Rival Hearts (Blackwood Billionaires (Blackwood Legacy) #1)

1. ALEX

1

ALEX

“ A lex!” Gabe cried out when I arrived at the house where the party of the year, as Gabe called it, was hosted.

It wasn’t his place—Gabe stayed in a modest apartment in the middle of Newport, Rhode Island.

This place belonged to one of Gabe’s frat buddies from college. James something-or-other. “It’s about time you arrived, bro! We were waiting for you before we really got into the booze!”

Gabe slurred his words, proof that he’d already gotten into the booze and not exactly waited for me. That was fine, I could always play catch-up, and if I didn’t… well, then I wouldn’t feel half as shit as he was bound to feel in the morning.

Since when did I think about partying and drinking that way? I just wasn’t feeling it tonight.

Gabe wrapped his arm around my neck and shook me. “Come on, this is a big one, we’re going to celebrate! Can you believe we’re already thirty-one? Next stop, old age home.”

I laughed. “I’m still thirty, buddy, and I have more than enough life ahead of me.”

“Not if you party right. Tonight we’re writing ourselves off. Tequila!”

“Tequila!” three frat guys echoed, and it turned into a chant.

“Stay here, I want to introduce Charlie to you,” Gabe said. “After the shooters!”

“Right. Sure.” Gabe had told me all about his sister, who’d studied in Miami for a while and was finally back home. I wasn’t really in the mood to meet her tonight. I wasn’t in the mood to meet anyone . I was just here because Gabe was my best friend and missing his birthday party of the year would be wrong.

When Gabe and his frat friends—seriously, how old were we?—lined up for shots, I made my way through a group of people roughly our age or younger. Guys stood in groups, playing drinking games or chugging kegs like this was a frat party altogether, and girls in groups gossiped and eyed each other, either with daggers if they hated each other or with fake smiles if they weren’t fighting right now.

God, sometimes I hated these circles. Everyone was fake and pretentious, and it was all about what they looked like and how much they earned, and no one seemed to care about who they were.

I shook my head. I was just cranky. I’d had a shitty day in the office, and I just had to shake it off. There’d been a time when I’d been just like these guys, right?

Yeah, ten years ago, maybe.

I was just being grumpy.

I got a drink for the bar—who’d funded all of this? I was pretty sure James what’s-his-name had pulled out all the stops. Gabe had a good job but he wasn’t rolling in dough and he didn’t usually splurge on unnecessary stuff.

Whiskey, neat, because anyone who diluted good alcohol with water or ice—or both—didn’t fully understand the process of whiskey making. In a different life, that was something I’d have liked to do.

“Hi,” a woman said, appearing in front of me. She looked me up and down, practically eating me up with her eyes. “You’re delicious.”

I gasped. “Just like that?”

“Oh, yeah, just like that,” she breathed. “I’m Candice.”

“I’m not interested.”

“Okay, wait,” Candice said. “I’m sorry. I mean, you’re really attractive, but the pickup line totally sucked. I was trying to be bold. New Year’s resolution.”

I frowned. “It’s been the new year for at least six months.”

She shrugged. “Never too late to start. You’re Alex, right?”

I narrowed my eyes. The fact she knew who I was usually meant trouble. Of course, a lot of people knew who I was. Blackwood Inc. was a company that dominated the business world, and my brothers and I were out and about on the social scene all the time, but an introduction like that made me hesitant.

“Are you going to the yacht show this year?” she asked.

I frowned. “We go every year. You know, since we make at least half the yachts that show up there.”

“Right.” She giggled and glanced around before she shimmied up against me. “Well, I’d look really good on your arm as a date, and I’m good in front of the press, the type of girl you won’t regret the press seeing you with…”

Right. She wanted my money. Fuck it, they all wanted my money, and that pissed me off.

“Look, I’m really not interested.”

“You don’t even know me.”

“Sure I do. You’re like all the rest of them. You do some kind of bottom-tier job, hoping that someone like me will come along so that you don’t ever have to work hard to get a lot of money. You’d rather parade yourself on social media as an influencer and the more contacts you can collect that make you sound like somebody , the more your followers will like you and make you feel validated when you’re a nobody because you didn’t do anything to earn it.”

Her jaw dropped. “Are you always this rude?”

I sighed. I knew I was being an ass, but I didn’t have enough alcohol in my system to take this one home to get laid, deal with her attempt to butter me up, and I was sick and tired of women taking my bank account more seriously than they took me.

