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Noah blinked. “Then write the story,” he said simply.
“Ah,” Travis held up his index finger. “Mr. Biceps over here has writer’s block, or something. So that’s off the table.”
“I have access to a publishing house of my own,” Adrian said. “Give me the story and I’ll publish it. Problem solved.”
“I don’t want to cheat,” Kenzie said. “I want my story to deserve what happens to it.”
Noah narrowed his eyes. “It’s a story, not a child. It won’t care if it deserves success or not. Let Adrian handle this.”
“See?” Travis said. “This is why I’m a vital member of the team. My semi-human counterparts here don’t always understand the human element. Besides, what’s the fun in that? These Ink House guys are being total assholes. This is only going to be satisfying if they have to eat shit somehow.”
“I could corrupt their systems,” Noah said with a shrug. “A lot of these places have absolutely no cyber security. It’d take me a few days, but I could cripple them for a few months. Shut down accounts, encrypt vital files, and so on. They’d have trouble signing new authors with that kind of history.”
Adrian ran a thumb across his chin. “Sebastian. If you finish this book, who will you publish it with? Not them, I assume?”
“Fuck them,” I said simply.
“Publish with me and I’ll help you,” he said.
“I haven’t agreed I need help. I came here because Kenzie insisted I let her brother take a stab at this. I’m capable of solving my own problems.”
“So am I,” Adrian said. “But when I can delegate the task, I don’t waste my time cleaning up messes I don’t have to. It sounds like you have better things to do than getting your hands dirty. It also sounds like you need a publisher who won’t fuck you over. This is a win, win.”
“See?” Travis said. “I knew we could work something out.”
Kenzie frowned. “Wait a second. Did you only offer to help because you thought you guys could land Sebastian as a client?”
“What?” Travis said. “I’m not nearly that clever, little sis. I had no idea Adrian was going to bring that up. I’m just looking out for you.”
“Do we have a deal?” Adrian asked.
“You three can come up with a plan,” I said. “Run it by me when you have something, then we’ll talk about deals.”
“Fair enough,” Adrian said. He got up, reaching for my hand.
I shook, then met eyes with the other two. “Nobody makes any kind of move until you run it by me. Are we clear on that?”
Travis shrugged. “You’re the boss.”
“Give us twenty-four hours,” Noah said.
Kenzie leaned close to my ear. “What is it with you people and classifying everything by the hour?”
35
Kenzie
Sebastian took me back to his place. I was sitting cross-legged in one of the pool chairs while he paced in the shade of a huge pagoda that overhung half of the area. He had on one of his many suits, and he looked like he was dressed to kill.
“So,” I said as casually as I could. “Does this sort of thing happen often?”
“My own publisher trying to blackmail me by threatening my girlfriend?”
“Oh my,” I said. I put my fingertips to my collarbone. “Did you just use the ‘g’ word, Sebastian?”
He paused. “I hardly think that’s the most pressing issue here.”
“Fine. I will hit pause on harassing you about that one until later. But do you want to know what I think we should do?”
“You already told me your plan. Go to your brother and find out what he thinks.”
“Well, yeah. I’m not talking about what we should do about this mess with publishers. I think we have twenty-four hours, according to Noah. That gives you plenty of time to take me on that date you promised.”
“You can’t seriously want to go on a date with this looming over our heads.”
“The alternative is sitting here watching you pace around all day, right? I’m thinking a date sounds marginally more fun, not that this isn’t great, by the way.”
If eyes were daggers, Sebastian’s would’ve been going full-blown stabby stabby on me at that moment. “Let me guess, you still want your parents to come over for dinner?”
I clapped my hands. “They’re already in town because they were visiting Travis last week! I’ll go call them!”
I got up and hurried inside to get my phone from the kitchen. Sebastian tried to shout something about how he didn’t actually say we could, but I ignored him.
In all honesty, my mind was in a million different places. There was the baby stuff, naturally. That was its own whole warzone in my brain. Then there were my feelings for Sebastian, which was also a deadly combat area. And last but not least was this whole, “you’re going to achieve your dream—but oh, wait, nevermind! Evil publishing executives are threatening to destroy your career before it ever existed” thing.
