Hidden Devotion Page 4

  It was a glamorous evening—dressed in their recently acquired Paris fashions, dining in one of the most elegant restaurants in the world and drinking inexcusably expensive wine.

  The only thing that was missing, the only thing that would have made eighteen-year-old Juliette’s night the stuff of dreams, was romance. They received more than a few appreciative glances from men in the restaurant, but most were old enough to be their fathers. When they moved to the hotel bar, complimentary drinks arrived with semi regularity, and after consuming more than a few of them, the age of the men sending the beverages mattered less and less.

  The drinks also helped Juliette forget that she was essentially already engaged. Rebecca didn’t know that Juliette’s trinity had already been selected. Normally members took advantage of the fact that they didn’t have to go looking for their own long-term relationships by messing around. Rebecca was clearly going down that path—a well-dressed man had his hand on her knee.

  When a slightly portly man in a pale gray suit put his hand on Juliette’s back—which was left bare by the daringly cut dress—she smiled and played with her hair. Devon and Rose mostly just ignored her anytime they were together. Maybe if she practiced her flirting they would stop treating her like a kid. She was eighteen, after all.

  “Parlez-vous Anglais?”

  “Oui. Je suis Américaine.”

  “Maybe you will help me practice my English, no?”

  “Of course, Monsieur.” Juliette crossed her legs, biting back a grin when the man’s attention dropped to her knees.

  “You are, ah, in Paris for the vacation?”

  “Excusez-moi.”

  Both Juliette and her admirer turned at the sound of a new voice—a voice Juliette knew.

  Heart in her throat, Juliette froze when she caught sight of the man who’d interrupted them. Devon Asher.

  His brown hair looked like rich chocolate in the muted lighting. He was wearing a tuxedo and was the most handsome, dashing man in the whole world.

  “Devon,” she squeaked, then took a sip of her drink to cover the unsexy voice.

  “Juliette.” Devon’s smile was brief—there only for a moment before he shifted his attention to the paunchy man. After a second under Devon’s stare, he melted away.

  Leaning on the bar, close enough that his sleeve brushed Juliette’s arm, Devon ordered a cognac in flawless French. When he turned to face her, Juliette could feel it. It wasn’t just a matter of his gaze; it was the weight of his attention. She felt like a butterfly pinned to a board for study, except it wasn’t terrifying, it was exhilarating. This feeling was totally new to her—maybe this was the first time Devon was really looking at her.

  “You’re in Paris.” Juliette winced as soon as she spoke. What a stupid thing to say.

  “As are you.”

  “I’m here with friends.”

  “I can see that.”

  Juliette wondered vaguely what the likelihood was that the floor would open up and swallow her. That would be preferable to sitting here feeling like a complete dumbass with nothing to say.

  “Are they…” Devon spoke quietly, motioning to the others with a slight nod of his head.

  “One of them. Rebecca.”

  “Hmm.” Devon slid away from her, interrupting the conversations Lisa and Rebecca were having with their admirers. Juliette swiveled, watching as Devon ran off the men her friends were practicing their flirting on. Both Lisa and Rebecca looked at her with wide eyes, asking without words what was going on.

  “This is, uh, Devon. He’s friends with my…” Juliette almost said father, which would have been a disaster, since Lisa only knew the public story, which was that Juliette’s mother had decided not to identify the father. “He’s friends with my mother.”

  “Oh, are you an actor?” Lisa took a sip of her drink and tipped her head, hair sliding along her cheek.

  Lisa was flirting with him. That bitch!

  Juliette pressed her tongue against her teeth to keep from saying anything.

  “No. And I’d hardly say I’m friends with Ms. Lissand. My parents are acquaintances of hers.”

  Lissand was Juliette’s legal last name, Adams—her real last name—her middle name. She was impressed Devon had remembered. Then again, he wasn’t the type of person who would make a simple mistake like that.

  “But,” Devon continued, “I’ve known Juliette all my life.”

  His attention shifted back to her. For the first time, Juliette truly understood the phrase “took my breath away.”

  “Juliette, would you like to go for a walk?”

