Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Stella
The door buzzer made me jump. That couldn’t be Beck, could it? I still had my mobile in my hand—we’d barely hung up more than a few minutes ago. I should have changed.
I glanced down at my pajamas—there was a hole in the knee, and the elastic waistband had grown baggy so they slid to my hips.
There were a lot of upsides to being single.
One of them was wearing your favorite stuff around the house because no one was there to criticize or make comments about how his mother was perfectly groomed at all times.
Beck always looked like he’d just stepped off a Milan runway, and I was sure his real girlfriends didn’t own PJs.
But I wasn’t his real girlfriend, so what did I care what I looked like? I buzzed him up and left the door on the latch. Should I have given him a key by two months? No, that was a little much.
“Have you ever lived with a woman?” I called as I heard him come through the door. Had he seen women other than when they were perfectly made up, hair blow-dried, with their best underwear on?
“Well, hello to you too, Stella. And no. Never lived with a woman.” He appeared in the doorway to my kitchen just like he had when he’d come to pick me up last night. Already he looked at home, but Beck was the kind of guy who was probably comfortable wherever he was.
“Have you ever given a woman a key to your flat?” Beck was right—I wanted this design job.
I wanted to stop this circle of disappointment I’d been in since I’d found out about Matt and Karen.
But we were going to have to up our game.
Especially after my phone call with Florence.
“You want coffee?” We were going to have to pack in a lot in a very short amount of time. Scotland was only a few weeks away.
“No to the key question. Although I’ve had it suggested to me a couple of times. And water if you have it. Tap is fine.”
“You don’t drink coffee?”
He shook his head and I took a deep breath. We had a lot to cover. “You need to tell me these things. Not drinking coffee is a big deal.”
“It is?”
“Of course, it is. Do you drink tea?”
“Nope. Can’t bear the taste. Coffee either. And anyway, I don’t like to be high on caffeine.”
“Caffeine gets you high?” It was possible that Beck was one of those oh-so-dull men who didn’t know how to enjoy himself. There had to be a catch.
“Not high, but it can amp up your mood. I don’t drink much alcohol either.”
“Whoa. Really? Not at all? Are you an alcoholic? Do you take drugs?” I had ten million questions. This was never going to work.
He chuckled. “No, not an alcoholic and I don’t take drugs.”
“I thought you said you went to university for a good time. Can’t have been that great for you if you didn’t drink or do drugs—not that I did drugs, but I drank my fair share.”
“I didn’t go to university.”
I stopped, my teabag balanced on my spoon, and turned to look at him to see if he was serious. “You didn’t? How come?” In my circle of friends, everyone went to university.
He shrugged. “Wasn’t my thing. I wanted to be out making money.”
“Well, you’ve clearly done that.”
“Exactly. I had my eye on the prize.”
“And your parents didn’t mind?”
He rolled his eyes. “No. Neither of my parents went.”
I’d made assumptions about Beck that I hadn’t even realized. I’d thought he’d come from a privileged upper-middle-class background, just like my friends and I had. But he was changing the picture I had unknowingly built up of him.
“You got into real estate straight away?” I asked. Did he have Russian backers or family money or something? Perhaps his business was a front for mob money laundering. Did London even have the mob?
“Sort of. Worked a lot of different jobs, saved a little money, took out a loan to buy a flat in Hackney, flipped it. Did it again. And again. You know.”
But I didn’t know. My friends were lawyers and doctors or helped run the family business. Flipping flats in Hackney was not part of my world. “So from a flat in Hackney to a development in Mayfair?”
He shoved his hands in his pockets and looked me in the eye. “Apparently.”
“Your parents must be proud,” I said, hoping to coax out of him more about his background.
“I guess. Not really thought about it.”
“You close to them?”
He laughed. “You’re going to need a notepad and pen. Get in the shower and then we can get on with whatever you had planned for the day while we talk.”
I’d planned to spend the day cross-legged on my sofa, working on design ideas for his development, but I wasn’t going to tell him that. He didn’t need to see my haphazard process.
