Chapter 27
Grafton
The amount of satisfaction I get from the shock that widens Christopher’s eyes is infinite. His brown eyes ping-pong between me and Lynley before settling on her.
“You cheated on me?” he demands hoarsely. “With my boss?”
There’s a frozen air of disbelief before Lynley cackles madly. I can’t stop the grin that pulls at my mouth. She sounds unhinged, and I love it. I tighten my arm around her, loving the way she automatically leans into me, trusting me with her weight.
“Are you kidding?” she demands. “Please tell me you’re kidding.”
Francine and Bradley Delcourt have finally fallen back a step, giving Lynley some breathing room. Francine looks confused, but Bradley’s already caught up, his wary eyes fixed on me.
“Lynnie—” Christopher starts plaintively.
Lynley holds a hand out, stopping him in his tracks. “Even if I did cheat, you’d be the last person to scold me about it. Or should we talk about the fact that you fucked. my. sister?”
His parents spin around to gape at their son, whose forehead is shiny with perspiration. Christopher looks around wildly, the whites of his eyes showing, and I can’t believe the idiot didn’t expect Lynley to clap back, considering how he left things the last time she saw him.
“What is she talking about?” his mother asks stridently. “Please tell me she’s lying.” Francine shoots Lynley a dirty look, but when her eyes clash with my menacing glare, she quickly looks away.
“You told us that everything was a misunderstanding.” Bradley clears his throat, still watching me, aware of who the apex predator is here.
I show him my teeth in a facsimile of a smile, but it doesn’t appear to comfort him at all.
Shame. “Christopher, you said that you and Lynley were fixing things.”
The tips of his ears go red. “And if I were,” he hisses viciously, “how the hell would the two of you ambushing her in the middle of the street have gone down? What the fuck were you trying to do?”
“Well,” Lynley interrupts, her voice filled with more amusement than this clusterfuck deserves.
Still, I lift a hand and rub my own smirk off my lips with my thumb.
“As fun as this is”—she makes a show of checking the time on her phone—“we actually need to go.” She looks up at me sweetly.
“It’s almost time to pick the kids up from school. ”
Christopher jerks like he has been struck by lightning. “Don’t tell me you’re actually together,” he rasps. “How did you even meet him?”
Lynley laughs again, and the worry I felt when I came out and found her standing with the Delcourts fades away. She’s stronger than she gives herself credit for, and I won’t take this moment away from her. Just the fact that she knows I’ve got her back is enough.
“It’s a funny story, actually,” she tells him conversationally. “I turned up to Reynolds & Media to catch you in the act of fucking someone else, and Grafton and I…” She turns enough so she can reach up and cup my cheek. “We ran into each other, I guess. And the rest is history.”
Christopher sways, looking like he might actually keel over, and his mother rushes to his side, grabbing his arm. “I don’t know what’s wrong with you,” she snarls at Lynley. “Our family gave you everything.”
“Not everything,” Lynley sing-songs. “I was lucky enough to miss out on any STIs, but I’m actually really grateful for that, so”—she schools her expression into something solemn—“thank you. Sincerely.”
I snort, unable to help myself, and Lynley grins up at me, clearly proud that she made me laugh.
Christopher’s watching us, his lip curled, but I couldn’t give a shit about what he thinks.
He threw his family away like they meant nothing, and I’m not thinking twice about selfishly taking them for myself.
He’s seen the kids twice since the day that Lynley demanded he sign the papers.
The first time, she let him pick them up from the house.
He took them to some fancy seafood restaurant one night where Ginny ended up puking under the table.
A couple of weeks later, there was an awkward ice cream trip where Mase came home and proudly told me he didn’t say a single word to his father the entire time.
It is obvious now that Christopher isn’t even going to ask after the kids—not about Mase’s baseball season and how his team had made it to the semifinals.
And not about how Ginny decided she no longer wants to be a ballerina.
Now my little dancer has decided she is going to be an Olympic swimmer, and only gold medals will do.
