The Grand Duel (The Grand Men #4)
Chapter 29
54%
TWENTY-NINE
Charlie
I make my way into my office with little to no confidence that my day will go the way I need it to. We should wrap up the case today, and based on the way yesterday went, I can’t see the jury siding with my client.
I also don’t expect Lissie to be in the office, but she continues to shock me.
She doesn’t spot me right away, her hair pulled back in a ponytail and her face carefully painted with makeup.
She’s wearing a black suit, which feels harsh on her, regardless of how incredible she looks in it.
“Charles,” Edna sings, unknowingly making Lissie aware that I’m here. “Feeling ready for today?”
Lissie looks up at me, her face barely flinching. Barely, but just.
“Never, Ed,” I say, my eyes glued to Lissie. “Lissie, could I borrow you a minute, I?—”
“Of course.” She stands and walks down the corridor to my office.
I follow, my gaze eating up the back of her.
Once inside, I close the door and face her. She folds her arms, keeping her shoulders straight.
“I didn’t expect you to be here today,” I say.
“It’s my job.”
I watch her like a bird might its prey, terrified that she’ll disappear at any minute, not quite understanding her. “You could have taken some time.”
“I wouldn’t let Edna or you down. You have your last day in court today. Are you okay?”
I nod. “We’re supposed to be meeting at Macca’s at twelve…” I trail off at the look on her face.
“Ice cream?” she asks, her eyes flaring.
Shit .
There’s a knock at the door and then Edna pokes her head inside. “Scott’s here, darling.”
“I can drive myself today,” I tell her.
“But he’s already here.”
I close my eyes and will calm into my veins.
“Charles,” Lissie says, and my eyes drop to hers. They burn through me, like an anchor searching for something to cling on to in the middle of a stormy sea. “I really hope the case goes well today.” She gives me a semblance of a smile, one that’s supposed to reassure me but doesn’t. Not when deep down, I know she’s hurting.
She passes me, leaving the office.
“Everything okay?” Edna asks, watching me.
I’m not sure I could fuck this up any more than I already have.
I look up at Edna and nod.
Lissie
I leave the office dead on five, desperate to get home and shower before I start my shift at The Nightingale and mindful that Charles could be back at any moment.
He opened up to me last night in a bid to help me understand why he didn’t tell me, and I get it—he’s never had a sexual relationship outside of the club. As much as it hurts that he kept it from me—embarrassment I still feel over certain interactions we’ve had, I can’t blame him when I don’t know how I’d have reacted in his position.
I feel an aching need to cave to his apology every time I’m near him. And while I do understand and should probably brush it under the rug, the things he said last night, telling me that he would go back to the club—basically saying he doesn’t see this going anywhere between us, I can’t get my head around his words when they clearly don’t match his actions.
I can’t help but think he does want to do things differently.
That maybe it’s just new, and he’s scared to try.
Once I’m home and showered, I drop back to my bed with the plan to try calling my sister for the millionth time. She texted me yesterday, telling me she’d been busy and would call, but where I’d normally have a missed call at the end of a day, I have nothing.
When I see I have multiple emails from Edna, I quickly click on my mailbox.
Can I book a table tonight at Mullins for when we win this thing?
Edna Harrison
Manager
Charles Aldridge Ltd
Charles’s reply sits right below, and I can’t ignore it.
Of course, Ed. Thank you.
Charles Aldridge
Director
Charles Aldridge Ltd
I chew on the inside of my cheek as I reply.
I have a shift tonight, sorry.
Please let me know how it went today.
Lissie
Assistant to director
Charles Aldridge Ltd
Without thinking too hard about the man who’s done a number on my head—and how it made my chest physically ache seeing him so conflicted in his office this morning—I call Jovie.
The phone rings, and I almost give up, my frustration at her not answering wearing thin, but then my mother’s voice sings down the line. “Lissie, hi.”
“Mum?” My heart lurches, my head scrambling as I consider what this might mean. I sit up in my bed. “Is everything okay?”
