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Okay then. I guess he didn’t want to talk about the wedding either.

I held back a sigh and took an unenthusiastic bite of salad.

I’d just forced the greens down when a family of three passed by our table. The daughter, who looked like she was around seven or eight years old, stopped to gawk at Vuk.

“Mom, Dad, look at his face.” Her stage whisper was hardly a whisper when she was standing less than a foot away. “Why does it look like that?”

“Don’t stare,” her father admonished. “It’s rude.”

“But those scars! They’regross.”

“Emily!” The mother glared at her daughter before casting an embarrassed glance in our direction. “I’m so sorry. She’s…” Boisterous laughter from another table drowned out the rest of her apology.

She placed a hand on the little girl’s shoulder and quickly ushered her out of the restaurant. The father trailed after them, taking great care not to look at Vuk.

Cold metal bit into my palm. I hadn’t realized how hard I’d been gripping my fork, and I had to physically force my hand to uncurl.

Vuk, on the other hand, hadn’t moved an inch. If it weren’t for the near-imperceptible tightening of his lips, I would’ve thought he hadn’t heard the girl at all.

How often did people openly stare and whisper for him to act so unfazed?

My earlier annoyance softened with sympathy. I wasn’t sure whether I should address what happened, so I let the silence stretch on while I debated what to say next.

Besides the scar on his face, Vuk had additional burn scars wrapped around his throat. They peeked out from the neck of his shirt, and though they weren’t as visible, they were enough to make the average person do a double take.

But the little girl was wrong. They weren’t gross; they were simply a part of him. Some people had freckles and moles; he had scars.

Vuk’s lips tightened further.If my appearance disturbs you so much, we can end dinner early.His movements were sharp enough to cut glass.I wouldn’t want you to lose your appetite.

Blood rushed to my face. I was mortified that I’d been caught staring—the very thing the little girl had done—but his assumptions regarding my character made me bristle.

Did he think me so rude and shallow that I would blatantly judge the way he looked over dinner?

“I wasn’t staring at you because of your appearance,” I said. “You’re sitting across from me. It’s natural that I look at you. I wasn’t eventhinkingabout you.”

It was a bald-faced lie, but I certainly wasn’t going to share my real thoughts with him. I had a feeling he’d hate sympathy more than he would rudeness.

Vuk arched his brow a fraction of an inch.

“I wasn’t.” I lifted my chin. “I was thinking about…Ireland. And how excited I am to visit.”

He looked unimpressed.You’ve been to Ireland before.

This time, I was the one whose eyebrows flew up. “How do you know that?”

I’d studied abroad in Dublin for a summer, before I was scouted and dropped out of Howard to pursue modeling full-time. It wasn’t a secret, but it wasn’t common knowledge either.

There was a short pause before Vuk answered.Jordan told me.

I frowned. I didn’t remember telling Jordan about Dublin, but I could be wrong. The past year and a half had been such a blur that I barely remembered what life was like before I agreed to Jordan’s marriage of convenience.

It was a long engagement, but I was marrying the heir to Jacob Ford. People expected us to have a lavish wedding, and those took time to plan.

Our ceremony was set for February, six months from now. After that, I’d receive my first five-million-dollar payment, and I could finally leave my agency.

They’d already taken too much of my money and soul; if I lost any more pieces of myself, I’d have nothing left.

“Are you bringing anyone to the wedding?” I asked Vuk.