Chapter Four
Lilah
Ipull up at the restaurant my brother-in-law owns with his siblings and cousins bright and early the next morning, feeling like death. I tossed and turned all night, and it's entirely Lincoln's fault.
Why did he kiss me? Why did he have to be so good at it? And more importantly, why do I want him to do it again?
He's turning me into a crazy person.
I force thoughts of him from my mind, check my expression in the rearview, and then climb from the car to have breakfast with Lucy. There's no way I'm telling her about Lincoln kissing me. She'll be planning our wedding in 0.2 seconds if I do.
She's a hopeless romantic who thinks everyone should be as blissfully happy and in love as she and Oliver are.
No, thank you. I'd much rather read about it than deal with the complicated feelings myself.
It's safer that way. I get to live a thousand lifetimes, experience love in a thousand different ways, and the heartbreak always ends before the story does, unlike in real life, where the heartbreak is often how it ends.
"Lilah!" my sister cries as soon as I step through the doors, beaming like she hasn't seen me in months instead of just days. That's Lucy, though. She's as exuberant as our mom. I think I'm more like our dad, suspicious and generally cranky.
"Hey," I mutter, dropping my bag on the bench before sliding into the seat across from her.
She's at our usual table in the back corner, as far from the bar and the kitchen as possible.
There's no one else here. The restaurant doesn't even open for another hour, but the chef comes in early just for us.
Well, just for Lucy, anyway. He adores her.
Her eyes widen at my tone. "Rough night?"
I grunt in response, which makes her chuckle.
"I ordered you coffee. We can wait until you're human to talk."
I shoot her a look and then grab the mug, taking a long sip. She spiked it with something, Kahlua, maybe. God, I love her. "It's good."
She just grins at me, tucking strands of hair behind her ears. "Landon brought me the Kahlua last time he was here."
"Have you heard from him and Link lately?"
"No, but Mom said Landon called her the other day. And Link just got back from the Middle East. He's probably holed up with Denver somewhere." She giggles. "It might be a while before they come up for air. How did it go last night?"
"The reading was great," I murmur, cradling my hands around the mug to inhale the rich scent. Something about the smell of coffee is soothing to me. The Kahlua isn't bad, either. "I think we had 250 people show up."
Her brows climb. "Oh, wow. That sounds like a lot."
"It was." I grimace. "I need to hire extra help for the next one."
"I can help," she says. "You don't even have to pay me."
"You could have helped last night," I tease, just because I know she was dying to meet Cassia, but couldn't because they had a wedding happening here.
"Don't remind me," she groans. "I'm so jealous you got to meet her, and I didn't. The wedding was a shitshow. I'm pretty sure the bride and the best man were having sex behind the winery."
"Seriously?" My eyes widen.
She just nods and then giggles. "The groom was halfway through his vows when she called it off.
He actually looked relieved. I'm not entirely sure what happened when they went to the dressing room to discuss, but they came out about half an hour later and announced that the wedding was off, but the party was on. "
"That's wild."
"Right?"
"I'm never getting married," I mutter.
"You will," she says, with so much confidence in her voice I almost break out in a sweat. "Just wait."
"No, thank you."
She just shakes her head at me, smiling. "Fine, then tell me all about Cassia."
"She's great, really down-to-earth and funny. She and her husband even stayed afterward to help us clean up. Her husband couldn't keep his hands off her." I smile at the memory. "They're as disgustingly in love as you and Oliver."
"Good for her!" Lucy says, and then pauses when a waiter strides out of the kitchen, juggling our breakfast in each hand. He's not even halfway to us when the aroma hits me, and my stomach growls.
We chat with him for a few minutes as he places heaping plates of bacon, eggs, and waffles in front of us, and then he disappears to the back, leaving us alone again.
"Why didn't Jazz come for breakfast?"
"She's on a mission to buy stock in sex toys," I mutter around a bite of eggs.
"Sex toys?"
"We're going to start selling them with some of the books. Maybe in boxes. I'm not sure yet. We haven't worked out the details. We've had other things to do." I pause, glancing over at her. "Would Oliver or his brothers and cousins object to us adding them to the wine and book boxes?"
"Pfft. No." She waves me off. "You can do whatever you want. They won't care."
