The Cinderella Deal

by Jennifer Crusie

  FOUR

  CRAWFORD DROPPED LINC at the motel, and Linc shook his hand again in genuine gratitude. “I appreciate this, sir. More than you can know.”

  “Well, we appreciate you too, son,” Crawford said. “And we surely do appreciate Daisy.”

  “Oh, we all do that,” Linc said, his exasperation considerably lessened by his success. When Crawford finally drove away, he went to find her and give her the good news.

  He opened the door to the motel room and saw her standing by the bed in her slip. She turned, lifting her chin in silent question about the speech, and he opened his mouth to tell her and then stopped, hit by the impact of Daisy undressed. Daisy would never make a model—too much bust, too much hip, too much everything—but she could make him lose his train of thought in an instant, even in a slip as opaque and virginal as the one she was wearing.

  “How’d the speech go?” she asked, apparently unaware she was blowing his mind, and he came back to the present and said, “We did it. I got it.”

  “I knew it!” Daisy threw herself at him, and he caught her, surprised that she cared so much, and then distracted by how much warm softness she was pressing against him. “You are going to love it here,” she told him, and he looked down at her in his arms and lost his train of thought again.

  She was so round against him that he closed his eyes for a minute, trying to keep his sanity, and when he opened them she was looking up at him.

  “You okay?”

  His eyes slid past her face to her slip, made of white cotton with little pink flowers embroidered on it, and to the curve of her breasts pressed against him. She was warm and happy for him, and he didn’t know what to do about it, so he held his breath while he coped.

  She said, “Breathe, Blaise,” and he took a deep breath and stepped back. “I’m fine.”

  Daisy sat down on the edge of one of the double beds, still glowing, and her slip rode up her thighs. She had excellent long legs that she stretched out in front of her as she talked. “Chickie kept hinting all afternoon, but I couldn’t believe it. Are you going to tell me what happened? Your speech must have been great.”

  “It wasn’t just the speech.” Linc sat down on the end of the other bed, trying to keep his eyes somewhere in the vicinity of her forehead. “Crawford didn’t give a damn about the speech, although Booker did.” The memory of the speech came back and he forgot Daisy had a body while he reveled in his victory again. “Booker loved the speech, but Crawford was hooked the moment you smiled at him. Thank God this college has such a small hiring committee. Make sure you tell him you love Prescott tonight at the party.”

  “I do.” Daisy moved back into the center of the bed and stretched her legs out, crossing her ankles. “You should have seen the tour Chickie gave me.”

  Linc looked at her legs again. Somebody should do her a favor and burn all those long skirts. She had terrific legs. And they went all the way up.

  Think of something else, he told himself, and looked at her face. “Crawford is crazy about you.”

  “I think he’s just plain crazy, period.” Daisy rolled off the bed and Linc tried not to look at her round butt as she slid to her feet. She headed to the bathroom, picking up her dress as she went. “I feel sorry for his poor wife.”

  “Chickie?” Linc was confused. “Why?”

  “She’s so lonely.” Daisy’s voice floated back to him. “She’s just dying to have a surrogate daughter, and if their marriage was any good, she wouldn’t need one. She’d have him to talk to.” She came back out, zipping up the virgin dress as she walked, and he felt confused again, remembering the slip and the body under it at the same time he registered that she looked like a child. “I can’t get over how you look in that dress. I feel like a child molester.”

  Daisy hesitated. “Do I look bad?”

  “No.” He tried to analyze how she did look. “Just provocative. Like a hot fairy tale. Sort of like Cinderella in heat.”

  He had a momentary vision of bouncing Daisy on the bed, sliding his hand up her hip, feeling her underneath him as those long legs—

  “Linc?”

  Make a note to stay out of motel rooms with Daisy, he told himself. “Nothing,” he told her, and went to get ready for the party.

  Daisy saw the Crawford house as Tara North: big columns, lots of drapery, flowers, gardens, statuary, everything that spelled opulent living, all in pink and white. “I do declare,” she said to Linc under her breath, and he whispered back, “Behave, Magnolia.”

  She really tried.