  “A walk?”

  “Paris is best at night.”

  “They call it the City of Lights.” Juliette wanted to smack herself. What was wrong with her? She normally wasn’t this stupid. Behind Devon, Lisa and Rebecca were wide-eyed as they watched the exchange, but both girls winced at Juliette’s stupid remark.

  Devon’s lips twitched. “Yes, they do.” He held out his arm.

  Rebecca and Lisa were gesturing and making faces, trying to communicate something, but Juliette couldn’t focus on that. Instead, she laid her hand on Devon’s sleeve and slid off the stool. He double-checked that Lisa and Rebecca would be okay, left money on the bar for their drinks and extra for a cab.

  Then they were gone, away from the security of the hotel and her friends. She was walking through the moon and lamplit streets of Paris with her fiancé.

  Despite that, she was expecting a lecture. Clearly Devon hadn’t approved of the men in the bar. He probably didn’t approve of her drinking, since she wasn’t old enough to drink in the states.

  “Did my brother send you?” she asked.

  “No, why would you think he had?”

  “I figure he sent you to check up on me.”

  “Knowing your brother, I’m sure he has people keeping an eye on you, but I’m not acting as the Grand Master’s errand boy.” Devon guided their path, taking them off the main roads into more picturesque neighborhoods where the houses crowded up against the street and wrought iron balconies looked like decorative lace in the moonlight.

  “So you’re in Paris for work?”

  “Yes. Headed to Helsinki next.”

  “Do you like it, the consulting job?” After she asked the question, Juliette realized it revealed that she knew what was going on in his life.

  But he didn’t tease her. Instead he told her a bit about his job then talked about the master’s program he was planning on pursuing. They walked until they came to the river, taking the steps down to the walkway. It was the second time she’d been here today, but now, in the moonlight with a handsome man, it was a very different experience.

  Devon asked her about her college plans, but not in the condescending way other people did. She planned to tell him the same lie she told other people—that she was going to major in economics and international relations as a pre-law student, but instead she told him the truth. She planned to major in anthropology.

  “You want to work for an overseas nonprofit?” he asked when she admitted her great secret.

  “Yes, I mean, no. I don’t want to work for a nonprofit. I want to help. Maybe that means I work for a specific organization, maybe it means I start my own, or do something else.”

  “That’s smart, very smart.” Devon’s voice was low and almost sad.

  “You think so?”

  “You sound surprised.”

  “I figured you’d talk me out of it. I’m supposed to be a lawyer.” When she got back from this trip she was going to have lunch with an old friend of her father’s, Harold Martin, who wanted to talk to her about her career. As a member of the Trinity Masters, professional success was assured. Usually members were recruited because of their careers. Legacies usually had their careers handed to them. Undoubtedly this meeting with her father’s friend would be all about him telling her what kind of law she was going to practice.

  “Supposed to be?”

  “Yes. You’re
supposed to be a lobbyist—which you’re working towards. Rose is supposed to be a computer developer.”

  “Medical tech-development engineer,” he corrected.

  Juliette shrugged, trying not to hate Rose. Jealousy was death to a trinity. It didn’t matter if that jealousy was romantic or professional. “The point is, we all have a part to play. And if I don’t play my part…”

  “Juliette, you know you have a choice.”

  She tried to laugh flippantly but it came out sounding rather desperate. “I don’t have a choice.”

  “You do. Just because you’re a legacy doesn’t mean you have to become a member. You’d keep our secrets, so you wouldn’t be a threat.”

  “I’m an Adams. Of course I have to be a member.”

  “I know your relationship with your father was…rocky, but Harrison would understand.”

  “Harrison might as well be my father as far as Trinity stuff goes.”

  They walked in silence until they came to a stretch of river where the trees on the street above were lit, their images, outlined in pinpricks of light, reflected in the sluggish water.

  Devon turned to face her, his hands cupping her elbows. “Juliette.”

  Her heart was beating so loudly she was sure he’d hear it. His face was in shadow, and his shoulders seemed impossibly wide. It was almost as if a stranger held her. Maybe he was a stranger. This was not the Devon she’d known all her life. He’d never looked at her, focused on her, this way before.