“Everything is fine, love. How are you?”
“How am I?” I repeat back.
I pull the phone away from my ear, wondering if I’ve clicked on the wrong contact, but I haven’t.
“Why…why are you with Jovie?” I swallow, my heart pounding, not understanding.
“Lissie?” Jovie’s panicked voice comes through the line. “Shit. Lis. I’m so sorry. I was going to call and explain.”
“Jove?” I stand, smiling slightly at her voice, but it fades as a frown forms on my brow. “What’s going on? Why is Mum there?”
She stays quiet, the sound of my parents’ voices carrying in the distance.
I swallow, my fingers toying with my lips and tapping against them as I pace my room. “Why are they there, Jove?”
“I’m so sorry, Lissie. I didn’t know how to tell you,” she says, her voice a broken whisper.
I freeze in the middle of my bedroom. My eyes fill with tears, and I widen them. “They’re in Australia?”
“They asked to fly out and meet Willow. It’s been so long since I’ve seen any of you, and I just needed…They begged me, Lissie. Begged me to meet her.”
I nod, although she can’t see it. “I…” I clear my throat when my voice betrays me. “Okay.” I close my eyes as tears fall, spilling down my cheeks. “That’s…”
“I know after everything this is hard for you, but I missed them. Mum’s been calling for a while, and it’s been nice. They’re still our parents, and they’re trying, Lissie. They told me they’d move out here and help me with Willow.”
“What? What do you mean move out there? What about the house?”
“I know. I know, how this sounds, and it’s probably impossible for you to understand, and I’m sorry. I was going to call you. I just didn’t know what to say.”
I do everything I can to hold back my emotions, my face screwing up as a sob threatens to slip past the ache in my throat. “I don’t know what to say to you right now,” I try, my voice shaking and audibly teary. “I love you, Jove, but I’m…I don’t know what I’m supposed to say.”
“I’m sorry, Lissie, please don’t be mad at me.”
I stare at my ceiling, my tears sinking to my temples.
Years. I’ve spent years working to bring her home, to protect her, and they’ve flown right out to her and promised her what? I shake my head at the thought, my tears pouring down my face, feeling like my sister has betrayed me.
Only it’s my baby sister, and since the age of five when she came into my life, I’ve only ever wanted to see her smile. “Okay. It’s okay.”
“I’m sorry,” she repeats.
I frown, my chin trembling. “I’ll call you later.”
“Lis—”
“I love you.” I hang up, pulling in a quick rush of air, as if it might suppress the emotions erupting from my chest.
It doesn’t.
Charlie
Please let me know how it went today.
It’s all I have as I walk through the doors at The Nightingale after my meal with Edna. I don’t waste any time on the ground floor bar and head straight upstairs, knowing it’s where she works.
When I get to the top of the steps, I cast my eyes that way, towards the bar, and through a sea of people, her eyes instantly find me.
She freezes, body going rigid, and then she centres herself, much like she centred me in the office earlier, and carries on with the drink she’s pouring.
I look around the club, a place I frequented weekly for years and yet seemed to care less for the minute I met her.
I make my way to the bar, slipping up onto one of the padded stools and waiting. I watch her work, declining service from the other servers until she’s free.
It’s with reluctance that she walks over to where I’m sat at the bar. “Charles?” she says in a way of asking for my order.
“We won the case,” I tell her.
Her eyes lift, and then she nods. “Good. I’m glad.”
My knee bounces as I watch her, not being able to read her mood but presuming she’s still upset with me. “I’ll get a whiskey.”
She pops her brows, turning and making my order.
When she places it down in front of me, the whiskey sloshes over the side. “Your one?” she asks, her tone flat.
“No, Lissie, it’s not.”
“Then why are you here?” she asks taking my token with a look of disdain on her face.
I pick up my drink and neck it back, getting the feeling I’ll need it.
She watches me before leaning across the bar, close enough no one else can hear. “You know, you paid to keep me out of the rooms, and I haven’t been back in, but what a load of bullshit that was.”
