Chapter 16 #2
“Stella, listen to me. I don’t kiss women because I have to. I kissed you because I wanted to. I want to.”
I wanted to turn away from him so he couldn’t see how much his kiss had affected me, no matter the shame from the previous evening. “Last night, I shouldn’t have—”
“Last night was last night.” He paused. “You’d had a lot to drink.”
I’d completely thrown myself at him, and though I’d been drunk, I could unfortunately remember every moment of it. I pressed my palm against his chest to get some space. “We’re here to introduce you to Henry, not to be . . . you know.”
He pulled me closer and kissed me again. “Business comes first. But I really like kissing you.”
I pressed my fingertips over my mouth to hide my smile. He really was an excellent kisser. And in the sixty seconds since it had happened, I’d not thought about Matt or Karen or their betrayal once. Apparently, kissing Beck was like pressing a temporary delete key in my brain. I nodded. “Me too.”
The sound of breaking pottery brought me back to where we were, and I glanced over my shoulder to find Florence staring at us. I was going to have some explaining to do. Not that I had much to say. It was just a kiss. “I should get back to . . .” I grimaced. “Painting pottery.”
“Sounds fascinating. Once you’re done, do they fling them into the air for us to shoot?” he asked. “These people do the weirdest things for fun.”
“These people?”
“You know. People with money.”
“Do I need to remind you that we flew up here on a private jet you use all the time?” I asked.
“Yeah, but my money isn’t old money. I’m not one of these people,” he said. “I don’t shoot at inanimate objects for fun. I like good food, sport, and sex. I’m a simple man.”
I laughed—I wouldn’t have made the distinction between Beck and these people.
But I suppose there was a difference. Most of the boys I’d grown up with had been wealthy, but he was right.
There was a difference now that he’d pointed it out.
It wasn’t obvious, but beneath the surface, there was a hunger, a drive Beck had that I didn’t see often.
“Simple pleasures are the best,” I replied.
“Absolutely.” His mouth twitched at the corners, and his eyes sparkled with a hint of wickedness. “I have to get back to clay pigeon shooting. I wonder if how they have sex is as unsatisfying as what they call sport.”
Like a fourteen-year-old girl hearing the word sex, I shivered as he spoke.
I couldn’t imagine sex with Beck could possibly be unsatisfying.
I glanced at the ground, hoping to hide the heat I felt in my cheeks.
“Yup. We both have to go and enjoy ourselves.” At least I’d managed to sit on a table with people I loved and away from Karen, but now being away from the boys for the day didn’t seem so much of a relief as it had on the coach ride over here.
“So, I’ll see you back at the hotel?” He dipped to catch my eye, as if his question carried more meaning than it first appeared.
I nodded and folded my arms, turning away but feeling a pull toward Beck that hadn’t been there before.
It had been so long since I’d been kissed the way Beck had kissed me.
In fact, I wasn’t sure, I’d ever felt a kiss so deeply before.
With Matt, we’d been too young to realize what a kiss could mean—how it could be the promise of something, good or bad.
Beck’s kiss had been so powerful that if it was the promise of something, it would either be catastrophic or the best thing that had ever happened in my life.
I wasn’t sure I could withstand either.
I wandered back to the tables, carefully avoiding looking at Karen’s table.
“How’s Beck?” Florence asked, grinning at me as I approached as if she was just dying to tell me she’d told me so.
Bea and Jo were both looking at me like baby birds waiting to be fed scraps of gossip. “Oh, you know—tall, dark, and handsome.”
“He most certainly is,” Bea said. “And a phenomenal kisser by the looks of things.”
There was no doubt about that.
“Let me help you choose what you’re going to paint,” Florence said, springing up from her chair and shooing me over to the shelves stacked with the different types of pre-prepared pottery.
She handed me a vase. “Oh my God, what’s going on?” she asked in a loud whisper.
I glanced back at our table to see if anyone was watching or close enough to hear, but they were all engrossed in what they were doing.
“Nothing, I mean—”
“Stop that right now. Don’t tell me that was nothing. That wasn’t a kiss for show. Are you sleeping with him? I can’t believe you didn’t tell me this even though I completely knew it was going to happen.”
“No, I’m not sleeping with him. This is as far as it’s gone—what you’ve seen is the entire extent of what’s happened between us.”
“Wait—that was the first time you’ve kissed? What’s going on?”
“He said he’d been running this morning and had realized he wanted to kiss me.”
Florence narrowed her eyes, silently accusing me of not telling her the entire story.
“You know how drunk I got last night? And being here—it was all a little overwhelming. And at some point, I might have lunged at Beck.”
“Lunged?”
Lunging wasn’t really my style. Not that I had a style with men. There had only ever been Matt. “Yeah. It was horribly embarrassing and if you tell anyone, I’ll kill you—”
“But he was down for it?”
“No, he politely declined.” My insides began to curl up in shame as I remembered last night. Despite him kissing me today, I still wished it hadn’t happened.
“But then today?”
“You know as much as I do. He said that he wanted to kiss me.”
Florence took a deep breath. “Well, he’s obviously crazy for you,” she said matter-of-factly. “It’s so nice that he didn’t kiss you when you lunged but did just now in front of everyone. He clearly couldn’t wait.”
Florence was a hopeless romantic. “He’s not obviously crazy for me. It was just a kiss.” One that I’d felt in my bones and gave me goosebumps just remembering it.
“You’re together for the next week. Sleeping in the same bed. Something more is bound to happen.”
I rolled my lips together. It was just a kiss. But what if Florence was right and he kissed me again? Wanted more?
Obviously, someone had to come after Matt. Unless I was going to check in to my local nunnery for the next fifty years, there would be another man. I knew that somewhere deep down, I just hadn’t gotten to the point that I wondered who that someone was or wanted a particular someone to be next.
Not that I could have ignored Beck and his handsomeness. It hit you in the face like a freight train.
And he’d been so nice to me—confident, reassuring, and concerned.
There was a reason I’d lunged at him and not the bellboy.
“You’re clearly both attracted to each other, and if he still likes you post-lunge, then that says a lot,” Florence said.
“Post-lunge? Really? Can we not focus on the lunging? It’s humiliating enough.
” But Florence was right—if he could see me drunk and emotional and not be running for the hills, perhaps Beck was the next someone.
The problem was I didn’t know which way was up and I didn’t trust anyone enough to tell me.
“He has a vested interest in being nice to me,” I said, my mind whirring with doubt and distrust. “He was probably worried about me abandoning him after his rejection last night and kissing me was his way of trying to keep me happy.” Was that what his kiss had been about?
Had he just been protecting his own best interests?
He seemed genuine enough but if he’d wanted to kiss me, was he really such a gentleman that he’d held back last night?
“Stella, I witnessed that kiss. There was nothing fake or forced about it.”
But she didn’t know Beck.
I didn’t really know Beck. And even though what I did know of him I liked, the fact that I was at the wedding of the man I thought I was going to marry told me my judgement wasn’t to be trusted.
No, I was here for business—fighting for my future. I wasn’t about to get thrown off course by a man’s showstopping kisses.
No way.