“He wants me to call him,” Finn replied.
Beah finished brushing her teeth. Her hair was a mess, so she pulled it out of its knot to allow it to spill down her back. Some of the curls brushed Finn’s wrist, his shoulder, and he immediately picked up a curl and wrapped it around his index finger. “It’s much longer than it was,” he murmured.
“I need to cut it. It’s too long,” Beah replied, finger-combing it back from her forehead. She quickly started pulling the strands into a tight braid, another way to control the curls.
“When you get my clothes, can you also find my bag?” she asked. “There’s a band in the side pocket.”
Finn nodded, his eyes darting from her hair to her mouth. For a brief moment, Beah thought he might kiss her again, her mouth, the ball of her shoulder, the tiny patch of skin where her neck met her ear. She couldn’t allow that to happen. If she did, both their towels would come off and they’d be back on his bed, or in the shower…
Either way, they’d end up naked, intertwined and late.
The night was over; this was a new day, and they had to move on.
Needing to break the spell, Beah bumped him with her hip. “Forget it, Murphy, the moment has passed.”
“Bet I could bring it back,” Finn said, the back of his knuckle running up her bare arm.
Sucker bet, Beah thought. Be strong, Bee. One of you has to be sensible.
A knock on Finn’s hotel door penetrated the heat swirling between them. Finn cursed and scowled at her in the mirror. “I’ll get the coffee.”
“And my clothes. And my hairband.” Beah pulled an insouciant smile onto her face, trying to pretend she hadn’t been a heartbeat away from yanking his towel down and plastering her still-wet body against his.
She waited a minute, then another, wondering what was taking Finn so long. When she was sure the server had left, Beah took another ten minutes to rub lotion over her body, to comb her hair out. Then, still just wearing her towel, she walked into the sitting room of Finn’s lavishly decorated suite and saw him sitting on the edge of a chair, his forearms on his knees staring at the carpet.
Beah halted, knowing something was wrong.
“Finn? What happened?”
Finn raised his head to look at her, his eyes filled with misery. “I just spoke to Ben. As he said, he and Piper are getting married back in the States, in six weeks.”
That was happy news, so why did Finn look sick to his stomach?
“Ben has asked me to take care of the arrangements, basically to organize the wedding. Neither he nor Piper has family who can do it for them. I’ve agreed to help them.”
She still didn’t understand; pretty much everything could be done on the internet or via Skype. Hell, Piper could get on a plane and spend a week in Boston and organize everything herself. While she admired his willingness to help, Beah couldn’t understand why he was agreeing to help with this wedding when he had so much else to do. The Mounton sale, for instance. Finn was an integral part of the most anticipated sale of the last decade. Plus, there was this upcoming meeting with Paris Cummings and the authentication of Keely’s possible Homer.
Why did a friend’s wedding skip to the top of the list?
“Piper wants to get married, in Boston, in six weeks.” Finn repeated his words, his voice flat and his eyes haunted. “She has stage four pancreatic cancer. Ben says she has, at the maximum, six months to live.”
Beah dropped down to sit on the arm of the closest chair, feeling like someone had punched her in the stomach. She lifted her fist to her mouth, her eyes instantly filling with tears at the thought of Piper—lovely, bold and vivacious—trying to make sense of her future.
Or lack thereof.
Beah pulled her bottom lip between her teeth, biting down on the tender skin. “How can we help? What can we do?”
Finn’s eyes slammed into hers. “You can help her by helping me organize a wedding that will be remembered in this lifetime. And in the next.”
* * *
Beah walked over to the tray of coffee and lifted the heavy pot and poured the fragrant liquid into two bone china mugs. Ignoring the milk and cream, she lifted the mug to her lips and took a sip, sighing when the heat hit her lips and her tongue.
Man, she needed this hit of caffeine, almost as much as she needed to leave.
But she couldn’t do that until she was dressed. Beah looked around the lounge and saw her dress on the floor. Picking it up, she shook it out before taking another sip. Scooping her panties off the back of a chair, she bunched them in her fist, thinking she’d go back to the bathroom, change and leave.
That was a good plan, a sensible plan. If she left now, she could have an hour or two to herself, to regain some much-needed perspective, to make sense of what had happened last night.
“Where are you going?” Finn demanded, his voice a low growl.
Beah sighed at his shocked and pale face. Finding out an old friend had minimal time to live was devastating to hear and she knew he needed time to process the idea. When she’d heard that her mom was on borrowed time, she’d fallen apart.
She sympathized; it was crappy, awful news. Finn needed time to digest Ben’s news, and knowing how self-sufficient and reticent Finn was, he’d want to do that alone.
Beah lifted her coffee mug, then her dress. “I’m going to get dressed and then I’m going to leave.”
“But we need to discuss Ben and Piper’s wedding.”
Beah’s eyes widened in surprise. Okay, he’d thrown out a suggestion that she help him organize their wedding, but she’d thought it was a throwaway comment, a statement made on the spur of the moment.
She hadn’t, not for a moment, thought he was being serious, as she told him now.
“I seldom make statements I don’t mean, Beah,” Finn said, standing up to pour himself a cup of coffee.
