Chapter 31
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Stella
Out of the back window of the car, I watched the hotel disappear and fade away into the gray, Scottish skies. I had to be sure we had gone. “It’s like I’m leaving my past behind,” I said. “Literally. Figuratively. It’s all back there.”
“Are you okay with that?” Beck asked.
I turned back to face forward in the passenger seat next to Beck. “It’s a relief. To get it done. And to not have to go to the ceremony. I doubt I’ll ever see Matt and Karen again.”
“But you’ll see Florence and Gordy?”
“Sure. Florence has been amazing through all this.”
Beck stayed silent.
“She’s been a great friend,” I added. “I don’t know what I would have done without her.”
He shrugged.
It was weird because I knew Beck well enough to know he wasn’t just disinterested in what I was saying. He was disagreeing with me but trying to hold himself back from saying so.
“You don’t like Florence?”
He tapped his thumbs on the steering wheel. “I don’t like the fact that she’s still friends with Karen after what she did to you.”
I reached for his arm. It was sweet that he seemed invested, but he’d gotten it wrong about Florence. “Florence isn’t friends with Karen.”
“She’s at her wedding. And honestly, I don’t know Gordy very well, but he seems like a nice bloke. I don’t understand why he didn’t put his foot down and refuse to come.”
I had to push down a giggle. “Put his foot down? I’d like to see him try and tell Florence what to do. But for your information, Florence promised to come to Scotland if I came. She didn’t want me to go through it alone. She wouldn’t have come if I hadn’t needed her here.”
Beck took a long, slow breath. “Good,” he said. “That makes more sense. And Gordy just went along with it?”
“He’ll do anything to make Florence happy. You can stop judging them now. Even though it’s kinda nice that you’re being so protective.”
“The character of a person is important to me. You know that.”
In many ways I knew a lot about Beck, considering the short amount of time we’d spent in each other’s company. But these days I knew better than to assume I knew anyone. After my conversation with Matt, the lack of confidence I had in my own judgement of people was reaching boiling point.
“I don’t understand why you were with Matt for so long, or friends with Karen since you were five. The pair of them deserve each other from what I’ve seen. Neither of them merit a friend like you.”
It was easy to look on as an outsider and see things that weren’t right. But when you were in the middle of them, they were easier to overlook. “No one is ever entirely one hundred percent to blame,” I replied.
We turned onto the main road, Beck revved up the engine and we picked up speed. “If that tool successfully made you feel like him running off with your best friend was somehow your fault—”
“No, it’s not that. More that when you’re in a relationship, the aim is to be happy and that means compromising and accepting you’re not right all the time.”
“And that’s what Matt did?”
I’m not sure I understood Matt’s aims at all, which made me feel all the more stupid.
I’d been blindly trundling along, expecting everyone to have good hearts and me to be granted my happily ever after at some point.
“They weren’t Matt’s core skills while we were together,” I said.
“But that doesn’t mean I can’t have good intentions. ”
“That’s the point though, isn’t it? You had good intentions and he didn’t give a shit.”
Matt cared about me. At one point. He must have done. “We were happy for a long time.”
“And when you stopped being happy,” he said. “Did you walk away?”
My stomach roiled. I hadn’t stopped being happy. Even when he’d ended things, I’d loved him and thought it would work.
I’d been such a fool.
Even with a little distance from Matt, it was clear that our relationship was far from perfect. Looking back, he was controlling and demanding and more than a bit of a snob.
Beck was right. I’d seen what I’d wanted to see—ignored the bad and created the good in our relationship. My rose-tinted glasses had been lasered on.
My fear now was that my twisted vision wasn’t limited to Matt and Karen but that I wasn’t capable of seeing reality. Was I only seeing the good things about Beck? It seemed real between us; it seemed like he’d do anything for me. But I’d been wrong before.
“I’m not looking back. I’m focused on the future. On the Mayfair project.”
“If we get it,” Beck said.
“You’ll get it.”
He grinned and grabbed my hand, linking his fingers through mine. Was this just pretend? “Thank you for your confidence. But I’ve decided. I want it without the name or not at all.”
At that moment, a call came through on the Bluetooth and Henry’s name flashed up. He should have been at the ceremony.
“Henry,” Beck answered.
“If you’ve got any sense, you’ve whisked the lovely Stella away from this ridiculous parade. The dear girl shouldn’t have to sit through such a palaver.”
“Agreed. We’re headed to the airfield now, and we’re going to make our way back to London.”
“Very good,” he said. “Anyway, I called because we didn’t finish our conversation back at Fort William.”
Beck cleared his throat. “Yes, sorry about that. I—”
“No need to apologize. You did quite the right thing,” he replied.
“It actually got me thinking about family and loyalty. There have been plenty of Dawnays who haven’t displayed the character you did to me in that moment when you intervened in the situation between dear Stella and Matt.
