state now? Last night, the vibes you two were giving off
when he came to pick you up were so strong that . . .
well, frankly, I wasn't even expecting you to come home
till this morning."
Time for a subject change. "Seriously, Audrey, using
paint to emulate wallpaper is an excellent idea. But let's
nix the cherubs. I'm going to suggest in the strongest
possible terms: No naked people or mammals of any
kind."
"All right. Would clothed bunnies be okay?"
"No." I put my pasta into the microwave and began
to throw together a salad, stealing some of the mushrooms and scallions that she'd just been chopping.
"Didn't your show's expert last year talk about painting
D o m e s t i c B l i s s 2 1
vertical stripes? That's a must when you're mimicking
wallpaper. Also, surely he or she mentioned how you
should start the process by creating stencils."
"I don't remember." Audrey crossed her arms and
leaned against the door casing that trimmed the dining
room entrance. Thankfully, that lovely section of white
decorative wood had gone unscathed by Audrey's
paintbrush. "Although, now that you mention it, I do remember something about stripes and stencils. But I
wanted to use some free-form drawings."
"Free-form is just not a smart way to go about creating faux wallpaper. Use chalk plumb lines and masking
tape, and create vertical painted lines as your first step.
Or, better yet, allow me to create them for you. That's
going to make things much easier than painting freehand on these huge walls. And it'll force you to get the
scale right. Then, I'll help you cut out two or three stencils
for the basic shapes of flowers.You can add free-form filigree and leaves, and shadings on the flowers."
She clicked her tongue. "You are such a fuddyduddy, Erin."
"I'm not a fuddy-duddy. I'm a designer. Selecting wall
treatments is a huge part of my job. I know what I'm
talking about, Audrey."
She threw up her hands. "Fine, fine. I'll take your advice . . . on the condition that you'll take mine."
With visions of her asking me to paint angels sitting on
clouds, I braced myself and asked: "Which is . . . ?"
"Regarding your love life. Stop driving me up the
wall!"
22 L e s l i e C a i n e
"The one with the cherubs?"
"You and Steve remind me of the amateur ballerinas
I used to work with. You're so concerned about not
stepping on each other's toes that you're always tripping on your own feet. Erin, there's no such thing as the
perfect mate or the perfect relationship for any of us.
We all have warts. Stop waiting for a guarantee, and
trust that, whatever the future brings, you'll be able to
handle it."
"It's really Steve who needs to learn that particular
lesson, Audrey," I grumbled.
"Interesting. That's exactly what Steve said about
you, when I gave him that very same piece of advice
yesterday."
Stunned, I gaped at her. She swept out of the room.
c h a p t e r 3
he steel gray sky of a typical winter late afternoon
Thad turned black and starless by the time I followed the brick walkway at Crestview University. A chill
wind whistled through the bare tree branches, and I
struggled to keep my footing on the icy patches that glittered in the yellow light of the street lamps. I made my
way to the ivy-covered sandstone building and wrestled
with its heavy door.
"Let me get that, miss," a man called from behind me.
"Thank you."
He followed me inside. He was wearing a dark wool
24 L e s l i e C a i n e
beanie and a sheepskin coat, and he was nice-looking--
in his late twenties or early thirties. He gave me a onceover and a broad grin, then said, "My pleasure," as
though he really meant it. It was a testament to just how
badly my day had gone that I flashed a grateful smile.
The warmth from his flattery lasted two seconds, until
I recognized Richard's raspy voice emanating from the
open doorway directly ahead of us. The class session was
in full swing. I'd guessed wrong on the time, although I
wouldn't have had to guess if Sullivan had bothered to
answer the message I'd left on his cell phone a couple of
hours ago. I dashed across the hall and slipped into the
room, quickly finding Sullivan. A young woman was blatantly ogling him, and I was only too happy to slip into
the empty seat between them. He gave me a you'reunforgivably-late arched eyebrow. I gave him an I'd'vebeen-on-time-if-you'd-returned-my-call shrug.
I took in the worn-out room at a glance--fifty black,
threadbare seats in five tiered rows where fewer than
twenty of us now sat at semiattention. Redesigning our
surroundings in the blink of an eye, I gave Richard a
more enticing stage that curved into the center aisle.
Then I swapped the dreadful overhead fluorescents and
acoustic ceiling tiles in favor of a lovely blue-lit coved
ceiling, and livened the textures and colors throughout
the space.
The three of us--Sullivan to my right, his ogler to my
left, and me, the monkey in the middle--were by far the
youngest people in the room. I took off my gloves and
Sullivan allowed me to shed my coat unassisted, which
was unlike him. He looked tired and miserable, even in
my peripheral vision.
I studied the jet black hair of the woman seated di-P o i s o n e d b y G i l t 25
rectly in front of me. Her precise, sharp-cut bob was identical to that of--she turned around and fired a glance at
me with narrowed eyes--Margot Troy!
