by Frost, Sosie
But he was happy.
And I never understood that contentment, not when the world had so much more to offer. Maybe I had billions, but that didn’t stop me from earning more, expanding my businesses, and consuming any industry ripe for the plucking.
I lived for opportunity. Challenge. The unknown.
And, maybe one day, I’d finally find something worth looking for.
“Tonight means so much to so many people…” Reginald raised his champagne. “I’d like to take this time to thank my loving wife. She is waiting on pins and needles for me to finally say goodnight so we can catch our flight to Hawaii.”
Mackenza’s mother, dressed completely in white and hidden beneath the largest hat of all, waved a gloved hand toward the crowd and downed the rest of her daiquiri without waiting for the toast.
Reginald continued, searching the crowd until his gaze fell upon Mackenza.
“And…to my sweetheart daughter…” His voice cracked, and he cleared it to force away the emotion. “I am so proud of you—you have worked tirelessly after design school to continue every tradition this company holds dear. As my time with Maxwell Intimates comes to an end, yours is only beginning, and I can’t wait for this company to blossom under your leadership.”
The party gave Mackenza a rousing cheer. She winked at me.
“Such a shame you won’t be able to see it,” she said.
I didn’t hide my smile. “Wouldn’t be so sure.”
Reginald’s voice lowered. “But…all good things must come to an end…in both life and business. Maxwell Intimates has remained an independent fixture in the fashion industry for fifty years…but sometimes, even the most steadfast company requires a new form of leadership and direction.”
Mackenza faked a pout. “Oh, I knew I should’ve written a speech for tonight. Oh well, I’ll just have to wing it when I accept my new position.”
“Not sure anyone will be so eager to hear from you,” I said. “Not when there’s someone more important to your company’s future.”
“Like who?”
Reginald swallowed hard. “So, it is my privilege to be the first to make public the changes coming to Maxwell Intimates. As of five o’clock this evening…I have decided to do what is best for this business, our employees, and our devoted customers.” He paused. “Maxwell Intimates has accepted an offer to merge with LACE Industries.”
I caught Mackenza’s champagne before the flute crashed to the ground.
“This new partnership will not only expand Maxwell Intimates into new, stronger markets, it will also allow our company to begin a new line of exclusive up-scale lingerie. This exciting opportunity will solidify our place within the fashion industry for generations to come!”
Mackenza covered her face. “Oh, no, no, no…”
Reginald raised his glass. “And to lead this company into the future, I have entrusted this brand, this business, and this family empire to the one person I know who can transition us to be the definitive designer of women’s lingerie in the industry!” He gestured toward me. “May I introduce you to a man who needs no introduction. The new face of Maxwell Industries—Cameron Mitchell!”
Mackenza searched the crowd, even pushing me aside as she eagerly scoured the audience.
Reginald’s laugh echoed over the party. “Cameron, I heard you made quite the splash with my daughter at the koi pond! So glad you two could finally meet…even if it was three feet underwater.”
The crowd parted for me to approach the podium, but Mackenza’s perfectly puckered, thoroughly shocked expression was worth delaying my speech.
She gripped my arm, her nails digging into my skin. “You…you’re Cameron Mitchell? The Panty King?”
I had hated the nickname until that moment.
“Excuse me, Mackenza…” I offered her a smile worth twenty-million bucks—the same price I’d paid for the nearly bankrupt Maxwell Intimates. “I need to address my new company.”
“Your company?”
I hadn’t been this excited to get to work in a very long time.
“I’ll expect you in my office bright and early on Monday morning.” And I’d savor her shocked indignation all weekend. “After all…you wouldn’t want to make a bad impression...”
3
Mackenza
“Him?”
I slammed the limo door, accidentally catching the hem of my dress in the hinge. The sodden, ruined gown was the least of my worries. I yanked the cloth out of the door and groaned as the material ripped a perfect slit right up my thigh.
Sultry.
Great.
One plucked stitch and I’d invented my own damned line of lingerie. Exactly the sort of initiative Cameron Mitchell desired in his employees.
“Him?”
Daddy urged me to be quiet until we’d pulled away from the event, lest errant paparazzi snap a photo of the Maxwell Intimates would-be heiress going nuclear in the back of the family’s rented limo.
But I had done my job.
I’d managed my temper.
Hadn’t shouted in front of the Board.
Hadn’t created a scene or upset our patrons.
The journalists had captured nothing but smiles and pleasant conversation.
Damn it. I’d thought I’d escaped the pond. Instead, I’d had mud on my face the entire night.
How could Daddy do this?
A merger? A sale?
Surrendering control of our family’s business to a new CEO?
And not just any random businessman. Cameron Panty King Mitchell.
Daddy settled in the limo, cracking open a bottle of exclusive, hundred-bottle-per-year bourbon he’d been gifted during the night. Usually he’d save such an expensive gift for the office—offering everyone a chance to share in the generosity. This time, he poured himself half a finger…and then another one and a half.