  “Devon.”

  “I want to kiss you.”

  “I want that, too.”

  “You do?”

  “Yes.” She spoke too quickly, too enthusiastically, and she caught the flash of white teeth in the moonlight. Juliette dropped her head in embarrassment.

  He nudged her chin up with one hand. “It’s been hard,” he whispered.

  “What has?”

  “Trying not to think about kissing you.”

  “Why didn’t you want to think about kissing me?”

  “You’re young.”

  “I’m not that much younger than you.”

  “Not anymore—the difference between eighteen and twenty three isn’t so bad. It wouldn’t have been appropriate for me to kiss you when you were fifteen and I was twenty.”

  “I wouldn’t have said no.”

  “I wouldn’t have asked.”

  “But you asked now.”

  “Yes, I did.” And with that he lowered his lips to hers. The kiss was soft and gentle, Devon’s hands slowly moving from her elbows until he could stroke the base of her neck with one thumb and press the other against her back. Juliette laid trembling fingers on his chest and hoped the moment would never end. When he deepened the kiss, she jumped. It wasn’t the first time she’d French-kissed someone—she and Sebastian had practiced on one another—but it was the first time it had felt so good.

  Devon pressed his lips to each corner of her mouth then rested his forehead against hers. He was breathing deeply, and she knew, she just knew, that he was as affected by their kiss as she was.

  There on the banks of the river Seine, Juliette had the romantic first kiss of her dreams, and fell hopelessly in love with the man she would someday marry.

  Chapter Four

  The ringing stopped as the person on the other end answered. “Hold on, I need coffee.”

  Devon smiled, the screen of his phone a whirl of color and fabric as Rose moved around. It was six thirty in the morning on the West Coast, which explained Rose’s need for coffee. She propped the phone up somewhere in her kitchen and he watched her moving back and forth prepping her morning caffeine before coming over to lean on the counter, staring at him through the video call. The gorgeous upscale kitchen behind her made him long for his condo in DC instead of the pot of room-service coffee in the hotel room. As nice as this hotel was, it wasn’t home.

  “Okay, give it to me straight.”

  “Juliette is back in Boston.”

  “And?” Rose’s eyebrows, dark against her pale skin, climbed up her forehead.

  “When I mentioned being called to the altar she told me to get out.”

  For a moment Rose’s face relaxed in an expression that was almost relief. “So that’s not why she’s back?”

  “Or she hadn’t figured it out yet.”

  “Juliette isn’t stupid.”

  “No, but she’s stubborn, and ignores things she doesn’t want to be true.”

  Rose shrugged in agreement, sipping coffee. “I guess we’ll have to keep our eye on the mail.”

  They chatted for another few minutes, though the conversation felt stilted. Devon was trying to figure out why he was getting the feeling that Rose was either sad or worried, when there was a knock on his hotel room door.

  Rose heard it too, and went perfectly still. “Can’t fault that for timing.”

  Devon knew what she was talking about, knew what she was expecting, and he felt the same. They’d joked about watching the mail, but correspondences from the Grand Master were delivered by messenger. A young man with a bike helmet under one arm was standing outside his door. Devon signed for the large, nondescript envelope.

  “Bring it over here where I can see!” Rose’s demand pulled Devon from his blank-faced study of what he held. He took a seat at the small desk by the window, heart thumping. It was a standard document-size mailer. Opening it, he shook out an invitation-size cream-colored envelope. The front was embossed with the triquetra—the symbol of the Trinity Masters.

  “Fuck,” Rose whispered.

  “Rose?” When he glanced at the screen, Devon was shocked to see the pain etched into her face.

  She waved her hand then turned so he could only see her profile. “Open it.”

  What the hell was going on with Rose? Glancing between the envelope and the phone, he decided to deal with one thing at a time. He’d been waiting for this—had imagined the moment when he’d be called to the altar. Most members of the Trinity Masters didn’t meet their spouses until they were called to a special ceremony. What he, Rose and Juliette had—a trinity arranged and acknowledged, if not formally announced, long before they were of the appropriate age to marry—was unique. Opening the envelope, Devon pulled out the folded sheet of heavy cream paper.

