The Cinderella Deal - Jennifer Crusie [40]
The more she thought about it, the more enthusiastic she became. It would be like a huge detailed painting, only it would be a house. It could be fun. It really could all work out.
She fought back her rising panic. She could make it work.
Linc watched her, her brow furrowed as she thought. I’ve got to be more careful of her, he thought. One cross word and her world was gone. He hadn’t needed to yell the way he had. She wasn’t dumb. He’d just been so … mad. So embarrassed. She embarrassed him all the time. Maybe that said a lot more about him than it did about her.
He eased his arm out from around her shoulders and gently took the flowers from her grasp. When he took them out to the kitchen to put them in water before he went back to the college, she didn’t even notice he left.
If I pick up the pressed-wood detailing in the dining room chairs with the same color, she thought, I can make them look like a deliberately mismatched set. She could put seat cushions on them too. And she could stencil the tabletop in the same color. She could make the whole house look like a piece of art.
“I can do this, Linc.” She looked for him, but he was gone.
She measured the couch and chairs and then added up the yardage. It was astronomical. Okay, flowers for the couch and one chair. The rest in a nice, cheap solid. And paint. She’d get paint and call Linc and ask him to pick it up on his way home. She could carry the fabric home. No problem.
And then she had to remember to get married tonight too.
She found a bolt of yellow fabric flowered in dusty blue and peach that was marked down. Then she took the fabric to the paint store and matched the colors.
“Two gallons of the peach,” she told the boy at the counter, “two of the blue, two of the yellow, and three of glare white. And I need something to fill in cracks in wood tables. I’ll be painting over the stuff, so it doesn’t matter what it looks like.”
“Fine.” He finished writing the list and then smiled at her. “Do you want to wait while I mix it?”
“No. My … husband will pick it up later.” My husband, she thought. Very strange words.
The boy wrote up the bill and gave her the total and she wrote a check, this time for ninety-eight dollars and forty-three cents. With what she’d dropped on the fabric, she was spending more in one day than she used to spend in a month. It was a sobering thought.
“Could you give me your husband’s name for the pickup ticket?” the boy asked.
“Linc Blaise. B-l-a-i-s-e.”
He looked up. “Dr. Blaise? The history prof out at the college? He’s great. I’m Andrew Madden, Mrs. Blaise. I’m one of the students he tutors.”
“Hi, Andrew. I’m Daisy.” Daisy held out her hand, and Andrew took it and shook it with enthusiasm. “I’ll tell him you like his class. He’ll be so pleased.”
“Oh, don’t tell him.” Andrew flushed. “He doesn’t even know who I am.”
“Of course he does,” Daisy said, not at all sure that he did.
On the way home she passed the vet’s and thought again, absentmindedly, how nice it was that he was close. And then she thought about Andrew.
She’d never heard Linc talk about him. She’d never heard Linc talk about any of his students. Of course, school had been in session only a week, but she’d talked about everybody she’d ever known. Maybe it was just because Linc wasn’t a talker. But maybe it was because he didn’t get to know his students. She quickly squelched the thought. Linc was a wonderful teacher. Andrew said so. He—
She heard the squeal of brakes and a thump and saw a car go past out of the corner of her eye, and then she saw the dog.
A little skinny black-and-white mutt was lying on