The Cinderella Deal - Jennifer Crusie [46]
“After that kiss at the wedding, I thought you’d be more than fine.”
Daisy tried to brush her off. “I think that was a fluke. He’s not much interested. He likes little blondes, remember?”
“Yeah, but he married a bouncing brunette,” Julia said dryly.
“He didn’t have much choice.”
Julia’s snort was loud on the line. “Linc always has a choice. He’s the most controlled guy I’ve ever met. If he married you, he wanted to.”
Daisy felt a flare of hope. “Maybe.”
“So how’s Evan?” Julia’s voice was carefully casual.
“Evan? Depressed, how else would Evan be?”
“Oh.”
Daisy tried to remember something about Evan to share. “Come to think of it, he has seemed more depressed than usual. He mentioned you the other day. He said you had an interesting sense of humor.”
“Oh.”
Hello? Daisy raised her eyebrows at the phone. Evan and Julia? Well, stranger things had happened. She and Linc, for example.
“Come visit soon,” she said to Julia.
“Go paint. I’ll come when you’ve got a show ready for that gallery. Have you gone down there yet?”
“No, and it’ll be a good long time yet before I do,” Daisy said, but after she’d hung up she went upstairs happier than she’d been before. I’ll start to paint again, she told herself, as soon as I’ve picked up Jupiter.
Jupiter was not a hit at first. He barked a lot, and developed a fondness for Linc that bordered on the pathological since Linc’s first words on seeing him were “That’s the most disgusting-looking animal I’ve ever seen.”
Jupiter had only one eye, so he looked as if he were permanently winking. His tail was bent down at a right angle, he limped, and because he’d lost teeth on one side of his mouth, his tongue tended to hang out that side when he panted.
“I think he’s darling.” Daisy’s heart bled for him every time she saw him. “Poor baby.”
“Poor baby, my butt.” Linc glared down at the little dog. “This is the luckiest dog in Prescott. You’re a mess,” he said to the dog. “We should put you out on the street with a cup to beg.”
“Linc.”
“He could sell pencils. We’d make a fortune.”
“Ignore him, baby.” Daisy patted Jupiter’s head, but Jupiter ignored her instead and attached himself to Linc. At first Linc would yell at her to come get the dog when it would sneak into his room, but on Friday, Daisy heard him talking to it when she went past his study door to go to her studio.
“You’re worthless. Here. Have a biscuit.”
A biscuit? He’d bought dog biscuits for Jupiter? The world was coming to an end.
She knocked on the door. “Do you want me to get Jupiter out of there?”
“No,” Linc said from behind the door. “He just sneaks back in. This is a worthless dog.”
“Yes, Linc,” she said, and went away laughing silently.
On Saturday, Linc came downstairs to get the house ready for the party and finally noticed Daisy had redecorated.
“This looks great,” he said as he wandered from room to room. “I mean, it really does. Did you do all this? It’s sort of colorful, but great.” He stopped in front of the painting on the mantel. It was painted in Daisy’s primitive style of tiny vivid brushstrokes, and it showed a Victorian house sitting in what looked like a lush green jungle populated by a lot of unblinking leaf-green eyes. A girl in a bright peach dress stood in the foreground, looking pensive.
“There’s a lot of detail here.” Linc leaned in for a closer look. “You can see in the windows of the house and—” His voice broke off.
“Do you like it? This is one of my favorites.”
“There’s a headless body on the couch in the downstairs room.” Linc turned to look at her. “You painted a headless body on a couch?”
Daisy nodded. “It’s Lizzie Borden’s house. It really is. I found a photograph. They had a picture of the body too. It’s not really headless. Almost, but not quite.”
Be open-minded, Linc told himself. It was the least he owed her, but he was still thrown. Headless bodies? “Lizzie Borden.”
“That’s her father on the couch. Her stepmother’s in the upstairs bedroom. If you look really hard, you can see her feet at the edge of the windowsill.”
Linc nodded, coping. “Her feet.”