Chapter 30
CHAPTER THIRTY
Stella
Even after a run, the man looked beautiful. Beck’s glistening face, his heaving chest. It was almost too much. No wonder I’d managed to stay distracted these last few days.
“You look gorgeous,” Beck said as he stood at the entrance to the hotel room.
Even the view wasn’t enough to distract me from the guilt that still covered me like a fine layer of sweat on a muggy August day in London. “You think you’ll see Henry today?” I asked.
Beck shrugged and pulled off his shirt. He’d whisked me out of the restaurant the day before yesterday, making some excuse about needing to speak to me.
I’d never been so pleased to see anyone, but at the same time, Beck had been so close to closing the deal.
And yesterday Henry had been visiting family and hadn’t joined the hike. Beck could have missed his shot.
“I should have sent you back to speak to Henry. I could have waited in the car.”
“You said that already. And there was no way I was leaving you.”
“Also, did I say thank you?”
He turned to me and smiled. “You did. Many times.” He toed off his shoes and headed into the bathroom, keeping the door open.
I could barely keep my hands off Beck on the car ride back to the hotel.
At one point along the way, we’d pulled over and I’d crawled onto his lap on the back seat.
I don’t know what it was, but Beck interrupting Matt and me, walking away from Henry to come to my rescue was .
. . I’d never had anyone do anything like that for me.
“I’d do it again,” he added. “He was lucky I didn’t punch him out, and if I hadn’t made that promise to you, I probably would have. Are you still not going to tell me what he said to you?”
I couldn’t tell him. It was too embarrassing to admit that Matt had said I looked desperate by coming to the wedding.
And that I should have realized he was never going to marry me.
“You know. He was just trying to justify running off with my best friend.” I tried to dismiss what he’d said but just thinking about his accusations was like pouring vinegar onto a wound.
Had I been desperate? Had I missed the signs? It was true that I never thought Matt or Karen capable of so much deception, of such a lack of loyalty. I thought they loved me. But I couldn’t have been more wrong.
“Typical coward. Trying to make you feel bad.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I lied. “I’m more concerned about Henry.” Focusing on the future was my only option now.
All I could do was move on, keep my heart safe, and not make the same mistake again. I had to focus on work. “He might have signed the paperwork if you hadn’t come to save me.”
“Maybe. Although, he seems stuck on keeping the Dawnay name attached to the building in some way.”
I’d been so wrapped up in my own drama, we’d not talked about what he and Henry had spoken about. “In what way?”
“Like a wing or the lobby or something.”
“And that’s a big no no for you, given, your background, I guess.”
He snapped his head around. “Yeah. Exactly.”
“I get that,” I said. He was treating this development as therapy of some kind.
Having to keep the Dawnay name as part of it would undermine that in his eyes.
But all the same, it seemed a small price to pay.
“You have to ask yourself whether you’re prepared to walk away if it’s a sticking point with Henry. ”
“I need to shower but come and talk to me,” he said.
I tried to think back to when Matt and I had first been together. Had we ever had conversations in the bathroom? Life was always so busy—I couldn’t remember the last time we’d properly talked.
“You think I’m being an idiot about the name? Am I cutting my nose off to spite my face?”
“I didn’t say that,” I replied.
Beck continued to strip off with the bathroom door open.
He was so unselfconscious. We’d only known each other a few weeks, but I knew his body better than I knew my own.
That small scar on his jaw that I couldn’t see unless I was just a few centimeters away—the result of falling and hitting the rocks on a trip up Snowden.
The dimples just above his arse cheeks that were the reason I liked to watch him from bed as he walked naked across the room.
The way his hands were twice the size of mine and wrapped around my waist, my hips, my breasts as if they owned them. I’d miss all those things about him.
I’d miss him.
“Yeah but I’ve gotten to know that little twitch of your mouth and the way you look away—it means you don’t agree. Tell me what you think, Stella. I want to hear it.”
We hadn’t known each other long, but in many ways he seemed to know me better than some of my oldest friends. “It sounds like there might be a bit of nose cutting off.”
“I’ve been known to do it before,” he confessed.
“Well, I’m hardly one to talk. Florence had to talk me into coming to this wedding.”
“I can understand why you wouldn’t want to come. What Matt and Karen did? It’s awful.”
“And I understand why you don’t want the Dawnay name anywhere near your building.”
He stepped into the shower and looked at me. “Don’t ever let a guy tell you you’re not a fucking prize, Stella.”
He said it as if he thought I was the best thing ever to happen to any man, and his gaze created a tingle across my skin as if his lips were on mine.