“Look, I feel really sorry for Piper, and Ben. I know how awful it is. I lived through it myself.” Beah rubbed her face with her hands, trying to push away the memories of her mom’s skeletal frame, her pale face, her labored breathing. “But Finn, I haven’t had any contact with them for nine years. Ben is your childhood friend and I only met Piper a couple of times after Vegas. I don’t know her.”
“But you know how to organize a wedding. You’ve done it before.”
Beah frowned, puzzled. “What are you talking about?”
“You organized Nell’s wedding.”
Nell—now there was someone she hadn’t thought about in years. They’d been fellow interns at Murphy’s and Beah, in between working and getting naked with Finn, had helped her organize her wedding. Beah shook her head at Finn’s computerlike memory. “Wow, I can’t believe you remembered that.”
“I remember everything,” Finn stated, his eyes not leaving her face. He rubbed the back of his neck and shifted from foot to foot. “Look, I’m good at many things but…weddings? Not my strong point. He’s my best friend and he’s going through hell, so will you help me?”
Beah clamped her bottom lip between her teeth, holding back the hard “no” hovering on her tongue. She didn’t have the time to work on a wedding. She had clients to see, trips to make. Just today she had to meet with Paris Cummings, meet another client for lunch at the Ritz, and she’d been invited to attend a West End show with a Kuwaiti princess.
But truthfully, there was another bigger, bolder reason why she had to say no…
Simply stated, she couldn’t afford to spend more time with Finn Murphy. Because being around him made her feel vulnerable. She’d worked damn hard to create the life she wanted, and Finn made her question her choices.
Those oh-so-familiar questions rolled around her head. What if she’d fought harder for him, for their marriage? What if they’d gone for counseling? What if she’d given him more space, been a little less demanding?
But she wasn’t solely responsible for the demise of their marriage. What if he had been a little more communicative, more understanding? What if he’d put her first instead of his work or his need for solitude?
Beah pushed her hair off her face with the back of her wrist. The sex was great but the walk down memory lane? Not so much.
Fact: their marriage was over. The night they’d just spent together, as wonderful as it was, was over. They needed to go back to being work colleagues who communicated via email.
She was allowed to say no to this request, allowed not to become involved. That didn’t make her a bad person. She was just trying to protect herself.
Beah pushed her shoulder into the frame of the door. “I don’t have the time and, might I point this out, I live here in London, not Boston. Even if I agreed to help, there’s little I can do from here.”
It was the truth, but it wasn’t the whole truth. But Finn didn’t need to know that.
Finn took a large gulp of coffee, then another. “We both know you could relocate to Boston for a couple of weeks if you wanted to.”
“But I don’t want to, Finn. My clients are here. My work is here.”
I can’t spend any more time with you, Finn, she silently added. I can’t take that much of a risk.
“I don’t know anything about organizing weddings!” he said.
“You did book two tickets to take us to Vegas,” Beah pointed out, and winced at the sarcasm in her voice.
Ten years and a divorce later and she still felt cheated because she’d never had the pretty dress, the prolonged excitement, feeling like a princess on her wedding day. That trip to Vegas had been a last-minute decision, and carrying on with the theme of impulsivity, their decision to marry had been a spur-of-the-moment thing, an impetuous decision by two stupid kids. She’d bought an off-the-rack dress from the hotel shop and stole some roses from the chapel garden for her bouquet. No planning had been involved. That might have been why she’d agreed to help Nell.
Finn banged his cup down on a heavy silver tray. “When did you become so stubborn?” he demanded, frustration on his masculine face.
Beah pulled in a long breath, looking for patience. “I learned to say no when I divorced you, Finn. I learned to do what was right for me, to not be pushed around, to not bend over backward to make people happy. I feel really sorry for Piper, I do. But I’m not helping you organize their wedding,” Beah told him.
She couldn’t; being around Finn made her feel. He also made her lose control, and she had to retreat to solid ground.
She needed to get back to her apartment and they needed to go back to ignoring each other. It was the safe choice, her only choice.
Beah walked back into the huge bedroom and threw her clothes onto the plump king-size bed. Dropping her towel, she yanked her panties up her legs, over her hips. Her eyes burned and she blinked back traitorous tears.
Breathing deeply, she ran through the conversation in an attempt to reassure herself that she’d made the right decision. It was true, she was busy, crazy busy, with Murphy business, preparing her clients for a series of sales, starting with the massive Mounton-Matthews sale at the beginning of spring. She also had meetings with her lawyer, with an accountant, and after she’d picked their brains, she’d meet with Michael to discuss his incredible offer.
Beah glanced at the closed door and bit her lip, fighting the wave of guilt, for saying no to Finn, for letting Piper down and, because she was on a roll, for wanting to walk away from her position at Murphy International. It wasn’t a defection. She was allowed to do something else, join another company, restructure her business life. She’d once been married to a Murphy but she wasn’t a family member, for goodness’ sake. She didn’t need to remain with Murphy’s “’til death do us part.”
It had taken her a long time to accept that she had a right to look at new opportunities, to find a new challenge, to enhance her career. Men did it all the time.
