Can't Buy Me Love Read online

  “I don’t feel so good,” he mumbled.

  Before Paige could move, he dropped his napkin over his dinner and hurried from the room.

  Chapter Twelve

  Despite the pounding in his head Blake weaved straight to the nearest phone. The Louis XVI chair and Chippendale occasional table in the hall swam dizzily before him. Small squiggles of white-blue neon pinpointed his vision as he dialed the familiar number. The shrill ring sounded forever before the phone on the other end was finally answered.

  “Anderson.”

  “Noah,” he choked. “You’ve got to help me.”

  “Blake? What’s the matter?”

  Blake took a deep breath and forced down the nausea. Or maybe it was good to feel sick. Perhaps he should allow himself the freedom, let loose, and just vomit on the Persian runner beneath his feet. The rug was priceless; he swallowed hard.

  “Blake?”

  “She poisoned me.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Paige.”

  “Paige?”

  Blake swallowed again. “She poisoned me. This morning, I think. At breakfast. She fixed me a ham and cheese omelet and—”

  “Ham? A vegetarian fed you ham, and you ate it?”

  “Well, yes.” Blake nodded his head and immediately regretted the movement. The sparks of light became daggers stabbing at his brain. He waited for the pain to subside. “She said it was a peace offering.”

  “You can’t have a peace offering without war. What did you do to make her mad?”

  “I offered her a job.”

  “And in the process you insulted her. You can’t insult the cook without some repercussions.”

  “I’m dying. Don’t shout.”

  “I’m not shouting. Have you called the Poison Control Center?”

  “I don’t need Poison Control. I need the police.”

  “Blake, how much of the omelet did you eat?”

  “Only about half. Then the pink Mercedes came.”

  “A pink Mercedes? You are ill.”

  “It wasn’t really pink. It was Razzle Dazzle Rose.”

  “Put Devin on the phone.”

  He heard the worry in Noah’s tone, but couldn’t summon the words to ease his friend’s concern. “It’s been her all along. First the sewing machine. Then the car. Noah, she’s trying to kill me for my inheritance. If I die, she gets it all.”

  “Blake, put Devin on the phone.”

  “Devin’s not here.” He sighed. “I’m all alone with my homicidal wife.”

  “Then let me talk to someone else—anybody but Paige.”

  “It’s for you,” Blake said as Holmes passed in the hallway. He handed the receiver to the butler. “Never insult the cook,” he solemnly warned and closed his eyes. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

  When he opened his eyes once again, the blurry images above him were shouting. What were they saying? Why were they shouting? Where the hell was he?

  He blinked. Suddenly Paige’s face loomed before him.

  “Ahhh!” he yelled.

  “Ahhh!” she yelled

  “Good to see you’re still alive, sir,” Holmes said as he hoisted Blake to his feet.

  Paige seemed distressed, almost frantic, fluttering around them as Holmes half-dragged, half-carried Blake to the car.

  What was she so worried about? He was the one dying. Isn’t this what she wanted?

  The ride to the hospital was a blur of bright lights and punishing sound. The squeal of the brakes, the honking of a car horn, and the wail of the sirens pierced Blake’s nausea as Paige pulled the land cruising Cadillac into the Emergency Room entrance.

  He laughed a little as the medics wheeled him in. His life had been taken over by the color pink. The juicy pink ham, the bright pink Mercedes, nurses in dusty pink scrubs. Paige’s pink dress. Paige’s hot pink dress. Paige’s just plain hot dress. Now that really sent his head spinning.

  “Hold on just a moment, Mr. Caldwell. The doctor will be here shortly. If you feel ill, you may vomit in here.” The nurse handed him a tiny plastic dish. It was pink.

  She turned to leave, but Blake weakly clutched her arm.

  “My wife,” he said in a choked voice.

  “Your wife is right outside crying and worrying herself sick. She wants you to get better. That’s what you should concentrate on too, Mr. Caldwell.”

