Chapter 24
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Beck
I was hoping that Stella remembered I was supposed to be Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman and not Steve McQueen in The Great Escape.
We’d stopped by Boots to pick up a nail brush and a pumice stone, which was on Stella’s list, then at the entrance of the hotel, she’d scooped up some soil from the flowerbed, putting it in a small plastic bag she pulled out of her purse.
“I still don’t understand what’s happening,” I said as I took a seat back in our hotel room. Stella was laying everything we’d purchased out on the bed.
“I’m going to show you. Can you get the scissors from the vanity pack in the bathroom, please?”
I’d just have to humor her. As I flicked on the bathroom light, images from the night before flashed into my head. Stella’s skin was so smooth it was like gliding my tongue over gin-soaked ice. My hands had fit perfectly over her hips. And she’d smelled so good.
But sex was sex. It was rare not to enjoy it—even though it had been exceptional with Stella.
What was more surprising was how completely alluring it was that she’d been entirely focused on our mission today.
And the way she’d held me when I’d confessed my connection to the Dawnay building had been .
. . comforting—no, more than that, it had bound us together somehow.
No one else knew why I wanted that building so badly.
It had just sort of tumbled out earlier. I couldn’t help it.
I’d always professed to like the shallows when it came to women, but I couldn’t help but wade deeper with Stella. Every step forward, things got better between us, felt more right, as if I’d been waiting for this woman and now that she was here everything in my life made more sense.
She was kneeling by the bed when I handed her the scissors, completely focused on the lining of the jacket of the five-thousand-pound suit I’d just bought and would wear once. She snipped the thread of the lining and made a hole in the seam about three centimeters long.
“Is this some kind of passive-aggressive shit where you make me buy things and then destroy them because you’re annoyed about me not going down on you for long enough or something?” I asked.
She paused what she was doing and looked up at me. “What kind of girls have you been dating?” Her expression was part horror, part pity. “And you went down on me plenty. Couldn’t you tell by my nineteen orgasms?”
Stella had made me work for her climax, which meant I appreciated it all the more when I’d finally coaxed it from her. And it had made mine all the stronger. “I’m happy to try it again if you think it wasn’t quite long enough. Wouldn’t want to disappoint.”
She grinned but shook her head as if I was some incorrigible fifteen-year-old boy obsessed with his older sister’s best friend.
“Let’s focus. You need this signature from Henry. Then after . . .” She shrugged. “Let’s . . . let’s just grab the trousers and sit on them,” she said. “We don’t want them looking too new.” She reached for the pumice stone and started to rub it over the seam on the shoulders.
“You know, I’m starting to think you’re a little bit crazy.”
“Everything needs to look worn and not like we bought it ninety minutes ago.”
“You mean you want it to look as if my grandfather bought the trousers and I’m so fucking stingy I’ve raided his wardrobe.” I toed off my shoes.
“Open mind, remember.” She looked at me with a grin so warm I felt the heat in my bones.
I took a seat next to her on the floor and picked up the pumice stone. “So, you know why I want the Dawnay building so badly. Why do you want the design job bad enough to watch your ex marry your best friend?”
She blew out a breath. “Shouldn’t you be encouraging me, not questioning why I’m such a lunatic?”
I shrugged. “You’re here now. For which I’m very thankful. But if I were in your shoes, I’m not sure anything could have dragged me here.”
She blinked, closing her eyes for a second longer than normal, as if she were trying to wipe her mind clean of a memory.
“Ironically, designing your Mayfair development is an opportunity to move forward after all that’s happened.
I hate my job, but I can’t leave it until I have something else.
I had a successful design business in Manchester but Matt had a job opportunity in London, so we moved down.
I had started to build a new business, but when he .
. . left, I’d only managed to get two small jobs.
I wasn’t properly established and I had a mortgage to pay—London’s expensive. ”
“He left you with the mortgage?”
“I told him to leave. I didn’t think through the cost of the place.”
“He should have done the right thing and kept paying his share.” My jaw tightened at the thought that Matt believed he could just drop Stella and leave her to pick up the pieces.
“It was my fault. I should have thought it through.” She always took on every problem like it was her own.
“You should have asked him to contribute.”
“I couldn’t do that. He wasn’t living there.”
“But you gave up your business, moved cities for him.” Stella didn’t seem to see the injustice that was obvious to me.
“For me too. I wanted a life together and anyway, I love London. I always wanted to be there.”
She didn’t look at me the entire time she spoke. I wanted to tell her how sorry I was, but I knew she wouldn’t want my pity. “You’re good at giving. Not so good at taking,” I said.
Ideas spun through my mind of what I could do for her. Maybe I could buy her something, pay her mortgage or something. It wasn’t that Stella was a woman who couldn’t look after herself—more that she was a girl who deserved to be spoiled.
This Matt guy needed someone to show him that girls like Stella didn’t come along all the time. She’d made sacrifices to make him happy. She’d given things up for the good of their relationship, for a future together. She’d been part of a team, whereas he’d only been thinking of himself.
“As long as Henry signs on the dotted line, this Mayfair development will turn things around for me. I’ve started sourcing suppliers already.”
As nervous as I was about her taking on the project, I wanted her to do well and create a better future for herself. “Maybe I can put you in touch with a few people as well.”
She looked up at me from beneath her lashes. “You’d do that?”
Didn’t she get it? There wasn’t a lot I wouldn’t do for her.
“It’s no problem. And I don’t think I’ve ever said thank you for coming here and doing all this.”
“It’s not like I’m not getting something in exchange.”
Was that what it was? A simple exchange? Perhaps I was making too much of what she was doing, but it felt like we were a team. That she was sitting on the hotel room floor, her arms deep in a sea of tweed because she wanted to help me.
“The Dawnay building’s going to be a game changer for both of us,” she said.
“Agreed. But can we stop calling it the Dawnay building?” I asked.
“What will you name it? The Wilde building?
“The entire development will be called One Park Street.”
I didn’t need to name the building after myself. I just wanted to erase its legacy. And at the same time, create a new one for myself. And Stella.