.

  Crawford had them out to the parking lot in no time. He waved them toward a big maroon Cadillac, and a chubby blonde waved back frantically. “This is my little woman,” he said as she disentangled herself from the front seat and got out of the car. “Chickie, honey, this is Linc and Daisy.”

  Chickie leaped on Linc. “Daddy didn’t tell me how handsome you were,” she said, and hugged him, and Daisy thought, Good, let him get groped for a change. Then Chickie turned on Daisy and her bright, vague smile widened. “And you must be Daisy! I declare, you’re a picture!” She threw her arms around Daisy, engulfing her in a cloud of Chanel No. 5 and gin. It smelled a lot like a drink Daisy had thrown up once at a college mixer.

  Daisy fought her way free. “Well, I’m just so delighted to meet you, Chickie. We’ll have to sit down later and have a girls’ talk.”

  Linc closed his eyes. Pouring it on too thick, Daisy thought.

  “We will, we will.” Chickie beamed and hugged her again.

  “Well, let’s go.” Crawford wasn’t having any fun and his leer was getting tired. “Let’s go.”

  Linc held the front passenger door open for Chickie and she was visibly thrilled. Then he held the back door for Daisy, and she resisted the urge to kick him on the ankle. “You’re such a darling,” she said instead, and batted her eyes at him. “I just love you.”

  “Don’t push it,” Linc said under his breath.

  “Isn’t she just the sweetest?” Chickie said to Crawford when they were all in the car.

  “Yes, she is.” Crawford leered over the seat at Daisy. “You’re a lucky dog, Lincoln.”

  By now Linc’s smirk was gone and his smile was pasted on. “Yes, sir.”

  This is going to be the car ride from hell, Daisy thought, and she was right. By the time Crawford had driven them to Prescott, helped them drop their things off at the motel, and then driven them out to the college, they’d heard what a lucky dog Linc was a dozen times, and Linc had said, “Yes, sir,” another dozen, and Chickie had never stopped babbling. Daisy was ready to scream, but she told herself that if she could keep smiling long enough to get into the lecture room, the Crawfords would have to shut up so Linc could give his speech. It was the only time in her life that she’d ever looked forward to a speech.

  As it turned out, she wasn’t destined to hear it.

  “You two go on along,” Chickie said when they were standing beside the car. “I’m going to show Daisy all of Prescott.” She flapped her hand at them. “Go on. Just go on.”

  Crawford frowned. “The faculty should meet Daisy. Professor Booker should meet Daisy. I—”

  “They can meet her at the party tonight.” Chickie fished her car keys out of her purse and waved Daisy toward the front seat. “You go on.”

  “Daisy would like to hear her future husband’s speech,” Crawford said, and the annoyance in his voice was plain.

  Chickie faltered. “Would you?” she asked, turning to Daisy.

&nb
sp; Daisy’s choices were Crawford and a speech on history, or Chickie and a look at a small town. It was a toss-up until she saw the uncertainty in Chickie’s eyes; whatever else Chickie was, she was vulnerable. “Oh, I’ve heard that speech a thousand times,” she told Crawford sweetly. “Linc rehearses everything with me.”

  Chickie’s hand dropped to her side as she shook her head in admiring wonder. “Isn’t that just darling? Aren’t the two of you just darling?”

  “I think so.” Daisy stretched up and kissed Linc on the cheek. “Knock them dead, darling.”

  “Thank you.” Linc bent to kiss her cheek in return and whispered in her ear, “Behave, brat.”

  She smiled at him and waved, Chickie-style, and got in the front seat, rewarded not only by his look of trepidation but also by Crawford’s scowl. Good, two with one blow. It was starting to be her story after all. She turned and smiled as Chickie slid into the driver’s seat. “This was a very good idea,” she told her. “You’re so thoughtful.”

  Chickie patted her knee and then put the key in the ignition. “Not at all, I’m just selfish. I just wanted to get to know you all by myself.”

