I harumph. “I think Zan is too blunt and competitive to be considered a lady.” I scoop up a bite of heavily sauced rice and slide it between my lips. “And I talk with my mouth full, so…”
“I’ve never seen you talk with your mouth full before tonight.”
“Are you repulsed?” I shove more veggies into the rice mix in my mouth. “Is it totally grossing you out?”
His mouth curves. “No. It’s cute, actually, the way you hide behind your hand every time.”
“I do not hide…” I trail off as I realize my fist is, in fact, hovering in front of my mouth. I force my hand into my lap and start to speak again, but the words refuse to come out until I’ve chewed and swallowed.
Apparently, my table manners run deep, even when I’m doing my best to defy my conditioning.
“Anything else?” Jeffrey asks, setting his fork beside his empty plate.
I blink. “How did you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Finish your food so quickly? You weren’t talking with your mouth full.”
He smiles. “Two brothers and a nanny who enjoyed watching us fight over who was going to get seconds at lunch.”
“What a sadist.” I shake my head. “Everyone should get seconds. I’m certainly going to, as soon as I force myself to eat the broccoli.”
“You don’t have to eat the broccoli.”
“Broccoli is good for you.” I sigh, stabbing a green floret.
“But if you’re going to die young, why worry about health?”
I pause, considering his words. “Excellent point. You’re right. I shouldn’t worry. Do you want my broccoli? Or should I throw it away?”
“I want every last bite of your broccoli,” he says in a husky voice that makes my belly burn for reasons having nothing to do with the heat level of the curry.
“You can’t make broccoli sexy,” I whisper. “Broccoli doesn’t work that way.”
“Broccoli works the way I want it to work. My expectations of the broccoli are nearly as important as the objective qualities of the vegetable.”
My brows pinch together. “Pardon me?”
“I’ve been thinking… There’s a flaw in my theory about the nature of reality.”
I rake my broccoli onto his plate. “Oh yeah? Do tell.”
“The placebo effect. Believing that we’re taking medicine is arguably as important as the medicine itself. Double blind trials have proven we possess almost mystical powers of self-healing, so long as we unquestioningly believe that a sugar pill is the real thing.” He wolfs down a broccoli stalk, chewing and swallowing quickly before he adds, “I wouldn’t be surprised if curses work the same way.”
I lean back in my chair, crossing my arms. “So, you think my subconscious mind is making the things the woman who kidnapped me predicted come true?”
“Or your conscious mind, in the case of Andrew and Sabrina.”
I narrow my eyes. “How did you know that she told me that?”
“I can see the future, too.”
I intensify my glare.
“An educated guess,” he amends. “And some things you’ve said before. Which begs the question—what happens if the prediction doesn’t come true? What if my actions on behalf of my brother shift the course of what you perceive to be inalterable destiny?”
I press my lips together. “Then I’m going to be angry again. Of all the things the woman told me, that’s the one I most wanted to come true.”
“Because you loathe my brother?”
“No,” I huff.
“You don’t have to lie to me. In fact, I’d much prefer you didn’t.”
“I’m not lying,” I say, meeting his probing gaze. “Seriously. The kidnapping happened well before I was old enough to understand what the engagement meant. So, I always knew I was never going to marry Andrew, and I hardly ever saw him. I honestly didn’t have strong feelings about him one way or another.” I shrug and admit, “I mean, yes, sometimes he made me nervous when we talked on the phone, especially near the end when he seemed so impatient all the time, but it was nothing that would make me actively dislike him. He seems like a good guy, especially for someone like Sabrina, who is also impatient, but in a nicer way.”
His lips quirk. “You didn’t answer my question.”
“I won’t have to,” I say with more faith than I feel just now. “Because Sabrina and Andrew are going to end up together. It’s written in the stars or…wherever people who can tell the future read things like that.”
He pushes his chair back and stands. “Fine. Let’s go see about that, shall we?”
“No,” I shout, lunging after him as he strides toward the stairs. “Don’t call Andrew! You’re only going to make him angrier and ruin everything all over again.”
“If it’s already ruined, I can’t very well ruin it any more.”
“Yes, you can,” I huff, hot on his heels as he steps off the last stair and starts for the phone, still sitting on the table by the bookshelves. “I know how men are, especially royal men. The only thing worse than knowing they’ve made a mistake is knowing that other people know they’ve made a mistake.”