The Grand Duel (The Grand Men #4)

Chapter 13

THIRTEEN

Charlie

L issie blisters past me when I hold the door open for her, heading down the street in her heels as if it’s a pair of running shoes on her feet.

I sigh and follow her out.

She was quiet after I made an ass of myself in her office earlier, barely uttering a word in the car over here.

And then I snapped at her.

I should have let her fall on her face. Touching her certainly wasn’t the right idea. My hand felt like it was on fire, like she was the fire, and I was a just a victim of its scalding flame.

I snapped at her . And not because she knocked over the water. I snapped at her because being in the same room as her when she has no idea I’ve touched and seen parts of her that still make me ache at the mere thought makes me fucking crazy.

“Lissie,” I call before she can reach the car.

She ignores me and climbs in.

And I don’t like it all that much.

I straighten my tie and climb in myself, not daring a glance at her.

“Hannah’s case,” she says once I’m seated and we’re in motion. “It’s not something you usually take on, is it?” she states, her words shaky. “You list certain cases on your website, and I never saw anything like this.”

When my eyes fall on her, I find her turned towards the window.

I frown, trying to get a gauge on her and why she’d ask about the case. “I deal with cases like this all the time. It’s just not high profile, public, or something I feel is needed to be shared with the world.” I think about the little girl. “She’s been through enough without some asshole lawyer asking to share her story with the world just to make himself look good.”

She nods, still not facing me.

I want to tell her everything. Get it over with right here and now. Maybe she’ll quit. Maybe that’s a good thing. But with Scott in the car, although I’ve known him for years and trust him, it wouldn’t be right for me to bring it up.

With Lissie quiet and not feeling like I need a shield between us, I leave my laptop in my bag and rest my head back on the seat, taking a moment.

I have two more meetings before my day is done, and I need to get my head in the game.

Get my head off of her.

I’d normally go to the club to let off steam after a week like this one is shaping up, but I can’t. I have no idea what Lissie’s shifts are, and it would be fucking stupid of me to go there tonight after telling her everything later.

I sigh.

Telling her is going to be a fucking disaster. Especially after the way I just treated her in front of all those people.

“Sorry, can you stop the car?”

I snap my head towards her, her panicked voice making my gut coil.

Scott looks at me in the mirror, and I nod before snatching my eyes right back to her. “What is it?”

“I-I’ll be back after lunch.” The second the car is stopped, she has the door thrown open and is walking down the pavement in the direction we’d just come from.

I scoot across the seat and out of the car, following her.

She’s a little way ahead of me, but I catch up to her quickly, not letting myself walk alongside her but close enough you’d know we’re together.

She comes to a stop eventually, and I turn to look up at the shop.

An ice cream shop.

I rub a hand over my face, watching as she just stares up at the sign that says Macca’s Parlour . “Are you going inside?” I ask after a minute, relenting.

She looks up at me as if she didn’t know I was behind her. As if she doesn’t know the world still spins and that my heart hasn’t stopped pounding in my chest since she asked to stop the car.

“Charles.” She shakes her head. “I’m so sorry about before. The water. Making a scene before the meeting with Hannah. I just…” Her eyes search mine. “I’ll be back before my lunch break ends. I just need to clear my head.”

I watch her, then step towards the door and pull it open.

She’s hesitant, her gaze wary as it rakes me, but eventually she walks inside.

With the assumption she wants ice cream, I lead the way to the back of the line and wait with her.

She stands with her arms wrapped around herself, eyes zeroed in on a spot beyond the counter. The chatty, no-filtered woman I’ve come to know over the last few days going silent on me.

I don’t like that much, either.

It unsettles me.

When it’s our turn at the counter, we both step forward. “What flavour?” I ask.

She surveys the counter. “Neapolitan, please.”

Neapolitan ? “Go and sit down, I’ll get it.”

“I can?—”

“Go and find us a seat, Lissie.” I cut her off.

I pull out my phone and text Scott telling him we’ll call him when we’re done. Would be a lot simpler if I had my car and didn’t have to rely on a driver, but that’s Edna for you.

I order Lissie’s ice cream, pay, and then carry it to the table she’s sat at.

She watches me with a thoughtful gaze as I place it down in front of her and sit opposite. “You didn’t want any?”

“I don’t tend to eat ice cream for lunch.”

She gives me a look, her face a little less troubled than before. “Well, thank you.” She hugs the dessert glass with her delicate hands. “You don’t have to stay.”

