“Not really, since she’s my agent. It’s in my contract that I’m obligated to give her 15% and nothing else.” He took a sip of his drink.
“But 15% of what?” I asked and he snorted, covering his mouth.
“That was close,” he said.
I laughed. “Sorry. Anyways, yeah. I suppose a relationship between agent and author could get messy.”
“Very. Though I do know one couple it worked out for.”
“There’s always one and they always make it look easy.”
An easy silence fell between us as we sipped our drinks and watched the room through the reflection of the mirror across from us.
I wanted to ask about the Vogue shoot. If he’d been asked. If he’d said yes. But part of me didn’t want to know. What if he had been asked, told he’d been working with me, and had said no? Or, what if they’d decided not to go with him after all? My asking would probably just make him feel bad.
“So,” I said.
“So.”
“I owe you a thank you.”
“Oh yeah? For what?”
“My shoe.”
He grinned and my stomach did a jazzy little dance.
“It was the least I could do.”
“And yet, you wrote me a poem as well.”
“That was all Brontë.”
I smiled. “She’s a talent. You’ll thank her for me?”
“Of course.”
A burst of voices filled the bar and I sucked in a breath, glancing in the mirror to see a group of at least a dozen people filtering in.
“Shit,” I said, starting to slide from my stool. “I should probably go.”
“They haven’t seen you.”
I chewed the inside of my lip, watching him. Was that his way of saying he wanted me to stay?
“Maybe just one more drink,” I said, catching Cole’s eye and tapping the rim of my nearly empty glass. He nodded and pulled down a glass exactly like the one he’d served me in the first time.
“I’ll give you a head’s up if anyone comes this way,” Graham said.
“Thank you. I’m really not in the mood to deal with people. They can be so disrespectful of my personal life.” I held up a hand. “And I know – it comes with the territory. But that doesn’t mean it’s fun.”
He stared at me for a long moment and I figured he must think I was full of shit. I really wasn’t in the mood for that either. Sighing, I slid from the stool and reached for my purse.
“What are you doing?” he asked, frowning.
“I really should just go.”
“Lior.”
