“Ouch.”
“Yeah.” Daisy sighed. “But she still thinks it’s just this error he made, and sooner or later he’ll remember she’s his one true love.” She shrugged.
“Sooner or later? How long has it been?”
“Thirty-three years.”
“Your mother is nuts,” Linc said, and winced. “Sorry. I didn’t mean …”
“I don’t think she’s actually nuts,” Daisy said. “I think she’s just detached from reality. It’s a coping skill.” She met his eyes and read his mind. “I am not detached from reality. I’m perfectly capable of taking short vacations from it, but I always know how to get back.”
“Good. Try not to go on vacation this weekend. What do I call your mother?”
“Pansy.”
Linc looked appalled. “Why?”
“Because that’s her name.”
Linc shook his head in disbelief. “Okay. Your mother is Pansy. What’s she like?”
Daisy thought about her mother. What could you say about Pansy? “She’s little,” Daisy said finally. “Nothing like me. Blond. Cute. Southern. She’d go bananas for this ring.” Daisy narrowed her eyes at him. “She’d go bananas for you too. The big, dark, handsome Yankee come to steal her little magnolia away. Just like Rhett Butler.”
Linc looked quelling. “Frankly, my dear, I never thought of you as a magnolia.”
Daisy didn’t quell. “I never thought of you as a Killer Bee either. The things you find out when you’re engaged to someone. What’s your mother’s name?”
“Gertrude.”
“Gertrude? For real? Gertrude Blaise?”
“Her maiden name was Gertrude Schmidt.”
Daisy nodded. “A German. I knew it.” She sucked in her breath suddenly. “Oh, my God, I can’t possibly marry you.”
Linc put his sandwich down, alarmed. “Why?”
“My name.” Daisy invested the words with as much tragedy as possible.
“Daisy?”
“Daisy Blaise.” She made a retching face. “Disgusting.”
He grinned. “Cute. Sounds like a stripper.”
“Maybe that’s how we met.” Daisy perked up. “I was stripping and—”
“No.”
“Okay, then.” Daisy tried to make her voice reasonable. “How did we meet? We should meet cute.”
“No, we shouldn’t.” Linc pointed a finger at her. “Forget the fiction. We met because we live in the same building. We lie as little as possible.”
“That’s no good. I’ll think of something,” Daisy said, and Linc said, “No, you will not,” and went back to his sandwich.
“Okay.” Daisy pushed her empty plate away, prepared to concentrate. “Brothers or sisters?”
“Two brothers, Wilson and Kennedy. Wil and Ken.”
“Lincoln, Wilson, and Kennedy?”
“Dad believed in role models. What about you?”
“I believe in role models,” Daisy said, getting ready to tell him about Rosa Parks, and then she realized that he meant her family. “Oh. Two stepsisters. Melissa and Victoria. Very chic.”
“Got it.” Linc finished his sandwich and looked at his watch.
Am I boring you? Daisy thought, but all she said was “Anything else you need to know?”
“What do you do for a living?”
Exactly what it says on my card on the mailbox, Daisy wanted to say, but she repressed it. Being around Linc meant repressing a lot. She didn’t like it. “I paint and tell stories. Julia said you wrote a book once. What was it called?”
“The Nineteenth-Century Sporting Event as Social History.”
“Catchy title. Who’s going to play you in the movie?”
Linc looked at her with palpable calm. “Maybe I should just tell everyone in Prescott that you’re mute.”
Daisy grinned back. “I’ll be good.”
“Remember that. What do you paint?”
“Primitives.”
“Primitives?”
Daisy thought about explaining it to him, telling him about the women she painted in the smallest, simplest shapes possible, surrounding them with the tiny details of their lives so that the simplicity became complexity, the way that the simplicity of their lives became complex when you looked at their hopes and fears and dreams and stories. Then she looked at Linc sitting across from her, logical and reasonable, and decided to forget it. This was obviously a man not interested in visual arts or in women’s lives. “It’s hard to explain, but I do them very well.”
Linc nodded, clearly uninterested. “What else? How do you really earn a living?”
