The Cinderella Deal - Jennifer Crusie [35]
“Oh, good,” Chickie said, but she didn’t sound enthusiastic.
Daisy headed for the door and the phone rang again. She picked it up prepared to tell Linc she was on her way, but a woman answered.
“This is Gertrude Blaise.” Linc’s mother had a voice like unrisen bread.
Daisy heard herself chirping to compensate for the deadness on the other end of the line. “Mrs. Blaise. How nice—”
“I am driving down today but I am not sure of the location of the campus. Could you please arrange for Lincoln to meet me at the Dayton airport at one o’clock? He is not answering his office phone.”
She heard the front door open and turned to see Linc coming in.
“Daisy, we’re late—” he began, and she grabbed him by his tie.
“He just came in the door, Mrs. Blaise,” she told his mother. “But I’ll be able to meet you at the airport. My mother’s coming in at the same time. We can all talk.”
There was a long silence as Linc looked confused and Gertrude thought things over. “Thank you,” she said finally. “That will be most satisfactory.” Then she hung up.
Linc peeled her fingers off his neckwear. “What’s going on?”
Daisy looked at him with undisguised distaste. She was going to spend the Afternoon in Hell while he went out to the college and taught people who couldn’t talk back if they wanted to graduate. “Your mother and my mother are both coming into Dayton this afternoon. Chickie and I will be picking them up, and then we’re going to buy a wedding dress and order a cake. All of us. Together.” She folded her arms and looked at him.
“I’ll make it up to you somehow.” Linc’s eyes were full of sympathy. “I don’t know how, but I’ll find a way.”
The phone rang again. “We have given that number to too many people,” Daisy told him, and went to get her purse while he answered it. When she came back, he said, “The movers aren’t bringing your furniture until Thursday.”
“I’m getting married Thursday.”
“So am I. Maybe we can make them ushers.”
Linc’s mother wasn’t hard to spot at the airport; she looked just like her son. Tall and broad with dark eyes and iron-gray hair that must have once been black like Linc’s, she looked like the kind of woman who would raise repressed sons. She looked like a prison warden right before the big break, sensing the tension in the air. She looked like Linc when he was being a pain in the butt.
“I’m Daisy.” Daisy walked up to her and extended her hand. “And I’m just so pleased—”
“Thank you for meeting me.” Gertrude did not extend her hand, so Daisy transferred the gesture into a wave toward Chickie.
“And this is Chickie Crawford. She’s having the wedding and the reception for us in her garden.”
“We just love your son.” Chickie grabbed for the hand that Daisy hadn’t captured. “Linc is just the sweetest thing.”
She exhaled a lot of gin, and Gertrude looked at her with distaste. “Thank you. I am parked in the short-term parking lot, so if we could go to the hotel now …”
“Oh, no,” Chickie said gaily. “We’re going to pick out Daisy’s dress first.”
“I have to get over to gate thirty-one.” Daisy backed away. “I’m late. My mother—”
“We’ll be right behind you, honey,” Chickie said, and Daisy left the two women together and ran for the other gate, where she found Pansy pacing and checking her watch.
“Oh, Daisy!” Pansy fell on her and cried, her fluffy yellow curls bobbing with her sobs. “My baby.”
“Easy, Mom. I’m all right.”
“You’re getting married.” Pansy hung on Daisy, looking up from her five feet two inches at the giant of a daughter she’d borne.
“You’re going to love him, Mom. He’s a nasty-looking Yankee. A carpetbagger if I ever saw one.”
“Did he just sweep you off your feet?” Pansy had pulled back and was clasping Daisy’s shoulders, looking up into her eyes. “Do you just love him to death?”
“Absolutely,” Daisy said, and stopped when she realized she sounded like Linc. She waved her ring hand at her mother. “Isn’t my ring cute?”
“He got you pearls,” Pansy said in