The Cinderella Deal (20 page)

“How are you?” Linc asked her when she woke at noon that day. He sat down beside her on the bed, holding a tray on his lap.

“I’m fine.” Daisy leaned her head forward. “Feel.”

He put his hand on her forehead, and all the tension went out of him when it was cool under his hand. He put the thermometer in her mouth. “If you’re normal, you’re well,” he said, and then he laughed. Daisy was never normal.

When he took the thermometer out a minute later, she said, “That’s not soup, is it?”

“Chicken noodle. Excellent for invalids. Ninety-eight point six. Good girl, Magnolia.”

Daisy looked mulish. “I want a hamburger with onions and pickle and mustard and tomato.”

“A hamburger? Daize, I don’t think—”

Daisy set her jaw. “I want french fries. I want onion rings. I want a large, large Coke. I want a chocolate milk shake. I want a hot fudge sundae.”

Linc started to laugh. “No. You’ll get sick again. Start small. I’ll go get you a hamburger and a Coke, and while I’m gone, you eat the soup.”

“I don’t want the soup.” Daisy scowled.

When he was gone, she poured half the bowl of soup into the toilet and flushed away the evidence of her rebellion. Then she went into the studio.

The portrait of Linc stared back at her, roughed in on the canvas, massive and brooding in gray and white and black. He looked powerful and cold and confident, the Linc she saw every day. The portrait was going to be terrific, she knew that just from the beginnings, and she couldn’t decide why it depressed her so much.
You’re just weak from the fever,
she told herself, and went back to bed to wait for her hamburger.

“Did you eat your soup?” Linc asked her when he got back, and she said, “No, I poured it in the john.” She wolfed the hamburger, washing it down with the bubbly Coke with visible pleasure. When she handed him the empty paper cup, she said, “Now I feel like a real person again.”

“You were always a real person. Don’t get out of bed for a while. You were sicker than Mom and I, so it’s going to take you longer. Sleep, so you don’t have a relapse.”

He waited until she’d obediently closed her eyes and he could hear her breathing slowly and steadily. Then he went downstairs to deal with the chaos left by their illnesses. They had bills, and yard work, and cleaning, and people coming to stay for Christmas in four days.

But when he looked into things, there was no chaos. Daisy had made a note of all the things she’d done while he was sick. She’d paid all the bills ahead of time. She’d sent the dry cleaning out, so all he had to do was pick it up. She’d made Christmas tree ornaments and left them in a box on the buffet. She’d hired Andrew to do the yard work, but when Linc called to ask him how much they owed him, Andrew refused to be paid.

“We all came over and did it together so it was done in a flash. Besides, we wouldn’t take money from you. You’re like family. When can we come back?”

“Come tomorrow,” Linc said, touched. “I’ll get a tree. We’ll put Daisy on the couch to supervise and you all can decorate.”

“Great,” Andrew shouted. “Christmas cookies. Eggnog. There are still three of us here. We’re not going home until Friday. Thank you. Oh, boy.”

“Great,” Linc said, not sure it was. “I’ll get the tree.”

But he didn’t have to. Daisy had ordered a tree and evergreen swags and several bunches of mistletoe from a farmer who called to say he’d be delivering them that afternoon.

“Daisy already ordered a tree?”

“Yep, she ordered all this stuff a couple of weeks ago. Said you were all gonna get the flu or something, and you wouldn’t be around to do it yourselves. How are you?”

“We’ve all had the flu,” Linc said through his amazement. “We’re better now.”

The grocery delivered Daisy’s Christmas dinner order just as Linc hung up the phone with the farmer. A frozen turkey. Lots of bread for stuffing. Red and green sugar for Christmas cookies. Candy canes for the tree. Cranberry sauce.

What had happened to scatterbrained Daisy Flattery? Who was this woman who knew she was going to be sick and planned ahead for it? Not Daisy Flattery, who let the ravens feed her.

Daisy Blaise
, he thought.
My wife. My wife, the adult
.

His throat closed with emotion, and he leaned against the stair post until he got his composure back. Then he heard her moving upstairs and went up to see if she was all right. She was throwing up her hamburger and Coke in the bathroom.

“I told you so,” he said to his wife, the adult. “Now will you have some soup?”

The next day Andrew baked Christmas cookies while Linc and Olivia and Tracy struggled to get the tree straight. Daisy directed them from the couch, and they all finally decided that the tree was just crooked and there was nothing to be done about it.

“I like it better crooked.” Daisy smiled at the tree and cuddled Liz happily. “It has more personality.”

“Just what this house needed,” Linc said. “More personality.”

For tree trims, Daisy had woven little baskets of red and white gingham and filled them with bleached white baby’s breath. She’d made stuffed doves of white velvet, and little stuffed pears of yellow velvet, stuffed gingerbread men and women of brown velvet trimmed in white rickrack and tiny round buttons. But as far as Linc was concerned, the best of the ornaments were quintessential Daisy, little hand-painted salt dough figures of all of them: Andrew in a chefs hat carrying his bowl of chocolate chip cookie dough, Lacey with a paintbrush wearing a dress covered in ivy, Olivia holding a women’s history book and wearing an ERA T-shirt, Tracy sitting cross-legged tickling Jupiter, Evan looking gloomy as he looked at his apple, Julia holding her sides laughing, Bill holding canvases, Chickie beaming and clutching pink roses, Art with a stethoscope and small animals peeping out of all his pockets. Daisy had even done Booker and Crawford looking scholarly and Caroline carrying a microwave stuffed with books. They all looked rounder and cuter than in real life, like elves instead of realistic portraits, but Daisy had caught their personalities and the students were charmed.

