“I thought you’d be winning by pointing out what you guys do well,” she countered stubbornly. “Not by underhandedly attacking our company and stealing our ideas.”
“It was just business.”
“Yeah, well your business sucks.”
He sighed with obvious frustration. She took a slug of her vodka tonic, gasping back a cough as she gulped too fast.
“It doesn’t have anything to do with me and you,” he whispered. “It didn’t have to do with last night.”
She closed her eyes. “I know that.” She took a deep breath. “And I finally understand how incredibly naive and stupid I was, to have thought that our arrangement would work.”
“You’re not stupid,” Mark said, sounding aghast.
“Yes, I am. But it’s like you said—I wanted you so badly that I was willing to ignore what was staring me in the face.” She opened her eyes, feeling tears sting at the corners of them. She wiped them away hastily with her fingertips. “I know we’ve said it before, but this time, I really mean it. We can’t get together again.”
“Ever?” Now he sounded bereft.
She bit her lip. “I don’t know.”
“I don’t want to lose you.”
The thought of losing him added to the pain she was already feeling. Her emotions were a maelstrom, dark and chaotic. “I don’t want to lose you, either,” she admitted. “But I don’t know how this can work.”
“There’s too much at stake for both of us,” he said. “But this challenge won’t last forever. At least give me the hope that when the damned thing is over, we might have a chance.”
“One of us is going to win,” she pointed out. “And that means one of us has to lose, Mark. As you said, there’s too much at stake. Do you really think that we can overlook that when it’s all over?”
He fell silent, and the two of them sat that way. It was all Sophie could do not to reach across the small table and take his hand, trying to either comfort him or gain comfort from his touch.
“If I lose,” he said, “I’ll still want you.”
“I’ll always want you.” The words popped out, unbidden, and she cursed herself for them.
His eyes lit. “Then there is hope.”
“I don’t know,” she repeated. “All I know is, we’ve got two weeks, and then we’ll know what happens, one way or the other. Until then—we’ve got to leave each other alone, Mark. We can’t keep going on this way. I know it was my idea, but now…we’ve got no choice.”
Mark nodded, standing up, and she stood up, too. “You’re headed out today?”
“Our flight’s this evening,” she said. She didn’t want him to leave, she admitted. As much as she knew it was smarter to cut all ties with him, the thought of not talking to him, of possibly never feeling his body against hers, was almost terrifying.
“I’m leaving tomorrow morning,” he said, and for a stupid, wild second, she thought about changing her flight—staying for one last night.
Do you really think that you can have one more “just one night”? She winced at her own stupidity.
“Well, then,” she said, and held out her hand. “I guess we’ll see you in New York.”
He took her hand, his warm grip sending shivers shooting through her. “Good luck,” he said. “And I really mean that, Sophie. I never meant to hurt you.”
She felt sadness like a lead weight on her chest. She nodded curtly. “Well, you won’t hurt me again,” she responded. “We’ll be ready for you.”
“I have no doubt.” But his voice still sounded full of remorse.
Then, slowly, tenderly, he leaned down and kissed her cheek softly. In that second, she felt as if her heart splintered.
Blindly, she turned, pressing a kiss against his lips. Not the usual conflagration of passion that they usually succumbed to. This was quiet, filled with need—and regret.
She broke away, then turned and headed toward the elevator. Back in the room, Lydia had finished packing. “Mom’s meeting us at the airport,” Lydia said. “I just got off the phone with her. Says she’s not surprised that Trimera’s ‘big idea’ was the ability to steal our ideas. She said that there’s no way we can trust them and the sooner we bury their asses, the better.” Lydia grinned. “And you know when Mom swears, she’s got to be super angry.”
Sophie listened to Lydia’s patter absently, as she zipped up her own bag.
“Are you okay?” Lydia finally asked.
Sophie shook her head. “No. I’m not okay.”
“Today was bad,” Lydia said. “But we’ll get even, don’t worry. We’ve got one more chance. And you know Mom. She’s even more creative when her back’s to a wall. We’ll figure out some way to pull this off.”
Sophie stared out the window. The problem was, even if Diva Nation came up with some way to win the final challenge, there was no guarantee that she could still have Mark. And if she did lose, she wasn’t sure she could forgive Mark for practicing what he considered “just business.”
The way she saw it, there was no way on earth that she could come out of this a winner.
And the way she felt—in a very real sense, she had already lost.
7
“WAY TO GO, MARK!”
Mark walked through the hallways of his office building, distracted. “Uh, thanks,” he said, nodding to whoever had called out the kudos. He hurried back to his desk. Ever since word of his coup at the San Francisco presentation had gotten out, he’d been getting congratulatory little e-mails and atta-boys from his coworkers. People he hadn’t heard a peep from in his entire duration at Trimera were suddenly taking notice of him. Everybody loves a winner, he thought, trying to make the observation amused and not bitter. Even Carol had come up to him when he was getting coffee at the kiosk in the lobby of the building.
“I heard about how you pulled it out at the Marion & Co. presentation,” she’d said, her face looking as if she’d choked on a lemon.
“It went pretty well,” he’d responded, as low-key as possible…even though it had been gratifying to hear her concession. If he’d been more petty, he would’ve rubbed her nose in the fact that she’d abandoned him and set him up, having every expectation that he’d fail.
How do you like me now, huh? Still think the model is too stupid to handle the business?
But even that second of gloating was shadowed by the fact that Sophie was upset with him. Something he felt torn about.
We can keep it separate.
He glanced at his cell phone, turning it over and over in his hand. He’d wanted to call her every day since the San Francisco presentation a week ago. He’d managed to resist to this point.
Simone walked into the office. “So, how does it feel to be Trimera’s great white hope?” She sat down in one of his chairs, beaming. “I knew you had it in you, Mark.”
“I appreciate the support, Simone,” he said, sitting in his own chair. “I wasn’t sure how much you believed in me.”
“I believed in you,” she scoffed. “No matter what else people said, I knew you had the killer instinct. You know what you’ve got, and you’re not afraid to use it to your advantage.”
Mark frowned, unnerved by two parts of that statement…the killer instinct, and knowing what he had and “using it.” “I’m not sure…”
Before he could finish, Roger, the VP of marketing, knocked on his door. “Got a minute, Mark?”
“Sure.” Mark gestured to another chair, then looked at Simone.
“No, this’ll only take a sec,” Roger said. “And Simone can stay. I wanted to say, officially, that the higher-ups are very impressed with what we hear happened in San Francisco.”
Mark couldn’t help it. His chest heated with pride, and he sat up straighter. “Thanks, Roger.”
“We had our reservations, believe me,” Roger said, deflating Mark’s sense of accomplishment a little. “We didn’t think you could handle an account of this magnitude. But I saw the presentation and the mock-ups you had built…and the time you had to do all of it.” Roger laughed. “If you can beat up the production department enough to get that quality in that short a time frame, then you’ve practically earned a raise right there!”
Mark laughed politely.
“Anyway, I wanted to let you know that we’re keeping an eye on you, Mark,” Roger said, and Mark wondered if this was real, or if it was more rah-rah crap, designed to make Mark feel better without having any kind of real power behind it. Roger obviously saw Mark’s hesitance because he chuckled again. “No bullshit, Mark. You keep this up, and we’ll put you in charge of the new project…and maybe start grooming you for bigger things, huh?”
Mark’s eyes widened. “Things on the marketing side?”
“I’ll have another director position opening up soon,” he said, and Mark noticed that even Simone looked surprised by this announcement. “You show me you can handle Marion & Co., and I imagine you’ll be paving the way for a nice promotion.”