“What I should have done before we came.” He jerked the dress over her head, peeling it over her arms as she struggled to keep it on. When he had it off, he walked over to the window, opened it, and threw the dress out into the alley.
“Linc!” Daisy went after it, and he caught her. He pulled the bow out of her hair and ran his fingers through her curls until they were as free and full as before, and then he kissed her. “I love you,” he told her. “I screwed up out there for a minute, but I’m smarter now, and I love you. You, not whoever was wearing that damn dress.” And then he kissed her again, harder, trying to bring her back to life, the way it worked in fairy tales.
His mouth was hot on hers, and Daisy gave up trying to argue with him and just leaned into his heat. It felt so good to be out of that awful dress, and even better to be back in his arms. The heat flared in her and she wanted him again, the way she always did, and it was like coming home. “I thought you’d never hold me like this again,” she whispered into his jacket.
“I’m dumb, but I’m not that dumb.” He kissed her hair, and her forehead, and her nose, and then her lips, and she laughed until she felt his mouth on her throat and then her breast, and she wanted to give herself up, but there was still too much between them.
She pulled away from him until his eyes came up to meet hers. “I have to tell you, that portrait being here is probably a by-mistake-on-purpose deal.” He frowned with confusion, and she tried again. “I think I told Bill to take everything in the studio because deep down inside I wanted to people to see the Daisy Flattery part of me. I think the Daisy Flattery part of me just couldn’t take being squelched anymore, you know?”
“I know.” Linc put his arms around her again. “I think the Daisy Flattery part of me is what threw the dress out the window.”
Daisy smiled into his chest, but she had to make sure he understood. “Listen, I’m not ashamed of who I am even if I am weird. And I’m not ashamed of that portrait.”
“I’m not either.” Linc held her tighter. “Anytime I’m feeling depressed, I’m going to go look at it and think, This is what Daisy thinks of you. And then I’m going to jump you.” He bent to kiss her, and she felt dizzy and relieved and turned on, right in the middle of Bill’s gallery. And she didn’t have any clothes. “Linc, what am I going to wear home?”
“I don’t care. Your slip’s nice.” He slid his hand over her breast and inside the slip, and she gave up and pressed against him, but then the door opened.
“I know you wanted to be alone with Daisy,” Julia said, squinting into the darkness from the bright gallery. “But if you’re yelling at her, I’m against it.”
“He threw my dress out the window.” Daisy pulled away from Linc before Julia saw. “He messed up my hair and threw my dress away.”
“Good. That dress stunk on ice.” Julia turned to go.
“Get her coat, please.” Linc pulled Daisy close again in the darkness, sliding his hand down her back to her rear end, pulling her even tighter until she felt how hard he was, and she closed her eyes with pleasure. “She’s shy about walking around in her slip. Also, we’re going home.”
“Why?” Julia stopped in the open doorway. “The party’s just started and it’s great. This is Daisy’s big moment. You can’t go home now.”
Linc’s hands moved over Daisy in the dark, and his hips pulsed into hers, and Daisy couldn’t talk.
Linc could. “We have things we need to discuss.”
Julia snorted. “If they’re the usual things you want to discuss with Daisy, this door has a lock.”
She closed the door behind her when she went, and Linc reached over and flipped the lock closed. Then he turned back to Daisy. “Show me where the hooks are on this Merry whatsit.”
“Widow.” Daisy fought her way through a fog of lust. “Listen, we can’t do this here; my father’s out there.”
Linc slid his hands up her thighs and grabbed the bottom of her slip. “That’s not a father. That’s a sperm donor. Forget him. He’s a mess. Concentrate on me. I’m terrific.”
He pulled her slip over her head, and Daisy shivered at the impact of the cool air and Linc’s hands and felt wonderful. “Pretty sure of yourself, aren’t you?”
“Yes.” Linc’s voice was thick with confidence and lust, and he trapped her against Bill’s desk without hesitation, pressing himself into her until she breathed harder and deeper. “Forget playing hard to get, cupcake. I’ve seen the pictures you painted of me. You think I’m God.” He found the hooks and started undoing them, flipping them open while he bore down on her, and his fingers felt so good against her skin that she gave up even pretending to fight him and let the heat sweep over her, and she thought, I have it all, and then she thought only about him.
