Page 91 of Inked Temptation
Clay came up to me, his eyes wide. “Should I be here for this?”
“Hold me,” I said, and Clay did indeed wrap his arms around me, and both Riggs and Killian just laughed.
“We have an idea. So maybe we should have just saididea,” Paige began, bouncing.
Beckett held up his hand, his eyes filled with laughter. “Let me do this since I think Paige had around five cups of coffee.”
“Six,” she muttered.
Lee winced. “I don’t know if she’s joking.”
“Anyway,” Beckett continued. “As you know, Montgomery Builders is getting bigger. We have more partners coming in, and we’ve had to turn away clients.”
I nodded as Clay moved so we were holding hands, and he squeezed mine.
I looked over at my friend, and Clay just beamed. “I have no idea what’s going on, but I feel like things are about to change.”
“Change can be good,” Riggs whispered, and Killian nodded. The four of us stood shoulder to shoulder as the rest of the adults looked at us. I had a feeling they all knew what was going on while we didn’t.
Nervous didn’t even begin to encapsulate it.
“Because of that, we have anidea,” Beckett continued. “We would like to open up another branch of Montgomery Builders closer to Boulder, because we’ve been getting so many offers for that area. We’ve talked about this before in passing, but we’re serious now. And since Colorado is growing so much, we feel like it’s a good time to expand. And, because of that, we would like the Boulder branch to be run by two people we think can handle it. They can work at both branches, just like we will, but there would be two people in charge of it.”
I blinked, my mind slow to catch up.
“Are you shitting me?” Clay exclaimed and then blushed. “Sorry. I didn’t curse. Don’t listen to that, kids.”
“We heard,” Clay’s oldest shouted from the other side of the room.
“You want to open another branch?” I asked, ignoring the laughter from both sides of the room.
“I know it’s crazy,” Annabelle said as she held up both hands. “But you were even with us when we talked about this at first.”
“Yes, and I thought Clay and our seconds-in-command would run the place if it actually happened. You want me to go?” I asked, not knowing if the excitement of being close to Killian or the feeling of being pushed out was the biggest emotion within me.
“Archer,” Annabelle whispered as she came to me. I let go of Clay’s and Killian’s hands as she slid her hands into mine. “I love you. And if you hadn’t been spending so much time at the Boulder house with Killian and with your team there, I wouldn’t even have allowed this to become an option.” My twin winked. “But we will always work as a family. These two branches will work as one. I will be over at the Boulder branch often, all of us will. Because we need to train our counterparts so that way we work as a cohesive unit. I think this is good for you. This way, we’re still working as a family, but there are no choices to be made. We can have the best of both worlds.”
Benjamin added more details, but I felt like I was barely keeping up.
“You’re not kicking me out.” I hadn’t even known I was voicing the words until they spilled out of my mouth.
“For fuck’s sake, we don’t want to kick you out,” Beckett growled, then winced. “Sorry, kids.”
“We still heard you,” Clay’s middle kid said, and everyone laughed.
“We’re not kicking you out,” Beckett repeated. “We’re just growing so we can include the entire family. And that includes Clay. He’ll have the same position that I do, and he’s basically a fucking Montgomery. I know I’m cursing. Just let it happen.”
“I can’t believe this.” I looked over at Killian, who just grinned. “Did you know?”
“No, but it goes with what I wanted to talk about this morning.”
“It’s fate then,” Paige said as she clapped her hands. “Nobody will have to choose. Yes, it may be more of a drive some days, but frankly, our projects are moving further and further out from where our main office is anyway. It’s going to take at least a year for all of this to happen, and this is just at the idea stage, but it makes sense to us. You don’t have to move if you don’t want to, but if you do, then we have a plan. If this isn’t what you want, then we will come up with another one. Montgomery Builders is family, and our family is growing, so the company should grow.”
I wiped tears, not even aware I was crying. “So, we’re going to do this.”
“We should. We can talk about it, go over details, figure it out.” Paige winced as she looked over at us. “Of course, we started to come up with this idea before the fire. So if things have changed completely on that front. Ignore us.”
Killian shook his head. “I was just telling Archer that he needs to buy the house he’s working on since the couple is pretty much building everything to his specs.”
