Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
Franco: I have a secret.
Franco: And I really want to tell you.
Colum: You should tell me.
Colum: Wait.
Colum: Will Devon kill me if you do?
Franco: …
Franco: Not Devon you should be worried about.
Colum: Your wife? Never mind. I don’t want to know.
“ C olum? Are you— Ouch, that’s my thigh. Colum, are you… Wait, hold on.”
Colum closed his eyes, first to block out the vertigo-inducing swirling of the screen, second to make sure he didn’t see anything he shouldn’t, since he was pretty sure Franco had answered his phone in bed.
“It’s the pillow.” Devon’s voice rumbled from the background. “It’s like having a fourth person in the bed.”
“Leave my pregnancy pillow out of this,” Juliette said faintly. “I love him more than either of you right now.”
Franco’s face appeared on screen, his brows pinched with concern. “You okay, Colum?”
“Pregnancy pillow?” Colum asked.
Franco smiled, but briefly. “Surprise! You’re going to be an uncle!”
“Juliette’s pregnant?” Colum smiled wide, imagining Franco as a father. Dear God, but that was one lucky kid. “Congratulations.”
“Thank you.” Franco smiled, but his brows were still drawn together.
“Yes, sorry about all this.” Colum hadn’t thought to check the time. This day had seemed to last forever, and he’d lost track of whether it was day or night. Luckily, Boston was hours behind his current time zone so it wasn’t too bad. Late enough to worry Franco though.
“No, don’t be sorry. What’s up?”
“I got un-married,” Colum said with a grin.
The line between Franco’s brows disappeared. “Wait, what? Tell me everything.”
Colum explained that Eric had annulled the marriage to Sarah—he really needed to check that someone had called her—and Nikolett.
Franco feigned a heart attack when Colum told him that he’d tried to step down as archivist, because after falling in love, Colum realized he didn’t want a loveless, in-name-only marriage, and that the possibility of finding some happiness was worth giving up the archive.
“After falling in love?” Franco said, as he miraculously recovered from his fake heart attack. “Who did you fall in love with? Annie and Xavier?”
“Yes.”
“You fell in love with one of my people?” Franco grinned.
“One of my people,” Juliette corrected from the background, making it clear she was eavesdropping on the call.
“Does that mean you’re switching sides and moving to Boston?” Franco asked excitedly.
“Er…no.”
“He’s calling to warn us that Eric is about to propose a new trinity, a trinity that would mean we lose Annie,” Devon called out.
“It’s more that I was just calling to ask if you’d help me with that. Not warn you. I don’t think Eric’s planning to call just yet. He’s dealing with other things.”
Things like Nikolett. Colum’s natural curiosity had him wanting to ask how Nikolett had gotten caught in a bear trap, but his newly discovered squeamishness meant he wasn’t going to.
Franco leaned in. “You want me to use my sexual wiles on the Grand Master until she agrees.”
“Jesus,” Devon said, but he was laughing.
Colum usually blushed when Franco said stuff like that, but he grinned. “Would you mind terribly?”
“Not at all. I’ll sacrifice my virtue, my?—”
“Fine!” Juliette yelled. “I owe Eric for Vadisk anyway. But I want a wedding. A real wedding. I want to get dressed up and go to a wedding. I want to cry because it’s beautiful and meaningful, and then I want to eat cake.”
Franco was looking back over his shoulder. “ Querida , do you want me to get you cake?”
“Yes,” Juliette breathed. “I want all the cake.”
Franco looked back at the phone, expression briefly serious. “The Grand Master agrees to the trinity of Colum O’Connor, Annie Ward, and Xavier…” He paused. “Whose last name I can’t remember.”
“Allard,” Colum said.
Franco nodded his thanks, then continued, “And Xavier Allard that the fleet admiral has proposed.” He grinned. “Be sure to remind him to call and actually propose it.”
Colum was grinning back so hard his face hurt as they exchanged a few more pleasantries, briefly catching up. “Go find your wife some cake,” he said at last.
“Go enjoy your fiancés,” Franco said. “Wait, are you already married because you don’t have to start with a binding ceremony? Either way…enjoy.”
“Thank you.”
“And, Colum?”
“Yes?”
“Be happy. You deserve it.”
Annie sat on the couch in the living area of the honeymoon suite they’d been assigned in the castle. The honeymoon suite—reserved for those members who were married by the fleet admiral, which Colum explained wasn’t a common thing, as most territory admirals performed the ceremonies—had been designed to allow newlyweds all the comforts of home. That was nice, since Annie was currently wondering how long she might be staying here at Triskelion Castle.
