The Cinderella Deal Read online

  Linc came home late one day in January a week before Daisy’s gallery show and found her sitting at the bottom of the stairs, her face pale with shock. He dropped his briefcase and went to her, pulling her close to him. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  “It’s my father,” she said dully. “My mother wrote him about the show. She was so proud I finally did something he’d like that she wrote him to brag about it. He’s coming. With my stepmother. And my stepsisters. He wants to meet you. He’s heard about your book.” She took a deep breath and looked at him. “He approves of me. After all these years.” She sounded bitter and hurt and Linc wanted to kill her father.

  “The hell with him. Write and tell him not to come.”

  “No.” She swallowed. “You have to meet him sometime. And if they come during the show, we’ll be too busy to have to spend much time with them. This is best.”

  Linc took the letter from her and read the typewritten lines. It was cold and impersonal and ended with the hope that she had matured over the years and that her new husband, a man respected in his field, had had a beneficial influence on her appearance and behavior.

  “Your father’s a jerk.” He threw the letter in the hall wastebasket. “Stick with Pansy.”

  “That’s what I’ve done all my life.” Daisy stared dully at the door in front of her. “I have to face him sometime. He’s my father.” She got up and walked upstairs, and Linc watched her go, helpless to ease her hurt.

  I will never shut my child out like that, he thought, and realized that it was the first time he’d ever thought about a real child, not some well-pressed fantasy. A curly-headed baby with Daisy’s smile. He thought about following her up the stairs and suggesting they start one now, but he knew it was too soon. After this show was over and their lives were back to normal, he and Daisy were going to have to do some serious talking about their future. But not now. She had enough to think about with her show and her father.

  He went in and found her sitting on the edge of their bed, and he put his arms around her and pulled her down onto the comforter with him, and she said, “I love you like nothing else in this world.” And he comforted her.

  Daisy made Julia go shopping with her for a dress for her opening at Bill’s gallery. Then over Julia’s protests, she bought a plain, high-necked black linen dress with fitted sleeves that made her look chic and adult.

  “That dress is not you.” Julia crossed her arms and scowled. “You’ve never worn anything that conservative in your life. I saw a boutique down the street. They had tie-dyed chiffon. Let’s go.”

  “No.” Daisy admired her black starkness in the mirror. “I look like a real person in this. Not even my father could complain about this. This is something Caroline would wear.”

  Julia made a face. “Why would you want to wear what she’d wear? She’s so conservative, she doesn’t wear colors.” Then Julia saw the light. “Ah. Just like Linc. Daisy, you dummy, Linc likes you in colors. You don’t have to dress like him.”

  Daisy turned sideways in the mirror. The black made her look slender. Sophisticated. Serious. “This is a real dress for a real adult. I’m buying it.”

  “That’s the most boring dress I’ve ever seen,” Julia said flatly, but Daisy bought it anyway. It made her look like Daisy Blaise, and that was all that mattered.

  TEN

  DAISY THREW UP the night of the opening. She sat on the bathroom floor in black lace underwear and shuddered with fear. All those people. Her paintings. Her father. She’d been so paralyzed with fear for the past week that she hadn’t painted. Bill had come over with a couple of his employees to pick up her work, and she’d told him that her paintings were in the studio. Then she’d sat down on the couch and put her head between her knees.

  “Nerves,” Bill had said. “Happens a lot. Leave it to me. I’ll get everything.” And he had, even the collages from the hall. He’d even come back to take pictures of the cherubs in the bathroom and the trompe l’oeil in the kitchen. Everything she had ever done was going to be at this show. She felt naked when she thought about it.

  Pull yourself together, she lectured herself. Be an adult. You’re acting like Daisy Flattery. Grow up. Right. She stood and brushed her teeth. There was something about brushing your teeth that was civilizing. Very Daisy Blaise. She tried to tell herself a story about Daisy Blaise, about her hugely successful gallery show and even more successful marriage, but it didn’t work. Daisy Blaise was reality, and the show could flop, and her marriage was wonderful but asked her to be something she wasn’t, and she wasn’t sure she could cope much longer, and—worst of all—she couldn’t make a story about it.

  When she left the bathroom, Linc was waiting on the landing.

  Daisy was wearing something that looked like a black lace bathing suit that didn’t have a bottom, and she had on black bikinis underneath it, and Linc felt dizzy just looking at all that black lace on the body he loved. “Well, that’s interesting,” he said. “How does it come off?”

  “Hooks.” Daisy moved past him into the bedroom. “Lots of hooks. You can play with it after the show.”

  Linc moved into the doorway and watched her slip on her stockings, smoothing them over her full calves and thighs. “I may not be able to wait until after the show. Have I ever told you how beautiful you are?”

  “All the time.” She smiled up at him faintly. “Usually I’m undressed when you mention it.”

  “That’s because every time I get near you, I undress you.”

  “I love you.” She stopped fumbling with her garters and looked up at him, and her voice was intense. “I really love you. More than anything or anyone. I’ll be anything you need me to be.”

  Linc tried to pull himself out of the haze the black lace had brought on. She was telling him something important here, and he wasn’t getting it. “I don’t need you to be anything but Daisy Blaise.” Her face crumpled a little, so he moved to the bed and pulled her onto his slap. “Don’t be scared, Magnolia. Everything’s going to go fine tonight. You’re a terrific painter, and after tonight everybody will know that.”

  “I know.” Daisy scrambled off his lap. “Wait until you see this dress.”

  He watched her bend over to finish her garters and felt the buzz return. “I’m already crazy about the underwear.”

  Daisy pulled on a black lace slip, smoothing it over her hips, and he wanted to help her. Then she jerked a dress off the hanger and pulled it over her head, turning her back to him so he could zip her up. It was depressing watching all that warm flesh and black lace disappear as he eased the zipper up, but what went up would come down again, and he could wait.

  Then she turned and held out her arms to show him the dress. “What do you think?”

  Linc had spent a lot of time with a lot of women, and he wasn’t stupid. “You look great,” he said, but he thought, What the hell is she doing in a dress like that? It looks like something Caroline would wear.

  “Good.” Daisy turned to her mirror. “I think I look adult and respectable.”

  “Absolutely,” Linc said. She did look adult and respectable. He hated it. “You ready to go?”

  “I’ll be right down.” She picked up her brush and started on her hair.

  “What are you doing?”

  “My hair. Go on. I’ll be down in a minute.”

  Linc left, feeling very uneasy, and he felt worse when she came downstairs. She’d pulled her hair back into a tight knot on her neck. The black velvet bow that kept her curls imprisoned framed her face like black wings. She looked pale and forbidding and cold and unhappy.

  “Daisy,” he began, and then stopped. It was her night. If that was the way she wanted to look, that was the way she could look. “Let’s go, Magnolia. You look great.”

  The gallery was full when they got there, and Bill grabbed Linc as he and Daisy walked through the door. “Where have you been?”

  Linc jerked his head at Daisy, who had moved past them and into the gallery. “Nerv