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“Drink your coffee,” Xavier said.

Annie’s gaze snapped to him as she raised the cup to her lips.She stopped, rim of the cup pressed to her full lower lip.

Xavier leaned in.“Worried it’s drugged?”

The old Annie, the one he thought he knew, would have winced or smiled.This Annie—or was it Anastasia?—maintained eye contact as she drained the entire cup.

“Janey Mac,” Colum muttered.

“No.”Annie passed him the empty cup, and Colum peered down into it.

“Did you think we wouldn’t know?”Xavier asked.

“I thought you two were in shock, and a pot brownie was safer than crushing up a Xanax and putting it in your drinks.”

“You drugged us secretly.”Colum frowned at her.“You can’t be doing that.”

At this, Annie laughed, that same sunny smile back on her face.“Oh, Irish, I’ve done far worse than slipping someone a pot brownie.”

The combination of the sweet smile and the grim tone was disconcerting.Xavier sat back, studying her again.

“Are you angry?”she asked bluntly, looking back and forth between them.

“Yes,” Xavier said.

At the same time Colum said, “Oh, but sure look, it’s grand.”

Xavier threw his hands in the air as Annie started to laugh.

“It is not ‘grand’ that she drugged us.”

“It’s a great story, like.”

A knock at the door saved Colum from Xavier’s urge to shake him.He stalked over, signing for the room service and dragging the cart inside.He made quick work of setting up the breakfast dishes, then pulled over the chair Annie had been sitting in.

Colum urged her up off the couch, holding her chair for her.

Annie stared, apparently dumbstruck by the breakfast spread.“I drugged you, and you’re ordering me breakfast and taking care of me?”She tugged the blanket tighter around her shoulders with one hand, the other reaching for a muffin.

“Anger doesn’t change what we feel toward one another.”

Annie and Colum both froze at his words.

“You want to pretend there is nothing?Or maybe pretend it is just surface sexual attraction?”Xavier smirked at them, enjoying their wide-eyed stares.He’d never been one for pretending something wasn’t there, especially when it came to romance and sex.“If it were just sex, we wouldn’t enjoy one another’s company, but we do.”

Colum ran a hand through his hair, making Xavier’s libido sit up and beg.Fuck, the man was sexy without knowing it.

“I need a cup,” Colum said abruptly, reaching for a silver pot of tea on the tray.“Annie, what were you saying we’d do next?”

Xavier caught Colum’s eye, mouthing “coward.”

His jaw tightened and his gaze slipped down Xavier’s naked torso, before jumping away.

“We really need to X-ray it,” Annie was saying.“But a portable X-ray machine isn’t going to be precise enough to see paper.We need to take it somewhere, but that’s risky.It’s possible the police will be looking for me and the skull.With Vincent’s pull, I won’t get charged, especially with the alibi, but they might question me for their report.”

“We could…”

Xavier stopped listening as he wandered over to the skull.A thrill of anticipation went through him.The manuscript was right here, just waiting to be set free.He inched closer, his thighs pressed to the edge of the table.