“You’re angry?—”
“Why would you come here whilst I’m working?” she snaps. “You told me last night that you’d use the club again one day, and the next day you show up here.”
“I didn’t come here to use the rooms?—”
“You couldn’t stop me,” she says as if not even hearing me, leaning back, a challenge in her stare.
“What do you mean I couldn’t stop you?”
“ If I wanted to use the rooms, you couldn’t stop me.”
“I’m pretty sure I could. Bronwyn?—”
“I couldn’t give a shit what Bronwyn thinks. I couldn’t at this moment in time give a shit what you or anyone else thinks.”
My eyes search her face as I frown, my gut tied up in knots as she backs away, walking towards the blond guy at the end of the bar.
I keep my eyes on them, her words wrapping tighter and tighter around my throat the longer I sit here. When she walks out through the bar and into the room, passing me, I stand. “Lissie.”
My arm is grabbed, and I turn on him. The blond prick stands at my side, his height putting him barely an inch shorter than me.
“Leave her alone,” he warns.
I look at his hand gripped around my bicep and then up at his face. “I beg your fucking pardon?”
“You heard me. She isn’t in the right frame of mind for any more of your shit tonight.”
I narrow my eyes on him. “What do you know of my shit?”
“Enough,” he snarls. “Leave. Her. Alone.”
“Gentlemen.” I look up at Bronwyn standing at his back. “All okay here?”
“Leash your dog,” I mutter, pulling my arm away.
I walk through the crowd to where Lissie stands chatting with what seems to me is the first man she could find.
It takes me a second, and another after that, to remember that if I throw hands, I’ll be out of here in an instant, and then I’ll be truly fucked.
With my eyes locked on her, I step up to her side, disregarding the man as I talk into her ear. “What will it take for you to leave this club with me right now?”
She looks up at me. “I don’t think there is anything you can say tonight.”
“I told you I’m sorry, Lis. What else am I supposed to do?”
“Why don’t you ask Bronwyn if she will put a price on firing me?”
My face falls, and all I can do is stare at her. And it’s when I see it, the redness under her eyes from where she’s been crying, masked by her makeup. Probably not obvious to anyone else, but it is to me.
A reminder that I hurt her.
Maybe even worse than I first realised.
But am I supposed to just let her be with someone else?
Because I fucking won’t.
I can’t.
She leans forward, saying something to the guy. When she steps back, she casts one last look at me, and then heads off down to the staff quarters of the club.
I stand on the spot and watch her until she disappears, the panic in my chest making it hard to breathe.
When movement catches my eye, the guy Lissie was talking to following the blond through the crowd towards the rooms, I set into motion.
They’re almost at the door of a private room when I catch the dark-haired guy by his neck and pull him back, stepping in front of him. “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll turn around and fucking leave. Now .” The words leave my chest feral and unhinged, my control shot.
“Fuck off, mate,” he tells me. “I pay my dues, just like everyone else here.”
I step forward, but I’m pushed back, security coming out of nowhere and removing me from the doorway.
If the guy hadn’t opened the door and stepped into the room, I’d have fought them.
If Lissie wasn’t in this club, preparing to sleep with some waste of space asshole, I’d have fought them.
I get a matter of seconds, and in those seconds, I decide fighting security guards isn’t the way to get her out of here.
My heart thunders in my chest at the thought of Lissie being inside that room with him.
“How much?” I say to the blond, shrugging out of the hold they have on me.
He turns, his eyes laughing at me. “Leave him be. I’ll see him out,” he tells the security guards, and they walk away. “You know, I like that you’re making a show of yourself. You always came across a little boring before. Shoes really did gut punch some life into you.” He smiles at me, ignoring the rage that consumes me. The way my jaw tics. “You like her, don’t you?”
He taps my chest with the back of his hand and walks off through the crowd.
I follow him. “She shouldn’t be working tonight. She’s clearly not in the right frame of mind.”
“She’s clearly not doing what you want her to, more like.”
