One Night Standards(35)

“Do you know what you’re going to be doing?”

“I don’t know,” Sophie admitted. It had been freeing enough just to think of quitting Diva Nation. She hadn’t formulated a plan from that point. “Finding a job, I imagine. Something else in the cosmetics industry…or maybe not. I don’t know.”

“You might want to take a break,” her mother suggested. “With that ulcer, and all.”

Sophie gave a short laugh. “I can buy a little time…a few months. But then, back to work.”

“You know, if it weren’t for your strategy and planning, and hard work, I never would’ve been able to sell Diva Nation for as much as I did,” her mother said. “I want to give you some of the money from the sale.”

Sophie shook her head. “That’s for your retirement.”

“I bled them dry,” her mother said with a snort. “I made out better than I could’ve dreamed, and you know it. I’ve got plenty left over. You’ll take some of it, and I don’t want to hear any arguments.” She smiled weakly. “Let me pay off some of this guilt.”

Sophie sighed. “All right, Mom. You win.”

“So maybe you’ll take a vacation,” her mother said. “Maybe…start dating.”

It was a big concession for her take-no-prisoners, business-is-everything mother. Sophie thought it was a good step forward. Still, the thought of dating made her chest ache. She didn’t want to date. She didn’t want to find someone.

She’d already found Mark, and then she’d lost him. That was painful enough.

“I’ll just take a break,” Sophie said. “Rest up.”

“It will get better,” her mother whispered.

Sophie nodded. “I know,” she said, even though she only knew it logically. Emotionally, she still felt like a wreck.

“So, have you already given notice?”

Sophie nodded. “I’ll be making the management-changeover announcement at the sales conference in San Antonio.” One year ago, she thought. At the same conference she’d met Mark.

“I’m sure it’ll be a big event,” her mother said.

“It will be memorable,” Sophie said. She certainly wouldn’t forget it.



“MARK MCMANN?”

Mark stood up, feeling acutely self-conscious. He wore a suit, but he appeared to be the only guy in the building to do so, and he felt a bit like a circus freak. He’d only seen one woman, who was wearing sweats, her hair in a ponytail. She had smiled at him. Everybody else there was a guy, all wearing jeans or khakis and T-shirts that sported various humorous slogans or TV-show pictures. There was a lot of Star Trek present, he noticed.

He followed the guy who seemed to be acting as receptionist and jack-of-all-trades into the main “office” of the man he was interviewing with.

“Mark! Good to see you!” The chief executive officer, Frank Stone, was wearing a pair of black jeans and a Sealab 2021 T-shirt. He also gave Mark’s suit a curious glance as he shook his hand. “Glad you could make it all the way out here to California to see us.”

“Looked forward to it,” Mark said, and he meant it.

“So. I’ve been reviewing your résumé. I have to say—it’s nothing like anybody else’s that has applied for the job here at Game Preserve.”

Mark had expected not—considering his entire background was in beauty and cosmetics, and this was a new video-game start-up. “Well, it wouldn’t seem like it would translate, but I’ve got a lot of national distribution and brand experience.”

“I can see that,” Frank said, and Mark felt gratified at the appreciative tone in the guy’s voice. “But tell me…we’re not going to be able to pay you as much as your old company did. Why do you want to work for us?”

Mark thought about everything that had happened in the past twelve months. Meeting Sophie. Falling in love with Sophie. Losing Sophie. Losing the job at Trimera because of Sophie. In roughly that order.

“I need a change,” Mark said, thinking understatement of the year. “I used to love video games as a kid and I’ve rediscovered them since then. Meanwhile, I’ve learned everything I needed to at my old job, and now I’m looking for a challenge.”

“Well, we’ll definitely be that,” Frank said.

The two of them talked shop for a while, and by the end of the interview, Mark felt as if he’d done the best he could—laid out what he thought Game Preserve’s strategy should be, the whole nine yards. Now, it was in their hands.

