The Grand Pact (The Grand Men #1)(66)

“Wonderful. It always was a favourite of ours, wasn’t it, Glen?” She looks across at Dad, and he smiles at her. “Are you taking a date?”

My lip twitches. They’re too predictable. “No, Mum. No date.”

“You do realise I’d get off your case if you gave me something? Anything. Even a bread crumb. I don’t believe a man as handsome as my son is still single at the age of thirty-four. There must be someone.”

My mind instantly wanders to Lucy.

We’re having fun right now. She’s in New York and doesn’t have any plans to come home.

It is what it is.

“If I were you,” My father warns her. “I wouldn’t ask the boy any more questions. I can guarantee you won’t like the answers you get.”

I smile despite the tugging in my chest. My mum bore witness to many of my one-night stands fleeing from our family home, but she doesn’t know about the women that go that one step further. My father once walked into my office to find it completely trashed by my receptionist. She got the sack—obviously, and my father added another colour to the image I allow the world to paint me in.

Fuck them.

I am who I am.

My mum knows what she needs to know.

“Shall we eat?” my mum asks with a clap of her hands.





My parents leave just before nine p.m., and I quickly shower. Lucy doesn’t finish work for a couple of hours, so I don’t expect her to call for a while. The time difference between us is messing with any attempt I have to get her home for the gala.

Fuck. My mother would lose her head if I went with Lucy.

The woman is as obsessed with her as I am.

I’ve turned into a wet blanket these past couple of weeks, and I know it’s confusing Lucy.

Worse… it’s confusing me.

I’ve always known what I want, and for me to tell Lucy that she’s mine and I’ll be hers if she asks. What the fuck does that mean? The words slipped free in the moment in the hope they would tie her to me in some screwed-up way. I’m afraid she will find someone else—I know that’s the reason. But I also don’t know if I want to be tied down.

What if I don’t make her happy?

It’s all she wants.

I already know I’m not the man she should be giving her time to. Yet I’m too selfish to stop. Too far gone to know how to, even if I wanted to.

She’s the woman of my wildest dreams, and I’m the broken fragments of yesterday’s nightmare.

Unwilling and not ready to let her go.





When I didn’t hear from Lucy by six p.m. her time, I decided to go down to my home gym and work out. I don’t use it often because there’s no buzz. I prefer to be around people at the gym.

I’m on the treadmill, sweat dripping from every inch of me when she finally calls.

I hit the stop button and step off. My chest heaves, and I stare at her picture for a beat before I answer, trying to clear my earlier thoughts.

“Ahh, I thought I missed you, and you were asleep! You’re working out?” She watches me with intrigue, and I frown as I clench my jaw.

Why am I so annoyed with myself?

Annoyed with her?

“Yeah, I needed to blow off some steam.”

“What steam?” she asks unapologetically. I’d ask her the same thing.

“I had my parents over for dinner.”

“Ahhh,” she smiles. “Explains it. What was it this week?”

“Just Mum, wondering if you’re going to get your ass home and come to this gala with me.”

“That’s low. You can’t bring your mum into this.”

“Will it make you come home? I don’t want to go on my own.”

I want to stop myself from saying it, but now that I’m talking to her, it feels right. She should be home with us. At the gala and on my arm.

“Elliot,” she croons.

“Hmm?”

“I’d tell you to get out of your head, but I have a feeling you need to be there.” She gives me a smile. One that’s meant to ease a turmoil she knows she’s in the dark about.

Still, she doesn’t push.

“I’m all moved in, and I know I need to give you a tour, but I locked the door the second Ralph left, and I’m now hiding in my room.” I smile, loving her dramatics. “Honestly, this place is incredible.”

“Good. I want that tour tomorrow, though, okay? You’re safe there, Luce. We made sure of it.”

“I know,” she murmurs, dropping her eyes, and I can tell she is caught up in her own head. “Do you want to watch a movie? I’m about to unpack my clothes and need something to keep my mind from wandering. I’m thinking Beauty and the Beast tonight.”

“I need to shower first.”

“That’s okay, we can watch that movie first.”

Fuck.

Rational thought seems to redirect straight to my dick.

“You coming with me, are you, princess?”

“I wish,” she says, her tongue lodged provocatively in the side of her cheek. “Don’t tease me.”

I pull my tee off from over my head, watching as her eyes hungrily scour me. “I’d never. And you started it.”

“Can I be super honest with you?” she says, her cheeks already blushed.