Read Online Can't Buy Me Love by Amy Lillard - Free Book Online Page B

or just spit it into his napkin?
    He looked up at Pa ige. Their eyes met and Blake lost all rational thought. She expected him to say something. Carefully he chewed. At least at this distance she wouldn’t see him grimace as he swallowed. Well, he hoped anyway.
    He wrenched his gaze from hers and mana ged to swallow without gagging.
    “ Did, uh…your mother teach you to make this, too?”
    “I have a confession to make.” She laid her fork aside and delicately wiped her mouth with the linen napkin. For a girl raised in the wilds of the jungle, she had impeccable manners. This just might work after all. “My mother never taught me to cook. I learned in the field and on the trips we made to different places.”
    “I see. Where’d you learn to cook this?” Surely his words didn’t sound as derisive to her ears as they did to his.
    “ This is my very own recipe.”
    “You don’t say.”
    Despite the distance between them, he could detect the blush rising into her cheeks. She placed her napkin back in her lap and retrieved her fork.
    “ I don’t think I have ever tasted anything quite like it. What kind of lasagna did you say it was?”
    “ Vegetarian,” She said proudly, scooping up another bite.
    “Vege—does that mean… ”
    “ That I’m a vegetarian? Of course.”
    “ Of course.”
    She watched him as she chewed. “You’re not eating. Is there a problem with your dinner?”
    Well, yeah. He was a meat and potatoes kind of guy and now he was married to, and had consented to eat the food of, a broccoli and tomatoes kind of gal. Yes, there was a problem. “No, no, no, it’s…fine.” He took another bite to prove his point.
    “ It’s even low fat,” Paige said. “I made it with tofu instead of cheese.”
    No wonder. He reached for the glass Dancy had set in front of him, and somehow managed to choke down the liquid. “What is this?” he sputtered.
    “ Iced Japanese green tea. Do you like it?”
    “ The tea?” It tasted like liquid grass.
    “ No, the lasagna.”
    “ Yes,” he lied, unwilling to hurt her feelings for anything, not even the steak he so desperately craved at that moment. Why he was so loathe to hurt her was anybody’s guess. Damn his aunt for teaching him to be a gentleman.
    But he had to have her on his side if this plan of his was going to work. And it had it to.
    “Good.” She smiled. “There’s plenty.”
    Blake ’s smile felt stiff on his lips. Somehow he’d make it through this terrible meal and somehow he’d talk Paige into hiring a new cook, but first he had to get through dinner without hurting her feelings. Then he had to convince her to pretend—really pretend for all of Chicago to see—that their marriage was real.
    ****
    “Let’s take our coffee into the den,” Blake invited.
    Paige looked from her plate, down the length of table to where her husband sat. Husband. So strange to use that word to describe Blake. After all, what they had wasn’t really a marriage, despite her efforts to pretend otherwise. That’s why she had offered to cook for him, she wanted to feel if even at dinner time that a portion of their marriage was real. It was stupid, but she couldn’t help herself.
    “ But you haven’t finished your lasagna.”
    Blake patted his trim waistline. “I’m stuffed. Really. I ate a big lunch.”
    Reluctantly, Paige placed her napkin beside her half -eaten dinner, picked up Bruno, and followed Blake into the den.
    The warm, friendly room held two big leather sofas that faced each other in front of the huge sandstone fireplace. Paige sat on one couch while Blake sat on the other. He crossed one leg over the other as they waited for Dancy to serve their coffee.
    He looked as cool and guarded as always, with the exception of that first time she had seen him in Noah ’s office and the fiasco with the press on the steps of the Cook County Courthouse, but something was up; Paige knew it. He hadn’t eaten his dinner. He wouldn’t look her in the