Tristan was exaggerating. As usual.
“I just don’t get it. We were having a great time. I read the situation all wrong.”
“From what you told me on the phone from Scotland, her very serious boyfriend married her best friend. The girl’s going to assume that everyone’s trying to screw her over for a while. That kind of stuff messes you up.”
I took in a deep breath and tried to process what Dexter had said. I wouldn’t describe Stella as messed up, but he had a point. It can’t have been easy for her to watch Matt and Karen play the happy couple, even if Matt seemed like a bit of a cock. “Yeah well, I get that.” She must have been concerned that I couldn’t be trusted. “But I’m not wasting my energy on a woman who was happy to walk away.”
“She’ll come around. Stella’s a sensible girl,” Dexter said.
“Funny, too,” Tristan said. “If you’re going to fuck things up with her, then can you let me have her number?”
Christ, Tristan was annoying me tonight. “What’s the matter with you? You can’t find your own woman, so you have to try for mine?”
He fixed me with a stare. “Your woman? Sounds serious. Sort it out. Because if it’s not me, some other guy will swoop in and this mood of yours will be permanent.”
A cold shiver ran through my body. Tristan was right—some other guy would swoop in. Stella was a fucking prize. The same swirl of dread that I had when I thought I was going to have to give up the Mayfair project gathered in my stomach, except this time it was sharper, more pressing and urgent.
“Yeah, well there’s nothing to be done. She doesn’t want me. So, that’s the end of it.”
The corner turned up on Dexter’s mouth. “She’s probably afraid. It won’t be that she doesn’t want you. You get that, right?”
It was Dexter who didn’t get it. She didn’t want me. There might be a reason, but it all boiled down to the same thing.
Dexter drained his whiskey. “Tristan, will you go and get me another drink?”
“It’s waitress service. And for your information, I’m not the waitress,” he replied, all the while his gaze fixed on his phone.
Dexter sighed. “Okay, will you fuck off for a few minutes so I can talk to Beck privately?”
Tristan looked up and grinned. “You just had to say.” He slid out of the boo
th and inevitably headed toward Christy.
I sat back, ready for whatever it was that Dexter was about to tell me. He’d been through a lot in the last few years. Losing his parents. The shit his brother put him through. Building his business from scratch. But he always kept a clear head, and I admired him for it. He never for a moment doubted his destiny.
“I don’t want to go all deep and shit on you,” he said. “But have you considered that you don’t get close to people because of what happened with your biological father?” It was a testament to how well Dexter knew me that he didn’t refer to the man who’d gotten my mother pregnant as my dad or ever just my father. He knew me better than that.
“You think I don’t get close to people because I never knew my biological father?”
“You experienced a fundamental rejection from the moment you were born and it’s bound to take its toll.”
“I’m not as naïve as you think I am,” I said. “It’s definitely affected me. I’ve just spent God knows how long chasing down the Dawnay property.”
“I’d hate to see that be the reason you lose someone who could make you happy,” he said.
I wasn’t sure what Dexter was trying to say but he had my attention.
“Your biological father was an arsehole,” he continued.
“Clearly,” I replied. “But what’s that got to do with Stella?”
“Stella is running because she’s scared. Not because she’s an arsehole.”
“I don’t think she’s an arsehole.” I thought she was wonderful. Special. All those things they wrote about in poetry and love songs. I felt them all when I looked at Stella.
“Sometimes you have to chase after the things that are important.”
Stella had nothing to be afraid of with me. She knew that. Dexter had this wrong. “She’s not afraid of me.”