He winked at her. “Be right back.”
Sophie quickly packed her luggage and materials into the small compartment, feeling a little guilty at how much room it took up. She’d make it up to Mark, she told herself. The guy was being so nice. Maybe she’d take him out to dinner, thank him properly.
Going out to dinner with a guy that good-looking would hardly be a hardship, she thought with a smile.
Mark returned after a few minutes. “I’ll try to wedge most of my stuff in the back,” he said, rolling a small dolly’s worth of boxes and luggage up to the car.
“Good grief,” Sophie said. No wonder he didn’t want company. They were going to be crammed like sardines in the tiny car. It was going to be an uncomfortable ride. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
“Again, I wouldn’t want to make a lady do my heavy lifting, either,” he said, with a quicksilver grin. “This’ll only take a minute.”
“I don’t mind…”
Sophie’s voice trailed off as she saw the logo on the boxes. It was distinctive, a set of three Ts in a swirling script.
Trimera. She’d know that logo anywhere.
He saw where she was looking, but didn’t say anything. He simply packed the rest of the boxes in the car.
He works for Trimera, she realized, the relief ebbing away slowly. Trimera, one of the biggest cosmetics companies in the business. The same company, in fact, that had fired her mother.
No wonder he’s going to San Antonio. He’s going to the same trade show. And he’s pretending not to realize we’re competitors!
“Okay, all set,” he said, in that same pleasant voice. “Shall we?”
She nodded, getting in the car.
And of course, he decided to give me a ride…after I told him about the Marion & Co. meeting.
He got in the driver’s seat, smiling at her. “Well, we might as well get to know each other. It’ll be a long trip.”
She nodded, smiling back at him even though the last thing she wanted to do was smile.
“Why don’t you tell me about this company of yours?” he asked, his voice elaborately casual. He didn’t even look at her when he asked, simply concentrated on the road as if his life depended on it. “It sounds great.”
Had she called him an angel? The guy was a devil—a handsome, smooth-talking, sneaky devil.
And for the next six hours, she was stuck with him.
THEY’D BEEN IN THE CAR for an hour, and the highway stretched out in the distance with very few cars besides their own. The sun was setting in a beautiful wash of salmon, rose and orange out on the horizon.
“That’s gorgeous,” Mark said, nodding at the sunset.
“Mmm.”
Mark bit back on a sigh of irritation. He hadn’t wanted to travel with anyone—it was bad enough that he had to drive, instead of catching a few hours of sleep on the plane—but he was being nice enough to offer the woman a ride to San Antonio. And now, since they’d gotten on the road, she’d barely spoken two words to him, and most of his questions had been answered with those one-syllable nonwords. She was so tense, he could practically feel it bouncing around in the interior of the ridiculously compact space they were sharing, threatening to explode. It was like traveling in a grenade.
“Warm enough?” he asked, pointing to the car’s climate control panel.
“Mmm,” she responded. “Thanks.”
He had to get her to open up. Otherwise…Well, not only would the trip be unpleasantly uncomfortable, but the whole point to them sharing a car would be ruined.
She said she had a meeting with Marion & Co. An important meeting.
He might not be credited with having a lot of business savvy by his colleagues, but he’d worked on the Marion & Co. account and knew them well. It was one of the biggest accounts Trimera had. If they were talking to other cosmetics companies, it would be worth a lot to know what they were talking about.
I find out what’s going on, and I might finally get that promotion.
Mark smiled to himself. He’d been working in sales at Trimera for the past five years, patiently biding his time, putting up with the snickers and snide comments about his past. He’d put in his time at night school, getting his MBA. Now, he was looking for his big break to make it up to the next level: director for a big account. He’d been angling for Marion & Co. for over a year. To have Sophie Jones and her information fall into his lap was an incredible stroke of luck.
He glanced over. Sophie’s toffee-colored curls danced around her shoulders, emphasizing the curve of her high cheekbones. Her green eyes scanned the scenery, fringed by long lashes. Her full lips pouted ever so slightly.
Having a woman like this fall into my lap would be incredible luck, no matter what the reason.
His body tightened in response. “Great sunset,” he croaked.
She glanced at him, her expression slightly amused. “You said that already.”
He frowned. “Oh. Right.”
He was attracted to her. That wasn’t all that odd, but the strength of his reaction was. He was used to dealing with women on a daily basis in his line of work—cosmetics execs were usually female. And before that, doing runway work, he’d been surrounded by beautiful women constantly. Comparatively speaking, Sophie wasn’t stunning, like the models and actresses he’d seen. But there was something about her, a spark or something, that he found absolutely irresistible.
“So, you work with your mother and your sister, you said?”
“Mmm.”
“That must be fun,” Mark continued relentlessly. “I couldn’t work with my sister. Or my brother, now that I think of it.” He laughed. “And I wouldn’t want to work with my mother. Too much pressure. If giving her my grades was hard enough, I can’t imagine what it’d be like to give her a sales performance report.”
He was gratified when she chuckled a little at that one. “Older or younger? Your brother and sister,” she asked.
It was an opening, so he took it. “My sister, Dana, is younger by three years. My brother Jeff is older by two.”
“You sound close,” she noted.
“Well, you must be close to your family, if you’re working with them,” he said. “How do you manage without going crazy?”
She smiled. “We do go crazy. Mom’s a bit of an absentminded professor,” she said, and her expression was soft, unguarded. “Lydia’s a creative type. She’s younger by only about ten months…a total ‘oops’ baby. She acts like she’s older, though.”
Mark nodded, encouraging. “And you’re not the creative type?”
“I’m the business type,” she said. “Numbers, strategy, you name it. That’s what I—” She stopped short, as if she realized that they were, indeed, having a conversation about her company. “I must be boring you, with all this talk,” she demurred.
He gritted his teeth. He’d need to try another tack.
She shifted in her seat to face him. “Listen, can I be blunt?”
“Please,” he replied easily, shifting gears. Whatever it took to keep her talking.
“I know who you work for. It’s right there on your product boxes.” She crossed her arms. “You’re my competition. You know that.”
Now he did sigh. He doubted she would have missed that, but he didn’t know that she’d put together that they were competitors. “Well, yeah. But that doesn’t mean we can’t, you know, talk.”
“Actually,” she pointed out, “it does. At least, it means I can’t talk to you, about business.”
“It’s not like we’re even in the same league,” he replied. “No offense intended.”
“None taken,” she said, her words edged in ice.
“I mean, Trimera is huge. Global. From the sounds of it, your company…What’s the name of it, anyway?”
“Diva Nation.”
Good name, he thought absently. “It’s a small start-up. You’re too small for us to be worried about.”
“Really?” she said sweetly. “And I suppose mentioning the Marion & Co. meeting did nothing to cause you concern.”
She had him there.
“You can’t honestly tell me that you’re asking about my company out of the kindness of your heart,” she added. “I mean, you seem nice enough, but you’ve been trying to pump me for information since you got on the road. Don’t kid a kidder. I used to work for a big company, too. Nothing’s too small to be a threat. You’re looking for an angle.” Her voice was bitter. “I remember what it’s like.”
He realized she was right—and her comment made him feel ever so slightly slimy. “It was just business,” he said, knowing it was a lame defense.
She shook her head, her curls twitching in response. “It always is,” she murmured.
“How old are you?” he asked.
She blinked in surprise. “Twenty-nine,” she responded. “Not that it’s any of your business.”
“I just thought—you’re awfully young to be that jaded.”
She sighed. “You’re right. But I’ve had some bad experiences.”
“Why don’t you tell me about them?”