The Cinderella Deal - Jennifer Crusie [29]
Oh, yeah. So good Booker had nailed him at the beginning. Linc sighed. “Why didn’t you tell Crawford?”
“Because I wanted to hire you.” Booker set his glass down, exasperated. “I wanted a good teacher in the department, someone with research experience. Your publication is sterling and your teaching evaluations are even better. And you’re working on a new book, aren’t you?”
Linc gave up being surprised. “Yes. How’d you know?”
Booker shrugged. “Anybody we hired, I was going to have to live with for a long time. I looked into you.”
Linc went back to the obvious. “Then you knew I wasn’t engaged when you asked me.”
“I hadn’t heard about a fiancée, but I wasn’t asking about one either. I don’t give a damn whether you’re married or not. That’s Crawford’s question. I just asked you about it because it makes him happy.”
“You must have really enjoyed the weekend we spent here.” Linc tried to remember how Booker had reacted.
“Almost as much as I enjoyed hearing what your book was about. Nineteenth-century birth control as subversive feminism. Crawford’s going to have a coronary when he finds out.” Booker laughed. “I’m going to enjoy that.”
Linc thought about getting annoyed and decided it wasn’t worth it. “Not if I’m not here to write it.”
Booker waved that off. “You’ll be here. You signed a contract. And Crawford will forgive all when you get what’s-her-name, Daisy, back here.”
Nobody was listening to him. “What’s-her-name isn’t coming back here.”
“You won’t make full professor without her.” Booker leaned back in his chair. “Crawford likes faculty wives. Especially attractive faculty wives. And he has grave suspicions about single men in their thirties.”
Linc rolled his eyes.
“I know,” Booker said. He stretched out his hand and snagged the bottle again. “I told you, he’s a fool. But he’s a powerful fool. Get her back.”
Suppose she did come back … Linc sipped his Scotch and let himself openly consider the idea for the first time, hating how much he liked it. There were many good reasons why the whole thing was a bad idea, reasons that mainly featured Daisy’s mouth and Daisy’s body, but the truth was, he missed her. He wanted to show her Prescott and the house and watch her face and see her smile and—
Booker picked up the phone. “I’ll call you a cab.”
Daisy carefully painted in the tiny pink dress that made Rosa Parks stand out like a beacon on the crowded bus. She moved the brush back to the china plate she was using as a palette and picked up a deeper rose to paint in the pleats in Rosa’s skirt, and then she stopped and sighed. Liz twitched an ear at her sigh, and Annie jerked her head around, but nothing else changed. Daisy stared at the painting, one she really believed in, one she really wanted to do, one she really didn’t want to do. Part of her genius was her attention to detail, but it was the part of her genius that was starting to make her nuts. She suddenly wanted to paint Rosa large, in big, juicy slashes of paint, but that would have been ridiculous. She couldn’t tell detailed stories in big, juicy slashes, and stories were her life. Except she didn’t like her life anymore. I need a change, she cried silently, but it was the same old cry and there was no change coming, so she took a deep breath and painted the first pleat.
Then she heard the outer door slam shut, and seconds later somebody pounded on her door.
Liz and Annie both looked at her. “Maybe this is it,” she said to them. “Maybe we’re getting a new life.” She put down her brush and went to answer the knock.
He was thinner than she remembered, but he had the same handsome face, the same tapering hips, the same stereo he’d stolen from her months before. “I don’t believe this,” she said, and slumped against the doorframe. “Derek, what are you doing here?”
“Hello, baby.” Derek beamed at her and held up the stereo with the two small speakers stacked on top. “I brought you this.”
“Thank you.” Daisy took the stereo stack from him. “Now,