The Cinderella Deal (8 page)

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
.

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, logical, 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.”