The Grand Duel (The Grand Men #4)

Chapter 12

TWELVE

Charlie

U nder normal circumstances, I’d fire Lissie for the way she disappeared from the meeting and then spoke to me in her email. But this isn’t normal circumstances, and I’m a complete asshole.

I’ve barely said a word to her in three days, and when I have spoken to her, I’ve been short and snappy. She probably thinks I don’t like her, when in reality, it’s the opposite. I can’t get the woman out of my head.

Edna has taken Luna and Daisy on a walk, needing the fresh air. Which leaves only Lissie and me in the office.

After our email exchange last night, which was unprofessional of me given the time, everything feels a little more awkward today. I need to squash the entire situation. Start over with the woman.

I knock on the door to her new office, which is opposite Edna’s, a small boxy room Edna had decorated for her.

“Come in.”

I push open the door and find Lissie sat at the desk, her cream jacket discarded over the back of her chair and her thick brown hair down, sweeping over her shoulder and down her arm.

“Charles.” She forces a smile.

So, it’s Charles now. “Good afternoon, Lissie.”

I don’t miss the way her face softens at her name. “I’m sorry I’ve been so quiet this morning, I’ve been looking over that file you gave me and some of the ones Edna showed me yesterday.” She looks up from the open file on her desk. “Actually, I was going to ask, am I able to take these home with me?”

My brows lift in surprise. “The cases?”

“Yeah. I understand if it’s not a possibility, but I was mid shower last night and had the biggest epiphany for the case with the woman…” She flips through the files.

I lean against the doorjamb and watch her, crossing my ankles.

“Kerry. Kerry Turner’s case.” She picks up a couple of files and then stands, heading right for me. “I’ve made some notes on these. You might think it’s absolute crap but?—”

I reach out and take them from her. “I already know it’s not crap,” I say, having looked over her references from college and university.

Lissie Elton was top of her class, an asset to any firm, and a model student—her professor’s words.

She lifts her eyes to mine, her head tilting back.

And for the first time since we met, from the moment I said hello to her in that room at the club to yesterday when she ran out on me mid meeting, she doesn’t fight the silence that settles between us.

She just looks at me.

“Thank you for this,” I say, my voice betraying me and growing thicker.

Her throat works. “I wanted to apologise for yesterday. For leaving early and my emails. In all honesty, I thought you were going to fire me.”

I frown, not expecting an apology.

“After you told me you had a matter to discuss with me, and you’d made it clear you didn’t want an assistant…I shouldn’t have presumed, but I’ve not long lost my job, and after the meeting with Hannah…” Her throat works again, and I itch to reach out and soothe her. To calm whatever it is that’s made her feel not okay. “I just didn’t have it in me in that moment to be fired by you.”

My eyes search hers. “I wasn’t going to fire you.”

I should…but I’m not.

I can’t.

“I guessed as much last night after your email.”

I nod, my eyes greedy with her so close to me, desperate to find anything I might have missed. I knew she was pretty that first night I met her, but her eyes were shielded from me, hidden. Seeing her now, so close I can make out the five—no…six—freckles that reside on the bridge of her nose, I can’t help but wonder if I’ve ever seen anything more beautiful.

Her brow creases, and it instantly snaps me out of it.

Fuck . I step back and away from her. “Right. Thanks for this.” I back up and out of her office completely. What the fuck am I doing? “We have our follow-up with Dennis and Hannah this morning.”

She drops her eyes, face falling. “Scott should be on his way,” she tells me, clearly one step ahead of me. “I can come and get you once he’s here.”

“Yes. Yes, do that.” I turn on my heel and walk down the corridor, slipping into my office and shutting the door behind me.

Lissie

The journey to the meeting is made mostly in silence, Charles occasionally asking me questions about my notes on the files I gave him earlier.

His eyes don’t meet mine.

His voice is cold and detached.

It’s nothing new.

I tried my best, and I almost thought I had him. Thought that maybe he could see a way of this working, too. I don’t need sunshine and rainbows every day, but if the man can’t stand to be around me, what chance do we have going forward?

I keep replaying the moment he locked eyes with me in my office. And then he frowned as if I had shit smeared on my face before creating as much space as he could between us and disappearing.

When I woke up this morning, I knew I’d need to put my pride aside and apologise for yesterday. I let my emotions get the better of me, not something I ever do.

I still feel off even now, likely because of the meeting we’re about to step into.

“Hello, Hannah,” I say, smiling.