I give her a look right back.

“You’re just going to sit there and watch me eat instead?”

I don’t know what I’m doing here. But I don’t think leaving her whilst she’s visibly upset is the right thing to do, either. I also know I need to apologise for before. But what do I say?

That the second I had her in my grip, she made me feel like an aeroplane plummeting to the earth just from looking into her eyes.

I think I’d rather let her think I’m an ass.

When I don’t reply she reaches for a spoon and sinks it into the middle of one of the three scoops.

She brings the spoon to her mouth, closing her eyes as she takes a mouthful.

I can’t seem to take my eyes off her.

“Can you go and get yourself a cone or something? I can feel your beady eyes on me. It’s creepy.”

I shake my head, not looking away. “I don’t want any.”

“You don’t like it?”

I shrug but she doesn’t see. “I’m more of a pancake man, myself.” I nod towards her ice cream. “Unless it’s with dessert on a Sunday, I don’t really see the point.”

Her eyes finally lift and fix on me. “You don’t see the point?” She drops down her spoon with a clatter and reaches into her bag, flicking through her purse before pulling out a fifty-pound note.

“A tip,” I tell Bronwyn, not meeting her eyes as I place two thousand pounds on her desk. “I’ll transfer the rest tonight.”

“The rest.” She chuckles in amusement.

Sweet baby Jesus.

“Here.” She pushes the money across the table. My money. “Go now. Order something, or I’ll leave and pull a you and be grumpy all day because you refused to eat with me. They might even have pancakes.”

“Pull a me?” I repeat, maybe liking the way this conversation is chasing away the shadows that followed her into this shop a little too much.

She pops a brow.

I go to the counter and order myself an ice cream, feeling like a child as I take the bowl from the server. I take my friends’ children for ice cream sometimes, but never my employees. Definitely not women who are over ten years younger than me.

I’m back in my seat and three bites into my triple chocolate when her smile beckons me from across the table.

“What?”

“I’m just wondering if you’ve found the point yet?”

A rare smile threatens, and I tighten my mouth, my lips twitching. “I haven’t been to an actual ice cream shop in years.”

“Me neither,” she says, devouring her own. “I was thirteen. Me and my sister were dropped home early from school by our driver, and he gave us a fiver each to go and get a packet of sweets from the shop around the corner. Jove was only eight years old, and I knew she’d had a bad week at school. I put us on the tube, and we rode all the way to Macca’s.”

“Macca’s has been a thing for that long?”

“Yes,” she assures me. “I went to one every year on my birthday for years, so I’d know.” She smiles as if remembering. “My mum would bring me, and I’d get to order anything I wanted.”

“You’re close with your mum?”

She pauses with her spoon on the way to her mouth, her eyes flicking up to me. “I guess,” she says, and I’m not sure what it is that gives her away, the way her face drops or the way her eyes lose some of their spark, but I know it’s a lie.

“You’d come here every birthday?”

She nods. “Until around age six.” She drops her stare to her dessert, pushing the ice cream around.

“And you’d order a Neapolitan? Every time?”

Her eyes flick up defensively. “Neapolitan is versatile. Everyone thinks their favourite is the best.”

“Well, anything is better than that.” I gesture towards her bowl.

She rolls her eyes, but her smile still lingers, teasing me as it threatens to show teeth. “If you only get one ice cream a year, it’s sure as hell not going to be only one flavour.”

I try not to overanalyse her words, but it’s impossible, my mind trying to work her like I might a client, needing to know that little bit more. “One a year?”

The possibility of that smile is ripped away from me. “What?”

“You said one ice cream a year.”

Her face tells me she didn’t mean to share that with me.

I never found anything on her parents, and it seemed wrong to dig too deep, but something tells me this woman didn’t have the childhood you’d expect as the heir to one of the biggest chocolate companies in the world.

“Your sister,” I say, changing the subject. “Jovie, wasn’t it.”

And fuck if that doesn’t spark memories.

A half smile brings her back to me. She nods. “She’s in Australia. A pharmacist—or she’s training to be one. She has Willow, my niece, to take care of so it’s tricky.”

“Why Australia?”

“A man.”

I nod, catching the disdain in her tone. “You don’t like him?”

“I don’t hate him. He was staying here with family when she met him and fell pregnant. They were both young, but he was two years older than Jovie and knew better.” She continues eating her ice cream, her face still thoughtful. “That little girl and her dad—Dennis. He’s a good dad.”

