Elle’s brain bounced right along the same track as mine. “You need a backer? Silent partner? Because I know a girl . . .”

The offer should have been tempting, but I would walk away before I accepted a handout.

Strings. Money always came with strings.

“Uh. No. I mean, I’ve got some ideas. You know what they say about taking money from friends, anyway. I’d never want to lose you, and certainly not because of that.”

The crease in Elle’s brow deepened. “You think I’d—”

“No. I’m just saying . . . I appreciate your offer, but I’m going to have to decline.”

“Do you really have other ideas? Or are you feeding me a line of crap?”

My brain shuffled through all the possibilities. The bank? The SBA? Maybe one of those organizations that support young entrepreneurs? I’d figure out something.

I met her frustrated stare. “I’ve got some ideas. I swear. No bullshit.”

“If you’re sure . . .”

“I’m sure.” My tone rang with finality, which Elle didn’t miss.

“Okay. Dropping it. Now let’s talk about this dress you’ve got for me. Hand it over.”

I turned and unzipped the garment bag hanging on the funky iron hook behind me. Parting the sides, I revealed emerald-green satin perfection. Elle was going to look amazing. And I happened to know that her man, Lord, had a thing about his redhead in green.

“Oh!” Elle clapped her hands. “It’s so much better than I even thought. I’m gettin’ lucky when I wear this.”

She dug her credit card out of her purse and handed it over. “You are the best. See—this is just one more example of why you were born to own this place. It would never be Dirty Dog without you. It would be just another touristy shop. You are the lifeblood of this store. Harriet has to know that.”

Her words unleashed a shimmer of pride inside me. I was the driving force behind the success of this store. It wouldn’t be the same without me. I needed to find a way to make it mine permanently, and I needed to meet Harriet as an equal—as a businesswoman with a plan. Shoulders squared again, I charged Elle for the dress as my mind spun with what I needed to do next.

This determined Yve—the one I’d forged out of broken pieces—never backed down from a fight.

IF I HADN’T SCHOOLED MYSELF in keeping my expression completely blank, I would have given away the rage coursing through me. I was a man with simple expectations: do what I ask, the way I ask you to do it, and do it right the first fucking time. I held myself to a ridiculously high standard. No one could keep up with the demands I placed on myself, but I expected people to live up to the lower expectations I had of them. How fucking hard was it to be a goddamn lobbyist? I paid them to get shit done.

And yet shit wasn’t done.

“So, what you’re telling me is since the last time we met—over a month ago—you’ve gotten absolutely no support for this bill?”

Cartwright, the principal of the most prestigious lobbyist firm in the state of Louisiana, seemed to shrink a little in his starched French collar shirt. “I’m sorry, Mr. Titan. I thought one of my associates was handling the matter, and it appears he was more fixated on handling a young legislative aide. He’s been terminated.”

Wonderful. A guy led by his dick—and in a way that totally fucked my chances of getting this bill passed.

“Then what’s your plan, Cartwright?” The man better have a plan. I didn’t take well to people who brought me only problems and not even a hint of a solution. People needed to show a little goddamn initiative.

“Well, Mr. Titan, I hadn’t really thought beyond solving the immediate problem. I’ll go back to my office and brainstorm some ideas.”

I said nothing for a few moments, just let the silence of the room wrap uncomfortably around him. Finally, I nodded. “Go. I expect an answer by midnight.”

His eyes bugged wide. It was already after five.

“Or you’re fired,” I added. “And I know damn well Titan Industries is over a third of your business.”

Nodding his head in a jerky movement, the man backed away until he hit the door with his heels. Then he turned and shuffled through it, and the room was silent once more. Until Colson spoke.

“You should’ve fired him on the spot.”

Anyone else questioning my judgment would have caught the sharp side of my tongue, but Colson was an exception to the rule.

“Giving him a few extra hours is easier than bringing on a new lobbyist at this point. I’m doing it for me, not as a favor to him.”

“Still, he doesn’t deserve it. Besides, if he’d been thinking on his feet, he would’ve offered up the obvious solution.”

And this was why Colson was my COO. Because he was smarter than ninety-nine percent of the people I came in contact with.

We first met at Stanford in business school. He’d been universally hated for screwing the curve in our strategic management class by acing the final, and I’d been the only person who didn’t care, because I’d only been one point behind him and wrecked the curve in the other three classes I was taking that semester. To find someone more disliked than myself was a novel feeling. Both his brain and his absolute disregard for what anyone else thought were the primary reasons I’d brought him on after I acquired my first few companies.

I leaned back in my chair, curious as to where he was going with this. “And what’s the obvious solution?”

“Johnson Haines. Old Southern powerhouse politician. He’s got enough pull to rally his own party, plus persuade the others across the aisle to vote our way.”

It sounded too easy. He was only one man, someone whose name I knew but hadn’t considered. Why hadn’t I considered him? Normally I was all over this shit. I’d made meeting the who’s who of New Orleans society a top priority, and yet I hadn’t met him.

Oh yeah, that’s right—because my arrangement with Vanessa Frost had gone sideways when Con Leahy had gotten involved. Or rather when they had gotten involved. Either way, my introduction into the upper echelons had been halted temporarily. Not because I’d accepted defeat, but because I’d thrown myself back into what was important—my business, preparing to dominate the market, and make a fuck ton of money.

Dad, you’re about to be proven wrong, I thought before returning to the conversation at hand.