“Take them home with you when you go,” Daisy told them. “Merry Christmas from us.”

Linc’s figure had his typewriter under one arm and Jupiter under the other and he was wearing his letter jacket. He kept turning it in his fingers, fascinated by the detail. “How’d you know what the jacket looked like?”

“I found it in your stuff. I tried it on too. It’s really warm.”

Later, when they were all stuffing themselves with warm Christmas cookies and milk, he went upstairs and got the jacket. When he came down, he put it around Daisy’s shoulders as she sat at the table.

“Stay warm,” he said, and went into the kitchen so he wouldn’t have to talk about it. When he came back out, she’d put her arms through the sleeves and was cuddled up in the jacket’s yellow and black bulk, her dark hair tumbling over the huge shoulders like a molten waterfall.

“I want to know how to make these.” Olivia turned her ornament over and over and marveled at the details, so Daisy told them how to mix the salt dough, and then showed them how to make the little sausage figures while Linc watched. It was all warm and comforting, like a family, and it made him a little nervous to be so warm and comforted, but he couldn’t tear himself away.

The next day the students left, and Julia came into town. She stayed at the inn but spent every waking moment with Daisy. Evan began to haunt the house, which Linc didn’t mind, and Art began to drop by every afternoon, which Linc did mind.

“What is he doing here?” he asked Daisy on Christmas Eve afternoon. “The party doesn’t start until seven.”

“He’s a friend. Friends come by anytime.”

“I should have told Caroline that,” he said, and Daisy sniffed.

By eight the house was full of people who were full of good cheer and eggnog. The house looked like a
Better Homes & Gardens
photo spread, the Christmas dinner table looked like a Norman Rockwell magazine cover, and Daisy looked like a witch-queen in a long, low-cut green velvet dress she’d found at the secondhand clothing store in town. Linc knew it was secondhand because she’d told him when she’d crossed the hall to his bedroom to get help with the zipper. “It sticks,” she said. “I think the last person who wore it jammed it.” He’d eased the zipper up, watching the creamy flesh of her back disappear in the shortening V, noticing that she wasn’t wearing a bra, using all his restraint to keep from reaching around and cupping her breasts. Since then she’d wrapped a thick red curtain rope around her waist and put holly in her hair, and Linc knew he should be wincing at how bizarre she looked, but he couldn’t take his eyes off her.

“That holly should be mistletoe,” he heard Art tell her at dinner, and she said, “That’s in the hall.”

Linc made a note to keep an eye on the hall. And an eye on Daisy. She was drinking a lot, he noted, finishing his own third cup of eggnog. He’d have to watch her.

“I cannot think who you remind me of.” Daisy leaned precariously over Julia to see Evan. She was showing a lot of creamy cleavage, and Linc reminded himself to make a note to tell her not to bend over. “It’s been driving me crazy ever since I met you.” Daisy looked at Julia, who had a peculiar expression on her face. “Have you had too much eggnog, or do you know?”

“Both.” Julia took Evan’s hand in hers.

“Well, who?”

“Eeyore,” Julia said.

“E. York?” Daisy echoed.

“No. Eeyore. From Winnie the Pooh.”

“Oh, my God.” Daisy fell back in her chair and laughed until she got the hiccups.

“Who’s Eeyore?” Evan asked suspiciously.

“Absolutely my favorite childhood character.” Julia looked into his eyes with drunken affection. “I loved Eeyore. I still do.”

“Oh.” Evan didn’t pull his hand away. Linc resisted the urge to tell him there were probably germs on Julia’s hand and poured himself another cup of eggnog. What the hell? He wasn’t driving. Neither were they. Another great thing about Prescott: everybody lived within walking distance.

“I have ivy in my bathroom,” Booker said to Linc. “I don’t think I mind, but I’m constantly surprised when I go in there.”

“Wait until she paints the snakes in.” Linc shook his head at the thought. “There’s one in my bathroom that stares at me while I wash my face.”

“This is just perfect, honey,” Chickie told Daisy. “This is the best Christmas I ever had.”

“I love you, Chickie,” Daisy said a little drunkenly. “I wish you weren’t married to such a—”

“Christmas cookies in the living room,” Linc said loudly. “Not to mention Lizzie Borden and her headless father. And there’s a surprise for everyone on the Christmas tree. Could I see you in the kitchen for a minute, Daisy?”

“No.” Daisy smiled lovingly at him and took his breath away. “But I’ll be good.”

Linc caught Art glaring at him. He glared back.

“Come on, Art,” Daisy said just as brightly as Linc had a few moments before. “Linc, bring some more eggnog. Isn’t this just lovely?”

Daisy put Christmas rock on the stereo and watched while everyone found his or her ornament, and the room became warm with laughter. Such nice people.

“Tell me what to do about Evan,” Julia whispered in her ear. “I can’t get him to make a pass.”

“You’re asking me? I’m
living
with a man who won’t make a pass.” Daisy watched her big, handsome husband talk to Evan and sighed. Then he looked up at her and smiled, and she felt heat all through her.

“Still?” Julia sounded drunkenly sympathetic. “What a waste. Now help me with Evan.”

“I think you’re just going to have to invite yourself home with him.”

“What if he says no?”

Daisy snorted. “Evan is gloomy not insane. Besides, he’s crazy about you.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Daisy grinned at her. “Go get him.”

“Right.” Julia squared her shoulders and marched across the room to her prey.