Chapter 12
Claire
For a woman who walked the world with an aura of chill, Claire couldn’t help but notice Margot sure had a lot of barbs stored up for Malachi. The man knew how to find Margot’s tripwire into hotheadedness. No effort required.
All he had to do was open his mouth.
“It’s not that simple,” Margot was saying, choosing wine over eye contact, but Selene swiped the glass away from her mouth half-way up.
Claire silenced a sigh of relief. She really needed Margot sober but didn’t have the courage to grab the glass herself.
“I don’t see the complication,” Malachi said, not helping Claire catch up to what they were even talking about. They seemed to have a whole code going on how to talk around things, and Claire had yet to crack it.
“That’s because you don’t deal with people,” Margot said, releasing the glass to Selene. “Things are a little less complicated when you’re just looking at charts.”
“You’d be surprised,” Malachi muttered, but Claire seemed to be the only one who heard him.
“People have feelings that need to be accounted for,” Margot continued, this time squaring off with him. “I don’t want to answer a thousand random questions about the future. I want to live how I choose while I can. I don’t think that’s asking too much.”
Malachi nodded thoughtfully. “But in fifteen months—”
“Three,” Margot snapped, resentment clear on her face. Selene and Ethan shared a nervous look and Claire felt her grip tighten on her glass as the tension in the conversation ratcheted up a notch.
Malachi’s head tilted, his face the model of innocence. “So soon?”
Margot glared while Ethan and Selene nodded.
Claire had no idea what they were talking about.
“Still, Claire must know that you’ll be stepping away from Jack’s team soon … for obvious reasons.”
“What?” Claire said, clearly confused. “Rewind. What was that?”
Malachi’s green eyes locked onto Claire, making her feel self-conscious for a moment before he looked Margot’s way again. “Does she know about you selling the business?”
Margot’s glower was enough of a confirmation that something was in the works. Claire felt herself panic.
“Why? Are we moving?” Claire regretted the words the moment they were out of her mouth. She sounded like a hopeful child, even to her own ears.
But a girl could hope.
“No,” Margot clipped out.
Or not hope.
Margot studied Claire like a patient parent trying to find a fun way to tell a child mommy and daddy wouldn’t be living together anymore.
This wasn’t going to be good.
“We use words like king and queen, which is a bit misleading when it comes to explaining things,” she began. “But what Malachi is alluding to is that, in a year, I will step into the role of queen and take over other responsibilities while another prince or princess takes over my company. It’s all very standard.”
Yep. Super standard. Nothing to see here. That’s what Margot’s tone said as she spoke, but her words had Claire’s chin hanging.
Margot. A queen? Was that why all her dates never turned into relationships? Because she was betrothed? That made way more sense than Margot’s perma-single status.
Who would she be marrying?
Definitely not Malachi. Claire knew that much. So who? Knowing she wouldn’t be able to concentrate on anything else until she had that answered, she followed Malachi’s advise and asked.
“Are you getting married? Who is the king?”
Everyone looked at Margot for her answer. There was a moment when Selene’s eyes filled with pity and she started to speak, but she bit her lip when Ethan gave her hand a quick squeeze.
“I become a queen when I have a baby,” Margot said, as if she had no opinion on the topic. But of course she did. She had to. Because…
A baby?
No matter how many times Claire tried to make the word make sense, she kept on trying to find a way to hear something else. But nothing else made more sense than ‘baby’.
“A baby,” Claire repeated.
Margot nodded. “With my husband. I’ll sell my company three months before the birth, transfer all power, and announce my retirement. The transition will be seamless.”
Seamless. As if that’s what Claire cared about in all this.
Margot. Retired. With a baby. And a husband who was the king of something no one had really clarified yet.
Until that moment, Claire hadn’t even imagined any of those things were on the horizon for her boss. A husband? Sure. Any day of the week, with pretty much the man of her choice. Margot was the type of woman that held that much sway with the opposite sex. But the closest thing she had to a man in her life was Ren. Yes, a relationship between them was forbidden, but Claire had always toyed with the idea of the two of them being secretly in love with each other and running off one day.
But a baby and retirement?
“When?” she choked out.
Margot held her empty glass out for the waiter, and this time Claire noticed her hand wasn’t as steady. “A year from now.”
“You…get married?”
Again, Margot’s face gave nothing away. “I’ve been married for twelve years. I’ll be having the baby a year from now.”
Claire officially had no more words. Innumerable questions? Yes. But not the words to voice them.
“The father’s around here somewhere,” Margot said, waving her hand around dismissively as Malachi’s thumb rubbed up against his ring.
“Oh, look!” Selene said in a chipper voice. “Jack looks like he’s going to perform. Claire, you’re probably going to want to see this.”
“See what?” she said, looking over her shoulder. She’d purposefully put Jack in her blind spot so she wouldn’t stare at him the whole time. Her heart picked up its pace at the sight of him descending to the main platform in his cobalt suit.
Her man always looked dashing, and Claire couldn’t help but send a territorial glance toward the redhead who had been getting far too close for her liking … only to find said redhead sending a meaningful nod to the person just behind Claire’s right shoulder.
Malachi.
“If you’ll excuse me,” Malachi said, as Claire turned in time to see him bow to the group. “I see someone I need to speak to.” He looked to Claire. “We’ll meet again.”
Not waiting for any other replies, he turned and left—Margot’s eyes throwing mental daggers his way with every step.
Seriously. What was their deal?
A chorus of oohs caught Claire’s attention and instinct had her looking back at Jack. The whole room watched as he levitated a rope and shaped it into a circle, without touching it.
“The boy had to hang it on a hook,” Selene commented helpfully just as the loop of rope burst into flames and started spinning faster and faster until Claire couldn’t believe it wasn’t throwing flames out into the crowd. The boy standing across from Jack on the platform looked just as spellbound as everyone else.
When Jack snapped his fingers, the ring of fire disappeared, as if it had never been, and the loose rope appeared in his hand.
Whoa. How’d he do that?
“How did he do that?” Selene asked, sounding as full of wonder as Claire felt.
Claire didn’t know. She’d never seen the trick before, but now she was clapping along with everyone else as Jack handed the rope to a teenage boy who looked ready to sign up to be a pimpernel groupie.
The exchange got Claire looking around the room, assessing everyone in it and taking note for the first time of what seemed to be a general tone of goodwill. It was pretty obvious that everyone was affluent, but they all seemed human. Warm. Approachable.
Claire caught a glance of the woman with the bear on a leash again and quickly turned away.
Well, almost everyone.
But bear aside, Claire was growing more and more convinced that she had not landed herself in a nest of supervillains.
For the past six months, she and Jack had talked about her officially joining his team at least once a week. But the conversations had been rough because there was so little he could say and so much she wanted to know before she committed.
But if this was a peek into the world he couldn’t tell her about, then she was officially good with it. She knew Jack had a good heart, but seeing a boy she could only assume was a prince react so enthusiastically to being one-upped told Claire more than Margot and Malachi’s bickering.
It told her she’d be okay with these people. She could work for them. And, like Jack, she could take orders from them.
She wanted in just as much as she wanted to kiss the sexy magician in the cobalt suit who had just wowed the room. And it wasn’t the flashy trick that had won her over, but the realization that she might be the least-accomplished person at the party—children included.
Claire was in a room full of exceptional people who had no qualms making room for her. And if those weren’t her kind of people, Claire didn’t know who was.