  As Chickie pulled the car out into the street, it lurched a little. Third gear not first, Daisy guessed, and turned her attention to Prescott.

  The university had made the little town an odd mixture of cosmopolitan and provincial, with interesting combinations like a gourmet grocery next to an old-fashioned hardware store and a diner straight from the fifties. The one theater had a sagging marquee and an improbably chartreuse and hot pink facade, but it was showing the latest Tarentino, and the coming attractions posters promised a Bergman revival, and an old Walter Matthau and Elaine May movie called A New Leaf.

  “I love that movie!” Daisy told Chickie. “Have you ever seen it? He marries her for money even though she’s hopelessly disorganized and then he falls for her anyway. It’s wonderful.”

  “I wish you were going to be here for it,” Chickie said with real regret. “We could go together, just like a mother and daughter. Wouldn’t that be fun?”

  “Yes,” Daisy said, a little taken aback to find herself in a story Chickie had obviously started without her.

  “But you probably won’t get here before fall since Linc still has to teach at his old job.” Chickie sighed, and then brightened. “But there’ll be other movies we can go to when you get here. Lots of them.”

  “If Linc gets the job,” Daisy reminded her, but Chickie just patted her knee again. The car swerved in response, and Chickie transferred her attention back to the road, and that’s when Daisy saw the art gallery.

  “Tell me about that,” she said, pointing to the wood facade that said GALLERY in gold lettering, and Chickie slowed down and said, “Oh, that’s Bill’s gallery. He started it over thirty years ago and it’s very successful now. He has shows four times a year and all these big art people from New York come out to see his latest discoveries.”

  All the breath left Daisy’s body in one long whoosh. “Discoveries?”

  Chickie nodded. “He likes showcasing new artists, so two of his shows, the ones in January and July, are always about new people. He’s been written up in all the big art magazines. He showed me the articles. They even had color pictures.”

  This is not your story, Daisy warned herself, but it was too late. It had been too late since she’d seen the gallery. The universe was doing everything but dropping a big sign in front of her that said This is it, this is your next move. Only it wasn’t. This is really cruel, she thought, but she couldn’t think of anyone outside of fate and the cosmos to blame.

  Chickie picked up speed once they were past the gallery. “We can go sometime if you like art. I don’t understand most of it, but I like Bill, and he doesn’t make me feel dumb if I don’t understand it.”

  “Well, of course not,” Daisy said, momentarily jerked out of her dream. “Why would he?”

  “Some people do,” Chickie said vaguely, and Daisy thought of overbearing Crawford and wondered what living with that kind of disapproving, domineering man would do to a woman. Probably drive her to drink.

  She put her hand over Chickie’s. “Then they’re lousy people and you shouldn’t pay attention to them.”

  “Oh.” Chickie blushed with pleasure. “Well, I don’t know much, you know. I never went to college. I’m just a wife.”

  Daisy scowled. “We need to talk, Chickie. You are not just a wife.”

  Chickie patted Daisy’s hand. “Well, that’s just sweet of you, sugar, but that’s pretty much what I am.” She waved her hand at the window and said, “Now, this is a nice neighborhood to start out in,” and Daisy realized they’d left the downtown and turned into a side street of old houses in various stages of repair. One had a sign in front that said PRESCOTT VETERINARY.

  “The houses here are reasonable, and it’s walking distance of the campus,” Chickie told her.

  And the vet’s, Daisy thought. Nice and close for Liz and Annie. Except she wasn’t going to be living here.

  Then they turned down Tacoma Street, and she saw the house. It was a slightly tumbledown Victorian cottage with diamond panes in the front window and a big front porch with most of the gingerbread missing, and a picket fence that needed paint badly, and—best of all—a For Sale sign in front of it. “Oh,” she said, and Chickie stopped the car.

  “That one?” Chickie looked doubtful. “Honey, it’s in awful shape.”