Come to think of it, her presence here made sense.
Margot would have been drawn to the name of the
course--Going Green. Could she have known in advance that Richard was going to be the finalist judge for
the green home contest? If so, her being his student certainly tipped the scales in her direction.
I struggled to focus on Richard's lecture. Did Margot
know that he'd stepped down as judge? If she was here
primarily to suck up to him, this latest development
wasn't going to sit well.
Margot raised her hand. "I'm sorry, Richard," she said
in a saccharine voice. "I couldn't hear what you said just
now. Could you please repeat your observation? The one
about conservation being our moral obligation?"
Richard repeated a hoary cliche about our being the
children of our beloved Mother Earth and it being our
duty to love, honor, and protect her and her precious, diminishing resources. After several minutes of his droning
on and on with variations on that same theme, I began to
suspect that Richard's lecture was the real cause of the
furrows on Sullivan's brow; Sullivan probably hated that
his one-time idol was regurgitating the homilies of countless conservationists instead of dazzling us with his own
vision.
The girl seated beside me struggled to peer around me
at Sullivan. She was clicking the spring on her pen repeatedly, probably trying to annoy me into changing
seats. Fat chance. She looked twenty at the mos
t. I had almost ten years on her, Sullivan had fourteen, and we had
26 L e s l i e C a i n e
amassed a world of shared experience in our relatively
short time together.
Richard finally began discussing something personal--
his sideline business producing and selling nontoxic products for households, including paints and wood-finishing
sealants. A middle-aged woman said timidly, "But your
products cost so much more than the products at the
home-improvement stores."
"In terms of money, sure," Richard countered. "But
think about the cost to the environment. Think about
how the toxins in all those products are permanently polluting the earth. And once the air and water are gone, we
won't survive. Mankind will simply cease to exist."
"Oh, get over yourself, Thayers," a man yelled from
the back of the room. I turned. It was the man in the
sheepskin coat who'd held the door for me.
"Matthew Hayes," Richard intoned wearily as he eyed
the handsome young man. "Figured you'd show up here
eventually to disrupt things."
"Oh, I'm not here to disrupt. I want you to teach me.
Teach me something I don't know, Mr. Thayers. Something
that I haven't heard a zillion times before. Teach me how I
can use responsible products and still make money. Just
don't focus on the so-called earth-friendly products that you
personally profit from!"
Several classroom members had slouched down in
their seats. Others were stealing tense glances at Richard
and his heckler. Was it just a coincidence that on the
same day, this man whom Sullivan so admired had made
two such ardent enemies? Or had Burke Stratton sent
Matthew Hayes here?
"Don't force me to call security, Matthew."
"Please, don't throw me out, Master Thayers. Teach
P o i s o n e d b y G i l t 27
me how I'm supposed to make my own profit when you
antipollutants fanatics are picketing outside my business." He stood up, the color rising in his cheeks. "When
protestors block customers from my door, while handing
out fliers, printed on your oh-so-ecologically-responsible
paper, urging people to boycott my company! Teach us
how big business is bad! Yet they're the only ones who can
keep their profit margins low! They can survive despite
your boycotts. All of which just happens to help sales for
all your touchy-feely products!"
An elderly man at the end of our row rose on wobbly
legs and called to the man behind us, "Sir? I paid good
money to be here and to listen to Professor Thayers. And
I'll thank you to either sit there quietly or leave!"
Matthew Hayes plopped himself back down into
his chair and crossed his arms. "Dude, sorry to break
this to you, but if you paid more than a dime for this
class, you got ripped off." Again he snorted with forced
laughter. "You actually believe Thayer's nonsense, don't
you?"
"Class," Richard said in an authoritarian voice, "this is
simply a personal vendetta that Mr. Hayes has against
me. Don't give this misguided man the time of day. He
skirts the law with his use of ivory and rain forest wood."
"Untrue! I use recycled materials only, and you know
it! If any of my materials were illegal, the SEC would
shut me down."
"This is not the time or the place," Richard said. "If
you want to have a private discussion, you--"
"Yeah, right. Admit it, Thayers. You just can't handle
anyone with a different mind-set from your own."
"What mind-set?" Margot remarked over her shoulder. "Do you even have a mind?"
28 L e s l i e C a i n e
I began to wonder if this had all been staged--if
Richard, the "great motivator," had hired Hayes to liven
up the class with a debate. I stole a glance at Steve. He
was glaring at the heckler.
Hayes again got to his feet. "Come on, Thayers. If your
product is so safe and earth-friendly, put your mouth
where your money is. Drink it."
