WILD OPEN HEARTS: A Bluewater Billionaires Romantic Comedy Read online

  WILD OPEN HEARTS

  A Bluewater Billionaires Romantic Comedy

  Kathryn Nolan

  Copyright © 2019 Kathryn Nolan

  All Rights Reserved

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Editing by Faith N. Erline

  Cover by Kari March

  ISBN: 978-1-945631-54-2 (ebook)

  ISBN: 978-1-945631-53-5 (paperback)

  101819b

  Contents

  1. Luna

  2. Beck

  3. Beck

  4. Luna

  5. Luna

  6. Luna

  7. Beck

  8. Beck

  9. Luna

  10. Luna

  11. Beck

  12. Luna

  13. Beck

  14. Beck

  15. Luna

  16. Luna

  17. Beck

  18. Beck

  19. Luna

  20. Beck

  21. Beck

  22. Luna

  23. Luna

  24. Beck

  25. Beck

  26. Luna

  27. Beck

  28. Luna

  29. Beck

  30. Luna

  31. Beck

  32. Luna

  33. Beck

  34. Luna

  35. Luna

  36. Beck

  37. Luna

  38. Luna

  39. Beck

  40. Luna

  41. Beck

  42. Luna

  43. Beck

  44. Luna

  45. Beck

  46. Luna

  47. Beck

  48. Luna

  49. Beck

  50. Luna

  51. Beck

  52. Beck

  53. Luna

  54. Beck

  55. Luna

  56. Beck

  57. Luna

  58. Luna

  59. Beck

  60. Beck

  61. Luna

  62. Beck

  Epilogue

  Want More Beck and Luna?

  Up next:

  More about the dogs:

  A Note From The Author

  Acknowledgments

  Hang Out With Kathryn!

  About Kathryn

  Books By Kathryn

  For Cait, Erin and Faith—the sisters of my heart. Every positive and affirming example of female friendship I write is based 100% on the three of you.

  and

  For Lucy, Claire and Pippa—thank you for making this series so damn fun to write (and hilarious).

  1

  Luna

  It was a beautiful day to be accused of fraud.

  I flashed my trademark cheerful smile at Sylvia Lee, the president of my board and my long-time mentor. “Can you repeat that, Sylvia? I’m not sure I heard you correctly.”

  “Ferris Mark lied to us,” she replied, with a face so pinched I winced in sympathy. She tapped a manicured finger on a sheet of paper I really didn’t want to examine that closely. “An investigative reporter went undercover at one of their factories and discovered that all of the ingredients they source to cosmetics companies like ours are absolutely, one-hundred-percent tested on animals.”

  Wild Heart’s headquarters were located on Miami Beach’s infamous Ocean Drive, which meant my wall-to-wall windows let in a dazzling panorama of white sand and turquoise waves dotted with vibrantly colored beachgoers. I usually felt a decadent love for my tropical hometown. But today, as I watched a lifeguard race by my office window on a skateboard, I was tempted to yank the window open, leap outside, and steal that skateboard for myself.

  Because surely, a clumsy escape by skateboard was preferable to the career-ending mess in front of me.

  There was a knock at my door. Jasmine Hernandez, the head of Wild Heart public relations, was staring at me with an expression that said you’re so fucked.

  “How bad is it?” I asked Jasmine.

  “Nuclear.” Her head was down, fingers flying over her cell phone.

  I took a sip of my ever-present green smoothie, grimaced, then pushed it away. I opened up a drawer and grabbed an emergency stash of Fritos corn chips—they were one of the only store-brand vegan snacks around, and I’d been mainlining them since college. During moments of stress or anxiety, I could finish a bag in five minutes flat.

  I had a feeling this was going to be one of those moments.

  Six years ago, Wild Heart inked a massively lucrative deal to sell our eco-friendly and cruelty-free cosmetics throughout the Fischer Home Goods department stores. The deal had solidified my position as one of the youngest self-made billionaires in the world. Wild Heart became the third-largest cosmetics company, right behind Revlon, and was currently valued at $4.5 billion.

  Six years ago, to meet our new increased demand from Fischer, I’d made the decision to drop our former supplier and go with Ferris Mark. They were faster. Cheaper. I’d assumed it was a wise business decision—had been proud of it, actually. You could be financially successful while maintaining your compassionate values.

  I finally scanned the page. Force feeding, lethal doses, irritation tests.

  Well. Maybe you couldn’t.

  “Are we sure this is real?” I asked, around a mouth full of corn chips.

  My phone started to vibrate. And vibrate. And vibrate. None of this was a positive sign.

  I slapped a hand over my phone. Re-pasted my smile on—which was now officially fake. That was new.

  “Very real,” Sylvia said. “The story is going to break any minute. It’s not just Wild Heart that’s implicated, but four other major cruelty-free cosmetics lines. Our competitors.”

