She pointed to my attire—a dark green summer dress that reached my knees and brought out the green in my eyes. I’d paired it with black flats. I was tall enough even without heels. Hailey almost always wore sky-high heels.

I drank some more. “You have to say that, though. We’re related. You can’t be mean to me.”

Lori chuckled. “No, but we wouldn’t lie.”

Well, that was true. My family rarely minced words. I could count on them to be honest. I looked at them warmly, happy I could spend the end of this evening with them. Others needed ice cream after a bad date; I needed Hailey and Lori. They weren’t just my sisters, they were my best friends. We were a team, whether we were on a shopping spree or relentlessly teasing my brothers during our weekly Friday dinners. Yeah, we had the kind of family dynamic that often made people wonder if we were grown-ups after all, but it worked for us.

“Val, what’s wrong?” Lori asked, pushing a hand through her blonde hair. “You’re usually optimistic. Is it the issue with Beauty SkinEssence?”

My stomach rolled. The second reason I’d accepted a date with Chad was because I’d been desperate to take my mind off that.

I nodded. “I have a meeting with a mediator tomorrow.”

“Val, you have nothing to worry about.” Hailey put a comforting hand on my shoulder.

I owned a cosmetic and fragrance company, Valentina’s Laboratories. My team had developed a formula for an antiaging cream, and now one of the multinational conglomerates were claiming they’d done it first. There was no patent, and they hadn’t advertised it anywhere. The only mention had been in a French trade magazine three months ago, but we’d been working on our formula for nine months at that point. I was fairly certain that what Beauty SkinEssence wanted was for me to drop the line, because if we launched similar products at the same time, profits would shrink for both sides.

The company was my baby. It had taken me twelve years to grow it to the successful business it was today. I wasn’t going to allow anyone to threaten what I’d built or smear the hard work of my team by calling us copycats. I looked up from my cocktail to find my sisters exchanging a glance. I suppressed a smile, certain that I knew what would follow.

“So, it looks like we have to plan an intervention,” Hailey told Lori, confirming my suspicions.

I laughed, throwing my head back. God, I seriously loved these girls. Interventions were a common thing in the Connor household. Whenever we thought one of us needed some shaking up, we’d pull one. If shit hit the fan, an ambush was needed.