Richard grabbed a quart-sized can of paint. He
smirked at Matthew. "This is gold paint, which, as you
must know, is normally the most toxic of all paints, because of its metallic content. You want me to drink this in
front of you to prove it's safe?"
"Absolutely!" the heckler fired back at Richard. "Go
ahead! Drink your paint. If it's so safe, why not?"
"No! Don't be crazy, Professor Thayers," a woman student cried, echoing my thoughts exactly.
"He just wants to make you look foolish and desperate," another woman said.
"No, no." Richard calmly held up his hand. "He's
right. About this one thing, I mean. I'm happy to prove to
this . . . earth-eroding miscreant that every word I say
about my products, and our duty to the planet, is the
truth." He pulled out a Swiss Army knife from the pocket
of his baggy slacks and started to pry open the can.
I looked at Sullivan, who was aghast as he watched his
mentor. "Stop him!" I whispered harshly.
"How?" he whispered back.
"Take the cans away from him!"
"I'm sure he knows what he's doing." To my ear, however, Sullivan had never sounded less sure of himself.
"He'll be fine, Erin," Margot said under her breath,
turning toward us.
"Wait, Mr. Thayers." I shot to my feet. "Can't you just
P o i s o n e d b y G i l t 29
point out that there's a big difference in calling something nontoxic versus edible? Or potable, in this case? I
mean, just because it won't kill you to eat a cup of mud
doesn't mean it won't make you sick. Furthermore--"
I broke off. My words were falling on deaf ears.
Richard set down the lid and held the gold paint high
with both hands as though he were a priest lifting the
Holy Cup at Mass. With his wild eyes and hair, however,
he looked more like the quintessential mad scientist. All
around me, his students were shrieking or laughing as if
this were a grand staged event.
Richard Thayers took three or four deep gulps from
his can of paint. Disgusted, I sank into my chair.
"Ah. Not bad," Richard said, wiping his lips on a paper
towel that he'd produced from behind the dais. He
coughed a little, set down the can, and gave his heckler a
triumphant smile. But I was certain that I glimpsed a hint
of fear in his eyes.
Richard glanced at his watch. "Thank you for your attendance tonight." He cleared his throat. "Class is dismissed."
"Are you okay, Professor Thayers?" an elderly woman's
frail voice behind me asked.
"Just fine. Thank you. And thank you all for coming
tonight. We'll see you here next week. For our final session." He gave a wan smile, then focused on packing up
his things.
"This is really not as big of a deal as it seems," Margot
said quietly, again rotating in her seat to face us. Her expression and voice sounded sincere, her dark brown eyes
directly meeting my gaze. Margot had the kind of patrician features and style that screamed old money. I
guessed her to be in her late forties, but she'd had "work
30 L e s l i e C a i n e
done," so it was hard to tell. "I've taken his class three
years running, and he does this every year."
"Really?" I asked, still appalled and feeling a little sick
to my own stomach. "He drinks gold paint every year?"
"Oh, yes. The first time he did it, everyone panicked.
Half the class was about to call nine-one-one on our cell
phones till he convinced us not to. Word's starting to get
around, though," she grumbled, eyeing Matthew Hayes.
"Obviously."
"Matthew Hayes couldn't have known. If he was aware
that Richard drank paint every year, why would he goad
him into doing so? He'd only be playing into Richard's
hand."
"True. Well. In any case, no worries." She grinned at
me and stood up. She whispered, "I need to go pay our illustrious instructor some compliments now. It probably
won't help me win the contest, but it certainly won't
hurt."
"Too late for that, Ms. Troy," Steve said. "He stepped
down today. He knows one of the finalists and couldn't
be impartial."
"Oh, but he--" She gave Richard, then me, a confused glance, but a moment later focused on Sullivan
with a steely resolve. "That could only be your client.
Otherwise, you wouldn't know before I did. I'm one of
only three finalists, for heaven's sake. What happened?"
"We really don't know anything beyond the fact that
he stepped down, Margot," I said.
"Peachy," Margot growled. "Just peachy." She narrowed her eyes at the doe-eyed girl beside me, who was
blatantly listening. "I'm sorry, young lady, does our conversation concern you?"
"Um, no, er. I was just . . . worried about Mr. Thayers."
P o i s o n e d b y G i l t 31
"Well, as you've already heard, you needn't bother."
Margot gathered her things and swept out of the room.
Steve laid his hand on top of mine and gave my fingers
a brief squeeze. To my chagrin, that was enough physical
contact to get my pulse racing, especially when our gazes
locked. He looked sad. "I'd better go talk to him," Steve
muttered, then rose.
"I'll meet you outside," I told him. He caressed my
shoulder for an instant as he walked behind me, then
brushed past the girl beside me as though she--despite
her doleful gaze--were invisible. My karma would no
doubt give me a head-whack for the glee that brought
me. The girl rushed out the back door as Sullivan strode