“Quality time together,” I say, reaching forward and pulling the water bottle from my bag. “Team building. The chance to see my excellent navigational skills.”
“Money,” he drawls.
“Are we saving money?” I squint, then shrug. “Oh, well. That too.”
I pull off my heels and settle into the seat, tucking one foot underneath my butt. I pick up my cell phone, and look through my texts. According to Trey’s recovered Tesla—in fine condition, minus one side mirror—we’ve got six hours to go, which includes a power charging break. And …. according to my schedule, we’ll be fine on time. Tonight, dinner and drinks with suppliers. Tomorrow morning, I’ve got interviews with two different designers, then we’ll make the trek back. I check for texts from Craig, but there are none. This trip is causing me to miss our second Mensa meeting. He seems as relieved as I am with the timing, one I carefully orchestrated. At our twenty-year anniversary, we’ll laugh about it. But now, the bitch that is Mensa seems like an anchor tied to our relationship, sinking Craig’s viewpoint of me and dragging my tolerance level down along with it.
I look over at Trey, who is relaxed against the seat, his eyes on the road, and flip through the list of questions I had jotted down to discuss during this drive. It had been Jess’s idea, being convinced that—given six hours alone with me—we could become best friends and cement my job security forever. She doesn’t understand fashion, the fickle beast that it is. She doesn’t understand that my job security hinges on my performance, my ability to revitalize the Marks Lingerie brand. I can bond with Trey Marks until I’m blue in the face and it won’t change the fact that his company is dying. I wet my lips. “How did you get into lingerie?”
It’s a story that should be known, should be sprinkled over every article, Wikipedia page, and company bio. But I’ve found nothing online, no breadcrumb trail to explain how this man ended up with the sixth largest lingerie company in the world. Were the rumors right? Had he seduced an old woman out of her riches?
“It’s a long story.” He glances at me. “And fairly boring.”
As if anything about him could be. I set down my phone. “I like boring stories. If it’s really good, maybe you can lull me to sleep and not have to deal with my incessant chatter for the next six hours.”
He gives a short smile—more polite than authentic. “Maybe another time.”
I huff out a protest. “I can’t properly create a vision if I don’t know the bones of the company.”
“Hasn’t seemed to bother you so far.” He shifts in his seat. “Besides, it’s not in my job description.”
“Ha. Funny.” I reach down and dig into my purse. “Do you allow people to eat in your car?”
“Of course.” He glances over, watching as I pull out a bag of M&Ms, ripping open the top and offering it to him. “No thanks.”
“If you’re not going to tell me, I’m just going to invent something scandalous and put it on the website. Poof.” I shrug. “Done.”
“I’m terrified,” he says dryly.
“As you should be. Wait until everyone finds out that you were a homeless street performer, playing a ukulele outside a trim factory. You broke in one night, looking for food, and built a hammock bed out of straps and a ukulele bag out of lace. One day, a wealthy woman saw your ukulele bag and—”
“Please stop.” He smiles, and it is an actual smile, one without sexual pull or cocky undertones. “You’re offending street performers everywhere.”
“That’s not offensive,” I say indignantly. “It’s the start of a ukulele-playing mogul! Look what you became!” I gesture to him, and his smile widens.
“Please stop saying ‘ukulele.”
“I’ll stop saying ‘ukulele,’ if you tell me the real story.”
He rolls his eyes. “Fine.” He puts both hands on the steering wheel. “I started at Bloomingdale’s, in their ED program.”
“How’d you get into that?” I interrupt him despite my best attempt to listen. South Central and Bloomingdale’s … talk about two completely different worlds.
He grins. “When I was thirteen, I was caught at Bloomingdale’s, shoplifting. The loss prevention manager wanted to know what a thirteen-year-old kid wanted with a woman’s blouse.”
“A girlfriend?” I guess.
He scowls. “No. My mother. She had an interview—for a real job, an assistant in a real estate firm—none of her clothes were appropriate.” He falls silent and I remember. The stripper mother.
“That’s sweet.”
He chuckles. “It’s not too sweet. I had lifted a few other items. Things for me, a thong for this girl I was dating. Anyway, the guy offered for me to work off the items in their stock room. I agreed, and we sort of became close.” He glances over at me. “That guy was eventually promoted, to a high enough level that—when college didn’t work out for me—he had the pull to offer me a job.”
I stay quiet, trying to piece together the picture of a young Trey Marks, one who sounds like a street thug … with the polished man who sits beside me.
He shifts in the expensive seat, a bit of his cologne drifting over and teasing my senses. “You know Vicka Neece?”
Vicka Neece … the name is familiar, but takes a moment to place. “Sure. The Creative Director for Victoria’s Secret.” Maybe the rumor mill had it wrong. I lean forward.
“We used to work together at Bloomingdale’s. There was a bit of a connection there.”
A connection. I don’t have to look up Vicka Neece to imagine what she looks like. Victoria’s Secret doesn’t hire ugly women. She and Trey probably just looked at each other and orgasmed. I wrestle out a peanut M&M with a little more aggression than is necessary. “And?” I say brightly, and it doesn’t sound fake at all.
“And then my father died,” he says flatly, and I suddenly regret my mockery.
“I’m sorry,” I say quietly.
“He didn’t have much to his name, but he had taken out a five-million-dollar policy three months prior to his death. A bunch of Italians came after me for part of that. Vicka Neece was interested in the rest. She pitched me on opening a lingerie brand.” He shrugs. “It wasn’t that hard to talk me into. I was twenty-six. I was stupid.”
His father. Something in my chest, a clog that hates the idea of Trey and an older woman, clears. “How were you stupid? You made it into a real player. I mean, right now we’re struggling, but—”
“I don’t regret opening the company. I regret losing Vicka. We were successful when she was here, when she was in control. And we sailed on her vision for the first few years after she left. But then, everything started to fall to shit.” He glances at me. “I don’t have to tell you that you are the sixth Creative Director we’ve had in five years.”
No, he didn’t have to tell me that. I had all of their files in the cabinet in my office. I had reviewed all of their work, all of their visions. Vicka Neece hadn’t had a file in that stack. Whatever her history with Trey, it had been erased before I got there.
“Did you ever try to get her back?” It’s almost a waste of a question, her job at VS putting her on the top rung of every fashion hierarchy. If I ever got that job, I’d be there until I died, or until I was forcibly carried out.
“No.” He rubs his neck. “We had opened the company as friends. A few months in, we started fucking.”
The words are so rough that I wince. “Just fucking?”
“I don’t know. It got so that I couldn’t tell the company from her, or our relationship from sex. I got jealous, she got jealous. We started fucking less and fighting more. And then she was gone. Packed up her office in the middle of the night and moved back to New York.”
“Do you still talk to her?”
“Fashion’s a small world. We see each other sometimes, but not much is said. I’m pissed at her for leaving; she’s pissed at me and I’m not even sure why. If you ask her now about Marks Lingerie, she won’t even admit that she worked here.”