Five
Finn followed Beah into the elevator, feeling disconcerted and off-balance. He wasn’t the type to look back, never had been, preferring to put his past behind him. Of course he’d thought about Beah over the years, probably more than he should—he often remembered how amazing the sex was, the way her hair glinted with streaks of gold in direct sunlight, her whiskey-colored eyes, open and filled with love, as she first looked at him in the morning—but up until Beah’s recent reappearance in his life, he’d never spent a lot of time analyzing their marriage, preferring to believe they had been too young and too dumb to have made such a lifetime commitment.
Beah’s phone rang and she pulled it from a side pocket of her bag, lifting it to her ear. “Your Highness, how nice to hear from you.”
Beah wasn’t being facetious; Finn could think of at least five of their clients holding royal titles.
“I’m sorry, I’m in Boston, but how can I help you?”
Finn tuned out of Beah’s conversation, silently admitting that he was mostly responsible for them crashing and burning. Yeah, Beah had been clingy and emotionally demanding, but had he been more mature, a little less selfish, he would’ve realized any woman who’d lost her mother to cancer and her father to abandonment would need extra reassurance.
“He’s a Moroccan sculptor working in glass. He’s phenomenal,” Beah stated.
It both shamed and irritated him that he’d never given her the space to talk about her mom, about what she went through as a teenager. On the few occasions he did try to listen, he hadn’t known what to say, how to respond, how to comfort her...how to make it better.
Because he found talking hard, because he found emotion difficult, he’d chosen not to engage at all. Why was so it tough with her? Was it because hearing about her mom reminded him of his own losses—his birth mom, then his stepmom, Raeni? Or was it because he couldn’t change her past and he felt incapable?
“But do you like his work, Princess Sofia? Or are you buying it as an investment?”
Whatever the reason, he knew the man he’d been—that selfish boy—had failed her. He’d brushed over her pain and attempted to slap a Band-Aid onto a gaping wound. Finn rubbed the back of his neck. If he could, he would go back and kick his own ass. Hard.
He’d messed up and he owned that. But what could he do about it? What did he want to do? What did he want from Beah this time around? And more importantly, what could he give her?
The thing was, while he might be a bit more self-aware these days, he hadn’t changed much. The thought depressed Finn because he was educated enough to know age should bring some sort of emotional growth, but he still wasn’t comfortable with emotion; he still liked his own space. He still thought it was better to hold back than love someone completely.
But he liked Beah, enjoyed her, loved what they did to and for each other. When he made love to Beah, he felt like he was flying over fresh powder, felt the same rush of dopamine as he did when he donned a wingsuit and flew off a cliff.
With Beah, he felt intensely alive.
And that scared the crap out of him.
“He only produces a few sculptures a year and they get snapped up pretty quickly. I can put out some feelers, ask if he’s interested in doing a commission. I can also contact a few collectors who own his work to see if they want to move any along.”
She was so smart, knowledgeable and personable. And she was so good at her job.
Finn shot a look at her pretty profile, idly noticing her spectacular hair was pulled back into another of her complicated smooth twists. He wanted to find those pins, yank them out and feel those pretty strands on his fingers, over his hands, his stomach and his thighs...
“Okay, we’ll chat soon. Thanks so much for the call and my regards to your family,” Beah said, ending her call.
Finn banged the back of his head against the metal skin of the elevator. He needed all his determination not to blow off their meeting with Ronan because he desperately wanted to slowly undress her and go back downstairs to bend her over the arm of his sofa.
See how easily he was distracted by her? One minute he was thinking about how much he’d failed her, how alive she made him feel, and two hops and a skip later and he was thinking about her naked...
That, he suspected, wasn’t going to stop.
But God, he should apologize for being such a selfish prick all those years ago.
“I’m sorry,” Finn forced the words out, keeping his eyes closed.
“What are you sorry for, Finn?” Yeah, he heard the ice in her voice, the thread of irritation.
“For blowing you off when you wanted to talk about your mom.” Finn forced his eyes open, forced himself to look at her. “I should’ve listened more.”
Astonishment flickered in Beah’s copper-colored eyes and she opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out. She tried again with the same result.
Shaking her head, she lifted her hands. “I—”
Before she could finish her sentence, the elevator stopped and the doors opened and Carrick stood in the hallway, looking impatient. Carrick, immediately sensing the tension, placed his hand on the door to keep it open and briefly kissed Beah’s cheek. “Hi, Bee. Nice to see you again.”