Later, dressed in her black coat, Daisy floated through the throng of people, smiling at everyone, buoyed up by the admiration for her work and wrapped in the sure knowledge of Linc’s love. Crawford was livid, her father was disgusted, and her stepmother was supercilious, and Daisy didn’t care. She thought her stepsisters looked envious. Then she looked at Linc and thought, No wonder. It really was better being Cinderella than the stepsisters. You just had to hang on until the happy ending.
She was gone when Linc woke up the next morning, and he panicked for a minute before he found her note on the bedside table: “Gone to see Chickie. Back by eleven. Love, Daisy.”
Love, Daisy.
He put the note in his drawer and got dressed, and took Jupiter out on the lawn and carefully threw sticks for him. And all the while he thought about Daisy and about Daisy’s father.
He could have been that man. If Daisy hadn’t loved him, he could have been like that. Daisy had saved him, and he had almost ruined her. She’d worn that awful dress for him. And last summer he would have thought it was great. Thank God he’d changed.
Olivia and Andrew came by, oddly cautious. “Is Daisy home?”
Linc smiled at them and waved them to sit down. “She’ll be back soon.”
They sat down to wait, and Andrew threw a stick for Jupiter, but Andrew was sloppy and it landed on Jupiter’s blind side, so he sat and looked dopey until Andrew went to show him the stick.
“We really can’t stay too long.” Olivia seemed edgy. “We just came to show her this.”
This was a record album with a picture of five leering musicians on the front. One of them looked vaguely familiar.
“Could Daisy have known these guys?” Olivia’s voice was cautious.
“Daisy knows everybody.” Linc took the album. “Why?”
“There’s a song on here.” Olivia blushed. “The lyrics are inside. We’d better go.” She stood up and yelled for Andrew, and they walked off together.
Linc pulled the lyrics sheet out and skimmed through it until he came to a song called “Daisy Paradise.” The song was explicit, about making love with a dark-haired woman who had a body made for sinking into until the singer died of satisfaction. Linc turned the album back over. The one who’d looked familiar was Derek. He’d made his album.
Linc leaned his head back against the porch pillar and thought about throttling Daisy, and then sanity returned. If any of his ex-lovers ever took up rock, he’d be in the same boat. And anyway, this kind of thing was standard fallout from loving Daisy. There’d be other things in the future that would embarrass him if he stayed with her, so he’d either have to give her up or get used to it.
And giving her up was out of the question.
He thought about Daisy, about everything that exasperated him about her, about everything that disappointed her about him, about everything that made her Daisy, and then he left to make some changes.
When Daisy came home at eleven, she parked the Nazimobile behind a red four-wheel-drive sport van.
“Whose car is that?” she asked as she came up the walk, and then she stopped.
Linc was sitting on the porch steps with Liz, Annie, and Jupiter. The animals were wearing bright red collars, and
Annie screeched her hello, and Jupiter barked and fell off the porch, and Liz opened one eye and then closed it. Linc wore a bright red sweater that matched.
“Color.” Daisy shook her head, blinded by the red.
“Come here.” Linc reached for her, and Daisy stepped back. “Linc, this is the front porch. People can see.”
“Good. Let ’em.” He pulled her down and kissed her and she blushed, but then the old heat started in her again and she relaxed into his warmth and kissed him back. She looked up dazedly and saw Dr. Banks across the street, coming down his walk. He waved, and she blushed even harder, but Linc just waved back.
“What is this?” she asked, and he said, “This is the new Linc.”
“Hey.” She tried to push him away. “I like the old Linc. Leave him alone.”
“He didn’t have enough color in his life. When’s Chickie moving in?”
“She’s not. She got a lawyer. Crawford’s moving out. She’s happier than I’ve ever seen her.”
“Good.” Linc nuzzled her hair. “Your hair smells so good. What do you put on it?”
“Shampoo. You look great in this sweater. Whose car is that?”
“Ours.”
Daisy jerked her head up. “That’s ours?”
Linc grinned. “Well, it’s ours for a test drive. If we like it, it’s ours forever, and we won’t get stuck in the snow anymore.”
Daisy stood to see it better. “Can we drive it around and wave at people? I’ve never had a new car before.”
“Later.” Linc tugged her down into his lap. “First I have to tell you a story.”
“Really?” She snuggled into his arms. “Am I too heavy for your lap?”
“No. Pay attention.” She was so warm, he held her close for a moment and couldn’t speak. Then she looked up at him, and he began.
“Once upon a time there was a prince who was imprisoned in a tower with track lighting.”
“Oh, a true story.”
