My fork clatters against my plate. I snatch it back up with fingers gone numb and white. "I… developed an allergy."
He stops chewing to stare at me, giving off another sense of oppression and stealing the air from the room.
Then he sets down his knife, reaching across the table to grab my wrist. His grip is firm but not painful, and I watch his hand in confusion.
He plucks the fork from my hand and sets it next to him. Then he switches our plates in a smooth movement.
I stare down at the steak, already sliced into perfect bite-sized pieces, not sure what to think. Is this the reaction of a man who kills his wife later in the story?
"Eat," he says simply.
"But—"
"Just eat." He's already slicing bite-sized pieces of the godawful fungus-bathed chicken.
I eat. The steak melts on my tongue—rich, buttery, seasoned with something peppery. It is obscenely good, and it takes everything in me not to do a little happy dance in my chair. I cut another piece, less careful this time, and juice runs down my chin before I can catch it.
Knox's gaze drops to my chin, his eyes darkening.
I grab my napkin and dab frantically, heat flooding my cheeks. Elegant, Vivienne. You're supposed to be a rich socialite, remember?
The rest of the meal passes in silence. He finishes my chicken—mushrooms and all—without comment. The waiter returns to clear the plates, refills Knox's wine glass from a bottle I didn't order and won't touch. The deep red catches the candlelight.
My own glass sits untouched, a full pour growing warm. Pretending to be elegant is one thing, but I'm not about to touch alcohol after all the pills I took this morning. Until I know the full picture of this body's health, I have to be careful.
Knox swirls his wine, sipping at it, apparently in no hurry to leave.
Beneath the table, I pick at my cuticles, thinking about how much smarter it would be to talk to a lawyer before discussing divorce with the man. But it isn't like I'm expecting anything out of the divorce, and I'm prepared to work to support myself. The original Vivienne might be some sort of shopaholic socialite, but I'm not.
I've worked my entire life, at least until my chemo sessions knocked me on my ass. I'm perfectly capable of doing the same here and affording a small apartment somewhere.
Which reminds me, I need to see if my apartment really does exist in this world. Otherwise, why would Vivienne have the key?
"What are you thinking?" Knox asks, after another sip of wine.
I clear my throat, deciding to go for it. The faster I can untangle myself from the plot, the better. "I'm thinking about us. About our marriage."
His glass pauses halfway to the table, his fingers tightening around the stem. "Go on."
"I don't think this is working for either of us." If I remember the plot correctly, Vivienne and Knox were at odds since day one. Granted, it's a little strange they have sex—it seemed implied in the book Knox never touched a woman before Abigail and the marriage was in name only—but it wasn't explicitly spelled out, so I guess the details were glossed over in the name of romance.
Risking a glance at the man gives me nothing. There's no emotion on his face as he waits for me to finish what I started.
"I don't need anything. Not the house, not money, nothing. I can support myself. I just want a clean break. We can get the divorce settled quickly if we both agree—"
The wine glass slams against the table. Red wine jumps over the rim and bleeds into the white cloth, and I jump.
Knox hasn't stopped staring. A vein pulses at his temple and his fingers remain locked around the glass stem. Then, one by one, he loosens his fingers from their death grip and stands.
It takes him two steps to round the table, leaning down to fill my vision with his face.
Damn. Even when romance novels give descriptions of the love interests, I always picture the men as tall, with black hair and dark eyes. It's my standard view of tall, dark, and handsome.
But now, I can't imagine anyone sexier than the man shoving his face into my personal space, even if I'm also terrified he might actually eat me alive.
I flinch back.
His hand snaps out to cradle the back of my skull, his fingers threading through my hair and palm warm against my nape. He draws me forward until his lips almost brush against mine, but not quite.
Everything about this moment is fire and electricity, zipping through my veins. Way too much of my brain replays last night's not-a-dream, and my eyes drop to his mouth before skittering away in panic.
My breath stutters, my heart races, and what the hell is happening?
Is he making a move?
Him? Knox Marshall? Love interest and partner to his own fated mate as described in vivid, and I mean vivid, detail across several hundred pages?
The man has a wildly sexy side. I know it intimately, thanks to multiple spicy scenes I've read and re-read. This side is not shown to Vivienne in the book. Not even once.
And yet.
And yet.
His lips hover against mine, close enough to taste the wine on his breath, feel the heat radiating off his skin. Close enough that if either of us breathed wrong, we'd collide.
Part of me wants to lean forward, close the distance, shove my hands through his soft-looking hair and beg him for a repeat of last night so I can actually remember every detail.
But that's only one small, teeny tiny, excessively horny, male love interest-addled part of my brain.
The rest of it is screaming: Girl, you're in danger, run! Run now! Don't look back!
So my body does the only thing it can agree on between the two very opposite thought processes going through my brain. It freezes.
"No," Knox says, destroying all my hope.