“I told you. Painting. Storytelling. I sell jewelry to an upscale craft store. I used to have some savings from when I was a teacher, but that’s all gone now.”
Linc looked nonplused. “How old are you?”
“I’ll be thirty-five in September.”
“You’re thirty-five and you have no career and no steady income.” Linc shook his head. “Who feeds you? The ravens?”
“I do all right.” Reality was not the story Daisy wanted to talk about. “This is your fantasy,” she told him. “I’m just along for the ride until midnight, when I turn into a pumpkin. Why don’t you just tell me your story, and I’ll memorize it, and we’ll be done.”
“Great,” Linc said, and began to talk. It was so much worse than Daisy had imagined, full of plans for a woman in a designer apron and smiling, apple-cheeked children dressed in Baby Gap and a stuffy career in a stuffy town. The man had no imagination at all, and she was stuck in his story. Thank God it was only for twenty-four hours. If anyone had heard her, her storytelling career would have been over forever.
Linc finished the story, feeling much better about the whole situation. Daisy was obviously a bright woman, and his story sounded pretty good as he told it. For the first time, he thought the whole thing might actually work.
“That is without a doubt the worst story I’ve ever heard,” Daisy said.
Linc bit back a reply. He needed her. He was going to have to put up with her for only one night. “Well, pretend you love it while we’re in Prescott.”
“No problem.” Daisy tilted her head a little, dropped her chin, and opened her eyes wide. “I’m just thrilled to be here in Prescott, the cutest little town in Ohio and the perfect place to raise my two point four children, who’ll all be going to Harvard on full academic scholarships. I can’t tell you how excited I am.”
She leaned forward a little and looked up at him under her lashes. He looked straight down the graceful line of her throat and into the gaping neckline of her ridiculous yellow dress and saw full, creamy curves. He jerked his startled eyes up to meet hers. She had a body. He’d missed that in all the clothes and the scowling, but she wasn’t scowling now. She was smiling at him dreamily, the killer smile that had laid Guthrie low, her lips parted and soft. A wave of lust rolled over him. She’s nuts and she’s messy and she irritates the hell out of you, he told himself, but all he could see were those curves and that wide, lush smile.
“I can’t wait,” she repeated, and Linc said, “Stop that,” and she laughed.
Linc stood up just to get away from her. “Come on, Magnolia. I have to get back to school.”
When they were outside, Daisy rolled her eyes at the car again, but she behaved herself until they were halfway home, which gave him some time to recover. Then she put her hand on his arm and pointed. “Can we stop up there for a minute? Just a minute?”
He looked ahead to where she was pointing, at a craft boutique. It didn’t seem like much to ask, and it would get her out of the car for a few minutes while he got his mind back where it belonged. “Sure.” He checked the rearview mirror and pulled over. “Don’t take too long. I have to teach in forty-five minutes.”
Daisy nodded, took a deep breath, got out of the car, and walked into the store.
Linc watched her through the big plate-glass window and relaxed. When her mouth wasn’t open and irritating him, and he
r dress wasn’t gaping and inflaming him, Daisy Flattery was cute. He watched her trek up to the counter, her ridiculous long skirt making her look like a kid playing dress-up. She asked for something, and the guy behind the counter leaned on the register, bored, and shook his head. Daisy said something else, and he shook his head again. Linc glanced at his watch and looked back at the guy. He was sneering. What was it with her? First Derek, now this guy. This woman has an absolute affinity for jerks, he thought, and got out of the car.
“Look, Howard.” Daisy faced the store owner and tried to be tough. And mature. Mature was important. “You sold the last of my jewelry two weeks ago.”
“I told you.” Howard pressed his lips together with exaggerated patience. “Checks at the end of the month.”
“But you didn’t give me a check at the end of last month,” Daisy pointed out. “And some of my pieces were sold by then.”
“Checks at the end of the month.” Howard looked up and beamed, and Daisy turned to see who had come in.