Lynley has been swinging back and forth over the desire to release the information she has on Christopher, but, so far, she’s always managed to land on the conclusion that it could do more damage than good, especially when it comes to the kids.
She isn’t prepared to risk it, and I am managing to respect that decision…
but if this motherfucker keeps glaring at my woman, the gloves will come right the fuck off.
Francine lifts her free hand, trembling fingers smoothing her hair back from her face. “I’m not sure I understand what’s happening.” She narrows muddy brown eyes at me in censure. “Who are you?”
“Francine—” Bradley starts, but my grin has already sharpened. I let go of Lynley and step forward, holding a hand out. Christopher stumbles back as Francine places cold fingers in mine.
“Grafton Reynolds,” I say smoothly, and she blanches. “I would say it’s a pleasure to meet you, but this has been anything but.” I drop her hand and step back, making a show of wiping my own hand off on my pants. “Now that everyone appears to have had their say, it’s my turn.”
“Now, see here—” Bradley blusters, but I silence him with one steely look.
“You know who I am,” I say with certainty and no small amount of arrogance.
It’s the persona that has carried me through years of boardroom meetings and cutting men full of hot air—like Bradley—down to size with little more than a few razor-edged words.
“And you know what I’m capable of when I’m pushed.
Lynley is prepared to treat you and your family with kindness, given your relation to Mase and Ginny.
” I keep my stance loose and nonthreatening, but I don’t blink as I lock eyes with Bradley. “Obviously, I am not Lynley.”
She steps forward, her arm brushing against mine.
I don’t hesitate, sliding an arm around her waist, and she leans into me, silent and trusting as we show them we’re a united front—and I love her all the more for it.
I know this isn’t how she wanted to handle things, but she also never dared to think they would actually accost her so openly.
And the second they tried to make her the villain in this story?
Well, that’s when I marked them for ruin.
Bradley’s jaw goes taut as he looks at Christopher. “What the fuck have you done?”
“Oh,” Lynley murmurs, ducking her head, but I can see the smirk she’s trying to hide. “Didn’t he tell you? The young girl Christopher knocked up? Her name is Angelica Reynolds.” She leans forward, dropping her voice to a whisper. “She’s Grafton’s niece.”
Francine sags like all the air has been sucked right out of her body, and suddenly, it’s Christopher holding her up. “Mother…”
“And your sister?” Bradley rasps, eyes on Lynley.
She blinks innocently. “Apparently, he’s a fan of women blackmailing him.” She wrinkles her nose. “Probably more so if he actually does get sex out of it.”
Bradley whirls around, snarling, “You let a woman blackmail you into fucking her? What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Apparently, she knew about his cheating, and he was still trying to hide it from me. I do have to give him credit, though. At first, he was just funding her and her husband’s lifestyle, and then it graduated to fucking, I guess.”
“Lynley!” Christopher shouts. “Shut up!”
“Don’t you fucking talk to her,” I snarl, and he clamps his mouth shut, his cheeks white. I look at Bradley. “Get your boy on a leash.”
He rubs a hand down his face, looking defeated. “What do you want from us?”
My brows dip together. “I don’t want anything from you.
” I scoff. “But you’d do well to remember that Lynley isn’t the only one who holds the evidence of Christopher’s actions.
We all know the press will be salivating for the Delcourts’ downfall.
” I raise a brow, staring at Bradley until he dips his chin in acceptance.
Or defeat. I don’t care, as long as he knows where he stands.
“Christopher has made his choices—many of them. He expected that everyone else would live with the consequences of those choices, much like a teenage boy with no accountability.” Out of the corner of my eye, shame flushes Christopher’s face, and I get a sick, sweet pleasure out of it.
“Those consequences are now his to live with, but I will not tolerate him or your family coming after Lynley again.”
There’s a long silence as that implicit threat sinks in, but then Francine is stomping forward, her hands curled into claws at her sides.
“You can’t just take the children from their father!
It isn’t right!” She throws a disgusted look at Lynley.
“If you’d just played your part, like every other wife knows to, none of this would have happened.
