The Cinderella Deal (23 page)

“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 never wore 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.

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 1‘ 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. “Nerves. Don’t say anything. She’s terrified.”

Bill squinted at her and frowned. “Why is she dressed like Morticia Addams?”

“I don’t know.” Linc spread his arms helplessly. “She’s been nuts for a couple of weeks now. I can’t wait until this is over and things go back the way they were.”

“Don’t count on it.” Bill grinned at him. “Daisy’s a hit. We’re almost sold out already. I’ve had a couple of offers on your portraits too. Huge offers. Will you sell?”

“My portrait? Absolutely not.” Linc grinned, remembering Christmas. “It was my second-best Christmas present.”

“The first one must have been a beauty,” Bill said. “How about the other one?”

“What other one?”

“Whichever one isn’t your present. I know they’re a set, but I can still find a buyer for one.”

“There was another portrait?”

Bill jerked his thumb to the back wall, and Linc turned to see where he pointed.

His black and white portrait was there, and in that one he still looked distinguished, intelligent, and powerful. But next to it was one done in yellow and orange, a mirror image to the cold gray portrait. Instead of a gray-suited body, Daisy had painted him in the nude, in fluid slashing strokes, laying in the flat muscular planes of his body in hot slabs of paint that glowed on the canvas. It was as abstract as the first painting, and thank God, the torso ended at the bottom of the canvas, just above his hips, but he was undeniably naked. The face was the worst part. It was him, all right, but all the dignity of the first portrait had been replaced with passion and heat. She’d picked out the lights in his eyes and hair with red, and he flamed on the canvas. He was distinguished, intelligent, and powerful in the first painting, but in this one he was passionate, seething, and erotic. If he’d seen it in the privacy of her studio, he’d have made love to her on the floor under it because she saw him like this. In the glare of the gallery, with everyone in Prescott looking at him, he wanted to kill her.

Julia came up beside him. “You never looked like that with me.”

Julia was the last thing he needed. “Shut up.”

She stepped back. “You can’t possibly be upset about this. That is a great painting.”

“Well, when she paints you in the nude, we’ll hang it here too.”

“She can paint me in the nude anytime she wants.” Julia frowned at him. “I thought you’d loosened up.”

He couldn’t take his eyes from the portrait. Imagine when Crawford saw it. “I am never going to get that loose.”

“Guess what!” Daisy materialized out of the crowd, bouncing with joy. “Bill just showed me the sales slips. He’s sold almost everything. I’m a hit. Isn’t that wonderful? Why are you frowning.”

He turned to glare at her. “I don’t like surprises.”

“What surprises?” Daisy scowled at him, back to her normal self. “What’s wrong?”

“The other portrait.” Linc nodded to the back wall, almost too angry to speak.

Daisy turned around, and he watched the color drain from her face. “That wasn’t supposed to be here. That was private.”

“Then how did it get here?”

“Bill must have found it. I told him he could have anything in the studio. I forgot. I was nervous and I forgot.” She turned back to him, bloodless with panic.

Linc closed his eyes. “You forgot. How the hell could you forget something like that?”

“Linc.” Daisy’s voice was desperate. “I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry.”

“I know you’re sorry.” His voice was cold, and he watched as she winced under his words as if they were slaps, so angry he didn’t care. “But I’m the one who has to face these people. I have
students
here.”

“I’m sorry.” Her voice was so low, he could barely hear her.

“We’ll talk about it later.” He turned away and came to face-to-face with an older man of about his height and coloring. “Excuse me.” Linc pushed past him and walked away.

“Well, Linc, my boy.” Crawford caught him, frowning as he jerked his head toward the portraits. “Not quite the image I had of you.”

Here we go
. “Well, sir, Daisy sees a different side of me.”

“I think it’s lovely.” Chickie held on to her drink for dear life and beamed at Linc. “Daisy’s so talented. You must be very proud.”

“Shut up, Chickie,” Crawford said savagely. “You don’t know squat. That dumb woman may have wrecked his career with that piece of porn.”

Chickie buried her face in her glass, and Linc stopped thinking about himself and thought about what an ass Crawford was. “It’s not pornography. Daisy’s an artist. She—” He broke off when he saw Crawford stare past his shoulder. He turned and found Daisy beside him with the older man he’d passed before at her side. Beyond him was a thin, elegantly dressed older woman and two younger carbon copies, all with disappointed mouths and thin eyebrows.

Daisy was blue-white pale, and her eyes were like coals. “Chickie, Linc, Dr. Crawford, this is my father, Gordon Flattery, my stepmother, Denise Flattery, and my stepsisters, Melissa and Victoria.” She drew a deep breath. “Dr. Crawford is dean of liberal arts here, Father. And Chickie Crawford arranged my wedding. It was beautiful.” She smiled at Chickie with tears in her eyes. Chickie smiled back just as woefully.

“Dr. Crawford.” Gordon Flattery shook hands firmly while he and Crawford nodded eye to eye. “Lincoln.” Linc’s hand was also firmly pressed. “Mrs. Crawford.” Chickie got a dignified nod. “I’m pleased to meet you all.”