The Cinderella Deal Read online

  Dear Readers,

  I wrote The Cinderella Deal a long, long time ago, but it’s still one of my favorites because it was so hard to write and I learned so much writing it. I’d written six romantic comedies before this one and in all the commentary on them, there was one recurring theme: My stories were a little … cold. More comedy than romance; no heart, no soul. That was a fair assessment; if there was one thing I’d learned in my creative writing classes it was to avoid melodrama, to never be sentimental, to go for irony and detachment whenever possible, because otherwise I’d get killed in the critiques. But I think I knew all along I was wimping out, that if I’d had any backbone, I’d have gone first for the hearts of my readers, so I decided that for my first book for Bantam, I’d try something new, something different. Hearts would be touched, tears would be shed. By God, I was going to be emotional.

  Then I sat down to write it and I’m here to tell you, writing comedy may be hard, but writing honest emotion is ten times more difficult. Every time I got near an over-the-top moment, I had to fight my knee-jerk tendency to step back into irony or even worse, to make a joke. After a while it got easier, and I can truthfully say that there are moments in this book that are downright weepers—well, I cried—but the important thing I learned is that tragedy is like comedy. You can’t add it to a book, you have to find both the humor and the pain within the story and then write both as truthfully as you can, even if it means that critics will accuse you of being sentimental or melodramatic. Good stories are about both hearts and minds, but the heart always comes first.

  Here’s hoping you like the heart at the center of The Cinderella Deal.

  Best wishes,

  Jenny Crusie

  BANTAM BOOKS BY JENNIFER CRUSIE

  The Cinderella Deal

  Trust Me on This

  For Jack Andrew Smith,

  a true hero and firefighter,

  and the best of all possible brothers

  ONE

  THE STORM RAGED dark outside, the light in the hallway flickered, and Lincoln Blaise cast a broad shadow over the mailboxes, but it didn’t matter. He knew by heart what the card on the box above his said:

  Daisy Flattery

  Apartment 1B

  Stories Told, Ideas Illminated

  Unreal but Not Untrue

  Linc frowned at the card, positive it didn’t belong on a mailbox in the dignified old house he shared with three other tenants. That was why he’d rented the apartment in the first place: it had dignity. Linc liked dignity the way he liked calm and control and quiet. It had taken him a long time to get all of those things into his life and into one apartment. Then he’d met his downstairs neighbor.

  His frown deepened as he remembered the first time he’d seen Daisy Flattery in the flesh, practically hissing at him as he shooed a cat away from his rebuilt black Porsche, her dark, frizzy hair crackling around her face like lightning. Later sightings hadn’t improved his first impression, and the memory of them didn’t improve his mood now. She wore long dresses in electric colors, and since she was tall, they were very long, and she was always scowling at him, her heavy brows drawn together under that dumb blue velvet hat she wore pulled down around her ears even in the summer. She looked like somebody from Little House on the Prairie on acid, which was why he usually took care to ignore her.

  But now, staring down at the card on her mailbox, appropriately backlit by the apocalyptic storm, he knew there was a possibility he might actually have to get to know her. And it was his own damn fault.

  The thought gave him a headache, so he shoved his mail into his jacket pocket and went up the stairs to his apartment and his aspirin.

  Downstairs, Daisy Flattery frowned too, and cocked her head to try to catch again the sound she’d heard. It had been something between a creaking door and a cat in trouble. She looked over at Liz to see if she was showing signs of life, but Liz was, as usual, a black velvet blob stretched out on the end table Daisy had rescued from a trash heap two streets over. The cat basked in the warmth from the cracked crystal lamp Daisy had found at Goodwill for a dollar. The three made a lovely picture, light and texture and color, silky fur and smooth wood and warm lamp glow. Unbelievably, fools had thrown away all three; sometimes the blindness of people just amazed Daisy.

  “Hello?” The petite blonde across the chipped oak table from Daisy waved her hand. “You there? You have the gooniest look on your face.”

  “I thought I heard something,” Daisy told her best friend. “Never mind. Where was I? Oh, yeah. I’m broke.” She shrugged at Julia across from her. “Nothing new.”