  “My wife,” Blake croaked again, increasing his grip on the nurse’s mauve colored sleeve. Didn’t she understand? Paige was responsible. He looked into the nurse’s eyes. No, she didn’t understand, and he couldn’t explain. He just didn’t have the strength. He was too sick, and Paige was responsible.

  The nurse disengaged herself from his grasp and left the cubicle.

  Eons later, the doctor entered, followed by the same nurse who pulled the curtain closed behind them. The young doctor was wearing street clothes—blues and browns—and a white lab coat. At last an anchor in his churning pink world.

  “Looks like food poisoning,” the nurse said as the doctor thumbed through the pages of Blake’s file.

  Blake wanted to scream, shout, yell, and jump up and down until they listened to him, but his head swam like a drunken fish, and his stomach rolled like a cheap rubber ball.

  “My wife,” he whispered as loudly as he dared, hoping that the doctor would listen to him.

  “She’s in the waiting area worrying about you,” the doctor replied absently, pulling a small flashlight from the pocket of his lab coat. He pried open Blake’s squinted eyes and shined the light in first one and then the other.

  Blake sat half doubled over holding his stomach and trying not to throw up as the doctor continued the examination.

  “Have you eaten any mushrooms in the last twenty-four hours, Mr. Caldwell?”

  Blake tried to clear the disorientation that surrounded him. A color came to mind. That sweet, piercing color of pink. The color of succulent, juicy ham.

  “Ham. This morning she fixed me ham. She did it. My wife. You’ve got to...”

  “Just relax, Mr. Caldwell. I’ll tell your wife. In the meantime, you rest. There’s not much we can do, but I’d like to keep you overnight for observation. You have the worst case of salmonella poisoning I’ve ever seen.”

  ****

  Paige stood. Then sat. Then stood again. She would have paced the length of the long narrow waiting area, but the majority of the area was filled with bikers. Huge, bearded bikers. Two clubs of them to be exact, rival gangs who after a mishap at the Wild World of Motorcycle Games came to participate in the Wild World of Sutures in the ER. The atmosphere in the room had been relatively calm, if not tense, that was, until the pizzas arrived. All two dozen of them called in from the same ER waiting area phone to the same all night pizza delivery service—by two separate calls—then delivered by the same confused delivery boy who apparently couldn’t distinguish between Canadian bacon and pepperoni.

  Paige sat again, trying to block out the shouts and grunts that naturally occur when rival bikers gangs with rival tastes have orders confused in the middle of a busy hospital. She thought of Blake. He had been so sick when they had taken him away. His face looked like a bleached-out lime, and his eyes blazed with fever and accusation. He had mumbled incoherently that she had “done it” as he’d pointed a trembling finger at her. His testimony disturbed her; she could think of nothing she had “done.” One of the nurses assured her that most likely Blake’s words were the product of the fever and this strange illness that infected him. What had made him so sick?

  Paige stood, wishing she had the room to pace, but what square footage of the waiting area that wasn’t claimed by Giant Bikers with the munchies had been staked out for the Little family reunion. The entire clan wore their colors with honor, not much different than the bikers. The sea of canary yellow T-shirts that proudly proclaimed, “A LITTLE Goes A Long Way” flowed through the waiting area like the ebb of the tide. A few would leave, more would come in and the stor
y of how Little Tommy Little had stumbled into a not-so-little nest of hornets and had been stung over a dozen times before he was doused with a ten gallon cooler of grape Kool-Aid would be recounted—again. Paige had heard the story at least twice as many times as Little Tommy had been stung. She knew how it ended. Tommy’s mother would recount—again—how Little Tommy’s ankles and face had swelled up and how they pushed him into the nearest car and raced to the hospital, the rest of the Littles following close behind.

  “And,” Tommy’s mother concluded for the eighth time with the eighth loud wail into her handkerchief. “I’ll never be able to get the purple stains off his reunion shirt. It’s ruined.”

  A balding man—perhaps an uncle—in one of those bright yellow T-shirts patted her on the back and reassured her that someone would get Little Tommy another shirt to replace his soiled one.

