He pinned me with a look. “You could have if you’d wanted to. Why not just own the fact that you didn’t want to?”
“Because it doesn’t matter what I want. It matters how it looks.”
“To who?”
“To people.”
“To Lila?”
“You know how it is, Luke,” was all I said.
“I don’t get it. I don’t get why you think you’re not good enough,” he fired off in challenge. “It can’t be money—you have that just as much as the rest of us. It can’t be your job because you fucking love your job, and don’t lie to me and say you don’t. And you don’t live with your mother because you can’t take care of yourself. You live with your mother because she can’t take care of herself. There’s a big difference, and anybody who doesn’t see that is an asshole.”
“Guess I have a thing for assholes,” I fired back in defense.
“Man, you assume a whole lot, considering.”
“Considering what?”
“Considering you think you’re so dumb.”
I opened my mouth to argue when Marcus busted into the workroom with Jett and Laney in his wake.
“We have a problem,” he said, his face dark as a storm cloud. And the pressure in the room changed to match.
The five of us gathered around one of the tables, Marcus at the head, looking grim.
“We’re being sued by Bower.”
Luke and I were too stunned to speak. Marcus didn’t require a response.
“They’ve requested immediate turnover of the financial statements, which aren’t ready. But we’re easily over the noncompete limitations. If we comply, Longbourne won’t open its doors tomorrow.”
“But our contracts,” I started, thinking immediately of Lila, the risk she’d taken on us, the events we had lined up. “What about our contracts?”
Marcus shook his head. “I said, if we comply.”
“What do you mean, if?” Laney asked.
“Ben and I have been trying to build a case that the clause is unconscionable. If we can, it would mean the contract won’t stand in court. In fact, we could get the whole thing thrown out before it goes far. Theoretically. With enough money and weight to throw around, anyone can take a case like this all the way to the end.”
“And Bower won’t back down,” Jett noted darkly.
“There’s another thing to consider. If Bower makes all the right moves, the cost of litigation alone would bankrupt us.”
The room fell silent.
“What do we do?” I asked.
Marcus paused, scrubbing his hand over his mouth as he thought. “My instinct is to tear up the contract and throw it in the fire. I don’t think they can prove that Longbourne’s success would in any way threaten their own. And I don’t believe they can win.”
“Of all the Bennets’ gut feelings, yours is the one we’d follow without question,” I said to a chorus of nods. “But is there any danger for Lila? Will her contracts be caught in the crossfire?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted, offering nothing more.
“If there’s any risk, I won’t put her anywhere near it.” I scrambled for a moment. Until an idea struck me like a bell. “Can we transfer them to me?”
Marcus paused, then lit up, his mind whirring behind his eyes. “You know, I think maybe we can. Why didn’t I think of that?” He was practically pouting.
“Think of what?” Laney asked, her gaze bouncing between us.
“I own a business. We can transfer the contracts to me, and I can fill them.”
Three-fourths of my siblings blinked at me.
“You own a business?” Luke echoed.
“Selling his hybrids,” Marcus added. “I made him set it up years ago. Seriously, why didn’t I think of this?”
I chuckled. “It’s all right. I forget about it too.”
“No, I mean … you have all that money to work with. You can get whatever you need. You could even lease Longbourne from me and keep it running, if it came to that.”
His words climbed their way through my thoughts, leaving me confused. “All what money?”
Marcus stared at me. “What do you mean, all what money? You have almost two hundred thousand in that account.” He kept staring as I stilled. “You mean to tell me you haven’t even looked?”
“No,” I breathed. “I didn’t ever need to. Didn’t even think to.”
He ran a hand over his mouth, glancing up at the ceiling as if to ask for deliverance from my idiocy. “Kash, you’re hopeless.”
“How about you berate me later,” I suggested. “Are we sure this is legal? They won’t see it like, I don’t know, like we set up a shell to evade paying them?”