Page 61 of The Grand Duel
“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. “Nottooold, 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. Itisa win. I think he might actually be alright.”
“Alrightor 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 apparentlyCharlie—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.