Page 124 of Rival Hearts

“This is exactly what I was trying to avoid by canceling the line and now it’s happening, anyway. Fuck!”

“We’ll fix it. I’ll work on a new yacht, and we’ll push it out as fast as we can. Something small, something private and exclusive. We focus on the epitome of luxury and privacy. Hell, we push isolation, making it a one-man show type of deal and tell people it’s about getting away from the noise and finding yourself. People lose their shit over something therapeutic like that these days.”

Chris wasn’t wrong, but I was still panicking.

“Do you think we can have it ready in time?”

“Yeah,” Chris said, and he sounded confident.

I let out a shuddering breath. “Okay. That might work. It could get us enough cash just to tide us over while we work on finding new investors.”

“That’s the spirit,” Chris said. “We’ve had shit hit the fan before, and we always manage to pull through. We made it this far, Alex. We can do this.”

He was right. We’d been in tough spots before and we’d worked our way through it. I just had to keep focusing on that.

“I spoke to Danny this morning,” Chris said.

“Yeah?”

“He told me about you and Charlotte. I’m sorry.”

“It’s nothing,” I said, trying my best to sound nonchalant and failing miserably. “These things happen.”

“They do…” Chris sounded like he wanted to say more.

“But?”

He hesitated before he spoke.

“You know, I know we were taught that money makes the world go round in a lot of ways, and in so many cases, that’s true. But there are situations where money means nothing. All the money in the world won’t make up for certain things you’ve lost.”

I shook my head, although Chris couldn’t see me, and looked out of the window toward the horizon.

“The money is all I need to make this thing work.”

“I wasn’t talking about the business.”

I knew that, but I wasn’t ready to talk about anything else.

“Call me when you’ve come up with a concept, and we’ll figure out the next step,” I said.

Chris took the hint that I didn’t want to talk about it anymore, and he dropped the subject, promising an answer before the end of the day.

We ended the call, and I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Maybe this whole situation could be salvaged, yet. And once we pulled that off, I could breathe easier.

I preferred being this busy right now—it meant I didn’t have time to think about anything.

The only problem was that no matter how busy I kept my mind, it wasn’t my mind that needed the distraction.

It was my heart, and a heart couldn’t be distracted from yearning for a lost love, no matter what I did.

35

CHARLOTTE

“Charlotte,” Victoria said with a smile when I walked into her office. “It’s been a while since you’ve come to see me.”

I nodded. “I’ve been pretty busy.”