He’d never been much of a drinker, but tonight he slumped against the seat, loosened his tie, and, with a celebratory sigh, he even unbuckled his belt. With a satisfied grunt, Daddy’s gut—hidden from everyone save Mom and the doctors—reemerged. He patted it like a bongo and winked in my direction.
“My first ten minutes of retirement…” He sipped his whiskey. “Gotta say…it’s treating me pretty good.”
His kind eyes had the potential to appear hardened under his bushy eyebrows. Fortunately, his were expressive, dancing over his brow like a fussy caterpillar shooing an intruder off his tree branch. As a result, Daddy always seemed happy.
Tonight, I finally believed it.
“Now, sweet-pea…I know you’re confused,” he said.
Confused? Maybe a little.
Insulted, aggravated, and thoroughly enraged? A lot.
“Him?”
Daddy fiddled with his tie, first neatly folding the silk to tuck into his jacket, then bundling it into a wad and tossing it away. “I wanted to talk to you before the party, but this all happened so quickly, and you were late getting in from New York.”
Yeah, working on an underwire crisis that, had I not caught the design flaw, might have punctured the lung of anyone wearing a 36-D.
Had I known Daddy planned on destroying everything we’d built, I would’ve offered a tetanus shot with each purchase and not spent an entire week in overtime redesigning a line which was supposed to already be in production.
Daddy sighed. “We started planning this when I was in Indonesia, and I didn’t want to upset you if the deal fell through. Mitchell approached me yesterday with a generous offer, and it was the smart thing to do.”
Mom grumbled as she attempted to sleep off the daiquiris which had been light on the strawberries and heavy on the rum.
“No business in the car, Mackenza…” She readjusted her makeshift shawl turned pillow as the limo lurched to a sudden stop at an intersection. “And you promised no more business at all.”
“I promised you no business once we reached Hawaii,” Daddy said.
“Are we there yet?”<
br />
“You’ve waited forty years, darling…you can wait another four hours for the flight.” He winked at her. “Then, I promise. Just you and me, the ocean, and endless bottles of wine.”
Mom peeked at me, her hazelnut eyes clearer than her slurred words would admit. “If you think you can walk away from the company and leave your daughter to manage this mess on her own, you’re not the man I married.”
“That’s the beauty of it,” Daddy said. “Kenza won’t be on her own. She’ll have help.”
My temper flared as red as the passing blur of the stoplights.
“Cameron Mitchell is no help.” I ground my teeth. “He’s an aneurysm waiting to burst.”
Daddy cleared his throat as he closed the window between us and the driver.
“You don’t like Cameron?” he asked.
“There’s nothing to like.”
And I’d looked. I’d spent the entire party on my phone, learning everything and anything I could about Cameron Mitchell while still posing for pictures, speaking with the board, and apologizing for traumatizing the thousand-dollar koi fish in the gardens.
“What’s wrong with him?” Daddy laughed. “He’s a good sport—who knows how someone else might’ve reacted if they hopped in a pond.”
“He’s a monumental…” I hesitated. Daddy didn’t like it when I swore. If a proper businessperson couldn’t say anything nice, they simply bought out the competition. Unfortunately, we hadn’t had that sort of capital in a long time. “He’s a risk.”
“Now, why would you say that?”
“Just look at his resume.”
Daddy chuckled. “Just look at his bank account.”
Ugh.
Sure. The gorgeous, enigmatic billionaire had made oodles of money through prudent investing and an endless, almost tyrannical obsession with conquering any and every industry known to the western world.
“Just because he’s rich doesn’t mean he knows women’s shapewear,” I said.
“Then look beyond the zeros and realize where he’s earned that money. He’s an excellent leader—a very shrewd and accomplished businessman who, within the span of a year and a half, absolutely redefined women’s lingerie. He’s created an empire of luxury that has revolutionized this industry.”
“By selling thongs.”
“And selling them well.”
Daddy knew better than to offer me alcohol. He reached into a little glass container illuminated by the limo’s mini-bar and ruffled through the pink and gold wrappers. I caught the offered strawberry sweet, but it’d take more than one candy to placate me. He handed over the entire dish.
I broke a piece of candy between my molars with a satisfying crunch.
“And he’s the one you want to be our CEO?” I asked.
“I realize you’ve been looking forward to helping with the company. But you’re too young. Inexperienced. You’ve only been out of college for two years, and you’ve been working exclusively with our design team in a completely different city. You’re an artist, not an executive.”
Since when did that matter?
“I know this company backwards and forwards, Daddy.”
He wagged a finger. “No. You know the product. But you don’t know the board. How to secure investors. How to manage our debt or release funds for general business. How to read profit and loss statements. How to make the hard decisions—when it’s time to let an employee go, to end a clothing line…or when it’s in our best interests to merge with a larger corporation that can supply us with the money we need to survive.”
“That’s what we hire people to do,” I said. “I could…have an assistant. A vice-president. Anyone could guide me and offer advice.”
“Just be glad that you’re not the one forced to make these difficult decisions,” he said. “One day you will lead the company, but you’ve gotta learn the ropes before you can climb them. And Cameron will be an effective teacher.”
“I doubt that.”