Unable to sit still, she rose, wandering around the large room that included not only the couch, love seat, and coffee table arranged before a large-screen television, but also a small dining table with four chairs, a kitchenette, and a large partner desk sat near the lone window in the room, offering people an amazing view of the cliffs and ocean beyond. She drifted over to the window, looking out at the dark night. The view was very dramatic at the moment, as the jagged landscape was cast in hard shadows from the full moon.
It was all quite beautiful and cozy and apparently their home away from home for the time being. Following the “war council,” they’d hastily retreated here, all three of them still shell-shocked by Eric’s agreement to allow them to marry. They’d been met at the door of the Great Hall by Regina, who showed them up to the suite, Annie apparently allowed in the other parts of the castle.
Regina also informed them they were under direct orders from Eric to remain in the castle until given permission to return to Dublin. Given how wily the Spaniard had proven himself to be, and how protective Eric was of Colum, Annie foresaw a long stay in their future.
Not that any of them had complained because, whether they were locked down here or in Ireland, the end result was the same. They were together.
Annie threw herself down on the cozy couch, leaning back against the headrest, looking at the ceiling. Her leg bounced, her nerves getting the better of her as she glanced toward the closed bedroom door.
While gaining Eric’s permission to marry had been a major hurdle, it hadn’t been the final one, and there was a small part of her that worried the Grand Master would veto the whole thing. Annie was trying to figure out how these two secret societies coexisted and what exactly the pecking order was. To be honest, she got the sense the fleet admiral and Grand Master were trying to figure out the same thing.
Colum had retreated to the bedroom the moment they’d stepped inside to call Franco. He’d been fairly confident his best friend would be able to convince the Grand Master to agree to their marriage, and while Annie considered herself a positive person, in this case, because she wanted it so fucking badly, she was waiting for the other shoe to drop. Because despite a few stressful, horrible, heartbreaking hours this morning when they’d thought Eric had refused their request to be together, the rest of their road to happily ever after had come relatively easily.
She heard the low rumble of Colum’s voice through the door, but she couldn’t make out the words. She was tempted to go press her ear against the wood, but she chastised herself for the thought, digging deep for patience. Colum had asked for a few minutes alone to speak to his friend.
According to Colum, Franco was quite in love with his wife and husband, and he’d wanted Colum to find the same thing. Annie had recognized the voice of the unseen man who’d put a hand over Franco’s mouth on the video call, and was fairly certain Franco’s husband was Devon Asher, the man who’d recruited her to work for the agency. The way Colum talked about Franco told Annie that he was quite special to her—God, please—husband.
From the door opposite the bedroom, she heard Xavier outside their suite in the hallway, the familiar tread of his feet as he paced back and forth mingled with his also-muffled voice. While Colum had vowed to take care of things on the Trinity Masters’ end, Xavier decided it was best to rip off the Band-Aid, so to speak, and let his mother know that while he planned to serve as a finance minister, he was no longer interested in training to become vice admiral. Given the one phone conversation Annie had overheard between Xavier and his mother, she’d venture to guess his call was more difficult than Colum’s.
So, with both her men, working to secure their future, Annie had been relegated to the living room, where she’d poured herself a glass of wine and tried to steady her nerves. Annie had wanted to be with Colum when he called, but given the Grand Master’s desire to keep her identity a secret, he thought it might go better if he was the one who did the informing. Then he’d assured her that if things looked rocky, Franco would go to bat for them.
“Argh,” she groaned to the ceiling, eyeing the empty glass of wine, and considering pouring herself a second. She’d downed it in record time.
Annie jumped from the couch when she distinctly heard Colum say goodbye. Rushing to the bedroom door, she listened briefly to confirm he’d hung up, then opened the door.
“All finished?”
Colum nodded, waving her into the bedroom. She started to walk in but stopped when she heard the front door of the suite open.
Twisting around, she watched Xavier stroll in, the lines of tension around his eyes fading when he saw her.
“Okay?” she asked.
“It went as well as could be expected.”
“That bad, huh?” Annie joked.
“My mother is a powerful person, which was why the two of us working together was never going to be a good thing. But enough of that. I have the rest of my life to listen to my mother’s long passive-aggressive sighs. Is Colum off the phone?”
She nodded. “He is.”
Xavier crossed the living room, the two of them walking into the bedroom and plopping down on the mattress next to Colum.
“Well, don’t keep us in suspense. Did the Grand Master agree?” Annie asked nervously.
Colum nodded. “Aye. Might have helped that I’d woken them up from a sound sleep. They’d been too groggy. Or maybe it’s just because Ju—the Grand Master is pregnant.”
“She is?” Annie asked in surprise.
Colum winced, as if worried he’d revealed something he shouldn’t have, then gave in. “Aye, she is.”
“Are you ever going to tell me who she is?” Annie asked. “After all, I’m not going to be a member of the Trinity Masters anymore, and since Franco is your best friend…” She was only half-teasing her new husband because her nosiness knew no bounds.