  “Well, you’re depressed about it. That’s new.” Julia took a sugar cookie from the plate in front of her and shoved the rest toward Daisy with one manicured hand, narrowly missing Daisy’s stained glass lamp. The lamp was another find: blue, green, and yellow Tiffany pieces with a crack in one that had made it just possible for her to buy it. The crack had been the clincher for Daisy: with the crack, the lamp had a history, a story; it was real. Sort of like her hands, she tried to tell herself as she compared them to Julia’s. Blunt, paint-stained, no two nails the same length. Interesting. Real.

  Julia, as usual, had missed color and pattern completely and was still on words. “Also, you’re the one who has to come up with the bucks for the feline senior cat chow. I should eat so good.”

  “Right.” Daisy scrunched up her face. She hated thinking about money, which was probably why she hadn’t had much for the past four years. “Maybe leaving teaching wasn’t such a good idea.”

  Julia straightened so fast, Liz opened an eye again.

  “Are you kidding? This is new. I can’t believe you’re doubting yourself.” She leaned across the table to stare into Daisy’s eyes. “Get a grip. Make some tea to go with these cookies. Tell me a story. Do something weird and unpractical so I’ll know you’re Daisy Flattery.”

  “Very funny.” Daisy pushed her chair back and went to find tea bags and her beat-up copper teakettle. She was sure the tea bags were in one of the canisters on the shelf, but the kettle could be anywhere. She opened the bottom cupboard and started pawing through the pans, books, and paintbrushes that had somehow taken up housekeeping together.

  “I’m not kidding.” Julia followed her to the sink. “I’ve known you for twelve years, and this is the first time I’ve heard you say you can’t do something.”

  Daisy was so outraged at the thought that she pulled her head out of the cupboard without giving herself enough clearance and smacked herself hard. “Ouch.” She rubbed her head through her springy curls. “I’m not saying I can’t make it as an artist.” Daisy stuck her head back into the cabinet and shoved aside her cookie sheets long enough to find her teakettle and yank it out. “I believe in myself. I just may have moved too fast.” She got up and filled the kettle from the faucet.

  “Well, it’s not like you ever move slow.” Julia took down canisters one by one, finally finding the tea in a brown and silver square can. “Why did you put the tea in the can that says ‘cocoa’? Never mind. Constant Comment or Earl Grey?”

  “Earl Grey.” Daisy put the kettle on the stove and turned up the heat. “This is a serious moment, and I need a serious tea.”

  “Which is why I’m drinking Constant Comment.” Julia waggled her long fingers inside the canister and fished out two tea bags. “I have no serious moments.”

  “Well, pretend you’re having one for me.” Daisy sighed, envying Julia’s optimism. Of course, Julia hadn’t quit a safe and solid teaching job to become a painter, or spent the past four years living on her savings until she didn’t have any. Daisy felt her head pound. “Julia, I don’t think I can do this anymore. I’m tired of scraping to pay my bills, and I’m tired
of trying to sell my paintings to people who don’t understand what I’m doing, and I’m tired—” She bit her lip. “I’m so tired of worrying about everything.” That was the thing, really; she was worn down from the uncertainty. Like water on a rock; that was what the edge of poverty did to you.

  “So what are you going to do?” Julia asked, but somewhere there was a faint sound, half screech and half meow, and Daisy cocked her head again instead of answering.

  “I swear I hear a cat crying,” she told Julia. “Listen. Do you hear anything?”

  Julia paused and then shook her head. “Uh-uh. Your water’s starting to boil. Maybe that’s it.”

  Daisy took the kettle off while Julia took down two mismatched cups and saucers, plunking her Constant Comment tea bag in a Blue Willow cup and Daisy’s Earl Grey in the bright orange Fiestaware. Daisy poured the hot water over the bags and said, “Pretty” as the tea color spread through the cups.

  “Forget the pretty tea.” Julia picked up her cup and carried it back to the table. “You’re in crisis here. You’re out of money and you can’t sell your paintings. How’s the storytelling going?”