In fact, between you and me, the cousin I inherited the building from wasn’t the best man I’ve ever met.
I’m thinking that perhaps the Wilde name deserves to be the only one on your development. ”
I squeezed my hands into fists in the hope it would hold in the squeal of delight pushing to get out.
“I appreciate that.” Beck shot me a grin—it was the look of a man who knew a victory when he won one.
“You said fourteen fifty a square foot?” Henry asked.
“That’s right,” Beck replied.
It seemed like a lot of money, but Beck had said it was fair for the location, and after doing some research I’d worked out Beck could put over a thousand per square foot on that if I did my job properly.
“If you can go to fifteen hundred, then I’ll sign,” Henry said.
“If we get documents executed by Thursday, I can do that price.”
“Then I suggest we light a fire under our lawyers,” Henry said, chuckling. “And you and Stella will come to dinner a week on Saturday to celebrate.”
Beck turned to me and without thinking about it, I nodded enthusiastically. Henry’s agreement couldn’t have come at a more perfect time. I had something to look forward to, to work toward.
“We’d be delighted,” Beck said. “I’ll let you go and get straight on to your lawyers. Enjoy the wedding, sir.”
“You got your building,” I said, beaming at Beck. “I knew you would.”
“And you got your project,” he replied.
“My future.”
He reached across and cupped my face, sweeping his thumb over my cheekbone. “We should celebrate when we get back to London.”
My stomach swooped and slid down to my knees. I’d deliberately not allowed myself to think about Beck and me on the other side of the Scottish border. But we were about an hour away from being back in England.
If he was suggesting a date, then I wasn’t sure what to say—Matt had taught me I had to be more careful with my heart.
“That’s the idea of Henry’s dinner,” I replied.
“Yes, but I’d like to celebrate just with you.”
He removed any doubt to what he was saying. My pulse began to thud in my wrists. I wasn’t sure if it was excitement or fear that was the cause. “It’s certainly something to celebrate,” I said.
Beck getting the Dawnay building was something to celebrate.
Standing up to Karen was something to celebrate.
Escaping the wedding was something to celebrate.
There were plenty of good things happening in my life I could raise a glass to. But doing that with Beck?
Was I brave enough to trust myself? Was it possible for me to see how things really were rather than how I wanted them to be?
The last week with Beck had been wonderful. But the two of us had been living a lie. Just like Matt and I had been doing. At least I was in on the deception with Beck, but it was still not the truth. It was still messy and complicated.
Matt showing me how different reality was to the life I thought I was living had pulled the rug from under me, and I needed to dust myself off and learn to walk again.
“You want to still pretend we’re dating for this dinner with Henry?” I asked. We hadn’t discussed what we were doing. We were pretending to be dating and sleeping together. Did that mean that we were really dating?
Beck shot me a look, his eyes narrowed. “You’re pretending? It didn’t seem that way last night in bed.” A wide grin curled around his lips. “Or this morning in the shower or—”
“Okay, I get it. It’s just, you know, Scotland was . . . Scotland.”
“I don’t know what ‘Scotland was Scotland’ means.”
I didn’t know what I was saying either. The fact was we hadn’t discussed dating in real life. I guess that’s what we were doing now—discussing what happened when we got back to London.
“You want to call it quits when we get back to London?” he asked, his voice a little colder and more distant than it had been just seconds before.
I gnawed at the inside of my cheek. Did I?
I liked Beck. I really liked having sex with Beck. And he was funny. And cute when he was serious. And seriously cute when he was in work mode.
He’d rescued me from Matt and suggested we didn’t attend the ceremony today.
Beck seemed like a good guy. But so had Matt.
I needed to figure out if I had some fundamental flaw that only allowed me to see the good things in people.
Florence had pointed out how selfish Matt had been and how I’d given in to him all the time, but I’d never seen it like that.
I needed time to let my focus readjust. Or retrain my instincts or something. I needed to fix the part of me that was broken and didn’t see things how they really were.
What I didn’t want to do was jump from the frying pan into the fire.
My stomach churned as I realized that Beck and I were probably a horrible idea.
History showed that my instincts were off.
If it felt right, it must be wrong. Surely he would agree when he thought about it.
“We’re going to be working together. Maybe it’s not a good idea to be mixing business with .
. .” I wasn’t sure what he was suggesting.
I was half hoping he’d agree, half hoping he’d talk me around.
No doubt he’d talk me into whatever he had in mind. “You know, sex.”
Beck turned away from me and stared straight ahead. “Okay, we’ll keep it professional.”
That was it?
I’d expected him to present a counterargument. That was his MO, right? I’d assumed I’d have to at least put up a fight. I’d seen Beck in action. When he wanted something, he didn’t stop at anything.
Looked like he didn’t want me. Enough.
I guess my judgement wasn’t so wonky after all. My doubts around him were well founded.