The Cinderella Deal - Jennifer Crusie [11]
Daisy transferred her beam to the clerk. “He’s so good to me. I can’t think why Mama and Daddy don’t like him.”
The clerk shook his head in disgust and went to ring the sale.
Daisy met Linc’s eyes as innocently as she could.
He wasn’t amused. “Listen, cupcake, you’re cute, but there’s no way you can pass for eighteen. Stop causing problems.”
Daisy smiled at him sunnily. “You haven’t seen anything yet. That guy thinks I’m underage. You pervert.”
Linc scowled harder. “Part of the deal is that you cooperate.”
“In Prescott,” Daisy pointed out. “We’re not in Prescott yet.”
Back at the car, Linc held the door for her and checked his watch, frowning. Evidently they were off his timetable. Daisy gritted her teeth; she hated schedules because all they produced was efficiency and guilt, two of her least favorite things. And Linc didn’t help things any when he got in the car and said, “Can we get a dress without you losing your grip on reality?”
Daisy met his eyes. “You never know.”
“That’s what I hate about this,” Linc said, and put the car in gear.
Shopping for a dress took exactly fifteen minutes. Daisy pulled Linc into a thrift shop and took a white-on-white embroidered rayon dress off a sale rack at the back of the store. She walked toward him, watching as he surveyed the place, realized everything in it was used, and said “No,” but she was ready for him. She’d been hanging out with him for only a very short time, but already she knew him like a book.
“Trust me,” she said. “I tried this on once and put it back because it makes me look like a dweeb-brained virgin. It’ll go great with the ring.” She surveyed him with contempt. “It’ll fulfill all your fantasies, Daddy.”
The thrift store clerk looked at Linc with disgusted interest.
“Stop that,” Linc told her, and bought the dress, as she knew he would, just to get them out of the store.
From there they went to a basement deli near the college for sandwiches. Daisy sat across from Linc and watched him eat, exasperated with him because of all he stood for, including white clothes and daisy rings. “So, tell me what I need to know to be your fiancée. What were you like as a kid? Where did you grow up?”
“A little place in Ohio. Sidney.” Linc bit into his reuben sandwich with a great deal of enjoyment, and Daisy suddenly remembered Julia talking about how enthusiastic he was in bed. Stop it, she told herself. Remember the car. “Sidney who?”
Linc shook his head and swallowed. “No, that’s the name of the town. We were the Sidney Yellow Jackets. I still have my football jacket if you want to wear it. Crawford would think that was great.”
Daisy frowned. “Yellow Jackets? Like bees?”
He nodded. “Our colors were black and yellow.”
Daisy stared at him, incredulous while he attacked his sandwich again. “The Killer Bees from Sidney, Ohio?”
He was unperturbed. “Hey, I got a football scholarship.”
Daisy shook her head and picked up her own sandwich. It was turkey on sourdough and much healthier than Linc’s reuben, which must have had at least four thousand fat grams, which for some reason did not make her turkey look any less boring next to it. “My husband, the Killer Bee,” she said, thinking resentful thoughts about corned beef.
Linc went on, oblivious to her. “Ohio is a big football state.”
“Does that make me the queen bee?”
“As a matter of fact, my scholarship was to Ohio State.”
“Which would make you a drone.”
“It wasn’t a great scholarship.”
“It would explain why you’ve got such boring taste.”
“But it didn’t really matter, because I had a full ride on an academic scholarship.”
Daisy got a faraway look on her face. “We could live in a little cottage called The Hive.”
Linc stopped. “Are you listening to me?”
Daisy batted her eyes at him. “Of course, my darling. You were a football hero and got a full ride to Ohio State. You dated the homecoming queen, you were president of your senior class, you were voted most likely to succeed, and your teachers adored you. And you lost your virginity as a sophomore after the first football