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“We’d love to see your new place sometime soon,” Kaylie added, her free hand settling on my upper thigh.

Before I could respond, Luke appeared out of nowhere, the look on his face grim.

“Hate to break this party up, ladies, but I’m afraid I need to talk to my brother alone.”

“Awww,” Kaylie whined, pushing her lower lip out in a fake pout.

“If you beauties will excuse me, it seems there’s some unwanted business I have to attend to,” I said, kissing them both on the cheek before following Luke into the back room.

“All right, man, what could possibly be so pressing that we had to leave our own party?”

Luke narrowed his eyes and crossed his arms.

“We’ve got a problem. Apparently our logo is too similar to a trademarked image.”

I bristled. I’d drawn and designed our logo from scratch months ago. It wasn’t anything too fancy, but still, I’d put a full month’s worth of work into it, and I was damn proud of it.

“Okay, so if we have to change it, we will. Not like we’ll need to pay extra for a designer.”

“It’s not that simple. They want damages in excess of eight million dollars. We just got this place off the ground. We don’t have that kind of money.”

I took a step back, feeling like the wind just got knocked out of me. Eight million bucks? Who the fuck did these people think they were?

The door to the room opened, briefly letting the roar of the party in before it closed again, muffling the sounds of the voices and music. Charlotte appeared around the corner, her brows knitted together in concern.

“There you guys are, I’ve been looking all over for you two. Everything okay back here?”

“Far from it,” I growled, pushing my hands roughly through my hair. Fucking figures that the moment I felt like I finally had our business under control, some asshole had to come along to try to take it all away.

Luke filled Charlotte in on the situation while I paced around the room, desperately trying to come up with a solution.

“My friend Valentina is a lawyer,” Charlotte said, slipping her arm around Luke’s waist.

“Who?”

“Valentina, my best friend who lives in LA? You met her at our wedding.”

“Whoopdie-fucking-do, she can’t do shit for us all the way in California.” I could feel myself becoming defensive. I’d gotten completely trashed at their wedding, so honestly, my memory was a little foggy.

Luke shot me a dirty look. I knew I was being an asshole, but I couldn’t help it. Not when everything I’d worked so hard for was on the line.

“That might be true, but lucky for you two, she’ll be here tomorrow. I’ll call and set up a meeting with her in the morning, so you can consult with her then,” Charlotte said with just a tinge of coldness in her voice. She’d learned to expect a few rough edges from me since becoming a part of my family, but I already knew Luke would chew me out for being a hot-head later. Damn, sometimes it sucks being the younger brother. Even if only by a few minutes.

“Fine, let’s see if your hotshot lawyer friend can help us out. Thank you,” I added, forcing a smile at them both.

Luke put his arm around Charlotte and the two of them rejoined the party, leaving me to stew in my own frustration.

I knew my brother was in love and seeing him happier than he’d been in years really did make me happy. But I couldn’t help being a little salty at how little he seemed to care about this. Just a couple years ago, this distillery was all we had besides each other. But now Luke had Charlotte, and this place was really all I had left to show for myself. It was the love of my life, practically my baby, and you’d better believe I was protective as hell of it.

Those two babes in my lap earlier? They didn’t do a damn thing for me. Because even before Luke had Charlotte, I was always the twin who had something to prove. Growing up, Luke was better at everything. He made varsity football our freshman year, got straight As all throughout school, and quickly developed a reputation as the better, more stable, more successful Wilder twin. I had a hard time in school because of my dyslexia, and it felt like I always had to work ten times harder to make sure I didn’t become the dumb twin—or worse, the town idiot. But ever since Luke settled down, it seemed like I was getting closer and closer to becoming the town drunk, and that was even worse.

I knew I had to do everything in my power to save the distillery. And if that meant shutting up and taking orders from a hotshot LA lawyer was the only way to do that, so be it.

Besides, if memory served me right, she wasn’t so bad to look at, either.

CHAPTER 2

Duke