Frank stood up, stretching, and Mark assumed that the interview was over, so he stood up, too, offering his hand again. But Frank laughed.

“No, I’ll be taking you out to lunch, too, if you’re up for it. I won’t beat around the bush. I like you, and even though your background is completely wrong for us, I go with my gut on this sort of thing. But you’ll have to run the gamut if you’re going to work here.”

Mark straightened up. “I have no problem with that. I’m just looking for a chance.”

Frank’s eyes glinted, and Mark suddenly wondered what the hell he had agreed to. Frank opened his office door, motioning for Mark to follow. “Okay, guys!” Frank yelled down the corridor. “We’ve got a candidate!”

With that, a wide range of men came pouring out of cubicles and headed for a large lounge-looking area. Mark swallowed nervously, wondering if this was some sort of arcane ritual akin to hazing. And he’d thought that the cosmetics industry was rough.

They were staring at him like a sacrificial lamb, and Mark refused to blink.

“Okay,” Frank said, crossing his arms. “Five minutes. Let ’im have it.”

Before Mark could react to that sweeping statement, he was peppered with questions.

“Where do you buy most of your video games?”

“What’s the best game you’ve bought in the past year?”

“What do you own?”

His head spun as the voices came yelling out at him, like a squalling mob. He took a deep breath. “Y’ all done?” he asked easily.

They went quiet, expectant.

One more deep breath, and then he marked everyone who’d asked him a question. “I get my games anywhere I’m in town, usually at a game store because the clerks know what I’m talking about, sometimes online if I have the time,” he said to a stocky guy with thick glasses. “I own an Xbox, a PS2, a Game Boy, my PDA’s equipped, and I’ve got some stuff on my PC at home,” he said to a thin, tall Asian man, who grinned in response. “And the best game I’ve bought in the past year is Halo 2…and I’d challenge anybody in here to try and take me on it, after the hours I’ve logged.”

“We’ll take you up on that!” a short kid with a backward baseball cap said, and the rest of them laughed.

Mark let out a quick huff. He’d survived the lion’s den. Frank looked puffed up with pride.

“Why don’t we go to lunch,” he said with a broad grin, “and discuss some particulars. Like salary, and benefits.”

Mark nodded to the assorted guys, who nodded back in return. “Welcome to the team,” the Asian guy said with a smile.

Mark felt his spine straighten. Part of the team. One of the guys.

Sophie had believed in him…and here he was, striking out on his own. This wasn’t about his looks, or his charm. This was finally what it meant to make it on his own, on his brains and his abilities.

He smiled as he followed Frank out the door, onto the street.

As he’d told his brother, he just wanted to prove to himself that he could handle it. It had taken longer than he’d thought to find a situation that suited him—six months of searching, and getting rid of his stuff in New York, simplifying his life. He’d briefly taken a job at Marion & Co., insisting that he not work on anything related to Diva Nation, but even that near proximity had been too much. Besides that—Mrs. Marion had shown him how he didn’t want to do business.

“I thought you had better business instincts than that, Mark,” she’d said when he’d finally given in and quit.

He’d made the right choice. He didn’t know how Sophie was managing, caught between the Scylla and Charybdis of Marion & Co. and Trimera. But from everything he’d been able to find out, things were going spectacularly well for her. Diva Nation was splashed across the pages of every trade magazine he read, and all of his contacts said that Trimera was set to make millions upon millions thanks to their investment in the boutique company. It looked like Mark’s instincts had been dead-on, after all. And Sophie was the brains behind the success. He imagined that must have bothered Simone, who’d taken a job with one of their competitors not long after. Roger had been promoted as a result, so he had to be happy.

Mark wondered if Sophie was happy.

“So now that your life’s in order,” his brother said, when Mark called to tell him the good news, “what are you going to do about the girl?”

Mark wondered about that, too. “It’s been a long while. I’m sure she’s moved on.”

“In other words, you’re chickening out.”