I wanted to kill him. But I’d made Stella a promise that I wouldn’t even say anything to Matt, not hold him to account or tell him how worthless he was for treating a woman so valuable with such contempt—let alone bury him.
It was a good job that a promise to Stella overrode my desire to give Matt what was coming to him.
“I’m sorry to interrupt, but I need to speak to my girlfriend,” I said, and with that I led Stella out of the room.
Away from the man who’d thrown her aside.
Away from the man who stood between me and the Dawnay building, and the ending I so desperately wanted.
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.