I can’t help but think that fact saddens her as much as it makes her happy.

“He is. Or at least he’s trying to be,” I agree, and for the first time since she ran from the car, the look on her face when talking about the case, I contemplate her upset not being solely because of me.

I flip the conversation again. “Your sister’s boyfriend?—”

“They’re not together. A one-night stand that ended with Willow.”

“But she’s still in Australia?”

“He has an amazing family who love Willow and want to spend time with her. It’s complicated, but she wants to be there.” She reaches across the table with her bowl, ending the conversation. “Here, give me yours.”

She hooks a finger on the lip of my bowl and drags it towards her. “Hey,” I groan.

She looks up just as defensively. “What?”

“That’s mine.”

“I know…but it looks nicer than mine.”

I shake my head and look out towards the road to stop my smile from forming.

When I look back at her, she’s grinning at me around the spoon. “Thank you for coming inside with me. Is it just modes of transport that you find triggers your moods? You’re being awfully nice all of a sudden.”

“I wasn’t angry at you before, Lissie.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

She looks at me, and I look right back at her, knowing this is it. This is the perfect time to tell her.

“It’s fine. Forgotten. All of it. I probably took everything a little to heart anyway.”

“What do you mean?”

She shrugs, although it’s as if the weight of the world is behind it. “It was my first few days at a new job. Edna is…well, Edna, and she sort of painted a slightly different picture of who you actually are. And that’s not on you.”

“Who did she paint me out to be?” I ask, curious.

“The type of man you’d happily take home to your mother, I think she said.” She chuckles, but I can barely breathe.

I have to tell her.

Now.

She must notice, her cheeks flushing a pinkish hue. “Oh god, I’m not hitting on you. You’re lovely to look at but definitely not my genre of man.”

I clear my throat and readjust in my chair, leaning forward a little. “Not your genre of man?”

She shrugs as if guilty. “You’re a little stiff.”

Stiff?

She thinks I’m stiff?

That’s not what her body was telling me when it was trembling beneath me.

“You’re a fair bit older than me, too.”

Fuck . I swallow around the uneasiness in my throat. “How do you know my age?”

“I googled you. I can’t remember exactly, but it was thirty-something.”

Of course, she did.

I wet my lips, rubbing my hands together under the table. “How old are you?” I ask, already knowing the answer but not wanting the conversation to end.

She’s probably thinking what a dick I am to have forgotten her age from her application.

“Twenty-four.”

I nod, raking my teeth over my bottom lip, not being able to leave it alone, as I try to gauge how disgusted she would be to find out she’s crawled over my lap and sucked my cock.

God, I shouldn’t have these thoughts in my head.

I should have told Bronwyn no the second she told me that she wasn’t twenty-five.

I never should have bent the rules.

“We should have ice cream for lunch every day. You’re much chattier with a spoon in your hand.” She keeps spooning my ice cream into her mouth. “Unless you do actually have plans to fire me at our out of hours meeting later…”

Fuck.

Fuck .

“Look, Lissie?—”

“I can shut up.” She nods, getting serious. “I can shadow you, take notes, not yap on like I did all day yesterday. I get it’s annoying, and I did try to take a hint the first time you showed your displeasure, but in fairness, you gave me nothing, and I was lost. I think the lack of conversation in the beginning left me unsure what our working relationship would be like. Communication is huge for me and a downfall of mine if I don’t get it. You didn’t set the ground rules, and I’ve tripped and fell on the ones we’ve found already, but I need this job.” She swirls the ice cream in the bottom of her bowl, waiting for me to say something. “I can shut up,” she promises with a small smile.

Although I don’t think the woman knows the meaning of shutting up.

I draw a long breath into my lungs and let it out on a sharp exhale.

You’re not my genre of man.

I rub at the burn in the centre of my chest. “I already said I wasn’t going to fire you, Lissie.”

“Then what was it you wanted to discuss?”

I swallow, looking deep into her big brown eyes freely, the gold-like flecks in them capturing me.

She’s a pretty thing Lissie Elton.

I’m not sure how I feel about that.

“A fresh start,” I say, despite the way it makes me want to punch myself in the face. I hold out my hand across the table. “I wanted to apologise for the way I treated you when we first met, the way I ignored you. And well, everything after. Especially how I spoke to you in the meeting before. I would appreciate it if we could start this professional relationship over.”

