“Do you always have to have the last word?” he asked.
“Pretty much. And I’m not done. The clothes aren’t enough—they’ll just make sure you don’t stand out. You need to switch up how you are approaching this. You’re self-sabotaging.”
He sighed. “I know. I’m letting these people get under my skin. Every time I speak to someone, I want to ask them when they last did a full day’s work.”
“You’d be surprised,” I said. “Have you met Matt’s uncle Richard?”
“Nope.”
“He doesn’t have to work—his family trust is gigantic—but he’s a pediatric neurosurgeon. Works full time in the NHS, doesn?
?t even see private patients.” He’d think I was making it up if I told him he liked to take on complicated cases from abroad on his off days.
Beck just nodded, and I could tell he was just thinking that there was always an exception, but people were people—rich or poor. Some were nice and some were arseholes.
“And Nancy Meadows, who I will introduce you to if I get a chance, works seven days a week, raising money for one charitable cause after another. The woman never takes a holiday. Last year she raised thirteen million pounds for a homeless charity. Not everyone born with money is worthless. And not everyone who made it on their own is a decent human being.”
“I know, it’s just . . .”
“You’ll like Henry. He really is one of the good guys. Just give him a chance to show you.”
“I need this building,” he replied.
“Then you know what you need to do. You need to be charming, and friendly, and get Henry eating out of the palm of your hand. Once you connect, you’ll like him—respect his opinion. I swear to you.”
He nodded. “I need to focus on the goal and not get bogged down in the injustices . . .”
“Yes, keep the endgame in mind, but it might not be such a chore if you give these people a chance.”
He pressed his lips to my forehead. “I don’t know what I’d have done without you.”
I closed my eyes, grateful that he’d needed me because I’d needed him right back. Without him, I’d still be mourning a man who wasn’t worth my tears, but now I was focused on my future. On the Dawnay building and the Mayfair development. We were going to get Henry to sign that building over, and we were going to rip that building to bits and rebuild it.
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.