Page 44 of Rival Hearts

I frowned at him and handed him the cup of coffee. “How?”

“Well… the problem is sustainability, right?”

“The problem is theythinkwe’re not environmentally conscious.”

“Yeah, yeah, same thing.”

I grunted, but Ben kept talking.

“What I mean is, if you’re not going to go for full transparency—”

“I can’t afford that.”

“—then partner with a business who will.”

I blinked at Ben. “What do you mean?”

“You know, find someone that they’re happy with and piggyback off their good reputation. Make them a deal they can’t refuse. Come on, man, you know what we have in buckets?”

“Money.”

“Right. Money talks. Make them an offer they can’t refuse and let their reputation carry us through so that when all this is done and dusted, Blackwood Inc. will be squeaky clean and coming out on top. It can’t hurt.”

I thought about it, turning the idea over in my mind. As much as I hated to admit it, Ben had a pretty damn good point.

“That might actually work.”

Ben shrugged. “Well, yeah. Otherwise I wouldn’t have suggested it.”

“Asshole,” I said, but I grinned.

Ben laughed. “It’s my signature move. People wouldn’t know it’s me they’re doing business with if I wasn’t a difficult son of a bitch.”

“Your self-awareness is staggering,” I said dryly.

Ben chuckled and lifted his cup to me in salute and walked out of the kitchen.

Maybe he had a point. Maybe I could make all of this go away if I partnered with the right company. Blackwood Inc. had always stood on its own two feet, but that didn’t mean we couldn’t reach out to another company and find a deal that worked for us both. Not that I would use another company as a crutch, but to hide under their good reputation while I figured out the kinks wasn’t a bad idea at all.

It would get Charlotte off my back, that was for sure.

Not that I was sure Iwantedher off my back…

I walked back to my office and sat down. Instead of working on the reports, I opened up the portfolio of companies who were technically our competitors and paged through the different press releases they’d done the past couple of months. I was looking for a company that was committed to sustainability, someone who was already transparent about what they did so that we could ride on their coattails.

A financial injection in return for a good rapport never hurt anyone, and with the right amount of money, we could make just about anything happen.

I didn’t know why I hadn’t thought about something like this before.

A part of me was pissed that Ben had come up with the idea and not me. I was the brains behind this operation. But lately, my mind hadn’t been on work. I’d been all tied up in knots about Charlotte and how she affected me.

It was just another reason this was a good idea. It would get her off my case, which meant she would leave me alone, and I could focus on work. Partnering with another company would buy me some time to work on our own sustainability models, and it was a win for everyone.

I found three different companies I could talk to and drafted emails to send out to them. I typed up an email to my dad and attached the drafts to hear his take on things. When he got back to me in the morning, no doubt on board with this plan, I could schedule meetings and get this ball rolling.

The sooner we got in bed with another company that would help us save face, the better.

Finally, when the emails were sent and there was nothing else left to do, I got up, switched off all the lights, and left the office.