“Okay, you can talk to me through the bathroom door. We don’t have time to waste,” I said, heading to my bedroom, my tea in hand.
“We’re going to be fine, you know.” He toed off his shoes and sat on my bed as if we’d known each other for years as I closed the bathroom door.
It was weird, having a conversation with a stranger in my flat while I was getting naked.
He could be an axe murderer or at the very least a pervert.
Although I didn’t get a pervert vibe from him.
He was too confident, too sure of himself.
“It’s not like we’re being quizzed by someone trying to catch you out,” he said.
“I told you, Karen smells a rat. She’ll absolutely be trying to catch us out.”
“But why? I thought you said you were friends.”
“We’ve drifted apart more recently,” I replied. “She’s said to Florence that she thinks something doesn’t add up between us.”
“Why does she care? Because your ex is the groom? Wasn’t it over between you years ago?”
I stepped into the shower, grateful Beck couldn’t see my expression and I could keep things breezy.
“You know how gossipy people are,” I said, raising my voice so he could hear my answer and sidestepping the question.
“We were together for a long time.” I wouldn’t tell a new boyfriend all the ins and outs of an old relationship right away, would I?
If I had to go to that wedding, then I wanted it to be with the one person who didn’t think I was a fool—who didn’t know I’d spent years with a man who’d tossed me away and replaced me within weeks with my best friend.
I’d been humiliated enough. I needed a break from the shame, some kind of safe harbor.
“Were you engaged?” he asked, his deep voice carrying through the closed door.
I screwed my eyes shut, letting the water cascade over my face, hoping that dull ache in the pit of my stomach could be washed away.
This was why I didn’t want to go to the wedding.
Ninety-six-point-four percent of the time, I was entirely fine as long as I didn’t think about Matt and what he and Karen had done.
But if I went to Scotland there’d be no escape from the two of them for an entire week.
“Not officially,” I said. “But we’d talked about it.
I assumed it would happen at some point.
” I’d thought we were working toward our future together. I’d got that very wrong.
“You lived together?”
“Yeah. In this flat.”
Silence from the other side of the door. Good, the Matt conversation was over, and we could move on to more important stuff.
“Did you decorate this place?” he asked.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I understand what you need in your development. I get the styles are different.” Most of this flat had been Matt’s choices, not mine. “What about you? Why do you think you’ve never lived with a woman?”
More silence but eventually he said, “I like my own space. Enjoy coming home, putting on the news, opening a beer, and sitting on my sofa in my boxers.”
That sounded like the boy equivalent of PJs, ice cream, and a re-watch of Bridget Jones’ Diary.
“And you can’t do that with a woman?” I finished rinsing out my hair and turned off the shower.
“I never have. I just like silence sometimes. I don’t want to have to talk all the time. I don’t want to have to hear about what happened in her day or remember that she took her cat to the vet or whatever.”
“Wow. Harsh,” I replied as I dried off and slipped on my favorite robe. It was white with pink flamingos all over it. I’d washed and worn it so often a small hole had appeared under the arm, but it was the most comfortable thing I owned, and I loved it.
Matt hated it.
“Harsh? That I like my own company?” he asked as I opened the door.
He was laid back on my bed, one arm tucked behind his head, his long legs crossed at the ankle.
My stomach tilted at the sight of him. He might drive a hard bargain, be overconfident, bordering on annoying, but there was no getting away from that sharp jaw and perfect body.
The way his shirt fit him just perfectly, the way his trousers hinted at his clearly muscular thighs—it was almost obscene. I glanced away, trying to focus.
“I suppose it makes sense if you’ve never been in love, which you obviously haven’t.”
A grin spread over his face like a sunrise. “Obviously?”
I turned away and sat in front of my dressing table, looking at him in the mirror behind me. “Yes, it’s clear to me for two reasons. First, you wouldn’t think hearing about her day was a chore—you’d want to know about her cat.”
“I really don’t like cats,” he said.
“Maybe not, but if her cat is important to her and she’s important to you, then you’d want to know what happened at the vet.” Something about the way he looked at me told me he wasn’t buying it. But what did I care? “For the record, this is a cat-free zone.”