  Paige glanced at the doors wanting to escape from the smell of garlic, sunscreen, and hospital antiseptic, but she was reluctant to leave the waiting area. Surely she would hear how Blake was soon. She could wait for a breath of fresh air, at least a few minutes longer.

  Unable to plot an avenue of escape, Paige was contemplating the merits of sitting once again when a young dark-haired doctor entered the waiting area via a set of swinging doors. He pushed his way through the crowd of bikers and yellow-shirted Littles and stepped over and around boxes of pizza until he reached her side.

  “Mrs. Caldwell?”

  Paige nodded, barely aware that for the first time she had let someone call her by Blake’s name.

  “I’m Dr. Mills. Your husband will be fine. The best we can determine he has a very severe case of salmonella poisoning.”

  The noise around her faded to a faint hum. “Poisoning?”

  “He’s very ill right now, but he’ll be fine.”

  “Poisoning?”

  “It’s not as bad as it sounds, Mrs. Caldwell. The contaminant was most likely contained in something he ate during the last twenty-four hours. Meat that had been left out too long or perhaps not properly cooked. Your husband mentioned that he’d had ham for breakfast this morning.”

  “Ham?”

  “If you have any left, I would advise you to dispose of it.”

  “I almost killed him.” Paige sank back into the seat behind her, her head swimming with the dizziness that Blake must have been experiencing. She had almost killed the man she loved.

  “It was an accident.” Dr. Mills crouched down in front of her.

  “I haven’t cooked like that in so long. I...I...”

  “Mrs. Caldwell, we see things like this happen all the time. They’re accidents, and you can’t blame yourself. Your husband’s ill now, but he should recover by the morning. Food poisoning is an inexact ailment, but I’d to keep him overnight for observation. Go home and rest. You can take your husband home tomorrow.”

  ****

  “Noah, get Masters on the phone,” Blake ordered the following Monday morning.

  It had been a helluva weekend. After coming home from the hospital, Blake had locked himself in his room and studied his options. He couldn’t call the police and have his wife arrested for attempted murder. They would cart her off to jail, and he would be in violation of his aunt’s will. He couldn’t come out of the room for fear that the next time Paige tried to make him dead she would succeed.

  Late Saturday afternoon Paige stopped apologizing through the door. It took two days of sending Dancy out for his meals before she stopped asking him downstairs to eat. Yesterday afternoon she had called through the door that she was placing an ad for live-in cook. Like that was supposed to make him feel better.

  During the course of his long weekend of self-imposed exile, Blake’s fear had turned into anger. He had followed the terms of the will; he had chosen a bride and had lived with her for almost two months. It wasn’t his fault that she was greedy and wanted all of his inheritance. He wanted it too. He deserved it with all that he had been through. Masters was going to let him have it whether Paige lived with him for the rest of the year or not.

  “Blake,” Noah started. “Don’t you want to talk about this first?”

  “No. You’ll try to tell me that she’s innocent, and I’ll want to believe you, then next week she’ll be wearing widow’s black. Now dial.”

  Noah shot him an I-hope-you-know-what-you’re-doing look, then reached for the phone.

  Blake waited impatiently, alternately drumming his fingers on the edge of Noah’s desk and jingling the change in his pocket. He was too nervous to sit.

  “I see,” Noah said into the receiver. “And when do you expect him to return? I see,” he said again.

  Blake’s apprehension grew as Noah left his name, phone number, and stressed the urgency of his call.

  “What’s the matter?” he demanded before his friend replaced the receiver.

  “It seems that Master’s doctor advised him to take it easy for a while so he booked an extended cruise in the Mediterranean and can’t be reached. His secretary has promised to call me as soon as he returns.”

  “Oh, that’s just great.” Blake sank into the horse-shoe shaped leather chair where this whole mess had started. “He’s off playing shuffle board with the Greeks, and I’m living with a murderess.”

  “It is possible that you’ve misconstrued what’s happened.”

