“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 toda
y 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.