The Grand Pact (The Grand Men #1)(3)

“I have goals.”

“Yeah?” She frowns, and I know she didn’t mean to sound so surprised.

“Yes. But I choose to live in the moment.” I step up to her, lifting her chin. “Tell me this. You want to wait it out, see if you can make it work with Miller, but you’re not truly happy. I know you’re not, so don’t bullshit me. But what if something happens? What if you’re chasing your five-year goal, fighting to make the dead relationship work, and you die at year three? Huh? What then?”

“That’s ridiculous and morbid.” She chuckles, lifting a hand to cover her mouth as if she can’t control it.

I smile along with her because it is morbid, and she’s fucking beautiful. “But I’m right. What if you’re wasting time right now? What would five-year Luce think about that?”

“She’d think it’s dumb.”

“She really is a silly bitch sometimes,” I agree.

She breaks out into another laugh, and I sober my features. Deciding in this moment that the girl in front of me deserves more, I make a rash decision that I know I won’t regret.

“Luce, I wanna see you live your life.”

“I am.”

“Leave him.”

“No.”

“Keep looking.”

“Elliot!”

“And if in two years you haven’t found him—No. Fuck him, actually. If in two years you haven’t found her, if you’re not settled and well on your way to ‘five-year Luce,’ I’ll give you the kids.”

“You’ll what?”

“Kids. It’s what you want the most, right? It’s not a big thing for me and not something in my future. I can be as supportive as you need me to be.” I shrug, feeling pretty sure of myself. “I’ll give you kids.”

I say it as if it’s the last bite of my sandwich and not my offspring.

She stands frozen, utterly shell-shocked. “Like… in a tube?”

My lip curls at that, and I lick at my bottom lip, watching as her eyes follow the movement. “You can have them whatever way you want them, princess.” I step forward, swiping her hair from her shoulders and pulling her to me. My hand grasps the back of her neck, and I angle her face up to mine. “Go live. Without restraint. I bet you won’t even need me come the end.”

“Ell,” she murmurs, lifting her dainty hand to smooth it across my cheek. “You’re the sweetest man sometimes, you know that?”





1





Lucy





Nineteen Months Later


And they lived happily ever after.

That’s the dream. A bar I set high at the tender age of six, completely out of reach of every man I’d ever encounter.

It’s not that I date the wrong men, although my girls would say different, but I seem to cling to the mediocre, the safe, simple men of the world who don’t ever make it past the first year.

I’m a firm believer that once you get the ick, you’re done. There’s no coming back from the ick. But my problem—and it’s a real kicker—Cinderella didn’t quit when Prince Charming didn’t recognise her at first glance. Aurora wasn’t mad that Phillip took one hundred years to wake her up. And the most bittersweet of them all, Beauty loved Beast, even after he locked her father away, held her captive, and showed her his true self. She loved him at his worst.

So, now I live in hope, too afraid to give up on the wrong man in case he is my Prince Charming.

How messed up is that?

“Princess, are you crying again?”

“Leave me alone.” My hands lift to cover my face, shielding my tears.

“Luce.” I can hear the smile in his voice as he pries my hands away. I find him on his knees beside me at the sofa. “Come on, you’ve seen this movie a thousand times.” His boyish grin pokes at the five-year-old in me, threatening to pop her sad little bubble.

Elliot Montgomery was thrust into my world a little over three years ago when my best friend Nina met Mason Lowell, Elliot’s best friend and business partner. He’s my friend, someone I spend almost all my spare time with these days, and one of the first people I call with any important news and cry to when I’m sad. And then sometimes, when it’s late, and the warmth from his body hits different, well then sometimes, on those nights, I curl in closer, and he stays till dawn.

We have an understanding—a friendship which comes with an invisible line that we’ve toed along for the past two years.

Somehow London’s most notorious playboy managed to worm his way into my fairy tale.

“I thought you were leaving after you finished your muffin?” I ask, letting him pull me up from the sofa.

“You wouldn’t have let me leave. You’d have fluttered those pretty lashes and made me stay.”

I grin up at him as I find my feet on the hardwood. “It’s late. I need to get some sleep. We both have work tomorrow.” I bend to collect our wineglasses, then slide past him and into the kitchen.

“Is that a hint for me to tuck you in?”

“No.” I roll my eyes as my lip curls into a full smile. “We have Nina’s showcase tomorrow evening. Are you still okay to pick me and Meg up? I think we’re going for food first.”