  That meant massive amounts of secret, horrible animal testing had been happening for years and none of us knew it. My fingers kept circling lethal dose testing, a particularly heinous way of testing the safety of new cosmetics ingredients on animals by getting them to die in a variety of ways. I was all for safety—always—but when I founded Wild Heart at twenty-two, it was on the basis that cosmetics companies had more than enough ingredients at their disposal to produce high-quality makeup. No new ingredients meant no need for safety testing—protecting humans and animals in equal measure.

  “We need to pull the products,” I said. “Every last one. I don’t care how much it costs. And we need a new supplier like yesterday. I’ll halt production until then.”

  An action that would cost us untold amounts of lost revenue. An action that the tiny billionaire-shaped devil on my shoulder was pissed about.

  “That’s a lot of money,” Sylvia said softly, voicing my concerns out loud. “I’m not saying we don’t support the same response. I want to make sure you’re positive, Luna.”

  My heart knocked against my chest—you’ll lose it all, you’ll lose it all. I inhaled. Exhaled. Behind Sylvia’s head was a framed cover from TIME Magazine: there I was, laughing into the sun in a field of flowers. The headline read: Luna da Rosa Believes Makeup Can Save the World.

  “We have to do it. It’s the right thing to do. And obviously we’ve been caught in the crossfire,” I said firmly, hushing the tiny devil. “We’ll make a statement, assure our consumers that we are dedicated to cruelty-free beauty products—”

  My phone buzzed so violently it fell to the floor. I picked it up as a flurry of notifications from my social media accounts lit up the screen. I’d always been the
face of Wild Heart. From the beginning, I’d positioned myself as America’s Vegan Best Friend and Wild Heart had reaped the rewards.

  Now I caught the words Twitter, comments, Luna, fucking fake.

  Could corn chips be delivered to you by the metric ton?

  “In the court of public opinion, you’re a liar, Luna.” Jasmine spoke up from her spot by the door. “We need to get out in front of this before the story breaks. Tell the narrative to the best of our ability.”

  “Okay,” I said, distracted by the vile words spilling across my screen. “The story’s already broken though.”

  I pushed my phone across the desk with one finger. Jasmine strode over, glanced at it. Muttered beneath her breath. I crossed my legs beneath my gauzy hot-pink skirt and pulled my hair over one shoulder, mindlessly braiding it. My bangles clinked up my wrist.

  “But Ferris Mark lied to us,” I said, attempting to process this new information. “Right? I mean, I get feeling upset but we’re the victims too. I would never, ever source ingredients that were tested on animals.” I jiggled my flip-flops, braided my hair, and tried to ignore the voice in my subconscious screaming at me. Something’s not right.

  “We should have the documentation to prove our innocence,” I said, standing up quickly. I swished over to a long row of filing cabinets, scanning for contracts from the year 2015. Yanked open the right cabinet and started flipping through file folders with a righteous passion. “I signed their contract myself so—”

  I waved the file in the air. “Here we go,” I said, slapping it down on the desk. “This will help. This proves that we were lied to. We’ll fix it. I believe that we can fix it.”

  My internal compass had been stuck on enthusiastic optimist since birth.

  “Luna, there’s another issue.” Sylvia’s gentle voice had an edge to it I barely recognized. We made eye contact—my mentor seemed pained, and not only at this news.

  “One second,” I said. “Let me just find this.” I dug through the papers, seeking validation that Wild Heart could make this right. I’d founded this company with the sole purpose to do right, to change things for the better throughout our entire industry—how could we be the ones in the wrong?

  “The reporter has something, Luna,” Jasmine piped up. “I doubt you remember this but you—”

  “Oh my god, I signed off on it.” I was holding the paper, swallowing hard, trying to decipher the ugly truth staring right back at me.

  An addendum to our contract. Traditionally, Wild Heart had an extensive due diligence process. It was one of the many ways we ensured the companies we sourced ingredients from not only had a clean animal rights record, but a human rights record as well. That was our promise to consumers, my promise to the world.

  That was the promise I made to myself, all those years ago.

  The addendum was authorizing Wild Heart to waive our standard policies and to move ahead without an inspection of their production plants.

  “You directed the production team to go ahead with Ferris Mark even though they expressed concerns with their ethics. You made the decision to waive our process because you trusted they were cruelty-free without verifying,” Sylvia said.

  My signature appeared huge and jubilant on the page—no doubt I’d been excited about the Fischer deal and eager to stay on track.

  “The decision to take Ferris Mark at its word was all yours, Luna,” Sylvia said.

  Our eyes met across the table. Sylvia Lee had smashed through the glass ceiling twenty years ago when she became one of the first female CEOs of a Fortune 500 company. Since then, she’d spent her career taking other female entrepreneurs under her wing, serving on boards and committees and acting as a mentor. For the past ten years, she’d kindly guided me forward and firmly wrangled me in.