It was Linc, looking prosperous in his expensive suit. Linc, looking sort of big and dangerous, like a hit man. Only protective, which was nice. A big, dangerous, protective hit man.
Howard’s voice oiled out from behind the register. “Can I help you, sir?”
The heck with mature. She’d never been any good at mature anyway. “You’re in trouble, Howard,” she told him, hooking her thumb over her shoulder at Linc. “This is my brother from New Jersey.”
THREE
LINC AND HOWARD looked at her, stunned.
Daisy nodded solemnly at Howard. “He doesn’t like me much, but he believes fair is fair, and he’s against people who cheat innocent, hardworking women. I told him you wouldn’t pay me even though you’d sold my stuff. I’m sorry, Howard, but a woman’s got to do what a woman’s got to do.”
“Daisy.” Linc’s voice was cold with warning.
“Don’t break his fingers, Linc,” Daisy pleaded, not taking her eyes off Howard. “He’s not a bad guy. He’ll give me the money.”
“Who are you trying to kid?” Howard sneered at her again.
“Wait a minute.”
Daisy shot a glance at Linc. He’d turned his icy stare to Howard. Oh, good.
“There’s no need to insult her,” Linc told him. “If you owe her the money, pay her, but whatever you do, treat her like a lady.”
Daisy felt warm all over. She’d never had a brother before. It was great.
Howard transferred his sneer to Linc. “Hey, she knows how this works.”
“If you owe her the money—” Linc began again.
“I don’t know who you really are, buddy,” Howard interrupted, “but …”
Buddy? Daisy watched Linc’s face darken. Thank you, Howard, for being a consistent jerk, she thought. An equal opportunity jerk. A jerk for all seasons.
“Give her the money, Howard,” Linc said.
Daisy stole another glance at Linc. He looked mad. Big and mad. And it was all for her. Oh, good. Oh, really good.
“What?” Howard stepped back.
“I said, give her the money.” Linc put both hands on the counter and loomed over him. “Pretend it’s the end of the month and give her what you owe her.”
Daisy looked at Howard, expecting him to sneer again, but he didn’t. He was looking at Linc with healthy respect. And Linc wasn’t looking much like a college professor, not with that jaw. He was looking like a thug with a very short fuse. She heard the register chime, and Howard shoved a handful of bills at her.
She counted it. “This is only seventy. You owe me a hundred and twenty, Howard.”
“You’re wasting our time, Howard,” Linc said.
Howard shoved some more bills at Daisy.
Daisy counted some more. “This is too much.” She put some of the bills back on the counter. “Now we’re even.”
“Great,” Howard said, never taking his eyes off Linc.
“Well, I think so,” Daisy said.
Out in the car, Daisy looked at Linc proudly. “My brother from Jersey.”
Linc closed his eyes and wondered if there was insanity in his family. First “Yes, I have a fiancée” and now “Yes, I’m her brother from New Jersey.” At least this time he hadn’t actually said anything. This one wasn’t his fault. He turned and glared at Daisy. “Don’t ever do that again.”
Daisy bounced a little on the seat as she looked at the bills fanned out in her hand. “That was terrific.”
He pulled out into traffic and then looked at her, bouncing with happiness, and he was torn between killing her and jumping her, which only increased his annoyance. “Not ever again.”
She beamed over at him. “You were great.”
He glared at her harder. “I mean it. Not ever again.”
“All right.” Daisy clutched her money and smiled at him, content. “Not ever again. My brother from Jersey is now dead.”
He moved into the fast lane and picked up speed. What the hell did she think she was doing in there? What the hell did he think he was doing in there? Linc shook his head. The woman was a menace. Still, she didn’t deserve the way that jerk had treated her. Whatever else Daisy Flattery did, he was sure she didn’t ask for anything she didn’t deserve. And Howard had been kicking her around just because he could. Linc hated bullies, having run across quite a few of them in his youth, people who thought because you were poor it was all right to push you around. It wasn’t, and telling Howard that it wasn’t had felt great. Making Howard’s sneer disappear like dirty snow in the rain hadn’t been the intelligent, mature, responsible thing to do, but it had been satisfying. And fun—
No, it hadn’t. He stopped for a red light and glared at Daisy again. “Don’t ever do that again.”