“Shut up. Then along came a curly-haired witch and set him free. But he wasn’t very happy about it because the witch made him nervous.”
Daisy scowled at him, and he remembered the first time he’d seen her, in that horrible hat, and he laughed.
“Why did she make him nervous?” Daisy demanded.
“Because she was a witch. In fact, he was so nervous about her being a witch that he kept trying to change her into a princess.”
“Dumbbell,” Daisy said, and Linc said, “Exactly. And he couldn’t leave her because they’d made a deal. A Cinderella deal. He had to stay with her until midnight, no matter how weird she acted.”
Daisy stuck her nose in the air. “Must have been embarrassing for the prince.”
“What he minded most was that she kept interrupting his story.”
“Sorry.”
“Then one day the witch turned herself into a princess. She dressed in black and sat quietly and behaved herself. She also stopped telling stories.” He hugged her tighter at the thought. “It scared the prince into fits because by then he’d fallen in love with her.”
Daisy put her face close to his. “Why?”
He grinned and kissed her nose. “Because she was kind and funny and warm and great in bed. She was damn near impossible to tell stories to, though.”
“Well, it’s a long story.”
“We’re almost at the end. So the prince told the princess to change back into a witch, and she did, but they had some more problems because witches and princes are going to run into problems no matter how much they love each other.”
Daisy got very still in his arms, and he held her close.
“Some more problems?” she asked quietly.
“The kids brought us a record. We’ll play it later. Where was I? Oh, yeah. The prince, who was not a complete idiot although he acted like one sometimes, noticed that she wasn’t completely a witch, that she had changed a little bit, maybe for him. And so he decided he could change too. So he bought a red sweater even though he really hated it, and he promised her that if she stayed with him he would never again buy track lighting as long as they both lived. And then he waited for her answer. Oh, and he got her a present.” He tipped her to one side of his lap, and she clung to him until he’d pulled a ring box from his pocket. “I’m not sure about this,” he told her. “I had to guess.”
Daisy wanted to tell him that she didn’t need a present, that it was all right, but he was looking at her with such concentration that she couldn’t. She opened the box. Inside was a chased silver band with freshwater pearls, not the one she’d liked in Pennsylvania, but close.
“It looked like a Daisy Flattery ring,” Linc told her. “I thought you might like it better than the old daisy ring.”
Daisy sat frozen, trying to absorb what he’d done. He must have gone back over every moment they’d had together to remember this; he must have rethought every minute they’d been together. He was giving her a chance to be Daisy Flattery again.
She held out her right hand. “I want them both.”
He held her tightly for a moment, and then he took the ring from the box and slipped it on her right ring finger. “Stay with me, Daisy. Make midnight stay away forever and live with me and have babies with me and adopt some more defective animals with me, and live happily ever after with me.”
“I love you,” Daisy whispered. “I couldn’t possibly ever leave you.”
He kissed her then, and she curled into him, holding him close in the bright spring sun, feeling so safe and loved and warm in his arms that she didn’t care who saw or what they thought.
“Actually,” Linc said into her neck, “for the complete experience of what happily-ever-after feels like, we have to go inside. The neighbors have taken just about all the public happily-ever-after they can stand without calling the police.”
Much later, Daisy moved against him drowsily, just enough to wake him up. “I forgot to ask. Does that car come with air bags?”
“Probably,” Linc said sleepily into her hair. “Why are you thinking of air bags now?”
“Make a note to ask the dealer.” Daisy snuggled closer to him and smiled up at him with such megawatt contentment that she took his breath away. “I want to keep us as safe as possible. I want all the happily-ever-after I can get.”
Looking for more classic romance from bestselling author Jennifer Crusie? Then don’t miss…
Trust Me
on This
By
JENNIFER CRUSIE
Coming from Bantam in December 2010
Dennie Banks is a serious reporter hot on a story, not a con man’s moll. Alec Prentice is a clever undercover agent, not a dumb male chauvinist hunk. Dennie and Alec can’t quite read each other because they have ulterior motives. Thank goodness their hormones keep getting in the way. Eventually they are going to get to know each other, whether they want to or not.
The Cinderella Deal is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
2010 Bantam Books Mass Market Edition
Copyright © 1996 by Jennifer Smith
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Bantam Books,
an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group,
a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
BANTAM BOOKS and the rooster colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Bantam Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., in 1996.
eISBN: 978-0-553-90745-2
www.bantamdell.com
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