I exhale a relieved breath. I kind of figured that would be the case, but the last thing I want to do is damage that relationship.
"What else have you been working on? I feel like I haven't heard from you all week."
"You've heard from me," I protest.
"Barely." She pouts at me. "You've been lame and busy."
She's not entirely wrong. She hasn't heard a lot from me this week, mostly because I didn't want to tell her about Lincoln buying the building.
She has a habit of meddling, and this is one time when I really, really don't need her getting involved.
But…we don't keep secrets from each other, either.
"Maybe I was avoiding you a little bit," I admit.
She points her fork at me, her eyes narrowed like she knows I'm hiding something big. "Spill, Lilah."
"Lincoln Hanover came into the shop the other day," I say, laying out the facts. "He owns Hanover Group, the real estate firm."
"I know who he is. They always order a bunch of wine for the holidays. Why was he in your store?"
"He came to inform me that he put in a bid on my building. Two and a half million dollars."
"Holy shit," she breathes, her eyes wide. "That's almost double what you were going to buy it for."
"Yeah." I frown at the reminder, my appetite rapidly disappearing. "I have thirty days to make a counteroffer, or the building is his."
"Obviously you're going to make a counteroffer," she says, and then frowns when I don't immediately answer. "Right, Lilah?"
"I can't afford it."
"What do you mean?"
"I used most of my trust fund opening the store.
We had to buy stock, renovate, and build the café.
I had to hire help." I tick off the expenses.
"And then I bought my house so I wouldn't be paying twice the cost of a mortgage in rent every month.
There's not enough left over to put in an offer, and the bank won't give me that kind of loan on a building worth half that amount. I already checked with Tina."
Lincoln was smart, putting in the bid he did.
It's high enough to guarantee no one else even tries to make a play for the building, without being so high that he won't recoup the expense once he's finished tearing it down to build whatever he wants to build in its place.
Until he found out about my dad, he was probably confident that I didn't have a chance of outbidding him.
Part of me is glad he's sweating in his expensive loafers right now. It serves him right for being arrogant.
"So…call Dad and tell him what's going on," Lucy says, like she doesn't understand the problem. "You know he'll help ensure you don't lose the store."
"I can't," I whisper, my eyes fixed on my plate.
"What do you mean, you can't?"
"You're making it just fine without running to him every time you need something. So are Link and Landon. I need to learn to do the same."
"I make it just fine because my husband is a literal millionaire himself, Lilah," she says, like I've lost my mind.
"I've never had to touch my trust fund because Oliver refuses to let me pay for anything.
And Landon and Link are in the military.
They don't have time to spend theirs. Our situations are not even remotely close to the same thing! "
"It just feels wrong to run to him for help," I mutter. "I'm an adult. I should be able to handle this. If I can't even keep my business afloat for longer than three months without needing to be bailed out by Mom and Dad, then maybe I shouldn't be running a business."
That's my biggest problem. Running to them for help feels a lot like failure. I don't want to fail at this. I want to prove to myself and to everyone else that there's still a place in this world for dreams like mine.
So many of the girls Lucy and I grew up with have clothing lines or jewelry lines, hotels, or a dozen other businesses, and none of them are truly successful. They're just their parents' way of keeping them quiet and occupied.
I don't want this business to be yet another that only works because my parents can afford it. I want other women to know that they're allowed to dream big, even when the rest of the world doesn't think their dreams deserve respect.
"Use my trust fund then," Lucy says with a shrug. "It's not like I'll ever need it. It's just sitting there, accruing interest. With what's left of yours, it should be enough."
"No way!" I shake my head, adamant. "I'm not taking your money."
"Why not?"
"Because you're leaving it to your kids. I refuse to let you give me money meant for them." No way am I taking the money from my nieces. Hell no. Especially when I may never be able to pay it back. My store does well, but not to the tune of two and a half million dollars.
Lucy rolls her eyes at me. "You're too independent for your own good, you know that? You're willing to lose your store just because you're stubborn. That's crazy talk."
"I need to be able to make it on my own," I argue. Maybe it is crazy, I don't know. But I don't want to spend the rest of my life wondering if I only made it because my family bailed me out or if I made it because I poured my blood, sweat, and tears into making it.