  “Budget cuts.” Daisy sat down across from her with her own cup and saucer. “Most libraries can’t afford me, and it’s a slow time for bookstores, and forget schools entirely. They all say I’m very popular and they’ll use me again as soon as possible, but in the meantime I’m out of luck.”

  “Okay.” Julia crinkled her nose as she thought. “How else were you making money? Oh, the jewelry. What about the jewelry?”

  Daisy winced with guilt. “That’s selling, but Howard won’t give me the money until the end of the month. And he owes me from the end of last month, but he’s holding on to that too. It’s not that much, about a hundred, but it would help.” She knew she should go in and demand her jewelry money, but the thought of Howard sneering at her wasn’t appealing. He looked so much like her father that it was like every summer she’d ever spent with him condensed into two minutes.

  Julia frowned at her. “So how much do you need? To keep the wolf from the door, I mean.”

  Daisy sighed. “About a thousand. Last month’s rent, this month’s rent, and expenses. That would get me to when Howard pays and then maybe something else would turn up.” That sounded pathetic, so she took a deep breath and started again. “The thing is, I quit so I could paint, but I’m spending all my time trying to support myself instead of concentrating on my work. I thought I’d have a show by now, but nobody understands what I’m doing. And even though I almost have enough paintings for a show, I’m not sure what I’m doing is right for who am I now anyway.”

  Julia sipped her tea. “Ouch. Hot. Blow on yours first. What do you mean, you’re not sure what you’re doing is right? I love your paintings. All those details.”

  “Well, that’s it.” Daisy shoved her tea away to lean closer. “I like the details too, but I’ve done them. I think I need to stretch, to try things that are harder for me, but I can’t afford to. I’m building my reputation on primitive narrative paintings; I can’t suddenly become an abstract expressionist.”

  Julia made a face. “That’s what you want to do?”

  “No.” Daisy shut her eyes, trying to see the paintings she wanted to do, paintings with the emotions in the brushstrokes instead of in the tiny painted details, thick slashes of paint instead of small, rich dots. “I need to work larger. I need—”

  The mewling cry that had teased her earlier came again, louder. “That is definitely a cat,” Daisy said, and went to open the window.

  The wind exploded in and stirred Daisy’s apartment into even more chaos than usual. Liz rolled to her feet and meowed her annoyance, but Daisy ignored her and leaned out into the storm.

  Two bright eyes stared up at her from under the bush beneath her window.

  “You stay right there,” she told them, and ran for the apartment door.

  “Daisy?” Julia called after her, but she let the door bang behind her and ran out into the rain. Whatever it was had vanished, and Daisy got down on her hands and knees in the mud to peer under the bush.

  A kitten peered back, soaked and mangy and not at all happy to see her. Daisy reached for it and got clawed for her pains. “I’m rescuing you, dummy,” she told it when she’d hauled it out from under the bush and it was squirming against her. “Stop fighting me.”

  Once inside, she wrapped the soaked little body in a dish towel while Julia and Liz looked at it with equal distaste.

  “It looks like a rat,” Julia said. “I can’t believe it. You rescued a rat.”

  Liz hissed, and when Daisy toweled the kitten dry, it hissed too.

  “It’s a calico kitten.” Daisy got down on her knees so she could go eye to eye with the towel-wrapped little animal on the table. “You’re okay now.”

  The mottled kitten glared at her and screeched its meow with all the melody of a fingernail down a blackboard.

  “Just what you needed. Another mouth to feed,” Julia said, and the kitten screeched at her too. “And what a mouth it is.” Julia shot a sympathetic look at Liz. “If you want to come live with me, I understand,” she told the cat. “I know you’re legally dead, but even you must draw the line at living with a rat.”

  Liz glared at the kitten one more time and then curled up under the light and went back to sleep.

  “A kitten doesn’t eat much,” Daisy said, and went to get food. She found a can of tuna on the shelf over the stove, stuck behind her copy of Grimms’ fairy tales, a jar of alizarin crimson acrylic paint, and her cinnamon. She took down the can and called back to Julia. “Want some tuna?”

  “No. I just came over to bring you the cookies, and then I got distracted.” Julia and the kitten looked at each other with equal distaste. “You know, this is not a happy rat.”

