The Cinderella Deal - Jennifer Crusie [59]
She went into the studio and stared at the canvas. The portrait was huge and glowing and more sexual than she could ever have imagined herself painting; it was everything she’d thought about Linc and repressed, and if it felt good to have it all out, it was terrifying to look at it. She took the painting down from her easel and turned it against the wall, and put the other large canvas in its place.
You did it once sick, you can do it again healthy, she told herself, and began to draw on the canvas in charcoal, tentatively at first and then gradually using the same large, sweeping lines that she’d used to draw the first portrait. She loaded a four-inch brush with paint and laid on big patches of black and blue and gray and white, blocking in mass and light. When the dawn broke, she wiped the paint from her fingers and crawled back into bed.
“How are you?” Linc asked her when she woke at noon that day. He sat down beside her on the bed, holding a tray on his lap.
“I’m fine.” Daisy leaned her head forward. “Feel.”
He put his hand on her forehead, and all the tension went out of him when it was cool under his hand. He put the thermometer in her mouth. “If you’re normal, you’re well,” he said, and then he laughed. Daisy was never normal.
When he took the thermometer out a minute later, she said, “That’s not soup, is it?”
“Chicken noodle. Excellent for invalids. Ninety-eight point six. Good girl, Magnolia.”
Daisy looked mulish. “I want a hamburger with onions and pickle and mustard and tomato.”
“A hamburger? Daize, I don’t think—”
Daisy set her jaw. “I want french fries. I want onion rings. I want a large, large Coke. I want a chocolate milk shake. I want a hot fudge sundae.”
Linc started to laugh. “No. You’ll get sick again. Start small. I’ll go get you a hamburger and a Coke, and while I’m gone, you eat the soup.”
“I don’t want the soup.” Daisy scowled.
When he was gone, she poured half the bowl of soup into the toilet and flushed away the evidence of her rebellion. Then she went into the studio.
The portrait of Linc stared back at her, roughed in on the canvas, massive and brooding in gray and white and black. He looked powerful and cold and confident, the Linc she saw every day. The portrait was going to be terrific, she knew that just from the beginnings, and she couldn’t decide why it depressed her so much. You’re just weak from the fever, she told herself, and went back to bed to wait for her hamburger.
“Did you eat your soup?” Linc asked her when he got back, and she said, “No, I poured it in the john.” She wolfed the hamburger, washing it down with the bubbly Coke with visible pleasure. When she handed him the empty paper cup, she said, “Now I feel like a real person again.”
“You were always a real person. Don’t get out of bed for a while. You were sicker than Mom and I, so it’s going to take you longer. Sleep, so you don’t have a relapse.”
He waited until she’d obediently closed her eyes and he could hear her breathing slowly and steadily. Then he went downstairs to deal with the chaos left by their illnesses. They had bills, and yard work, and cleaning, and people coming to stay for Christmas in four days.
But when he looked into things, there was no chaos. Daisy had made a note of all the things she’d done while he was sick. She’d paid all the bills ahead of time. She’d sent the dry cleaning out, so all he had to do was pick it up. She’d made Christmas tree ornaments and left them in a box on the buffet. She’d hired Andrew to do the yard work, but when Linc called to ask him how much they owed him, Andrew refused to be paid.
“We all came over and