Free The Cinderella Deal by Jennifer Crusie Page B

bed. “Why can’t I sleep with Caroline someday?”
    So much for fantasy; he was still obsessing on the overbred blonde. “Because she reminds you of your poor dear sister Gertrude.” Daisy pulled back the covers and climbed into her bed. “Chickie would consider it incest.”
    Linc tensed, wariness in every beautiful muscle. “I don’t have a sister named Gertrude.”
    Daisy nodded, enjoying his torment. If she had to look at his body and suffer, then he should have to look into her mind and do the same. It was only fair. “I know. She died young. Tragically. She—”
    “Daisy!”
    Daisy stuck her chin out. “That’s why you hold hands with blond midgets instead of paying attention to your fiancee. I had to explain to Chickie because she thought you were cheating on me in front of me. The way Crawford probably does with her. Understand?”
    Linc froze. “Oh.”
    “You used to call her your little cupcake. She called you Honest Abe.”
    Linc looked confused. “Chickie?”
    “No, dear Little Gertrude.”
    Linc started to laugh, and Daisy had to grin with him. “And Chickie bought this?” he asked her.
    Daisy’s grin faded as she remembered. “She was drunk. She drinks way too much, but it’s because she’s so unhappy. She’d stop if she had somebody to talk to.”
    Line’s grin disappeared too. “Did she tell you that? How much did you talk? What did you tell her? What did you do this afternoon?”
    Daisy stuck her chin out. “We just looked at Prescott. But I can tell. She’s a good person, she’s just so, so lonely.”
    Linc leaned forward. “Don’t get caught up in this story. It’s not true, remember?”
    “I know,” Daisy said.
    He stood up to get ready for bed, and she closed her eyes because he was so near. “I appreciate everything you did today, don’t think I don’t,” he told her. “I know that you were the deciding factor. You got me this job, and I appreciate it.”
    How much?
she thought, and considered asking him to show it, but only for a second. Then sanity returned, and she said, “My pleasure,” and rolled away from him before she did anything dumb.
     
    Once they were on the plane the next day, they both relaxed. “You did it.” Daisy leaned her head back and sighed. “I can’t believe it. You did it. I’m so proud,” she said, and he felt warm because he had done well, which had happened before, and because somebody was proud of him for it, which hadn’t happened in a long time. She looked at him with pride and affection and friendship, and he was a little sorry that it was all over. They’d reached The End, and they’d both live happily ever after apart, the only way people as different as they were could live happily ever after. Daisy would go back to dressing like a leaky Magic Marker, and he would go to Prescott.
    Prescott.
    He was really going. Because of Daisy.
    “Let me give you something to thank you.” He took her hand and squeezed it. “You can have anything you want.”
    Daisy hesitated long enough that he bent to see her face better, and then she turned to him. She pulled her hand from his grasp and tugged the daisy ring off her finger and handed it to him, smiling up at him at the same time, which took some of the sting off the move, although not enough. His hand closed around the ring automatically.
    “Just promise me that I’ll never have to see Crawford again,” Daisy said.
    “You’ve got it,” Linc said as the sapphire in the ring cut into his palm. “That I can promise.”
    ----
FIVE

     
    Linc spent the rest of the spring finishing up loose ends at the university and getting ready to move. He saw Daisy in the apartment foyer and thought about asking her out for pizza or something else mundane that wouldn’t signal “date,” but it seemed better to just keep nodding and moving past her so that he wouldn’t get caught up in the story again. Daisy was a hard habit to kick, he’d discovered, even after only three days. She was