You obviously drove him to those other women! ”
Lynley shakes her head. “And that, right there, is why I’ll never let you around my children.”
“You can’t do that!” Francine yells, her voice verging on a shriek. “You’re just some trollop with no power.”
“For God’s sake, Francine,” Bradley snaps. “Would you shut up before you cost us everything? Don’t you think your son has done enough to our family?”
“My son?” Francine repeats, before laughing manically. “My son? When all he’s done is act just like you!”
There’s a stilted pause, right as the door to the shop opens behind us and heels clack against the pavement.
I don’t have to look to know it’s Marjorie, and I feel her curious stare burning into us.
Professional as always, her footsteps fade as she heads away, but it’s a signal that this situation needs to be shut down.
“The decision over whether you have a relationship will lie with Mase and Ginny,” Lynley asserts firmly, clearly already on the same page. “Christopher is well aware of where they are and how to contact them, but I will not force them to spend time with a man who threw them away.”
“I didn’t—” Christopher starts, pushing a hand through his hair. “Lynnie, you know that’s not why I did it.”
“I know nothing of the sort,” she retorts acidly.
“You were more worried about your image and your parents’ reaction to your indiscretions than your relationships with Mase and Ginny.
” Lynley shakes her head. “I will never make excuses for you. Not anymore, and never to them.” Sadness flits through her eyes.
“They deserved better from you, and so did I.” She inhales deeply through her nose and turns back to me, wrapping her arm around my waist. “Luckily for me, I found better.”
“Yeah, you did,” I murmur, tipping her chin up and pressing a claiming kiss to her mouth. She makes a sound of amusement against my lips, her eyes knowing when they lock with mine, but I don’t care. I’ll erase that worm from her memory if it’s the last damn thing I do.
Vitriol is still lighting up Francine’s eyes, but Bradley just slumps.
“It seems we’ve been acting with only some of the information.
” He glares at his son before he tells me, “You have our word it won’t happen again, as long as the, uh…
footage”—it’s a question, testing what we actually have, but my expression gives nothing away—“stays out of the media’s hands. ”
It takes Bradley a good minute before he realizes that our acquiescence isn’t coming and that there’s nothing he can do about it.
“Come on, Francine,” he mutters. “There’s nothing left to say.”
He turns and walks away, and she looks between him, Christopher, and us before she shakes her head and follows him. Christopher is watching Lynley, a whole lot of realization in his eyes.
“Lynley—”
“How’s the baby?” she cuts him off, her tone impersonal, and he mutters a curse under his breath.
“Please, Lynnie…”
“Okay, let me try again,” she says. “How’s my sister?”
I chuckle darkly, drawing Christopher’s attention.
“We’re done here, asshole. Don’t worry. I know how to treat a woman.
Lynley will be safer in my hands than she ever was in yours.
” I tilt my head, letting him see the absolute honesty in my eyes.
“She will never know a bad day with me, and she’ll never doubt her place at my side.
I’ll treat her like a queen, and she’ll forget you ever existed. ”
He opens and closes his mouth, looking like a lost little boy, but finally, he turns and walks away, following his parents.
Once he’s out of earshot, Lynley spins in my arms, pressing her front to mine and going up on her tiptoes to wind her arms around my neck. “Oh my god,” she whispers as my hands land on her hips. “That was just about the last thing I expected to happen today.”
My lips quirk. “I won’t hold it against you that you married an idiot.”
“Hey, you trusted him with business,” she sasses. “That makes you just as bad as me, in some respects.” She hums, eyes twinkling. “Maybe even worse.”
I narrow my eyes playfully. “We’ll have to agree to disagree.” I pinch her ass, making her yelp, followed by a giggle. “Come on. It’s time to grab our kids.”
Her eyebrows lift, those stormy blue eyes wide. “Our kids?”
“Got a problem with that?” I challenge. She watches me for the longest moment, her shrewd gaze assessing my sincerity, but then her head shakes from side to side.
“You know what? No.” Lynley’s smile is slow coming, but takes over her entire face. “No, I don’t.”