“How much?”
He turns on me. “You’re?—”
I step into his face, my jaw rigid. “I’ll take the door off the fucking hinges myself, or you can get that prick out of there and save me causing a scene.”
His lip twitches, and then he eases back slightly. “Because you asked so nicely.”
He shoulders past me, pulling his phone from his pocket momentarily before dropping it back inside. He walks to the rooms and to the door.
I look from him to the door over and over again, my throat growing tight.
“You hurt her, and I’ll break your fucking legs, pretty boy. I don’t care who you are or how much money you have.”
One of my eyebrows lifts as I eye him.
“I mean it.”
He keeps his eyes locked with mine as he unlocks the door and pushes down on the handle. The second the mechanism clicks I push inside, not thinking twice past the need to have her out of the room and away from the asshole who thinks he can touch what isn’t his.
Only he isn’t in the room with her.
It’s just her.
And me.
My nostrils flare at the sight of her blindfold. Of her waiting for him. At the idea she’d have done this again.
She’s wearing a black bra and thong, the lace see-through.
I work my jaw and walk to where she stands, her chin lifting when she senses the movement.
She’s nervous. I can see it in the tension around her shoulders, the taut line of her mouth.
I swallow, maybe as nervous as she is.
I’ve not known what to say to her all day. How do I make it better? Make her not hurt or hate me.
I can’t stand the idea of her hating me.
As I study her bow-shaped lips, I reach up with my hand. I barely make contact with her chin before she knocks my hand away and reaches to pull away her blindfold.
Our eyes meet and hold, hers wild, her chest rising and falling in tandem with my own.
I lock my jaw in the hope it eases the tightness in my chest. “You’d sleep with another man?” My brow gathers, the tightness only getting worse. “Here, Lis. In this room?”
Her shining eyes flick around my face, her features softening, and I wonder if the sight of me eases her ache in the same way she eases mine.
I force myself to look away, my chest too fucking tight. My eyes widen when I realise the room we’re in isn’t even the same one that the guy was sent to.
Somehow, in a mist of panic and fury, I missed that.
I shake my head. “You knew it wouldn’t be him,” I accuse, realising. “You knew I’d come for you.”
She swallows and nods.
I don’t know how I look to her right now, but I feel like a meteor travelling too close to the sun. A fucking mess of a man whose only need seems to be this woman standing in front of me. I feel ready to rip whatever it is she’s wearing off her and forget that the world around us exists.
Closing my eyes, I rein it in.
I do my best to, at least.
Reaching up, I pull the blindfold down over her eyes, dusting my thumb across her temple as I pull back. I take a steadying breath and lift her chin, my eyes hungry as they trace her lips and nose.
I haven’t kissed a woman in years.
Twelve to be precise.
But the thought of never kissing Lissie Elton—my gut twists—well, I’d rather fucking die.
Leaning in, I bring my nose to her cheek, running it across her skin until I reach her ear, my lips dusting. I’m desperate. Too far gone after everything that’s happened. “I need to be inside of you,” I whisper. “It’s all I’ve needed for weeks.” I swallow, glancing down at the goose bumps pebbling across her chest. “Tell me I can be inside of you, Lis.”
Her lips part, and then her hand runs up my stomach, flattening on my chest as she pushes me back a step.
Panic has my eyes pinned on her, awaiting her next move. “Lis?—”
She reaches up and slips the blindfold over her head, holding it between her fingers. “You think you can fuck me, lie to me, say you’re sorry, and now fuck me again?”
When I don’t say anything, she closes the distance she created with one step.
“Do you, Charles?”
I look down at her, my head tilting as my eyes beg for forgiveness. “Let me take you home,” I say, sensing this is about more than just me and what I’ve done to her.
She shakes her head. “You don’t get off that easily. You fucked me. Right here in this room, you fucked me whilst I couldn’t see you. And then to my face, you lied to me.” Her eyes narrow, and my heart pounds. “Get on your knees, Charlie boy .”