“Hi, honey,” a woman said, appearing from the side. She looped her arm through mine and smiled sweetly at me. “Did you get stuck at the office?” Her hazel eyes were almost the color of honey, and she gave me a pointed look, willing me to play along. “I’ve been waiting for you. Come, there’s someone I want you to meet.”

“Who are you?” Candice asked.

“I’m his girlfriend. Who are you?” She frowned, looking Candice up and down like the cat dragged her in.

“Oh.” Candice glared at me. “You could just have said you’re in a relationship.” She tilted her head. “Funny, I didn’t read anything about it in the paper.”

“We prefer to keep our private lives private ,” my pseudo-girlfriend said sweetly. “If you had someone like this hunk, you’d want to keep him all to yourself, too.” She ran her hand over my lapel.

“Hey, Lottie,” someone said and waved at the girl next to me.

She waved at them absently, keeping her attention on me and my situation.

Candice huffed and turned away without another word.

The moment she was gone, Lottie let go of me.

“Sorry, you looked like you needed saving,” she said. “She looked ready to dig her claws into you and you’re not very well-equipped.”

I blinked at her. “I’m usually better at it.”

“Rough day?”

“You have no idea.”

She smiled brightly and it shifted the constellation of freckles on her nose, lighting up her whole face. “Well, now you’re free to unwind, or get drunk with the rest of them, or whatever.”

“Thanks…”

She started to turn away.

“Can I get you a drink?”

She turned back to me, question marks in her eyes. “I figured you’d rather be left alone.”

“It’s the least I can do to say thanks. Lottie, right?”

“Only my friends call me that.”

“Well, you were a friend indeed. Let me return the favor.”

She grinned at me, and God, she was breathtaking. Wavy blonde hair, a slender build, and a vibrant attitude.

“I didn’t catch your name.”

I blinked at her. She didn’t know who I was?

“Alex.”

“It’s nice to meet you,” she said and held out her hand. I took it. Those eyes drew me in, and when she smiled—which was often —her whole face changed.

She wasn’t too much shorter than I was. I stood at six-two, which meant a lot of women were tiny in comparison unless they wore heels, but Lottie wore flats with her jeans and a boho blouse that made her look so much less pretentious than the dolled-up women all around me that teetered on their heels wearing their tight dresses.

“Okay,” she said. “Vodka tonic it is.”

Somewhere behind us, Gabe and his friends started chanting for another tequila, and Lottie rolled her eyes.

“You don’t like shooters?”

“To be honest, this whole party isn’t exactly my thing.”

“It’s not mine, either,” I admitted. “Maybe once upon a time, but after a hard day in the office, I don’t really feel like getting my drink on to the point of blacking out.”

“Either energy to party or energy to work, not both.”

“Exactly.” I hesitated. “Do you want to go somewhere else?”

“Like where?” she asked with a frown.

Even her frown was cute.

“Anywhere but here. Somewhere we can actually have a conversation.”

Lottie smiled, her face lighting up again.

“Yeah, why not?”

She stood and looped her hand through mine. I led her through the crowd and out of the door. The night air was cool.

“Are you here in your car?”

She shook her head, so I led her to my Lexus LS and opened the passenger door for her.

“Oh, wow,” she breathed. “ That’s a car.”

“Yeah.” I grinned at her.

She slid onto the leather seat, and I closed the door, running around and getting in behind the wheel.

“Why does it smell so good in here?” Lottie asked.

I chuckled. “The car has a fragrance system that diffuses a smell through the car.”

Lottie laughed. “Isn’t that—”

“Overkill? Absolutely.”

I turned the ignition, and the engine purred to life. Lottie glanced up through the panoramic sunroof, and I pulled out of the packed driveway and onto the street.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“You tell me.”

She considered it. “I know of a place called Soulstice.”

“What?”

“It’s a bar but it’s very… laid back. It might not be quite your thing.”

“No, let’s do it.” She directed me toward it, not too far from the center of Newport. “Tonight, I’m all for anything that’s not my thing because that party in there… that used to be my thing.”

She smiled, not looking at me, as we weaved our way through the streets.

When we arrived, it looked like the place was a little dive bar hidden in a lesser part of town than was usually my playground. I parked against the curb—my car the only shiny new car in the line—and we walked to the door.

“Hey, Eric,” she said, waving at the doorman when we walked in. “Room for two more?”

“For you, always, Miss Charlotte,” the big, burly doorman said with a grin.

Charlotte . Of course. Lottie should have tipped me off. Something about the name was so elegant and beautiful.

Just like her.

We walked into the bar, and it was like we were transported into a different world. It was a bohemian kind of place, with mismatched furniture in cozy corners, plush cushions, and walls adorned with tapestries—yes, tapestries , in a bar —depicting nature scenes.

