7. CHARLOTTE
7
CHARLOTTE
T he beach cleanup was symbolic. It wasn’t going to make a huge difference—it wouldn’t do anything to help yacht emissions and how the ocean life was being destroyed by what these mega companies were doing, but it was a step in the right direction.
The more I could keep the campaign in the public eye, the more awareness I hopefully brought to my cause.
That was all I wanted.
Besides, looking at the beach, it was horrific to think that people actually did this. They threw down their junk wherever they wanted without a second thought, and turtles or seagulls or any other kind of wildlife creature ended up choking on it.
Our team had been up since dawn, combing the sand with gloves, trash pickers and big bags. I walked a few feet from Maya, stabbing chocolate wrappers and chips packets, putting them into the bag I dragged behind me. It was my second bag already.
“This was a good idea,” Maya said. “Did you spot the reporters?”
“Yeah.” I stabbed another wrapper to my stack, lifting the picker to pull it off and dump it in my bag. “I’m a little worried about them.”
“Why? You’re getting the publicity you wanted, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, I am. I just don’t know how it will go this time around—the last article wasn’t too great.”
Maya snorted. “They’re just trying to defend themselves because they know we’re right.”
I nodded.
“It would look worse if they didn’t do anything, so they’re scrambling to make the public think they give a shit when they really don’t.”
I nodded again. Maya was right—the press was going to cover this cleanup and something good would come of it. What could they possibly say that wasn’t positive about us doing something like this?
“I heard that the yacht companies are squirming,” Maya said.
I frowned. “Really? Where did you hear that?”
“Oh, you know”—she waved her hand—“you pick it up. Rumors do the rounds and when you’re out and about you can’t help but hear them.”
“That’s not exactly how it works,” I pointed out. “At least, not for me. How did you arrive in Newport the same time I did and you have so many friends and connections already, and I’m just… me?”
Maya smiled at me, her green eyes bright. The sun caught the pinks and greens in her hair, making her stick out like a sore thumb. She usually looked like she belonged in a club, not at a beach cleanup, but Maya was unapologetically herself.
“You’re just not as outgoing as I am, but trust me, being this well-known is a pain.”
“Enlighten me,” I groaned.
“I can’t go anywhere without being stopped for a conversation, and sometimes I just want to be rude… but I can’t be because everyone knows me now and being rude just won’t cut it.”
I giggled. “Your problems are impossible .”
“Shut up,” Maya said, but she laughed. “The point I was trying to make, before you decided to psychoanalyze me, was that one of the owners of a mega yacht company is rumored to show face here sometime today. You know, to do a press release of his own.”
“He wants to piggyback off the publicity I’m generating?” I cried out.
Maya shook her head. “I don’t think that’s what it is.”
“The hell it’s not! We did all the work putting this thing together, and it’s our hard work that’s getting all the people here. Now he’s just swooping in to use the press and make it about himself?”
“It’s not a big deal. The more press we get, the better, right?”
I shook my head. “It’s going to be like David and Goliath.”
“Did David win that? All hail the underdogs, right?”
She was right. That had been a bad analogy. I was just being negative. The sun was hot, that article still bothered me, and I didn’t know if my attempts to make a difference would really do that. I wanted to make a difference. I was determined. I just wasn’t always sure of myself.
My dad had been a giant like that, someone who’d had the ability to make a difference. The money, too. He’d just chosen himself and getting more money rather than making a difference.
These people were all the same—in a world where money ruled, nothing else mattered.
A ripple passed through the crowd of onlookers and reporters, and a sleek black car pulled up in the beach parking lot. The reporters flocked together around whoever stepped out so that I couldn’t even see the guy, and lights flashed. The reporters chirped and squawked like seagulls, each trying their best to be heard, to have their question answered first.
“Can you believe it?” I grumbled. “Having that much clout that everyone wets themselves when you get closer and not using it for the greater good?”
“Maybe it’s something we can sway, get them on our side.”
I snorted. “If it was that easy, we wouldn’t be campaigning at all. I’m going up there.”
“What for?”
I dropped my bag and picker and marched through the crew on the beach toward the steps that led to the parking lot.
I was going to give Mr. Whoever-He-Was a piece of my mind about using my hard work to draw a crowd for his own personal gain.
“Rest assured that we’re doing what we can to ensure that our ocean life isn’t affected by the way we do business,” a voice said. It sounded achingly familiar. “That will be all for now.”
A burly-looking man shooed the reporters away from this guy.
Seriously? He’d come to the beach with a bodyguard.
He turned away from the crowd, and his eyes fell on me.
I froze.
My blood rushed in my ears.
My stomach twisted in a way that made me feel sick and made me giddy at the same time.
Alex Blackwood.
His eyes locked on mine. They were the same piercing eyes I’d fallen into at that boho pub last weekend.
The same square jaw, with his neat short beard.
The same upright posture.
I knew what it felt like to run my hands over those pecs of steel. I knew what his lips felt like on mine.
I knew exactly what he tasted like.
Stop it.
“Charlotte,” he said, as surprised as I was. “What are you doing here?”
