Waking Up to You Overexposed - By Leslie Kelly Page 0,148
so they were bottom-side up. And in the bottom of each, very easily visible, was a small hole.
Something that wouldn’t have happened at the candy factory.
“Oh, hell,” Izzie whispered.
It appeared someone had, indeed, tried to poison her.
And when Nick turned to her and said, “Tell me about the roses,” she realized it might not have been the first time.
11
WHEN NICK REALIZED there were holes in the bottom of the candy, he saw red. And it wasn’t the cherry cordial filling.
He needed to know more—especially after what Jackie had told him about some flowers Izzie had passed to Leah last weekend. But he didn’t want to do it here.
“The police are on their way,” he muttered to Harry. Then, without a word, he grabbed Izzie’s elbow and pulled her out of the room, straight to her private dressing room.
She stumbled to keep up and he realized he might be holding her too tight. But he couldn’t let go, couldn’t release his grip. He wasn’t letting her get more than six inches away from him...or letting anyone else get within six feet of her.
“Nick, calm down,” she muttered.
“I’m calm.” Deadly calm.
“No, you’re not. You’re volcanic,” she said as they walked into her dressing room.
Nick shut and locked the door. The last time he’d locked the door to this room had been at the start of one of the most amazing sexual experiences he’d ever enjoyed. He really wished he was doing it for the same reason now.
He wasn’t. He was locking the door to keep Izzie—the woman he now knew he loved—safe from someone who’d tried to hurt her at least twice now. Maybe even more.
Looking down, he saw the new chair sitting in front of Izzie’s vanity and the steam built again. He leaned over and smacked it with his palm, sending it crashing against the wall. It did not fall apart.
But that didn’t ease his suspicion about the last one.
“Why did you do that?” she asked, her voice calm and even.
Good thing one of them was. “Just making sure our friend didn’t sabotage another chair.”
Izzie’s pretty mouth opened into a perfect O as understanding washed over her. That, more than anything, seemed to finally make this situation sink in. She grabbed the edge of the table and sagged against it. “Someone really is trying to hurt me?”
He stepped close and wrapped his arms around her shoulders and tugged her against him. “I think so, babe.”
“Why?”
“I have no idea. Why do stalkers do any of the crap they do?”
Tilting her head back to look up at him, she murmured, “Stalker? Why would someone wanting to get close to me only to do something as dumb as make me sick?”
He had a few ideas. There were a lot of men out there who liked to play hero. Maybe somebody was setting Izzie up to get sick or take a fall just so he could get near her by being the one who came to her aid. Who knew how some dark, twisted minds worked? “Maybe somebody was hoping you’d pass out onstage and he could say he was a doctor and come to your aid.”
She blew out an impatient breath. “That’s silly.”
“But not impossible,” he insisted. “Those flowers that came last week...Jackie said they were for you, but that you gave them to Leah?”
Narrowing her eyes, she nodded. “You think they have something to do with this?”
That seemed incredibly obvious to Nick. “You get a couple of anonymous gifts, and the person who ends up with them gets sick.”
She quickly figured out where he was going. “Harry said Leah was sick Sunday night....”
“So was Jackie. They share a dressing room and both smelled and touched the flowers when they were putting them in a vase.”
Izzie shook her head, obviously not wanting to believe it. He didn’t blame her. It couldn’t be easy for her to think someone out there had been targeting her.
Because it was absolutely killing him to think it.
“And you think there was something on the roses....”
“Could have been insecticide, roach powder, anything. They both got nauseous and dizzy, and went home with horrible headaches.”
Nick didn’t know a lot about common household pesticide exposure, but he sure knew about its military applications. He’d been trained in dealing with all kinds of chemical attacks and imagined the most basic symptoms would be similar.
Izzie finally slipped out of his arms, her lovely face taut and strained. Her mouth drooped and she shook her head, appearing almost...hurt...that someone would be after her.