She looks from my hand to my eyes with a wicked smile teasing her lips and me.

“And you were wondering what the point was,” she says, slipping her delicate hand into mine, her grip strong. “A fresh start.”

I wet my bottom lip, wondering what the fuck I’m doing.

She simply goes back to eating my ice cream, none the wiser of the turmoil that’s going on inside of me. “How old actually are you?” she asks without looking at me.

“Thirty-five,” I say a little absently.

What the fuck am I doing?

“Huh.” She makes a noise in the back of her throat, and it goes right to my cock. “Not too old, Charles.”

I stare at the stripes of vanilla, strawberry, and chocolate ice cream, lost.

Lost to the wonder of what Lissie Elton’s genre of man could be.

Lissie

“He sounds like every other nepo baby in this city. A stuck-up prat,” Christian tells me.

I chuckle from my spot at the bar. “He’s a little stuffy. No idea if he is a nepo baby, though.”

“Probably is.”

“Maybe, but stop interrupting, you missed the best part.”

He rolls his eyes at me from his spot on the opposite side of the bar. Although I know he’s invested based on the way he could have walked away at any point since I started this conversation but hasn’t.

“What’s the best part, Shoes?”

“Well, maybe not the best part, but amid all the bullshit he threw at me, or didn’t, the man was practically mute for two days?—”

“The point, please.”

“Ice cream.” I grin at him. “He bought me ice cream and apologised for being a prick.”

“And you’re taking it as a win I presume.”

“I thought he was going to fire me. I literally walked out of a meeting and called him a dick over email. It is a win. I think he might actually be alright.”

“ Alright or alright to look at.”

“Very alright to look at.”

He shakes his head at me. “Last week it was cop boy, and this week it’s lawyer boy.”

“I’m not saying I want the man.” Although Charles is very nice to look at, I’m more of a personality girl myself. “But he’s definitely keeping my cop boy fantasy alive with his deliciously wide shoulders and handsome face. You need to tell me if he walks in here tonight.”

It’s been six days since we were together in the private rooms, and apparently Charlie —or cop boy as the girls like to call him, hasn’t been back in since.

“You’d go there again?”

I simply smile back.

Christian has been, what I rarely allow, a friend to me since I started working here. He checks in on me, makes sure I’m fed at the end of a shift, and will travel thirty minutes more than necessary to see Iona and me home.

He also told me about his brother whilst dropping me home on Tuesday night. It’s why I know that the papers he’s reading over right now are for clinical trials in America which will potentially save his brother’s life.

If he can raise the funds.

It’s why he started working at the club at such a young age, and it’s his wages that will one day pay for treatment abroad that’s not available here.

The fact he shared something so personal with me solidified my gut feeling that Christian is a good guy.

“If he requested me, I absolutely wouldn’t say no,” I tell him.

“What if he’d want you blindfolded again?”

“Then even better. I think it’s what makes him so exciting to me in my head.”

“Still don’t want to know what I think of him?”

I smile, dipping my head to my shoulder. “No. It’ll ruin my fantasy if he doesn’t look the way I want him to.”

“I don’t think it would ruin your fantasy. He’s a good-looking fucker and knows it.”

“Sounds like someone else I know…”

He gives me the finger as he continues to read.

“How often does he normally come in?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “Fuck off the idea of pining after clients. Bron won’t have it. It’s how arguments start amongst the girls. Best thing you can do is forget about him. Let someone else take the room when he comes in.”

“But if he requests me?”

“Shoes,” he deadpans.

“Fine!” I relent. “Then find me someone better.”

He lifts his eyes to look at me, his right brow raising.

“Not you. You’re a baby.”

“Isn’t old boy in the office like forty?”

“Thirty-five, but I’m not going to bang my boss. He’s just stupidly hot and wears a suit that tells me just enough.”

I sigh as I think about the man.

“You’ll bang him.”

“I won’t. I’m pretty sure his peace offering was because of his office manager.” Although I’d like to think it was genuine. “Sometimes he looks at me with pure disdain.”

“Trust me, he likes you.”

“You just know that, do you?”

“I do. If I like you, he does. I don’t like anyone.”

“You’re literally the nicest person in this place.”

“To you and a select few.” He finishes signing the papers and smiles at me. “I’d fuck you, Shoes.”

I wrinkle my nose. “I just don’t think you’d be very good.”

He throws the pen at me.