  Crawford practically drooled down her neckline, and said, “You really are a daisy,” and she smiled back, even when he patted her rear end. A thousand dollars is not enough, she thought, but a deal was a deal. Professor Booker seemed a little staggered at first and then welcomed her politely. “You’re not at all what I expected,” he told her, and she smiled at him, turning on the charm as ordered. He blinked once, and then introduced her to his wife, Lacey, who was open and warm in her welcome and got a real smile in exchange. Later Booker moved to one side of the room and laughed quietly into his drink until Lacey nudged him with her elbow, and Daisy thought, We’re not fooling either one of them, and liked them even more. A professor with a long, mournful face introduced himself. “I’m Evan York. History. Interesting dress. It probably won’t wash well.” His smile was brief but genuine, and Daisy liked him a lot too. There was something endearing about anyone that depressed.

  There was nothing endearing about the last professor who introduced herself, a small blonde with a lovely face. “I’m Caroline Honeycutt, from the history department. I love your dress. Really.” She smiled up at Daisy and managed to make it seem like she was smiling down. “And you must be so proud of Lincoln. His paper was brilliant. What do you think of his theory of the impact of the ring on social barriers?”

  “I’m all for it,” Daisy said, and Caroline’s smile widened.

  “Ah, you’re not a historian,” Caroline said. “Forgive me.”

  “You bet,” Daisy said, but she thought, I don’t like you. She liked Caroline even less when she slithered over to Linc and began to smile up at him. Really up at him, because she was little. And blond. Like Julia. And probably like all of Linc’s other women. Not that it mattered. Linc smiled back, tall, dark, and gorgeous, looking down at tiny little Caroline.

  Daisy gritted her teeth. There was no reason to be jealous. This was all just a story, and it wasn’t even her story. No matter how much she loved Prescott and liked the people she met and wanted to save Chickie, it wasn’t true. She and Linc were only pretending to be engaged.

  But he wasn’t pretending very well, the jerk.

  Daisy decided to do the adult thing and ignore them while she concentrated on what Linc was paying her a thousand dollars to do. So she talked with Crawford, keeping out of range of his hands. She talked with Evan, radiating cheer to counteract his gloom. She talked with Lacey, sharing stories about Liz and Annie when she found out that Lacey loved animals too. She talked with Crawford again, because when she turned around he was there. She talked with Booker, sharing his admiration for Linc. She talked with someone from the English department who’d come for the drinks, sharing his annoyance that the mushroom canapes were gone. She talked with Crawford, because when she turned around he was there again. Crawford was growing from an annoyance to a real problem. She looked around for Linc to rescue her, but he was gone, and Daisy felt her temper rise.

  If he’s with that skinny midget Caroline, she thought, I’m going to take steps.

  Linc was seriously confused.

  On the one hand, he had Prescott for sure; Crawford had taken him aside when they arrived at the party and together with Booker had made him the formal offer which Linc had accepted so promptly that they had all beamed.

  Then things began to get weird. It couldn’t be the story, he told himself. After all, it was his story. No, it was more like slipping reality. There was Caroline Honeycutt, for example, logic
al, intelligent, and more than interested in him, exactly his kind of woman. And then there was Daisy, intuitive and unpredictable, scowling at him and charming everybody else, exactly not his kind of woman. So it was disconcerting that his eyes kept going back to Daisy instead of staying on Caroline. It was seeing her in that slip, he told himself. He’d stick close to Caroline, and he’d remember that he liked thin, lithe women dressed in designer suits and black lingerie, not round, tall women dressed in secondhand clothes and white slips with pink flowers, for God’s sake, and then he wouldn’t fall into the story and think about taking Daisy back to the motel and consummating his new job with his wife-to-be-who-wasn’t.

  Make a note not to tell any more stories, he told himself, and when Caroline joined him, he threw all his attention onto her and reality.

  By midnight Daisy felt that if she flashed her smile one more time, her eyeballs would roll out and her cheeks would split. And it didn’t help that every time she turned around, Linc was with Caroline.

  “Linc.” She walked up beside him, smiling.

  He was talking with Caroline again and he ignored her.

  “Linc?” She tugged on his sleeve, still smiling.