  The very real disappointment on her face had a fist closing around my throat.

  I remembered now, the night I’d signed this. I’d met Emily, Cameron and Daisy for drinks at our favorite tiki bar by the beach, had danced and twirled around and laughed with my favorite women and felt powerful, strong. Because I’d bypassed my board and pulled the trigger on a decision I knew was right—if I didn’t think we needed another six months of red tape and bureaucracy, we didn’t.

  Except—clearly—we had. And now that formerly happy memory was tinged with a distressing, guilt-filled regret.

  My phone was lighting up like the Times Square crystal ball on New Year’s Eve.

  “It’s my job to fix this,” I said cheerfully, chin up. “Nothing we can’t get through. The worst has already happened. It’s only up from here.”

  They stared at me with varying degrees of skepticism.

  The large flat-screen TV on my wall caught my attention—probably because my name was stretched across it. Jasmine snatched up the remote, turning up the volume.

  I kept mindlessly braiding my hair—an anxious habit I’d never broken. Well, that and mindlessly devouring junk food.

  “An interesting story coming our way from the Miami Dispatch this morning,” the anchor was saying, “exposing illegal working conditions and animal cruelty at an ingredient plant called Ferris Mark. Sources say well-known Miami-based cosmetics company Wild Heart is a main customer.”

  They proceeded to cut to my TED Talk from two years ago—where I’m pointing to the audience and declaring, “Cruelty-free cosmetics is the only way forward. Anything less than that is indefensible.”

  “Goddammit,” Jasmine cursed.

  “Did Luna da Rosa lie to her customers to make money?” the anchor asked.

  “I didn’t lie,” I said weakly. Which was true. But I’d violated a value I’d always held at the core of my being.

  Never let the money change you.

  At twenty-two, I’d been a starry-eyed bohemian, intent on changing the world, excited to be part of a new era of female business owners. The night I’d won that first, crucial million dollars, Sylvia had emailed me a few simple thoughts: Having a lot of money is wonderful, Luna. Money can also make things much more complicated. This will be part of your struggle as a future leader.

  I already knew I liked Sylvia. But I’d deleted the email. Because money had felt like the key to changing the world, not the complication.

  Liar, hypocrite, fake. The words flashed-flashed-flashed across my phone.

  “I’m guessing everyone hates me now?” I asked, attempting a lightness I did not even remotely feel.

  “Worse,” Jasmine said, face serious. “They feel betrayed by you.”

  I sank back into my chair.

  An email popped up on my computer from a name I desperately needed to see.

  Daisy Carter-Kincaid.

  The subject line read: “Who do we need to stab for you today?”

  2

  Beck

  Jack Sparrow was finally going home.

  Jack was a nine-year-old, senior Pomeranian with a feisty personality twice the size of his seven pounds. I’d rescued Jack three months ago from a family that had abused him. He’d been terrified of people. All of us—me, Elián, Wes and Jem—took turns sitting outside his kennel, talking softly, getting him used to the sound of human voices that were gentle. Safe. And with training and all the goddamn love we could muster, the real Jack had appeared just in time for Buzz to adopt him.

  “You nervous?” I asked, clapping Buzz on the back. He was scowling into the Miami sun, cigarette dangling from his mouth. The old man had been a fisherman his entire life and looked the part—right down to the faded blue anchor tattooed on his arm.

  “I’ve killed a marlin with my bare hands,” Buzz grumbled, “don’t know why I’d be scared of an old ball of fur that’s blind in one eye and almost deaf.”

  Jem and I shared a look—Buzz hadn’t been here when the bastard had snarled at anyone who got too close to his food bowl.

  “Oh, he’ll keep you on your toes. Promise,” I said, nodding at Jem. Her spiked mohawk glowed green as she re-appeared with a wiggling Jack Sparrow.
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  Buzz dropped to one knee. Sized the dog up.

  His wife had died two years ago and his adult children had begged him to adopt a dog. They’d chosen Jack Sparrow for their father specifically, although Buzz had given off a disinterested vibe for the entire process.

  Except I knew a match when I fucking saw one. Buzz was gruff, intense—but when he’d wandered onto the Lucky Dog campus, I could see a cheerful Jack Sparrow on the bow of his fishing boat, wagging his tail as they cut through the water.

  Jack sat, tail wagging, and placed a tiny paw on Buzz’s knee.

  With a strange look, Buzz clutched Jack to his chest and pressed a palm to his head. “Good boy,” he said.

  Jack licked his face. I’d seen the dog’s records—I wasn’t sure once in his life he’d ever been treated nicely by a human being.

  “You got whatcha need, Buzz?” I asked, crossing my arms. “Bed, food, toys?”