Although I may not particularly care for the man, I care for all my fellow humans when they’re suffering, and I have to wonder if he’s suffering at the moment thanks to his friend. Wait, are they still friends? Hmm, I say no. No one steals ten million from someone and still gets to call that person a friend. Not even when ten million is a drop in the bucket to that person.
I stare at Beckett a little longer than I mean to while processing the decision whether to ask him about this or not when he arches his brows and says, “Are we getting to work or not?”
And there goes my desire to ask him how he is.
Without another word, I head over to the suits. There are six to choose from, and I search for the ugliest. I mean, he’s already dressed to kill in his own suit; he hardly needs to wear one of these, so it would give me great joy to choose the worst one for him. The problem is I would never compromise my job for my dislike of a person. There’s no way I’d ever dress Beckett in the shittiest suit as a fuck you, even if that’s exactly what I want to do.
“How are we going, babycakes?” Tilly says, coming up behind me as I inspect each suit. “Any luck with these, or do I need to put a call out for another?”
“Why aren’t there any red velvet suits to choose from?”
She frowns. “Are you for real right now?”
“Yep.” I look at her. “No, but don’t you think he’d look great in red?”
“Good God, maybe you were right about this hangover interfering with your skills today.”
I eye Beckett who’s back on his cell. “Okay, tell me the feel for this piece on him, and then I’ll tell you which suit to go with. But just so you know that asshole could pull off red velvet, blue velvet, green velvet…. He could even pull off a suit made from cowhide.”
“That annoys you, doesn’t it?”
I meet her gaze again. “Yes.”
“Okay, let’s get back to the job at hand. The piece on him will cover his takeover of Pride Industrial and the billion that’s added to his bank account this year. We’re also hoping to talk with him about his love of the Mediterranean and the yacht he recently purchased, as well as the houses he owns around the world and the lifestyle that entails.”
“Good luck with all of that,” I say. “You do know that Beckett despises talking about his life, don’t you?” It’s the one thing I respect about him. He might be rich as sin, but he doesn’t flash that around.
“Yes, but he hasn’t met our girl before. She has a way of getting these guys to open up. I’m confident she’ll get what we’re after.”
When Tilly has confidence in people, it’s not usually unfounded, so I nod and say, “Okay, this is the suit you want then.” Pulling a dark blue Brioni from the rack, I hand it to her. This Italian brand speaks the money, power, and success she’s looking for. “We’ll team it with a blue shirt and brown leather shoes.”
She hands me back the suit. “No point giving it to me when you’re the one dressing him.”
With that, she turns and walks away from me. Of course she does; I’m the damn stylist, so I’m the one who needs to get this on him.
I search through the shirts and shoes, locating what I’m after to complete the outfit. I then call out to Beckett, “Let’s go.”
Without waiting for him, I head toward the area set up for him to try on the clothes.
He joins me and eyes the suit where I’ve hung it. “You’re telling me this suit’s better than the one I’m wearing?” God, could he be any more arrogant?
“My job is to choose a suit from what’s on offer.” I nod at the Brioni. “That’s the best one on offer. Your job is to put the damn thing on and parade around in it for a bit. I really don’t think it’ll take it out of you to do that.”
“I see you’re still as angry with me as you always were,” he says, removing his suit jacket as he walks behind the change cubicle.
“I’m not angry with you, Beckett. I just don’t have time for your ways.”
Beckett stands at around six foot three, which means he’s taller than the screen separating us. He keeps his eyes on me as he changes. Something I find a little disconcerting.
“What ways are those, Jenna?” he asks, and it sounds like an actual question he doesn’t know the answer to. Odd, because he should. We nitpicked at each other constantly during the two years I dated Declan.
I hold his gaze, determined not to be the one who looks away. “Look, I’ve got a headache and a hangover; I don’t need to get into a discussion with you that will likely lead nowhere good. Let’s just get through what we need to and go our separate ways again.”
“I always liked our discussions,” he says as he shrugs out of his shirt. “Even when they disintegrated into you lecturing me on why I was wrong about whatever we were discussing.”
I’ve never seen Beckett without a shirt on, which means I’ve never seen the tattoo I’m now looking at. I try not to stare, but color me surprised; Beckett never struck me as a man who’d have a tattoo. I can’t see the entire tattoo because most of it is on his back. What I can see is part of a wing. It curls around from the back, over his shoulder, ending at the base of his neck.
I desperately want to see the rest of the tattoo and have to refrain from asking him to turn around.
Dear God, Jenna. Get yourself together, woman.
He catches me staring. I mean, I don’t even try to hide it. I can’t, because I’m so taken aback. I had Beckett in a neat little box, and this screws with that categorization.
Beckett comes from old money. He followed his father into the family business straight out of college. He married old money at the age of twenty-seven after a suitable amount of time dating. Three years if my research is correct.
And yes, it kills me to have researched this man. In my defense, I wanted to know who I was spending time with while dating Declan.
Even when Beckett divorced his wife just over two years ago, he did it respectfully, making sure their family names were kept out of the gossip columns as much as possible. My research couldn’t find the actual reason for the divorce, so that shows how well he managed it.