  Caroline looked up at her and smiled patronizingly. “You are just too darling for words.”

  Daisy narrowed her eyes. “Don’t be bitchy, dear, it ages you.”

  Linc took her arm and steered her away from a startled Caroline.

  “What are you doing?” he whispered.

  Daisy put her hands on her hips and glared up at him. “I’m going back to the motel. This is my idea of hell, but I have been good for five excruciating hours, and now it’s time for me to be set free. Take me home, cupcake, or I’ll turn into a pumpkin right here before their very eyes. And the first one I show my real self to will be that patronizing anorexic dwarf with the bad bleach job.”

  “Hold on.” Linc patted her shoulder a little frantically. “I will get you out, I swear, but it will take some time. We’ll have to say good-bye. Can you stand it another fifteen minutes?”

  “Just about.”

  It took them half an hour before they’d said all their good-byes and the Crawfords would let them go. Daisy figured that unless Linc did something incredibly stupid, he was in. Then she saw him with Caroline again, holding her hand, looking into her eyes, saying good-bye. Laying the groundwork for laying Caroline next year. Well, the hell with them both. They deserved each other.

  And then she turned and saw the expression on Chickie’s face as Chickie watched them.

  Chickie must have watched her husband with a lot of women, Daisy thought. And Chickie hasn’t attached to Linc, she’s attached to me. The daughter she never had.

  Linc, you dummy.

  Daisy moved up beside Chickie and sighed. “It’s so sad.”

  Chickie put her arm around Daisy and glared in Linc’s direction. “Men!”

  Daisy looked surprised. “Oh, no. He’s not interested in Caroline that way. It’s just that she looks like his little sister. His little sister … Gertrude.”

  Chickie stopped, taken aback. “Oh?”

  “You see …” Daisy leaned closer as her mind raced ahead. “He adored her, and she died very young.”

  “Oh, no.” Chickie was horrified.

  Daisy got a faraway look in her eye. “They loved each other very much. He called her his little cupcake. She called him”—Daisy’s imagination faltered. What the hell had she called him—“Honest Abe. After the president. Lincoln, you know?”

  She saw Chickie frown and decided to retrench a little. “As a joke. She called him that as a joke. They joked around a lot.”

  Chickie nodded.

  Daisy tried to recapture the thread of her story. “And then one day—” She paused. How was she going to kill off this nauseating little creep? Disease? Murder? Act of God? How would she like Caroline to go? “She was hit by a truck.”

  “Oh, my heavens.” Chickie’s hand went to her mouth.

  It was a good thing Chickie was so full of gin. This was not one of Daisy’s best efforts. “And so, Linc is just naturally drawn to be kind to small blondes because they remind him of his little cupcake. Little Gertrude.”

  “Oh.” Chickie clutched at her, touched.

  Linc finally let go of Little Gertrude’s hand and turned to find them watching him. Chickie sniffled. Daisy wiggled her fingers at him.

  He walked over to them and took Daisy’s hand. “Well, it’s midnight, so I’ve got to get Cinderella home.”

  Chickie clutched his arm. “You poor, poor boy.”

  Linc looked at the gin glass in Chickie’s other hand and nodded. “Absolutely. We’ll see you tomorrow.”

  He put his arm around Daisy and pulled her out the door.

  “What was that all about?” he asked Daisy as they went out to the car.

  Daisy beamed at him. “I’ll tell you later, but it’s nothing to worry about.” Linc looked at her warily, and she added, “Unless you were hoping to sleep with Caroline someday. That would be bad.”

  “Daisy—” Linc said, but then Crawford joined them and cut him off.

  Daisy got into the car and smiled all the way back to the motel.

  Half an hour later Daisy came out of the motel bathroom wearing an oversize white T-shirt and saw Linc sitting on the opposite bed with his shirt off. Merciful heavens, she thought, and then she stopped thinking in words and went to pictures. Moving pictures.

  He scowled at her across her bed. “Why can’t I sleep with Caroline someday?”

  So much for fantasy; he was still obsessing on the overbred blonde. “Because she reminds you of your poor dear sister Gertrude.” Daisy pulled back the covers and climbed into her bed. “Chickie would consider it incest.”

