Page 49 of The Library on Plum Island
“You don’t even like boats that much,” Alex reminded her.
“I like the Black Ocean,” Harriet said. “It’s a beautiful super yacht.”
“It really is,” Dawn agreed. “I even convinced Alex to sail me here on it.”
“Dawn!” Alex sighed.
“Sailing with Alex and Ethan to Plum Island wasyouridea?“ Harriet looked at her in disbelief. “Dawn, you get seasick just standing on it in the dry docks.”
“I got this new seasick medication that was supposed to work,” Dawn explained. “But it didn’t.”
“No, it didn’t,” Alex concurred. “And I was the one who was blamed for dragging you here on my boat.”
“All you had to do was say that,” Harriet exclaimed. “Instead, you went all Alex doesn’t give a fiddle for anyone and told me that yours and Dawn’s father thought it would be a good publicity stunt for the show.”
“They did think that,” Alex told her. “I wasn’t lying about it.”
“But you let me believe that you didn’t care that Dawn was so sick when you docked here,” Harriet accused him before turning to Dawn. “And you let me accuse Alex.”
“To be honest, I wasn’t feeling great, and I hardly paid any attention to what you were saying,” Dawn admitted.
Before Alex could respond, his phone rang, and he frowned when he saw it was a blocked number.
“Who is it?” Dawn and Harriet asked in unison.
“It’s a blocked number,” Alex told them before answering. “Hello?”
“Is this Alex Blackwell?” A woman asked him.
“Who wants to know?” Alex asked.
“I’m calling from the Boston Celebrity Splash magazine,” the woman told him.
“I don’t know how you got this number,” Alex said, his voice icy cold as anger spurted through him. “But I don’t take unsolicited phone calls or give interviews over the phone.” He put a hand over the mic. “It’s a freakin’ reporter.”
The reporter told him, “Your soon-to-be wife told me that you wouldn’t mind answering a few questions.”
Alex went cold, and his brows furrowed. “Excuse me?”
“What?” Harriet whispered.
“Put it on speaker. We want to hear,” Dawn suggested.
Alex clicked it to the speaker, holding the phone in his hands.
“Doctor Daniella Thornton called me a few minutes ago to tell me the news about your upcoming wedding and gave me your phone number,” the woman informed him. “She told me all about how heroic you were being to help Doctor Thornton and her daughter.”
“Do you have the number you were called from by Doctor Thornton?” Alex asked, shock escalating through him at the thought that Daniella would do this.
“I do,” the reporter told him. “I was called from a landline, and when I called back to verify a few details, it was the Plum Island Clinic. I can give you that number if you like? Although I think after what I’ve been told that you’d know it.” She paused for a few minutes. “I didn’t manage to get Doctor Thornton’s number because she’d already left, and the woman on the other end of the phone wouldn’t give me the number.”
Alex, Harriet, and Dawn looked at each other in shocked disbelief.
“What did you say your name was again?” Alex asked.
“I didn’t,” the woman answered. “It’s Meg Parks from the Boston Celebrity Splash magazine.”
Alex watched as Harriet pulled out her phone and immediately started messaging her contacts in the media world.
