“Here’s what’s sad. I have been sucking up.”

That country boy mouth crooked at the corner. “The best you can do, huh?”

“I know. Depressing, isn’t it.”

His amusement turned to suspicion. “What did Melanie mean when she said you should give me a raise?”

“No idea.” Her stomach rumbled. “I don’t suppose you’d consider feeding me?”

“We don’t have time. The next one will be here in ten minutes. I’ll buy you another drink instead.”

“The next one?”

He pulled out his BlackBerry in a blatant attempt to ignore her, but she wasn’t having it. “Portia Powers can baby sit her own introductions. I’m not doing it.”

“Yet only six days ago, you were in my office on your knees telling me you’d do anything to land me as a client.”

“I was young and stupid.”

“Here’s the difference between us…The reason I’m running a multimillion-dollar business and you’re not. I give my clients what they want. You give your clients grief.”

“Not all of them. Just you. Okay, and sometimes Mr. Bronicki, but you can’t imagine what I’m up against there.”

“Let me give you an example of what I’m talking about.”

“I’d settle for a breadstick.”

“Last week I was on the phone with a client who plays for the Bills. He just bought his first house, and he mentioned that he liked my taste and wished I could help him pick out some furniture. Now I’m his agent, not his interior decorator. Hell, I don’t know jack about decorating; I haven’t even furnished my own place. But the guy broke up with his girlfriend, he’s lonely, and two hours later, I was on a plane to Buffalo. I didn’t blow him off. I didn’t send a lackey. I went myself. And do you know why?”

“A newly discovered passion for country French?”

He arched an eyebrow. “No. Because I want my clients to understand I’m always there for them. When they sign a contract with me, they sign with someone who cares about every aspect of their lives. Not just when times are good, but when things get rough, too.”

“What if you don’t like them?” She’d intended the question as a small dig—implying she didn’t like him—but he took her seriously, which was just as well. This weird compulsion to put him in his place had to stop. Her future depended on making him happy, not alienating him.

“I’d never sign a client I didn’t like,” he said.

“You like them all? Every single one of those demanding, egotistical, overpaid, self-indulgent jocks? I don’t believe you.”

“I love them like they’re my brothers,” he replied, with un-flinching sincerity.

“You are such a bullshitter.”

“Am I?” He gave her an inscrutable smile then rose to his feet as Portia Powers’s second socialite of the evening made her appearance.

Don’t you have it memorized yet?”

Portia jumped at the sound of a deep and very threatening male voice. She spun around from her spot on the sidewalk in front of Sienna’s window and took in the man who’d come up next to her. It was only a little after ten, and people still strolled the sidewalk, but she felt as though she’d been sucked into a dark alley at midnight. He was a goon, huge and menacing, with a shaved head and a serial killer’s translucent blue eyes. An intimidating display of tribal tattoos decorated the ropy muscles visible beneath the sleeves of his tightly fitted black T-shirt, and his thick, muscular neck belonged to a man who’d done hard time.