  Linc tensed, wariness in every beautiful muscle. “I don’t have a sister named Gertrude.”

  Daisy nodded, enjoying his torment. If she had to look at his body and suffer, then he should have to look into her mind and do the same. It was only fair. “I know. She died young. Tragically. She—”

  “Daisy!”

  Daisy stuck her chin out. “That’s why you hold hands with blond midgets instead of paying attention to your fiancée. I had to explain to Chickie because she thought you were cheating on me in front of me. The way Crawford probably does with her. Understand?”

  Linc froze. “Oh.”

  “You used to call her your little cupcake. She called you Honest Abe.”

  Linc looked confused. “Chickie?”

  “No, dear Little Gertrude.”

  Linc started to laugh, and Daisy had to grin with him. “And Chickie bought this?” he asked her.

  Daisy’s grin faded as she remembered. “She was drunk. She drinks way too much, but it’s because she’s so unhappy. She’d stop if she had somebody to talk to.”

  Linc’s grin disappeared too. “Did she tell you that? How much did you talk? What did you tell her? What did you do this afternoon?”

  Daisy stuck her chin out. “We just looked at Prescott. But I can tell. She’s a good person, she’s just so, so lonely.”

  Linc leaned forward. “Don’t get caught up in this story. It’s not true, remember?”

  “I know,” Daisy said.

  He stood up to get ready for bed, and she closed her eyes because he was so near. “I appreciate everything you did today, don’t think I don’t,” he told her. “I know that you were the deciding factor. You got me this job, and I appreciate it.”

  How much? she thought, and considered asking him to show it, but only for a second. Then sanity returned, and she said, “My pleasure,” and rolled away from him before she did anything dumb.

  Once they were on the plane the next day, they both relaxed. “You did it.” Daisy leaned her head back and sighed. “I can’t believe it. You did it. I’m so proud,” she said, and he felt warm because he had done well, which had happened before, and because somebody was proud of him for it, which hadn’t happened in a long time. She looked
at him with pride and affection and friendship, and he was a little sorry that it was all over. They’d reached The End, and they’d both live happily ever after apart, the only way people as different as they were could live happily ever after. Daisy would go back to dressing like a leaky Magic Marker, and he would go to Prescott.

  Prescott.

  He was really going. Because of Daisy.

  “Let me give you something to thank you.” He took her hand and squeezed it. “You can have anything you want.”

  Daisy hesitated long enough that he bent to see her face better, and then she turned to him. She pulled her hand from his grasp and tugged the daisy ring off her finger and handed it to him, smiling up at him at the same time, which took some of the sting off the move, although not enough. His hand closed around the ring automatically.

  “Just promise me that I’ll never have to see Crawford again,” Daisy said.

  “You’ve got it,” Linc said as the sapphire in the ring cut into his palm. “That I can promise.”

  FIVE

  LINC SPENT THE rest of the spring finishing up loose ends at the university and getting ready to move. He saw Daisy in the apartment foyer and thought about asking her out for pizza or something else mundane that wouldn’t signal “date,” but it seemed better to just keep nodding and moving past her so that he wouldn’t get caught up in the story again. Daisy was a hard habit to kick, he’d discovered, even after only three days. She was sloppy and round and uncontrolled, and she brought warmth and chaos into his life, and he was having a hard time forgetting her. Especially in the middle of the night when he’d remember the motel room. Sometimes the only thing that got him through those middle-of-the-nights was the memory of how awful she could be. She’d brought him more anxiety in the three days he’d spent with her than all the other women he’d ever known put together. But she’d also brought him Prescott. He sent her flowers to thank her before he left. Then he packed and moved to Ohio.

  He bought a small Victorian house Chickie found for him on Tacoma Street about a mile from campus. Linc preferred a more modern look to his housing, but this place had been rented to students for forty years and needed a lot of repair, so it was a bargain, or at least as much of a bargain as any house could be in a college town. The structure was solid and the rooms were airy and the holes in the walls could be fixed with spackle and paint. “I can’t thank you enough,” he told Chickie when she’d shown him through it. “You found me a great deal.”