No emotion.

Focus on the facts.

The young girl gives me a closed-mouth smile. “Hi.”

My gaze travels from her loosely plaited light-brown hair to her dull grey eyes.

“Mr Aldridge.”

I look up at the little girl’s dad, Dennis, as he spots Charles and stands from his seat with a folder in his hand.

“Those text messages you asked for. You said it would help with the case. I’ve also called my provider and asked for my full phone records, but I’m still waiting on those.”

“Ah, that’s great, Dennis,” Charles tells him, placing his hand on the back of Dennis’s wrinkled suit jacket. “Shall we get seated inside?—”

“And those pictures of the mattress. I have those in here, too.”

I frown as Dennis starts pulling images from a blue folder, his hands working a mile a minute in his fluster.

Charles takes them and moves the pictures to his side, as if to shield Hannah from seeing them.

I look towards the young girl. Her head is drawn down, her eyes zeroed in on her sparkly boots.

“I also spoke to the doctor I was telling you about. There are records and notes of the night she was brought into the hosp?—”

“Dennis—”

“I’m sorry,” I interrupt at the same time Charles does, and all eyes shift to me. “Sorry,” I say to my boss now, knowing I’m already on thin ice. “Shall we maybe move this into the conference room? Hannah doesn’t need to be present for this part of the meeting.”

I see the man look towards his daughter. “Hannah, love, I’m sorry.” He looks to Charles and then me. “I just want to make sure I’m getting all the information you need.” He bends down to Hannah’s height. “Are you okay?”

She lifts her head and looks at him before nodding.

“Where is Kate?” Charles asks, referring to Hannah’s social worker.

One of the ladies who was waiting alongside Dennis steps forward. “She’s just a little behind this morning. Said she won’t be long at all.”

“I can sit with Hannah,” I tell them.

“Are you sure?” Dennis asks.

“Of course.”

Charles turns his attention to me as I step towards the meeting room, his eyes hard.

I’ve clearly pissed him off again.

But I don’t care.

I can’t care.

Be mad at me. So long as this little girl at my side doesn’t have to stand here and listen to a second more of her neglect.

I sit with Hannah for fifteen minutes before Kate arrives and takes my place. She didn’t engage with me at all whilst we waited, and I never pushed it. The second I stopped asking her questions I saw the way her shoulders relaxed and decided to shut the hell up.

I join the meeting with Dennis and sit, listening as I take notes, pretending it’s not tearing me up inside to be in this room.

The meeting runs longer than planned, more gut-wrenching accounts being laid bare to build a case against a terrible human being.

“We’ll meet again in a couple of weeks,” Charles tells Dennis, standing and seeing him to the door.

I start clearing up the files, slipping the images from before into the folder. My eyes dart over each one, accounts of how the incidents occurred playing back in my mind until my vision grows blurred on a photograph of Hannah, a burn on her hand that I now know came from trying to cook soup in the microwave.

“Lissie, how much longer? I’m hungry.”

“It won’t be long. Go back a bit, it’s hot.”

“Lissie.”

“Don’t cry, Jovie. Please, don’t cry. I’m making it now.”

I blow out a shaky breath and go to slide the image into the file with the rest, but my ears ring. Memories of the saucepan hitting the floor and splattering both mine and Jovie’s legs with porridge making the tiny scars left behind there feel like they’re burning.

I place my hand on the flat of the table, steadying myself as I turn to leave. I need some fresh air . But just as I turn, I stumble, my face hitting hard into a solid chest.

“Woah.”

I’m caught, strong, sure hands grasping me at the waist. I look up, ocean-blue eyes shining, searching my face as if the last piece of the puzzle resides there. “Charles, I’m sorry.”

His hands flex on my waist, and I think his thumbs might smooth over my ribs. My eyes search his, his brow creasing as he frowns down at me?—

“The files!” someone shrieks.

His gaze flares and then snaps away. He lets me go as he reaches for the files that are now covered in water.

“Oh my god,” I say, reaching out to help. “Mr Aldridge, I’m?—”

“What the hell were you thinking?” he snaps without looking at me, his tone thundering though my entire body. “Jesus. What were you even doing?”

“I-I…”

“Mr Aldridge, let me,” a woman says, giving me a sympathetic half smile across the table. “We have copies.”

I give her a nod, smiling despite how big of a mess I feel inside.

“Right,” he says, rubbing his hand across the back of his neck as he glances quickly towards me. “Of course we do.”