  “Stop it, Julia.” Daisy dumped the tuna onto a china plate covered with violets, scooped a third of it into a half round of pita bread, and divided the remaining two thirds between Liz’s red cat dish and a yellow Fiestaware saucer. She took the dishes back to her round oak table, dropping Liz’s red bowl in front of her as she went. Liz was so enthusiastic about the tuna, she sat up. Daisy put the yellow saucer in front of the kitten and stopped to admire the violets on her plate next to the complementary color of the Fiestaware. Color and contrast, she thought. Clash. That’s what life is about.

  “Daisy,” Julia said. “I know you’re going to freak when I say this, but I can loan you a thousand dollars. I want to loan you a thousand dollars. Please.”

  Daisy froze and then turned to face her friend. Julia stood beside the table in the light from the stained glass lamp, looking fragile and cautious and sympathetic, and Daisy loved her for the offer as much as she was angry that the offer had been made. “No. I can make it.”

  Julia bit her lip. “Then let me buy a painting. You know how I feel about the Lizzie Borden painting. Let me—”

  “Julia, you already own three of my paintings.” Daisy turned back to the cat. “Enough charity already.”

  “It’s not charity.” Julia’s voice was intense. “I bought those paintings because I loved them. And I—”

  “No.” Daisy picked up the plate with her pita on it. “Want some tuna? I can cut this in half.”

  “No.” Julia sighed. “No, I have papers to grade.” She shoved her chair under the table and looked at Daisy regretfully. “If you ever need my help, you know it’s there.”

  “I know.” Daisy sat down next to the kitten, trying to concentrate on it instead of on Julia’s offer. “If you come across an easy way to make a thousand bucks, let me know.”

  Julia nodded. “I’ll try to remember that.” The kitten screeched again, and she retreated to the door. “Teach that cat to shut up, will you? Guthrie is not going to be amused if he finds out you’re keeping a cat in his apartment building. The only reason Liz gets by is that she’s ninety-eight percent potted plant.”

  Once Julia had gone, Daisy got down on her kn
ees next to the table so she could look the kitten in the eye. “Look, I know we just met,” she told the cat. “But trust me on this, you have to eat. I know you’ve had a rough childhood, but so did I, and I eat. Besides, from now on you’re a Flattery cat. And Flatterys don’t quit. Eat the tuna, and you can stay.”

  Daisy picked up a tiny piece of tuna and held it under the kitten’s nose. The kitten licked the tuna and then took it carefully in its mouth.

  “See?” Daisy scratched gently behind the kitten’s ears. “Poor baby. You’re just an orphan of the storm. Little Orphan Annie. But now you’re with me.”

  Little Orphan Annie struggled farther out of the towel and began to eat, slowly at first and then ravenously. Daisy pushed the unruly fuzz of her hair back behind her ears as she watched the kitten, and then she began to eat her pita.

  “You’re going to have to lie low,” she told the kitten. “I’m not allowed to have pets, so we’ll have to hide you from the landlord. And from the guy upstairs too. Big dark-haired guy in a suit. No sense of humor. Flares his nostrils a lot. You can’t miss him. He kicked Liz once. He looks like he has cats like you for breakfast.”

  The kitten finished the tuna and licked its chops, its orange and brown fur finally a little drier but still spiky.

  “Maybe you’re an omen.” Daisy stroked her fingers lightly down the kitten’s back while it moved on to cleaning the plate. “Maybe this means things will be better. Maybe …”

  She began to tell herself the story again, the story of her new life, the one she’d been building for the past four years. She’d given up security to follow her dream, so of course she had to face years of adversity first—four was about right—because without adversity and struggle no story was really a story. Now the next chapter would be her paintings finally selling, and maybe her storytelling career suddenly taking off too. And a prince would be good. Somebody big and warm to keep her company. It had been seven months since Derek had moved out—taking her stereo, the creep—and she was about ready to trust somebody with a Y chromosome again. Not marry anyone, certainly; she’d already seen what that part of the fairy tale could do to women. Look at her mother. The thought of her mother depressed her, but Annie abandoned the empty plate and began to lick the dampness from her fur, and the scratchy sound brought Daisy back to earth.