  “I could fix it,” Daisy said. “If the foundation’s good, and it’s not loaded with termites, I can fix everything else. I’m an artist. I can fix anything.”

  Chickie perked up. “You’re an artist? Well, isn’t that interesting? Linc didn’t tell us that. Wait until I tell Bill.”

  “I’d paint it yellow,” Daisy went on, half to distract Chickie and half because she was starting to love this story. “With blue and white trim. And I’d put the gingerbread back up. See where there’s still some left at the side? I could use that as a pattern and cut more. It would be so beautiful.”

  Chickie looked back at the house, squinting to see it through Daisy’s eyes. “Wouldn’t you like something new?”

  “No,” Daisy said with passion. “People throw away too many things because they always want new. But if you look at old things, they have history and personality and spirit. The things that I have that I love best are the old things that I’ve rescued. They have stories of their own, and then I fix them up and they’re part of my story too.” She looked back at the house, seeing the proportions under the peeling grayish paint, and the light that would certainly flood through the long, dingy windows once she’d cleaned them. Liz would stretch out and sleep on the hardwood floors Daisy knew were inside, and Annie could climb the porch rail and screech at people and birds. And Julia could come to visit… . “I could make that house a wonderful part of my story.”

  “I’d like to see that,” Chickie said softly, still looking at the house. She sounded wistful, and then she turned to look at Daisy. “I’d like to watch you fix that house. Would that be all right?”

  Daisy swallowed at the loneliness in Chickie’s voice. “Sure,” she said, hating herself for lying. “Of course, we don’t know if Linc will get the job—”

  Chickie turned back to the house. “He’ll get the job.” Her voice sounded grim with determination, and Daisy had a feeling that even if Linc had just given the most abysmal speech of his life, Chickie would see to it that Crawford hired him. If only the whole thing hadn’t been a lie—no, a story—she’d have felt better.

  If it had been true, she’d have felt wonderful, coming to live in this little town, in this little house, with a vet a block away and a great movie theater nearby and a gallery that might show her work in a couple of years, and a husband like Linc to take care of her—

  That last thought brought her back to earth. A husband like Linc would take care of her, but he’d also make her be something she wasn’t and then he’d probably make her feel guilty if
she slipped. He’d be her father all over again. It was a story, but it was also a fairy tale.

  “Yellow,” Chickie said, still staring at the house. “I can just picture it. With lilacs out in front.”

  “Lilacs would be beautiful,” Daisy said, seeing the purple contrasting with the yellow house and blending with the blue trim, and for a moment they both shared the picture and the story. “Lilacs would be perfect.”

  “Will be perfect,” Chickie corrected her, and Daisy closed her eyes in regret.

  Linc’s presentation went the way all his presentations did: smoothly, clearly, and professionally. He could see approval in the eyes of his audience, particularly in the eyes of a trim little blonde in the front row. Definitely my type, he thought, and then he stopped. Not now she wasn’t. Now he was engaged to Daisy. But in the fall, if he got the job, when he wasn’t engaged …

  Make a note to get to know the blonde in the fall, he told himself, trying not to feel guilty since there was no reason to, but somehow feeling guilty anyway.

  The question and answer period after the talk was vigorous but supportive; most people weren’t arguing with him as much as asking for more information, particularly the blonde, who seemed very intelligent and very interested in more than his speech. Even Booker thawed and told him he’d done good work. For a moment, surrounded by approving people, he wished that Daisy were there to see him do well, so that she’d know that he really was good. He would have liked to look up and see her smiling at him, just as if the story were true, just for that moment.

  Then Crawford shook his hand and said, “That’s a fine little woman you have there. Chickie thinks she’s just super.”

  Linc felt exasperated with him. The man had a university to run, for God’s sake, and he was obsessing over faculty wives. “Well, I think she’s super too.”

  “You know, she’s just going to love living here in Prescott.” Crawford winked, and Linc stiffened in surprise before he smiled back at Crawford with new appreciation.

  My God, he thought. She did it. I’m in.