Page 18 of His Vow

He smoothed the napkin across his lap. "Yes."

I could have asked. The question was right there — If you weren't planning to call, why did you have a table? If the three days of silence were real, how is this reservation also real? The math didn't work. One of those things was a lie.

But the candle was warm. His eyes were on me. The alcove smelled like butter and rosemary and fresh bread. The evening felt like something I didn't want to interrupt with a question that might change the atmosphere.

I picked up the menu.

The waiter appeared. I ordered the duck confit with cherry reduction. Nolan ordered the sea bass, grilled, no sauce. I looked at him over my menu.

"No sauce."

"I don't like sauce."

"You don't like sauce. On fish."

"The fish is the point. Sauce is a distraction."

"Sauce is a complement."

"Sauce is a cover-up."

I shook my head and set the menu down. "You are the most difficult man I've ever shared a table with."

His mouth quirked. That ghost of a smile. I was mapping its varieties — the faint flicker, the one crinkling his eyes, and the elusive full version flashing teeth. Tonight, I was gunning for the teeth.

The food arrived. My duck was perfect. I took a bite and closed my eyes.

When I opened them, Nolan was watching me. His fork was suspended halfway to his mouth, forgotten. His eyes were on my lips.

I reached across the table with my fork and speared a piece of his sea bass.

He looked at my fork, then at me. "You're going to keep doing that."

"Obviously." I put the fish in my mouth. It was good. Plain, but good. "It needs sauce."

"It does not."

I reached across again. He caught my wrist. His fingers wrapped around it — loose, warm, his thumb resting against my pulse point. My fork hovered over his plate. We stayed like that for a beat. Two. His thumb pressed lightly against the vein in my wrist, and I knew he could feel how fast it was going.

He released me. I withdrew the fork. He went back to his fish. I went back to my duck. Neither of us mentioned it. Both of us were aware of the exact spot where his thumb had been.

"Tell me about your week," he said.

"Rafael got a write-up in a downtown arts journal. The journalist called his work 'emotionally tectonic,' which made Rafael so nervous he called me four times to ask if that was good." I tore a piece of bread and dipped it in the cherry reduction. "I'm scouting a new artist — a ceramicist from Bed-Stuy who makes these incredible vessels that look like they're mid-collapse. And Margaux threatened to quit over a framing vendor who delivered the wrong molding for the third time."

"Did she quit?"

"Margaux threatens to quit every Tuesday. It's part of her process." I leaned forward on my elbows. "What about you? What does your week look like when you're not vanishing on women who kissed you?"

His jaw worked. He set his fork down and picked up his water glass, turning it once. "Acquisitions. Restructuring. Finding the weak angles in companies that don't want to admit they have them."

"That sounds like surgery."

"It is surgery. Except the patient doesn't get anesthesia."

I laughed. He observed every bit of it. His gaze followed my lips' curve, my head's backward tilt, and my hand rising to my collarbone. When our eyes met again, his face cracked open, like a door left unlatched.

"You're different tonight," I said.