Colum shrugged good-naturedly. “I think I’m going to have to tell you, since she said she wants us to have a proper fancy wedding with a big cake and she wants to be invited. Besides, Franco is my best friend, and since we’ll be working on the joint archive together, it’s a sure bet we’ll have to travel to Boston from time to time. Especially after the baby is born. Franco…” Colum blushed slightly. “He said I was going to be an uncle.”
Annie’s heart nearly exploded with happiness. Colum, the endearing, lovely man, might be an introvert, but when he cared for someone, they didn’t just become a friend; they became family.
“The big wedding won’t be a problem,” Xavier reassured them. “My mother wants the same. She said if I wasn’t going to work with her as vice admiral, wasn’t going to follow the path she’d been grooming me for my entire life, the least I could do was give her a big wedding to attend and grandchildren.”
“Grandchildren!” Annie repeated, laughing, and strangely not a bit upset about that request.
Xavier nodded. “ Oui . She’s been threatening to choose a trinity for me the last few years. Her desire to become a grand mère was slowly outweighing her hope for me to find love.”
Annie had always wanted kids, but that reality had felt so far in the future that she’d never really let herself think beyond the idea of them. Now though…
Now, she could imagine a little boy with Xavier’s dark eyes and mop of thick black hair. Or a little boy with Colum’s green eyes and curly hair. Or perhaps even a girl who looked like Josephine, with her mass of red curls and freckles. Putting faces to those future children had a powerful effect on her, and she could practically feel her ovaries popping out the eggs.
“You want kids, don’t you?” Xavier asked them.
Annie laughed, realizing they’d spent so much time worrying about actually annulling Colum’s marriage and getting permission to wed, they hadn’t had a second to spare talking about what happened after.
“I want them so badly,” Annie admitted, the two of them looking over at Colum, who nodded effusively.
“I never thought I’d be a father,” he confessed, “but now, with the two of you, I can’t imagine anything better.”
“Excellent,” Annie said, mentally composing a checklist of things couples—or throuples, in their case—usually discussed before the wedding. “So we’ll have children.” Then Annie thought of a funny game. “Should we hold up our fingers to show how many kids we want? On three?”
Xavier and Colum laughed, but they both held up their closed hands, ready to play along.
Annie lifted her as well. “One, two, three.”
Annie flashed three fingers, wanting those two boys and that little girl she’d just dreamed of. Her eyes widened when she realized Colum and Xavier had chosen the exact same number.
“Perfect for each other,” Xavier murmured.
“Now,” Annie continued. “The living situation. Obviously, I have to live on this side of the Atlantic, but?—”
“Are you okay with leaving New Jersey?” Xavier asked.
Annie thought about it, then nodded. “I am. I settled there because it was home and familiar, but I’m not afraid of change. Besides, there are auction houses in most big cities.” She glanced at Xavier. “I’ll have to learn French.”
Xavier cupped her cheek. “I will teach you. But you won’t have to learn it for your job. Because I can make France plenty of money as a finance minister while living in Dublin.”
“You’ll both be wanting to stay in Dublin?” The hope in Colum’s eyes made it impossible to say no to that, not that either she or Xavier intended to.
“Of course, that is where your archive is,” Xavier reassured him. “Besides, you’ve promised to let me look at all of Oscar Wilde’s things.”
“You can look at everything,” Colum offered before pausing. “There’s an auction house in Dublin, Annie,” he hastily added. “And we’ll only stay in that little flat of mine until we find our own home. We could remodel the old mews out back, plenty of other houses around Merrion Square have that. It’s big enough for us and our three kids and?—”
“And a cat,” Xavier added playfully.
Annie narrowed her eyes. “I’m a dog person.”
“Fine,” Xavier relented. “A dog and a cat.”
“And a big guest room for when Uncle Eric comes to Dublin. Or Uncle Franco, Uncle Devon, and…” Colum paused. “Aunt Juliette visit.”
Annie giggled. “Juliette Adams. I should have known.” She kissed Colum on the lips. “Your secrets are safe with me, I promise.”
“So is that it?” Xavier asked. “Have we planned a future together?”
Annie nodded. “I think we have.”
“Good. Because I vote we stop looking years out and start thinking about our more immediate future.”
Xavier’s sultry tone and bedroom eyes told her exactly what he was thinking, but Colum asked anyway.
“What part of our immediate future?”
Xavier cupped the back of Colum’s neck, pulling their foreheads together. “I think we should start the honeymoon now.”
Annie rose from the bed, standing in front of them as she pulled her shirt over her head, dropping it to the floor. “And I think it should never end.”
Xavier’s gaze slid to her breasts, but Colum did one better, reaching for her, his large hands spanning her waist. Looking up at her from the bed, he gave her that sweet, sexy smile she loved.
“Deal.”