Lanterns of all shapes and sizes stood on the different tables, and above the bar hung a whole planter filled with plants and wildflowers that was just… weird.

“This place is… nice,” I said carefully.

Lottie—Charlotte—laughed.

“Yeah, I like it. It’s different, you know?”

“It definitely is.”

We sat down in a booth at the back, and a server arrived.

“Vodka tonic for the lady,” I said, remembering what she’d wanted at the party. “And Johnnie Walker Black, if you have it.”

The server winked at Lottie, and she grinned at him.

“A friend?”

“Everyone in here are friends,” she said. “It’s been a while since I’ve been here, but you know how it is with some people. You can be apart for years and when you reconnect, it’s like no time has passed at all.”

I didn’t generally have that, but with Lottie, I could imagine it being like that. Hell, I barely knew her and I felt like I’d known her for years.

“So, what do you do?” I asked her.

“I’m an environmentalist,” she said. “Especially related to the ocean.”

I blinked at her. “So, you think my fancy car with its CO 2 emissions is a problem?”

She laughed, and God, I loved the sound of it, the way she looked. I didn’t have to drink to be intoxicated when I was around her.

“Your car is fine. I mean, CO 2 emission is a problem, but there are bigger fish to fry.” She looked at me expectantly until I laughed.

“I see what you did there.”

She giggled. “What about you?”

I hesitated. I didn’t want to tell her who I was and what I did. I didn’t want to break the spell where she just talked to me like I was a normal person, like I wasn’t Mr. Rich-and-Powerful, the way everyone else treated me.

“I’m in manufacturing.”

“Like a factory?”

I nodded. “Something like that.”

“That’s interesting. What kind of stuff do you manufacture?”

Before I could figure out a way to dodge the question and avoid telling her that our company manufactured a large percentage of the world’s most luxurious yachts, the server arrived with our drinks.

Lottie joked with him with the same ease she talked with me, and I watched her, enthralled. Everything about her was magnetic.

We drank our drinks, and she told me about her love for the ocean, how deep and dark and mysterious it was, and at the same time, filled with vibrancy and life.

“I think part of why I love it so much is it’s not dominated by the human world, you know? It’s an ecosystem that survives all on its own, and it’s largely untouched by human control, the way it is with animals on land.”

I nodded, mesmerized by every word, her mouth as she spoke. I wanted to kiss her when she talked about something interesting, which was all the time.

“But I’ve talked about myself all night,” she said after she’d finished a whole story about the Mariana Trench and its undiscovered depths. “Tell me about yourself. What is it you really do at the factory? What do you make?”

Shit, this was going to open a can of worms. I really didn’t want to talk about work, about my family’s empire, about the Blackwood legacy and all that entailed. It would change everything—this moment, the closeness that had become so comfortable between us.

“Nothing I do is very interesting,” I said, hedging.

“That can’t be true. If you chose that career path, then there has to be something that drew you to it, right?”

Damn it, she was kind and thoughtful and caring enough to not only talk about herself.

“I prefer not to think about work outside of the office. It’s my night off and I’m in the presence of a beautiful woman.”

She blushed, her smile broadening, but she folded her arms.

“Sounds to me like you’re hedging, Alex.”

Fuck, she was right, but the more she fished, and the more I evaded, the more ridiculous it would be when it finally did come out. I’d created a stupid game.

So, instead of answering her, telling her exactly who I was and what I did, I leaned over the table and kissed her.

She made a small yelping noise at the back of her throat and her eyes widened, but then she melted against me and kissed me back.

I would have chalked it up to a victory, but I couldn’t even think that far because kissing her was electric. Her lips were soft, and my tongue slid into her mouth.

She moaned softly at the back of her throat and sighed against me, and I was done. Lost to the world. Nothing else mattered but her.

We finally broke the kiss, and I looked at her; her eyes were a darker amber in the dim light of the bar.

“Do you want to get out of here?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she answered in a breathy voice.

I fished my wallet out of my pocket and threw a handful of notes on the table—probably more than the drinks cost, but whatever—and we left the bar together.

I drove us back to my place, my mind spinning, my heart thundering in my ribcage.

I’d had a lot of bodies warm my sheets in the last decade or so, but none of them had felt like this . I didn’t know what it was about her, but I didn’t want to dissect it. I just wanted her. As much of her as I could get.

I wanted to consummate whatever this feeling was and never let go.

You barely know her .

But that wasn’t true. It felt like I’d known her for a lifetime.