“Are you still going to have your book club?” Sean asked.
His soft tone took her by surprise. Isabel glanced up and met Sean’s gaze. Her heart stopped and she couldn’t look away. His eyes narrowed as he studied her.
He suspected something. Her heart suddenly started to pound against her chest. How? She was playing the good girl perfectly. Did he notice that there was no spark in her? That she felt dull and broken? She was hiding her true thoughts for now but she would break free when she felt safe and was with someone who supported her. She used to feel that way around Sean but now she knew the truth.
“Of course, it’s only one evening a month.” She heard her father’s huff of exasperation and turned away from Sean. “It’s important to me.”
“Why?” Keith argued. “You’re purposely reading books that other people are against.”
“Because I’m against censorship.” She glanced at Sean as the anger and disappointment coursed through her. “In all forms.”
He tilted his head. “The next selection is the cookbook on aphrodisiacs, right?”
She nodded. The movement felt tense and choppy. “We are each making a dish.”
Sean leaned back in his chair and watched her carefully. “I think I will attend the next meeting.”
Her throat tightened with dread. If she was barely surviving this dinner, she definitely wouldn’t last through a book club discussion with him. “If you wish,” she said and grabbed her water goblet.
“I had such a good time at the last meeting.”
“I’m glad.” She calmly drank her water as her pulse galloped. He was trying to get a reaction out of her. She wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction. She had spent her school years sitting next to troublemakers and class clowns. She wasn’t going to crack.
He frowned. “Although, aphrodisiacs are just one step removed from love potions, aren’t they?”
She paused and stared at Sean. Was he serious? She then saw the spark in his eyes and realized he was being deliberately provocative.
“Witchcraft?” Keith Bennett’s voice dripped with disapproval.
“There’s no connection,” Isabel claimed. The book explained that while a love potion was designed for a specific person, an aphrodisiac was supposed to increase sexual desire in anyone who ate it.
“Both are designed to make a person act against their will.”
“I believe that’s what the reading circle said in their letter to the editor when they recommended people boycott any store that sold it,” Isabel said.
Sean drummed his fingers against the table. Her responses were confusing him and he was deciding which tactic to take. “Do you believe an aphrodisiac is like a love potion?”
Of course she didn’t. She also knew that he didn’t. He’d probably already read the assigned book because the man didn’t start an argument without having all the facts. Sean would appreciate that aphrodisiacs were more about food chemistry than hocus-pocus. Certain foods contained vitamins and minerals that increased the body’s production of hormones. The results were subtle, though, and had little effect.
So he had taken the other side of the debate just to get a response out of her. She wasn’t going to play. Not today, not ever. “I don’t know enough about aphrodisiacs,” she answered. “That’s why I’m reading the book and trying the recipes.”
“If you will excuse me. I’ve heard enough.”
Keith abruptly got up from the table and walked out of the dining room. Isabel sighed and rubbed the ache that had bloomed in her forehead. Even when she tried to be on her best behavior she seemed to make someone upset.
“Am I your intended victim?” Sean asked in a teasing tone.
Victim? Sean Hawkins was no one’s victim. She was the one who was vulnerable and exposed, but she wasn’t going to act like it. Isabel slowly turned and faced him. “Excuse me?”
He smiled. “Are you going to try those recipes on me?”
She gave a tight, closed-mouth smile. “I don’t need aphrodisiacs to get you into bed.” Apparently all she needed was an overbearing father giving him an assignment to babysit her.
“Then why are you wasting your time reading the book and preparing the recipes?”
She didn’t consider the book club a waste of time. It was fun and made her try something different each month. It was a safe way to break out of her gilded cage.
“Because, as you know, in the book club we apply what we read to our daily life,” Isabel said. “And if I was going to approach the aphrodisiacs using the scientific method, I would have to give them to a man who has either no interest or only a slight interest in me.”