She had a right to put herself first, to protect herself. So if that was true, why was she not only fighting tears but also the urge to run back to Finn and tell him she’d help him organize an amazing, albeit last-minute, wedding?
* * *
Beah hurried back to her apartment in Notting Hill and after changing, she poured herself another cup of coffee and walked into her sun-drenched living room. She loved her apartment. It was colorful and cozy and the only place where she could fully relax.
Beah looked over to the mantelpiece and smiled at the large photograph of her and her mom, taken just before she got her diagnosis, when life still made sense. Two weeks after that photo was taken, their lives fell apart and everything changed forever.
Beah sighed, thinking that Ben and Piper’s lives had also been flipped over and around. She wondered how they were coping with the harsh reality of a terminal illness diagnosis.
Beah had no regrets about her mother’s death… Wait, that was wrong. Of course she regretted her mom’s death; she still missed her every day, but she had no misgivings or regrets about her mother’s final days. Though Beah had been young, just nineteen—nearly twenty—she’d given her mom the best possible send-off. In those final days and months, they’d loved each hard: up, down and sideways. She’d taken six months off from school to care for her mom and she’d do it all again without hesitation.
They’d always been a team and while they’d had their fights—what mothers and daughters didn’t argue?—they’d been brutally honest with each other, utterly authentic. They’d struggled through her dad’s leaving, together, both equally hurt and astounded and sideswiped by his lack of integrity.
They’d turned to each other for comfort, a rock-solid team of two. Up until the last few days, when her mom slipped into a coma, they’d laughed and wept and hugged. They shared happy memories and, in their own unique way, said goodbye. Back then, having watched her mom die, Beah understood life was meant to be lived, every second of every day.
That was why she jumped, both feet first, into love with Finn, moved in with him at the first opportunity and married him in Vegas. She’d been determined to wring every drop of happiness from her life.
But somewhere between her divorce and today, she’d lost that willingness to jump, to catapult herself into a situation. She’d been badly bruised when her marriage collapsed and trying to reconnect with her dad shortly after she signed the divorce papers had, in hindsight, cemented her need to protect herself.
Beah jumped when her phone rang and she scooped it up, smiling at the familiar number.
“Why are you still awake?” she asked Keely, automatically calculating the time difference. “Have you just kicked someone out of your bed and sent him on his way?”
“Basically.”
Beah’s eyes widened. “Well, wow. Who?”
“That’s a long and complicated story,” Keely replied, her tone blasé. Beah, because she knew Keely so well, also heard the not-ready-to-talk-about-that subtext.
“You didn’t text me to tell me how your dinner went. Did you and Finn resist the urge to kill each other?” Keely asked.
“We behaved until he stripped me naked.”
It took a moment for Keely to fill in the missing blanks. “Hopefully not while you were at still at the dinner table,” Keely drily responded. “So you slept with him?”
“No, sleep didn’t feature much. Earth-moving sex did.”
Beah heard the tint of bitterness in the words and sighed.
“I’m not sure what to say, or how to react to that,” Keely said.
“You and me both.”
Beah pulled in a big breath and a torrent of words accompanied her exhale. She quickly and, hopefully accurately, summarized Finn’s request to help her with the wedding, how she felt about Piper’s diagnosis and how she felt bombarded by memories and the stinging return of past hurts.
“
And now, because I’m a masochist myself, I’m remembering how my father wasn’t thrilled to see me after I returned to London after Finn and I fell apart,” Beah muttered, hearing the rasp of tears in her voice.
During that awkward conversation with her dad she learned he’d moved from her childhood home into the one owned by the woman he’d been having an affair with while her mom had been taking her last breaths. On the mantelpiece was a photo of her stepmom and her dad on their wedding day, a scant four days after her mom’s funeral.
While Beah had been nursing her sick mom, her dad had been off playing happy family with his mistress and her then-six-year-old daughter, who called him dad.
Something died in her that day. Maybe it was her naivete, her innate belief that people were mostly good, that love was meant to make you happy, that the men she loved were supposed to love her back.
But those horrible years long ago did teach her to be strong, to be independent, to not rely on anyone else to do what needed to be done. People, especially the people who were supposed to love you the hardest, always let you down.
“I can’t stop thinking that in Hong Kong, a couple is coming to the end of their time together, that a life is drawing to a close,” Beah told Keely, swiping at the tears rolling down her face. “I’m scared to spend time with Finn, Keels. He ties me up in knots, but my heart aches for Ben—I know what it feels like to watch someone you love die. He will be veering between hope and despair, trying to be strong and stay strong…”
“Oh, honey.”
“And Pippa wants a pretty wedding, a celebration of their love, a wonderful memory to hold on to. Hell, I’m as healthy as a horse and I wish I had that memory. I wish Finn and I had that perfect day!”
Pippa and Ben needed that memory, something wonderful to hold on to as their time together wound down, as her strength started to fade. And Beah had refused to help because…yeah, her reluctance to become involved started and ended with Finn.
Beah rested her elbows on her knees and pulled the tiny rake through the white sand of her minuscule meditation garden on her coffee table. She’d thought sex with Finn would be just that, good sex. But dammit, it had been more…
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