She rolled her eyes, exasperated. “All right.”
Linc made a sound between a groan and a snarl and stepped on the gas as the light turned green.
“You know,” she said a few minutes later as he pulled into the driveway at their house, “I don’t think you appreciate me.”
“You’re an acquired taste.” He got out and held the car door open for her. “And unfortunately, we’re not going to be together long enough for me to acquire that taste.”
“That’s not unfortunate.” Daisy took his hand as he levered her out of the low-slung car seat. “Just because you acquired a taste for me doesn’t mean I’d let you indulge it. You’ve just saved yourself a lot of frustration.”
Linc looked down at her, fed up. “Trust me. If I acquired a taste, you’d let me indulge. I’m irresistible.” He met her eyes, ready for battle, and she smiled at him, that bone-melting smile. Combined with the surge of adrenaline he’d gotten from rescuing her from Howard and the surge of lust he got every time he looked down her dress, her smile wiped all thought temporarily from his mind and breathing was suddenly difficult.
“Don’t do that,” Linc said.
“Don’t underestimate me,” Daisy said.
“That would be a mistake,” Linc agreed, and got in the car without looking at her again.
On the plane the next day, Linc was relieved to see that Daisy was a different woman. She sat quietly in her white dress with her ankles crossed and her chin down, and she didn’t say a word. During the takeoff, she’d held his hand, and he’d though that it was a nice touch until he noticed her hands were like ice and her knuckles were white. She was cutting off the circulation to his fingers.
“Are you scared?”
Her voice was only one notch above a whisper. “I hate flying.”
“Why didn’t you say so?”
“One thousand dollars.”
“Flying is statistically safer than driving, so you can relax.” Linc pried her fingers loose. “Concentrate on the money. Your rent is paid, by the way. I sent it directly to Guthrie so he wouldn’t evict you while we were gone.”
Daisy clenched her hands in her lap. “I know you paid it. He called.”
Linc winced. “I should have though
t of that. I suppose he thinks I’m keeping you. Did he threaten to evict you for immoral behavior?”
Daisy shook her head a little. “No. I’m not sure, but I think he offered to take over for you if things didn’t work out between us.”
“What?”
“I think he propositioned me. I’m not sure. He hems and haws a lot.”
“The creep.” Linc took her hand again and thought about what louses men could be to defenseless women like Daisy. “Would you like me to break his fingers?”
Daisy rolled her eyes at him. “Linc, he knows you’re not my brother from New Jersey.”
“I’ll break his fingers anyway, the old goat.” Linc was outraged. Poor Daisy. She was such a nice kid.
He stopped. The story was working. Daisy wasn’t a nice kid; she was a hippie from hell. But she had even him thinking she was a sweet little thing. He looked down at her. She did look sort of gormless, sitting there with one hand curled in her lap, the other crushing his again whenever they hit an air pocket.
“Did he upset you?”
“Guthrie?” Daisy shook her head and loosened her grip. “Oh, no. I just don’t like flying.” After a couple of minutes during which no air pockets attacked the plane, she peered up at him. “How about you? Are you nervous about the speech?”
“No.” Linc thought about the speech and the party afterward and shifted in his seat.
“Well, then, what are you nervous about?”
“What?”
He looked down at her, annoyed, but she met his eyes calmly, and he realized he wasn’t breathing again. He drew in a deep breath through his nostrils, and Daisy said, “I hate it when you do that. If you don’t want to talk to me, don’t, but don’t flare your nostrils at me like William F. Buckley—”
“What? I’m not flaring my nostrils—”
“—because that’s just rude.”
“—I’m breathing.”
Daisy didn’t look convinced, so he went on. “When I get tense, I hold my breath. It’s a bad habit, so I concentrate on breathing deliberately through my nose to make sure I don’t pass out.”
Daisy blinked at him. “You’re kidding. You forget to breathe?”
The Cinderella Deal Page 4