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then he’d probably make her feel guilty if she slipped. He’d be her father all over again. It was a story, but it was also a fairy tale.
    “Yellow,” Chickie said, still staring at the house. “I can just picture it. With lilacs out in front.”
    “Lilacs would be beautiful,” Daisy said, seeing the purple contrasting with the yellow house and blending with the blue trim, and for a moment they both shared the picture and the story. “Lilacs would be perfect.”
    “Will be perfect,” Chickie corrected her, and Daisy closed her eyes in regret.
     
    Linc’s presentation went the way all his presentations did: smoothly, clearly, and professionally. He could see approval in the eyes of his audience, particularly in the eyes of a trim little blonde in the front row.
Definitely my type,
he thought, and then he stopped. Not now she wasn’t. Now he was engaged to Daisy. But in the fall, if he got the job, when he wasn’t engaged…
    Make a note to get to know the blonde in the fall
, he told himself, trying not to feel guilty since there was no reason to, but somehow feeling guilty anyway.
    The question and answer period after the talk was vigorous but supportive; most people weren’t arguing with him as much as asking for more information, particularly the blonde, who seemed very intelligent and very interested in more than his speech. Even Booker thawed and told him he’d done good work. For a moment, surrounded by approving people, he wished that Daisy were there to see him do well, so that she’d know that he really was good. He would have liked to look up and see her smiling at him, just as if the story were true, just for that moment.
    Then Crawford shook his hand and said, “That’s a fine little woman you have there. Chickie thinks she’s just super.”
    Linc felt exasperated with him. The man had a university to run, for God’s sake, and he was obsessing over faculty wives. “Well, I think she’s super too.”
    “You know, she’s just going to love living here in Prescott.” Crawford winked, and Linc stiffened in surprise before he smiled back at Crawford with new appreciation.
    My God
, he thought.
She did it. I’m in
.
    ----
FOUR

     
    Crawford dropped Linc at the motel, and Linc shook his hand again in genuine gratitude. “I appreciate this, sir. More than you can know.”
    “Well, we appreciate you too, son,” Crawford said. “And we surely do appreciate Daisy.”
    “Oh, we all do that,” Linc said, his exasperation considerably lessened by his success. When Crawford finally drove away, he went to find her and give her the good news.
    He opened the door to the motel room and saw her standing by the bed in her slip. She turned, lifting her chin in silent question about the speech, and he opened his mouth to tell her and then stopped, hit by the impact of Daisy undressed. Daisy would never make a model—too much bust, too much hip, too much everything—but she could make him lose his train of thought in an instant, even in a slip as opaque and virginal as the one she was wearing.
    “How’d the speech go?” she asked, apparently unaware she was blowing his mind, and he came back to the present and said, “We did it. I got it.”
    “I knew it!” Daisy threw herself at him, and he caught her, surprised that she cared so much, and then distracted by how much warm softness she was pressing against him. “You are going to
love
it here,” she told him, and he looked down at her in his arms and lost his train of thought again.
    She was so round against him that he closed his eyes for a minute, trying to keep his sanity, and when he opened them she was looking up at him.
    “You okay?”
    His eyes slid past her face to her slip, made of white cotton with little pink flowers embroidered on it, and to the curve of her breasts pressed against him. She was warm and happy for him, and he didn’t know what to do about it, so he held his breath while he coped.
    She said, “Breathe, Blaise,”