“I think it’s pretty obvious what I’m doing here.” I glanced over my shoulder at the beach.
“No, I can see that. I mean, what are you doing here?”
I shook my head, flustered. I’d meant to pick a fight, to tell him off, but now that he was in front of me, my words weren’t coming as easily as I’d hoped.
His eyes were drowning deep, and that mouth…
I forced myself to look into his eyes again.
“Are you seriously going to hijack my press turnout?” I sounded less flustered than I felt.
“What?”
“Do you have any idea how much planning went into this cleanup, and now you’re using my crowd to advocate for your side?”
“ My side?” Alex frowned, and damn if that didn’t make him even more handsome. His frown turned into a smirk. “I thought you were an activist, not an event planner.”
His smirk made me unbalanced. I’d been on top of shit that night when we’d talked and flirted and it had just been us without all the extras. Now… he was the yacht manufacturer who destroyed oceans, and I was the activist pitted against him.
Damn it, could there be a more star-crossed couple?
Dramatic much?
I shook my head, trying to remember what I was fighting with him about but it was suddenly hard to think.
Alex took a step closer—presumably to keep the conversation between us instead of letting all the nosy reporters who craned their necks in our direction hear what we were actually saying— but his scent enveloped me, and if I’d thought it hard to keep my train of thought before, I was pretty much done for now.
“We’re on the same side,” Alex said when I didn’t answer him. I’d settled for glaring at him, hoping it would bring my point across in lieu of the words I couldn’t find. “We’re committed to sustainability.”
“You make yachts, don’t you? Blackwood Inc. is at the forefront of making mega yachts. Do you know what mega yachts do?”
He narrowed his eyes. “This feels like a trick question.”
“They have mega emissions.” It sounded lame, even to me, and I groaned inwardly.
Don’t buckle, don’t buckle, don’t buckle.
He cocked a grin at me, his eyes amused, and my resolve was starting to waver. Why the hell was Alex here? And why the hell was he still so damn attractive?
I flashed again on his naked body, writhing on mine, his face riddled with concentration so he could last longer…
“You’re known for your extravagance, opulence, and neither of those takes the environment into account.” I crossed my arms over my chest.
“Your stereotypes cloud your judgement,” Alex said in a deep, velvety voice that had no business caressing me as intimately as it did. “I’m not here to flaunt my wealth or to hijack your hard work. I really care.”
His words were hypnotizing. His scent would be my undoing, cologne, wrapping so tightly around me, making me come undone. And I wanted Alex to find a thread and keep tugging until I was completely unraveled in his arms.
But that couldn’t happen. Not after what happened when we weren’t at Gabe’s party. My brother’s party.
And not now that the whole world knew we weren’t on the same side of the line.
“I don’t know if I can believe you,” I said.
Alex frowned, that smile wiped away. He seemed genuinely concerned about my comment.
“Why not?”
“You didn’t exactly tell me who you were when I met you,” I said. “If you can hide that from me, what else can you hide?”
“Are you comparing a one-night stand gone wrong with a fight between industry giants and activists?”
“Did you just call this a fight?” I challenged, trying not to cling on to the words gone wrong too much. It wasn’t like it had gone right, was it? But God, it had felt so incredibly right…
“I’m not the enemy here, Charlotte.” He touched his hand to my arm. Electricity ran through me at our contact. His words were sincere, his eyes staring into my soul.
“How do I know you’re not just trying to save face?
“You don’t,” he said, leaning a little closer still so that the world fell away and it was just me and him. “But if you give me a chance, you might find there’s more to me than meets the eye.”
I had to shake myself to think straight. I was lost in the sea of his eyes, the way he was desperately trying to convince me that he wasn’t the bad guy, and I was so damn close to believing him.
“Don’t you for a second think I’ll stop fighting for what I believe in.”
He cocked a grin, that deep sincerity gone again. It was hard to read him. One moment, I was falling into his eyes, and he was an open book, and the next, he was unreachable, an Adonis towering above the rest, a god that was impossible to touch.
“I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
A phone rang in his pocket, and Alex pulled it out, glancing at the screen.
“I’ll see you around, Charlotte.” He pressed the phone against his ear. His eyes lingered on my face just a while longer before he turned and walked away.
Despite myself, I let my eyes fall to his perfectly tight ass, delicious in his tailored suit.
I forced myself to look away.
“What the hell was that?” Maya asked, coming up behind me and dragging her trash bag behind her.
“Nothing.”
“Sure didn’t look like it.”
I shook my head. I was pissed off now that he was gone and I could think straight again.
What the hell was I thinking, swooning over Alex Blackwood like that? He was the enemy! He was a yacht manufacturer who stood diametrically opposed to everything I believed in.
He was just like my dad—someone who cared about nothing more than what he could gain from it and knew just the right words to say to get the rest of the world to believe he had good intentions.
Alex Blackwood was not the good guy he wanted me to think he was.
And I couldn’t afford to get all weak-kneed and doe-eyed around him.
No matter how much we’d connected.
No matter how good the sex had been.
No matter how much I’d wished we were alone so that I could have all of that again.