I squeezed my hands into fists in the hope it would hold in the squeal of delight pushing to get out.
“I appreciate that.” Beck shot me a grin—it was the look of a man who knew a victory when he won one.
“You said fourteen fifty a square foot?” Henry asked.
“That’s right,” Beck replied.
It seemed like a lot of money, but Beck had said it was fair for the location, and after doing some research I’d worked out Beck could put over a thousand per square foot on that if I did my job properly.
“If you can go to fifteen hundred, then I’ll sign,” Henry said.
“If we get documents executed by Thursday, I can do that price.”
“Then I suggest we light a fire under our lawyers,” Henry said, chuckling. “And you and Stella will come to dinner a week on Saturday to celebrate.”
Beck turned to me and without thinking about it, I nodded enthusiastically. Henry’s agreement couldn’t have come at a more perfect time. I had something to look forward to, to work toward.
“We’d be delighted,” Beck said. “I’ll let you go and get straight on to your lawyers. Enjoy the wedding, sir.”
“You got your building,” I said, beaming at Beck. “I knew you would.”
“And you got your project,” he replied.
“My future.”
He reached across and cupped my face, sweeping his thumb over my cheekbone. “We should celebrate when we get back to London.”
My stomach swooped and slid down to my knees. I’d deliberately not allowed myself to think about Beck and me on the other side of the Scottish border. But we were about an hour away from being back in England.
If he was suggesting a date, then I wasn’t sure what to say—Matt had taught me I had to be more careful with my heart.
“That’s the idea of Henry’s dinner,” I replied.
“Yes, but I’d like to celebrate just with you.”
He removed any doubt to what he was saying. My pulse began to thud in my wrists. I wasn’t sure if it was excitement or fear that was the cause. “It’s certainly something to celebrate,” I said.
Beck getting the Dawnay building was something to celebrate.
Standing up to Karen was something to celebrate.
Escaping the wedding was something to celebrate.
There were plenty of good things happening in my life I could raise a glass to. But doing that with Beck?
Was I brave enough to trust myself? Was it possible for me to see how things really were rather than how I wanted them to be?
The last week with Beck had been wonderful. But the two of us had been living a lie. Just like Matt and I had been doing. At least I was in on the deception with Beck, but it was still not the truth. It was still messy and complicated.
Matt showing me how different reality was to the life I thought I was living had pulled the rug from under me, and I needed to dust myself off and learn to walk again.
“You want to still pretend we’re dating for this dinner with Henry?” I asked. We hadn’t discussed what we were doing. We were pretending to be dating and sleeping together. Did that mean that we were really dating?
Beck shot me a look, his eyes narrowed. “You’re pretending? It didn’t seem that way last night in bed.” A wide grin curled around his lips. “Or this morning in the shower or—”
“Okay, I get it. It’s just, you know, Scotland was . . . Scotland.”
“I don’t know what ‘Scotland was Scotland’ means.”