“I’m not sure if that means you’re going to accept Henry’s condition or not.”
He sighed like it was an impossible situation. “What would you do if you were me?”
“Wrong question,” I replied. “You want to know what Warren Buffet would do or Jeff Bezos.”
“You’re telling me not to let sentiment get in the way.”
“Actually, I’m not. I think that if your aim is to make the best business deal, then agree to let Henry keep the name. That’s what Warren or Jeff would do.”
“Of course I want to make the best deal,” he said.
That might be partly true but there were other reasons why he wanted the Dawnay building. “Or you want to lay ghosts to rest,” I replied. “And if that’s the case, then buying that building is never going to fulfil you in the way you need it to if you have to keep the Dawnay name attached to it.”
“So walk away?”
I shook my head. “I’m saying, decide what’s more important—putting the past to bed or getting that building. If this is about your father and Henry insists on keeping the name, then maybe you should walk away.”
Beck got out of the shower, and I padded back to the bedroom and dressed quickly in a Zara knockoff of a Prada skirt and blouse.
“As well as being a prize, you’re right,” Beck said, toweling himself off.
“It’s more than a building or a deal. I can’t live with the name being a part of the building in the future.
I want to move forward and for so many years, owning that building—having my thumbprint on it and not my father’s—has been the only thing holding me back. ”
I knew the feeling about wanting to get on with my life. I couldn’t help but think I’d just shot myself in the foot. If Beck didn’t buy the Dawnay building, where did that leave me? In a crappy job that I hated and a flat I’d shared with Matt.
“Then I guess you have your answer,” I said.
“Maybe,” he replied. “If I can’t convince Henry to drop the name. But it’s worth another shot.”
“Hopefully you’ll get to see him at the ceremony today.”
Beck pulled on his trousers and pulled a shirt from the hanger in the wardrobe.
“And then we’ll be done,” I said. After today I could move on with my life. The Matt chapter of my life that I thought would last the entire book would be over. But with Beck and the Dawnay building still uncertain, I had no idea what would be over the page.
He grabbed his suitcase from behind the door, reached onto the bed for a t-shirt, and pulled it over his head. “Let’s pack,” he said.
“Now?” I glanced at my watch. “We can’t be late for the ceremony.” We could pack later. There was no way I was going to be late to the church and risk having to grab a pew when everyone else was seated and turned to watch me.
“No, let’s go today. Now. I have Henry’s details. I can call him. Email him.”
My heart started to thunder, excitement and relief mixing in my stomach.
Although the thought wasn’t vomit-inducing like it had been at the beginning of the week, watching Matt and Karen get married wasn’t exactly first on my list of things to do today.
“Wouldn’t it be better for you to speak to him face-to-face? ”
“I think I need to let him stew.” He pulled his clothes from the wardrobe and threw them in the case. “Unless you want to be there for some reason? Closure or something?”
“It’s the last place I want to be.”
“So, come on then, get those sexy shoes off and packed.” He grabbed his phone off the bedside table, and I sat like a stone on the mattress. “I’m going to call for the plane, but if you want to stay, we’ll stay.”
Did I care if there was a two-person gap at the reception?
People would probably say I couldn’t face it and they wouldn’t be wrong.
I wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for Beck and the design job.
If Beck was offering me a get out of jail free card, why shouldn’t I grab it?
“Are you sure? You’re so close with Henry? ”
“I think we both need to escape right now.”
“If you’re sure, then—”
“Stella, it’s almost as if you’re waiting for me to change my mind. You never know—walking away might be the push that Henry needs.” He held the phone up. “Say the word.”
I didn’t want to stay here. I didn’t want to watch Matt marry Karen. I wanted to be in the air, and on the way back to London. I wasn’t sure I wanted to go back to the flat Matt and I had shared or the job I’d taken to pay the mortgage, but I knew being here was worse. “Let’s go.”
I jumped up, adrenaline licking at my skin, and began to strip out of my wedding-appropriate outfit as I scanned the room for my jeans. “Are we really doing this? It feels wrong somehow.”
Beck picked up the phone. “Joe, I’m going to need the plane today.
We’re going to be leaving the hotel in about ten minutes, so we should be at the airfield in half an hour.
” Beck hung up and turned to me. “Yes, we’re doing this.
Finally, you’re going to do what’s best for you, rather than what’s best for Matt, your friends, and even me.
” He grinned at me and then pulled me toward him, placing a kiss on the top of my head. “It’s about time.”