“He’s an incredibly astute businessman, Kenza. A self-made billionaire, and he’s only thirty-five. He’s got good instincts for these sorts of deals.”
“But what can Cameron Mitchell teach us about our own company?” I crinkled the candy wrapper in my hand, taking delight in ripping it right down the middle. “He’s already ruined everything.”
“How?”
Was he blind? “The lingerie?”
Daddy grimaced. “You…didn’t like it?”
Mom grumbled in her sleep. “I told you she wouldn’t, darling.”
“We are not lingerie,” I said. “We’re sensible clothing for sensible women. What will our current clientele think?”
“Kenza…we don’t have many current clientele anymore. The lingerie will be one of the few items which might help us profit again. We must innovate. We can’t rely on our name forever.”
That was ridiculous. “Of course, we can. People know what to expect from Maxwell Intimates. We can’t abandon our current customer base just so a playboy billionaire can chase a couple extra dollars tucked into some model’s g-string.”
Daddy’s voice hardened. “The money is gone.”
“We can make a few sacrifices.”
It was the one argument Daddy refused to tolerate. “Absolutely not. I want the best for you, sweet-pea. And I haven’t been able to do it. I wanted to send you to the best schools, but the company needed the infusion of cash. I wanted you to apprentice with the world’s greatest designers, but I needed you to start with us right out of school. And I wanted to hand the leadership over to you once you had learned how to manage the company…but with my health the way it is…” He sighed. “Let me do this for you. Let me give Maxwell Intimates the best possible chance for success so that, one day, I can finally give you something I promised.”
Nothing like pouting in a pond-sullied dress that would ruin the interior of the rented limo. Daddy had always taken a company sedan, but nothing fancy. Nothing frivolous. The one day he’d spent the money on the limo, and he wouldn’t even get his deposit back once they finished picking fish food out of the leather creases.
He’d wanted so much for me—the same luxury and privileges his father had given him. But managing a successful company in this day and age was tough, and I feared he’d never overcome the guilt of selling our home and pulling me from private school.
But this…
This wasn’t the way forward.
“I started researching him, Daddy,” I said. “He’s a billionaire vagabond. He’s been in fashion for less than two years. Before that it was cars. And before that restaurants. He’s dabbled in oil. Supposedly started in software. But who knows. He never remains in any industry for very long, and he stays with individual companies for even less time.”
“Of course,” Daddy said. “He’s a venture capitalist. He seeks out potentially lucrative companies, invests his money, and, within a few short quarters, everyone turns a profit.”
Not before selling their souls. “And that’s what you want? Some stranger hacking and slashing through our budgets so that we can trick the Board into thinking that we’re profitable?”
“When Cameron takes control, he will make this company better than it was before. I guarantee it.” Daddy’s smile grew. “I am surprised though.”
“Why?”
“I thought you’d admire this man. I knew he’d make a good CEO…but I had hoped he’d make a better husband.”
The second candy was a mistake.
The strawberry orb lodged in my throat. I coughed. Panicked. Threw back Daddy’s bourbon and instantly regretted drowning in the bitter burn of one-hundred-year-old whiskey.
Daddy always looked out for me though. One good slap between my shoulder blades and the candy shot across the limo and plinked into Mom’s glass of wine.
She didn’t even open her eyes. “Don’t choke, Mackenza. It isn’t ladylike.”
Neither was yelling so loud the limo nearly veered into a corner hot dog vendor.
Daddy chuckled.
I did not.
“Aw, come on,” he said. “He’s a good-looking fella. Single. He doesn’t have a good reputation with women, but all he needs is to meet the right one to settle him down…and not toss him into a koi pond.”
I should’ve let the fish eat him. “Absolutely not.”
Daddy’s bushy eyebrows wiggled, those caterpillars dueling. “He’s not your type?”
“I don’t date jerks.”
“Maybe you didn’t give him a chance.”
“He pulled me into the pond!”
“I heard you pushed him first.”
“Lies and slander.”
I crossed my arms and sunk deeper into my seat, puffing a breath to scatter my now unreasonable hair out of my face. The tight ringlets had reappeared. It’d take hours to straighten it again.
Daddy awkwardly shifted, rubbing his palms over his knees. “What are you waiting for, Kenza? You can’t spend your life designing girdles forever. And with us moving out to Hawaii…” His voice trailed off. “I don’t want you to be alone.”
Which was patently ridiculous.
“Daddy, I’m not going to be alone. I plan on finding the right man.”
Mom snorted in her sleep. Daddy was less subtle.
“That elusive right man.” He poured himself more whiskey and snickered into his tumbler. “I’ve found many a right man for you, but none of them seem to be up to your standards.”
This again?
Just because Daddy found Mom right out of school didn’t mean I had to fall in love with the first man who could grope me and recognize if my shirt was made of cotton or a polyester blend.
I sighed. “Is it so much to expect that a man be handsome, educated, compassionate, athletic, sensitive, business-orientated, fashionable, adventurous, kind, and an opera fan?”
Daddy hooted. “Keep pulling adjectives out of your hat—maybe one day, you’ll pull out a man who matches them.”