The Cinderella Deal Read online

  Eighteen years alone. Linc shuddered at the coldness of it.

  “I did not love you enough.” Gertrude’s tears were coming faster. “Later, I was better. I was better with Wil and Ken. But I did not love you enough then. I am sorry.”

  “No.” His embarrassment was agony, but much worse was how helpless he was to stop her pain. “No, it’s all right. You were a good mother.”

  She shook her head weakly on the pillow. “No. But now it is all right. You have Daisy. Now you will get all the love I could not give you.” She was openly crying now, the tears rolling down her cheeks, and Linc felt the room begin to swoop. This couldn’t be happening. He had to stop it.

  “Listen.” He grabbed her hand and held on tightly. “You took care of me. I had plenty to eat, and my clothes were always clean, and you never interfered or pushed me or made me feel like I wasn’t a good son. You gave me space to grow up and you took care of me. And I was fine. Really.”

  “You deserved more,” Gertrude insisted, her eyes bright with tears.

  He ran his hand through his hair, unsure of what to say next. “I’m just glad you didn’t die.” He stopped when he realized that was true. And he didn’t want her alone and cold either. “Listen, I don’t like this stuff about you being lonely. Why don’t you move down here? We’ll take care of you.”

  She cried even harder, and he couldn’t understand why, and he sat frozen until Daisy walked in and took the Bible out of his hands.

  “Go away,” she said. “Crying is women’s stuff.” When he didn’t move she looked at him more closely and said, “Breathe, Blaise,” and he sucked in a deep breath. “Now go away.”

  He stood up and she took his place on the bed. She pulled out a tissue and gently blotted Gertrude’s tears away. “I know he’s awful,” she teased, “but you shouldn’t cry like this. You need all the liquid you’ve got; the doctor said so.”

  Gertrude kept crying silently, the tears sliding down her cheeks faster now, and Linc felt like hell.

  “What did you say?” Daisy asked Linc, but she wasn’t accusing him, thank God. “What were you talking about?”

  “My dad.” Linc took another deliberate breath. “And I told her I thought she should move down here so we could take care of her.”

  He watched Daisy’s eyebrows go up in surprise, and then she said, “Of course. That’s a good idea. Go away now. Make some tea.”

  He didn’t understand, but he went downstairs and made tea for all of them and found cookies that Daisy had made that day, and when he went back upstairs half an hour later, he met her coming out of her room.

  “She’s sleeping.” She put her hand on his cheek. “You poor baby. Are you all right?”

  Linc slumped against the wall. “She’s never said things like that before.”

  She let her hand fall from his cheek to his shoulder, and he missed the comfort of her palm on his face. “She’s sick,” Daisy told him. “It makes people feel vulnerable. They say things they keep hidden when they’re feeling strong. Let’s have the tea downstairs.” She took the tray from him and led him back downstairs, and he watched her and remembered his mother’s loneliness, and thought, What am I going to do when she leaves? The thought was so bleak that he even drank tea with her although he hated the stuff.

  Linc’s mother got steadily stronger and never referred to that evening again. But they finished Job, and Linc felt as though a knotted place inside had been freed. It shouldn’t matter now, after all these years, that his mother loved him, had loved him then, and was sorry that she hadn’t loved him more, but it did. For the first time he saw her as a real person with regrets instead of just a demanding shadow in his life, and when he let himself care about her, the world around him became an easier place.

  The last thing she said to him before she left at the end of the week was “Take care of Daisy. She is so good for you.”

  “I will.” He kissed her good-bye gently. “Take care of yourself. If you feel sick again, we’ll come up and get you. Are you sure you don’t want to move down here?”

  “I am sure.” She put her hand on his cheek as she must have seen Daisy do half a dozen times that week. Another surprise. “You must take care of yourself too. You are very pale.”

  “I’m always pale.” He kissed her cheek. “Be careful on the drive home.”

  Daisy heaved a sigh of relief when Gertrude was gone. She liked her, but sleeping with Linc for a week had been too difficult. It wasn’t just that he had a nice, large, hard body, the kind of body a woman could hold on to during great, cataclysmic sex. She’d never actually had great, cataclysmic sex, but she was sure that was what she’d have with Linc. No, it wasn’t just his body, it was more that he was Linc, stubborn, brilliant, kind, rude, fascinating Linc, who scratched Jupiter’s tummy while he watched the game on TV and crooned dumb dog songs to him during the commercials. She’d heard him once singing, “Daisy Blaise had a real dumb dog, and Jupiter was his name/Oh, Ju-Ju-Ju-pi-ter/Ju-Ju-Ju-pi-ter/Ju-Ju-Ju-pi-ter/And Jupiter was his name, oh.” When she’d looked in, Jupiter was on his back in Linc’s lap, waving his legs languidly in all directions while Linc scratched his stomach. They both looked ridiculous and she loved them both so much, she felt tears start in her eyes.

  There were so many layers to Linc, and they were all inside that great body. She definitely had to get out of his bed. And she wasn’t sleeping well. Between her concern for Gertrude and her lust for Linc, it had been a rough week. Well, at least it was all over and they could get back to normal living. She went into the dining room and found Linc sitting at the table.

  “What are you doing? Are you hungry?” she asked, and he turned his pale face to her, and she saw his eyes were dulled. She felt his forehead. It was burning.

  Terrific. “You have the flu. Get into bed. I’ll call Evan. He can proctor your finals.”

  “I’m all right,” he said, and she said, “No, this is contagious. You stay home. Go upstairs.”

  Daisy couldn’t decide whether Linc was sicker than Gertrude, or if it was just that he hated being sick so much that he seemed sicker. She brought him books and tea and soup and the radio and the TV, and he still thrashed around feverishly unless she was in the room with him. She read to him from his history books, and her voice seemed to calm him, the words keeping his mind off his aches until he got so sick, he didn’t care anymore.

  His fever went up, and one night she woke up and found him standing dazed in the hallway.

  “What are you doing?” she scolded him. “Back into bed.”

  “I thought it was midnight.”

  “It’s three-thirty, and even if it was midnight, you’re still not supposed to be wandering around.”

  “I thought you’d gone,” he said, and she realized he’d thought it was Cinderella’s midnight.

  “No. I won’t leave you. Get back into bed.”

  She tucked him back in and he said, “Come in here with me. I’m cold,” and she slipped into bed beside him and held him next to her warmth until he was quiet again.

  In the morning his fever had broken, and hers began.

  Linc still felt like hell the next day, but he knew just by looking at Daisy that she was worse.

  “I can get up.” She pulled weakly at his arm. “You’re still sick.”

  “I’m not that sick.” Linc put his hand on her cheek. “I’m all right. Get back in bed.”

  “No.” She had crawled out of bed and staggered past him out onto the landing. When she turned to go down the stairs, she put out her hand for the rail and missed, and as she fell forward, Linc caught her and picked her up, his heart pounding from the adrenaline rush he’d gotten when she’d started to topple. He carried her into her room and pulled back the covers and made her crawl into bed, and then he popped the thermometer into her mouth.

  “Stay there.” He tucked in the covers tightly around her. “I’ll put water on for tea.”

  He could tell Daisy wanted to argue, but she was too sick.