The Cinderella Deal - Jennifer Crusie [5]
“No.” And then he’d seen the look on Crawford’s face: regret. Linc hadn’t made it as far as he had in a very competitive profession by being slow. “But I’m engaged,” he’d finished. Then he’d had a stroke of what at the time had seemed like genius. “Prescott would be the perfect place for us. We’ve been waiting to get married until I was established so we could raise our children the old-fashioned way.”
Crawford didn’t just thaw, he blossomed. “Excellent, excellent. Old-fashioned values. You’ll definitely be hearing from us again, Dr. Blaise.”
Dr. Booker had sniffed.
And Linc had wondered if he was losing his mind. It was bad enough that he’d created a fiancée; he’d really sent himself to hell when he’d babbled about mythical children. And the weird part was, it seemed so true while he’d been saying it. Not the fiancée part, but the idea of settling down with some elegant little woman and reproducing in a small town. The pictures had been there in his head, sunny scenes of neat lawns and well-behaved children in well-ironed shorts. You’re pathetic, Blaise, he’d told himself at the time. And you lied. God’s going to make you pay for that. You’ll probably get struck by lightning.
But as it turned out, it wasn’t lightning that slugged him from behind, but Crawford. He’d been invited to speak to the faculty on his research, the standard job-talk audition for a college position. And, Crawford had written, make sure you bring your fiancée.
Right. Linc punished himself with the thought of it and drank more beer. He deserved this. If Prescott wouldn’t take him on his own very considerable merits, he should have just let them go. There were other schools. And once he finished the book he was working on—
But he couldn’t finish the book. Not at the city university, where he was now, not while teaching three awful, mind-numbing classes. To finish the book he needed someplace like Prescott. And to get Prescott he needed a plan.
Linc shifted on the couch. He actually had two plans. One was to show up without a fiancée and probably not get the job. That one had the benefit of honesty and not much else. The other was to convince somebody to pose as his fiancée, and then if he got the job, he could tell the people at Prescott that the engagement was off. They couldn’t take the appointment back. As a plan it wasn’t great, which was why he’d put it out of his mind until three days before the interview, but as the deadline approached, it became more attractive. It beat not getting Prescott.
All he needed was a woman who was reasonably bright and reasonably attractive in a sedate sort of way who was willing to lie through her teeth and then quietly disappear. His first thought had been Julia in the apartment downstairs. They’d had a brief affair and parted friends. She would probably do it, he knew, but she’d make a mess of it. Julia was too sharp-looking and too sharp-tongued. He needed a … a wifely-looking woman. A Little House on the Prairie kind of woman. A woman who could lie without batting an eye.
Daisy Flattery.
No, he thought, but logically, she was his best hope. Stories told, her card said, so truth was not one of her virtues. And Julia had said she was straight as an arrow, and he trusted Julia’s judgment if not her restraint. Daisy Flattery was about six inches shorter than he was, with a round midwestern body; if he put her in one of those old-fashioned flowered dresses, Crawford might go for it. Since she seemed to hate him for some reason, she’d probably have to be in desperate need of money before she’d agree to spend any amount of time with him, but she didn’t look rich. Desperation could drive a person to do things he or she would never contemplate ordinarily.
I should know, Linc thought