  “How can you misconstrue poisoned meat?”

  “And how can you prove that the meat was poisoned?”

  “It’s not just the ham. Don’t forget the car and the sewing machine. I’m afraid to go to sleep at night.”

  “Blake, you can’t prove Paige is responsible. In fact, this all could be a series of unfortunate accidents, and you could be going to these extremes for no reason.”

  “I’m not willing to take that chance.” Blake shook his head. “You want to know the worst part? I still have fantasies about a woman who’s trying to kill me. It’s morbid. I lie awake every night and wonder if all of this is just my imagination. And then I wonder if she’s lying awake and thinking about me while I’m thinking about her. I wonder if I go to her if she’ll take me in despite the contract, or if she’ll chase me around the bed with a butcher knife.” He sighed. “Either way, that woman will be the death of me.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Paige, if you didn’t want to eat here you should have said something. We could have gone somewhere else.”

  Paige met Maddie’s gaze over her untouched plate. “This is fine, really.”

  “I only wanted to eat here, because I never have. If you didn’t want to, all you had to do was say something.”

  “Maddie, this is fine.”

  “Then why aren’t you eating?”

  “I’m eating. See.” Paige took a bite of rice to back her claim. Lately her appetite had been enormous, but today the food could have been sawdust and cardboard with a side order of Styrofoam and she wouldn’t have known the difference.

  “That’s the first thing you’ve eaten since the waiter brought our food. Now what’s the matter?”

  “Devin will be home from his buying trip tomorrow. He’s been gone three weeks, you know. He sent me a postcard from Mexico.”

  “How thoughtful. Is that what’s got you down in the dumps?”

  “I’m not down in the dumps.” Paige smiled to show Maddie just how happy she was, but her lips felt plastic.

  “Is it the new cook?”

  “Mrs. Elliot is great, though Blake hasn’t eaten at home since before Devin left.”

  “So that’s the problem.”

  “There’s no problem. I don’t care where he eats.”

  “Liar. Come on, Paige. Level with me.”

  Paige sighed and put down her fork. She never could hide anything from Maddie. They had been friends too long, had shared too much, and knew each other too well to keep secrets from each other.

  “I’m pregnant.” There. She said it, but having the words out in the open didn’t diminish the problem as she had hop
ed it might.

  Maddie briefly closed her eyes. “Please, tell me you’re lying.”

  “I did one of those home tests this morning, then I went to the doctor before lunch. But I don’t need any further confirmation.”

  “Paige, when?”

  “The night of my birthday party.” She laughed, just a small sound, more lonely than humorous. “It’s all so ironic. I wanted him to notice me, and he did.”

  Maddie took a drink of her water then shook her head. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “What was there to tell? It was only one night.”

  “The bastard.” Maddie slammed her palm down on the table, turning several heads in their direction.

  “Oh, Maddie, I appreciate your loyalty, but Blake’s not the only one to blame. These things just happen, I guess.”

  Her lunch forgotten, Maddie leaned back in her chair and studied Paige. “Are you going to tell him?”

  “Don’t you think I should?”

  “When?”

  “Soon.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  Paige sighed. “I know he’ll want this child, and I know I don’t stand a chance against him in court. He’s got too much money and too many high-placed friends.”

  “You think he’ll try to take the baby away from you?”

  “Maddie, his entire household staff couldn’t pass a background check. Do you honestly think he’ll abandon his own flesh and blood?”

  “We can always hope.”

  “No. I just have to tell him.”

  “And—” Maddie cocked her head toward some point behind Paige. “There’s no time like the present.”

  Paige half-turned in her seat, then groaned. “What’s he doing here?”

  “Don’t quote me on this, but my guess is eating.”

  “Why here? Why today? There has to be a thousand restaurants in Chicago. Why did he have to pick this one?”

  “So you do care where he eats.”

  “Maddie.”

  The red-head merely shrugged. “Montrachet is a good restaurant. Why not pick this one?”

  “Because I wanted to eat here.”