Wild Open Hearts (Bluewater Billionaires) - Kathryn Nolan Page 0,15
would let their prodigal son partner with a goddamn billionaire and leave him be?”
Elián paused with the door half-open. “You’re the one who always says you refuse to let that family dictate who you are,” he said. “And now you’re letting that fear dictate the future of Lucky Dog. Besides, you don’t have to be online. But our mission could. The dogs could. All the hope that we create here—no one knows about it. Because you keep it a secret.”
“Elián, that’s not—” I began. But he was already gone, leaving me to sink down into my donated desk chair, defeated. I focused on the fading Polaroid of Willow I had taped to my computer. It was taken a week before we both graduated from our Positive Results program at Miami-Dade Correctional Facility’s juvenile detention program. For more than six months, I worked with Willow, who’d been a giant, terrified, snappy pit-bull mix days away from euthanization when she was placed in my care.
Unconditional love didn’t exist in the Mason household. Caring for a living creature was new to me. In the picture, I’m eighteen years old, tall and rangy. We are both transformed. Willow into a dog that is calm, gentle. And me looking confident—knowing that after I got out I didn’t have to return to the MC. Could make my own way, free of their stranglehold on me.
Now I felt like shit. What was my goddamn plan, after all? A hundred dogs like Willow were going to come through our doors and if we didn’t have enough money, where were they going to go?
I rapped my knuckles on the table.
I knew where they’d go.
Out the window, I saw Jem waving, pointing to Kennel #7. I shut off my computer, closed the file of financial paperwork, and prepared to distract myself.
Luckily, Luna da Rosa had left—because I wasn’t sure I could face her anyway.
9
Luna
When was the last time I’d been rattled by a man?
Beck Mason had been trying to scare me, and even though I’d never scared easily, I was still upset that I couldn’t work here. It was clear they needed help, the whole place screamed grassroots in a way that was endearing but also concerning. This place, these dogs, deserved to thrive and I wasn’t sure why he’d pushed back so hard—why he’d been put off at the idea of us both benefitting from each other.
It wasn’t using if both people got what they needed. That was called smart business.
There was a shiny Harley Davidson in the parking lot and I assumed it was Beck’s. Sylvia had said he was no longer involved with his family, but maybe he still rode his bike. His whole vibe screamed tough-as-nails motorcycle gang member and he was, quite literally, the most colossal person I’d ever seen. He was white, about forty—almost a decade older than me. His shaggy, dirty-blond hair was the same color as his thick beard. And those midnight-blue eyes betrayed only one emotion during our entire stand-off: judgment.
Well, that and a pride I recognized because it mirrored my own. But every time I felt an empathetic urge to reach out, tell him I’ve been there, he’d cross his thick arms over that barrel chest and all I wanted to do was fight back.
Pride versus pride.
I toed my flip-flop through the dirt and the brown grass, eyed the dilapidated equipment. Beck’s entire office was the size of the bathrooms at Wild Heart. We didn’t use donated pens or computers that were 10 years old. I’d had that twitchy feeling again during my face-off with the shaggy jerk.
More evidence of my shift, I guessed.
“I knew Sylvia’s idea was a bad one,” Jasmine said next to me, fingers flying over her phone. I blew out a breath, stared around me at the kennels filled with dogs getting a second chance at life. They were all shapes and sizes, skittish and confident, healthy and scared, big and small. Even as my heart called out to them, the billionaire devil on my shoulder begged for me to let it go.
“Beck’s background is a complication anyway,” I said, more to myself than to Jasmine. Bella, the security guard I employed at Bluewater, was scanning the environment as if she expected a roving band of bikers to appear at any second. “And him clearly not liking me wouldn’t make for a strategic partnership.”
“Exactly,” Jasmine said, laying a hand on my arm.
Sylvia’s presumed disappointment hung in the air between us.