“Thank God. What’s the second reason?” he asked, sitting up.
“We all get days where we want to sit around and decompress after work. People in love understand that they can do that together.”
He hooked his legs over my bed and began to examine what was on my bedside table. “Is that what it was like with you and Matt?”
I paused as I watched him pick up the silver elephant trinket box that I’d bought on a trip to India with Matt after graduation.
Matt’s parents hadn’t approved of a gap year.
But we had a gap six weeks. We’d been so happy, as if we’d been limbering up for a marathon or in the wings of a theatre before the first show—we were full of excitement and nervousness, hope and expectation. I’d thought we’d be together forever.
A lot had happened since then.
“Maybe. In the beginning, when things were good.”
“That’s the other thing I don’t get about couples. They always seem to stick it out when it’s clear to everyone around them that neither of them is happy and they both need to move on. Why the hell is that?”
I uncurled the towel on my head and picked up my hairbrush. “I suppose one or both of them is hoping it will get better. Wishing it could go back to how things used to be. It’s hard to walk away when you’ve invested so much time and effort into someone.”
“But it’s a sunk cost. That time and effort is gone—spent. No point wasting more resources on a project that’s not going anywhere.”
“Jeez. Relationships aren’t a balance sheet. Feelings are involved. Or are you just a cold-hearted businessman who’s all about the cold, hard cash?”
Holding the book I was currently reading—The Goldfinch—he turned to stare at me.
In actual fact, it was the book I was trying to read—what I was actually reading was the latest Nora Roberts.
I’d gotten into the habit of having one paperback by my bedside that Matt would approve of and the one I was reading on my Kindle where he couldn’t comment on the number of brain cells I was losing by reading it.
I suppose I had no one to pretend to anymore.
“Maybe I am. Perhaps I’m just not capable of being in a relationship.”
“Who was your last girlfriend?”
“Danielle. She was a pharmacist. Gorgeous girl.”
I wasn’t about to admit it, but I’d assumed he’d be dating models or ballerinas. Where the hell did men find ballerinas? Every ex-boyfriend Florence ever had left her for a ballerina. “What did you like about her?” I asked.
“She was busy.”
I burst into laughter. “You liked that she was busy?”
He shrugged. “I mean, she was pretty. Great body. Her hair was . . . glossy. What do you want me to say?”
I bit down on my bottom lip, willing myself not to laugh again. This guy was totally clueless. “Why was the first thing that popped into your head that she was busy? Because you didn’t have to see her much?”
He tossed my copy of The Goldfinch on the bed and wandered over to my wardrobe. “No, I don’t think so. I just liked that she had her own life, her own friends. She wasn’t too needy. Although, I think I might have assumed she needed less attention from me than she actually did.”
“So, your ideal woman doesn’t need anything from you? You don’t have to pay attention to her, hear about her day, concern yourself with what’s important to her, just as long as she’s around for a shag at your convenience? Is that about the size of it?”
“You’re making me sound like a dick,” he said, pulling out a pink hoodie that I really should donate or at least fold away in a drawer as I never wore it.
“I’m just replaying what I heard.”
“You’re saying I’m a dick.”
“I’m not saying that.” But I wasn’t not saying that either. Make-up done, I stood up and pulled out some jeans and a top from the chest under the window. “You need to leave, go poke about in my kitchen or something while I change.”
He fixed me with a serious expression. “I really should see you naked if we’re doing our research properly.”
Heat rose up my body and thundered into my cheeks and I shivered. It had been a long time since I’d felt those first whispers of attraction to someone.
I glanced up at him and he grinned and then slipped out of the room.
Beck was Matt’s opposite. Matt had never been afraid of commitment. He’d always envisaged his life with a wife and children. I wasn’t sure if it was because we’d met so young, but neither of us had needed to get used to coupledom. We’d wanted to be together, wanted to hear about each other’s day.
Trying to get Beck to act like a man in love—a man more like Matt—was going to require some work.