  Devon Asher,

  As of today, your previously arranged trinity is dissolved. Within the next twelve months, you will be called to the altar to meet your spouses.

  Grand Master

  “Devon? Devon?!” Rose’s voice pulled him back to the present.

  Jumping from the chair, he grabbed his shoes, sat on the edge of the bed and shoved his feet into boots.

  “Devon, what’s going on, why did you run away?”

  He grabbed his jacket from the closet, moving on instinct.

  “What did it say?”

  He didn’t answer, but plucked his phone and wallet off the desk and headed for the door.

  “Devon!” She screamed his name loud enough that he heard it even over the sound of the hotel room door thunking closed behind him as he ran for the elevator. Holding the phone up, he looked at Rose, but the words wouldn’t come.

  “Where are you going?” This time Rose’s voice was soft and soothing, coaxing him to respond.

  “I’m going to talk to the Grand Master.”

  She sucked in a breath just as the elevator doors opened. “Why?”

  Devon stepped in and hit the button for the lobby. The call dropped as the elevator did. Rather than answer the inevitable call back from Rose, he held out the sheet of paper as he walked, snapping a photo and texting it to the woman who had, until five minutes ago, been destined to be one of his spouses.

  *****

  Juliette yawned and stretched. She had no idea what time it was. The windowless office, so far underground, had thrown off her internal clock. She’d been too angry and keyed up after Devon’s visit to stay at the house, so she’d raced to the Grand Master’s office—her office. Though members could
n’t enter the Trinity Masters’ headquarters unless the library was open, they had a secret door that most people, including most of the library staff, thought was blocked off and she fully intended to stay here, immersed in the piles of papers, until she stopped thinking about what she’d done, about the notes she’d sent.

  She was the Grand Master, the one person who had the right to choose her own trinity.

  Why did she feel so sick at having sent that message to Devon?

  Forcing herself not to think about it, she turned back to the notes her brother had left her. Harrison had been banging his head against the wall trying to decipher their father’s journals. She wasn’t going to bother with that—her brother didn’t know it yet but she fully intended to make him suffer by assigning him the task of continuing to go through the notes—so she went in a different direction.

  Every person, and every trinity, had their own file, all neatly arranged. Luckily the majority of the records were hard copy only, particularly the notes on the trinities. Even with the best digital security their members could create, Harrison had ended up in danger. That meant that the only safe place for anything related to the members was here, in the Grand Master’s office. Having established that, now all she had to do was make sense of everything.

  She’d been tempted to start with the current members’ records. She didn’t know everyone, and there were probably plenty of people waiting to be called to the altar, or who would benefit from the Grand Master evaluating their position and throwing the weight of the Trinity Masters behind their cause or career.

  Like being admitted to a prestigious university, or joining a Greek house, the strength of the Trinity Masters was found in each person’s access to other members. With some of the most powerful and intelligent people in the country on the roster, new members were treated to meteoric rises within their chosen careers. Those who held positions with nonprofits or who were doing humanitarian work had access to businesses and foundations that could fund their causes. Artists met the right people, had benefactors, and got the media attention necessary to pursue their passions.

  Juliette opened a cherry-wood filing cabinet, running her fingers over the neatly labeled folders. “Asher, Devon” was right near the front. Seeing Devon’s name made her stomach roll, so she closed the drawer. Checking through the other drawers and shelves, she familiarized herself with the contents of the office, tried to feel some ownership over the hundred-year-old books, brass lamps and heavy wood furnishings. Wondering vaguely when was the last time the oriental carpets had been vacuumed, she pulled up one corner and let it fall back, watching dust puff out. Coughing, she waived her hand in front of her face, turning her head aside. A small Victrola sat against the wall, the top closed. When she’d come here with her father, he would occasionally let her wind it up. Then he’d open the top and the two small doors covering the speaker. He’d set the needle on the record and she’d lean against the cabinet, liking the way the music seemed to rumble through her.