by Frost, Sosie
“I find both are admirable traits in a leader.”
“And I find it an irritating waste of my valuable time.”
I hadn’t invited her to sit, and yet Mackenza claimed her seat and crossed her legs—professional and modest. Too bad the hem had inched upward along her soft-as-silk leg and threatened to show a peek of a thigh. Even obscured by the wretched tights, hers was the loveliest leg I’d ever seen.
Christ. I’d spent my life for the past two years surrounded by models wearing little more than a stripe of ribbon held in place by God’s mercy. Since when did a slip of the knee get me excited?
“Do you realize that you have no credentials, no experience, and absolutely no idea how to effectively manage a company?” I asked.
She was confident.
I’d respect that until it became a problem.
“At least I care about the company.” She met my gaze with a huff. “I’ll do whatever I can to save it.”
“If that were true, you’d ask me about your responsibilities and duties for the day.”
“I can only imagine.”
I pushed away from the desk, searching the windows to find a view that didn’t include the rusted-out shell of former industry or crumbling infrastructure. Hard to find that in Ironfield, but at least I had a view of a dreary sky, so heavy with impending rain the clouds kissed the city’s mud-stained river.
“This is what I expect of you,” I said. “You will report to me each morning at 6:45.”
“The office doesn’t open until eight.”
“And you think a good CEO only works during office hours?”
Mackenza scoffed. “Good thing I’m the assistant.”
“If you want to learn, here’s your first lesson—the time before the office opens is the most important hour of the day. This is when I review my calls, answer unread emails, and prepare for meetings.”
She didn’t hesitate. “I’ll be here at six-thirty then.”
“Good.” It wasn’t. I couldn’t imagine dealing with the brat for any longer than the usual workday, but I’d faced hostile environments before. Hell, I’d just returned from the Arctic. If my balls hadn’t frozen in the sub-zero temperatures, then even she couldn’t break them. “Every morning, your first task will be to bring me a cup of coffee.”
“No.”
I hated the word, and yet, something told me I needed to prepare to hear it loudly and frequently.
“If that task is too difficult for you, you won’t like the other responsibilities.” I warned.
“Like what?” Mackenza rolled her eyes. “Adding creamer? Stirring in a spoonful of sugar?”
“I take my coffee black.”
“Good. I’ll just file that away under all the ways this information will save the company.”
“After you bring me coffee, you will ask me only one question—Mr. Mitchell, what can I do for you today?”
Mackenza held up a hand. “Wait. I know this one. I bet it’s your lunch order.”
“Or you can ask me, Mr. Mitchell, what can I do to make your day easier?”
“Pastrami on rye? Roast beef and cheddar?”
The girl knew how to irritate me. “If you truly valued the sacrifices I’m making for this company, the only words you’d ever speak would be, Mr. Mitchell, thank you so much for this valuable opportunity to learn how to operate a successful business.”
“You’re not serious…” She tilted her head. “You can’t possibly think you’re that amazing.”
“How many multi-billion-dollar companies have you saved?”
“I haven’t been given a chance.”
“And you’re worth that chance?”
“I’m worth more than fetching you a cup of coffee.”
I sighed. “It isn’t the coffee. It’s everything I expect from an assistant—taking my messages, picking up my dry cleaning, making appointments with my tailor, personal chef, masseuse. If you prove competent, I might allow you to make my travel arrangements.”
Mackenza wasn’t impressed. “Want me to chew your food for you too?”
“I can think of something far better for you to do with that mouth, and it’s a hell of a lot more productive than arguing.”
“Then you should see what I can do with my fist…or a well-placed kick.”
Insolent and uncivilized.
I’d been warned about buying the company. My accountants bickered about debts. My marketing team loathed the girdles. My consultants preoccupied themselves with the difficulties of redistributing the product line.
And yet, nobody warned me about how difficult my time at Maxwell Intimates would be when I was at the mercy of the office brat.
“Never thought you’d be interested in the rougher stuff,” I said.
Mackenza’s eyebrows wiggled as she became more emotional. They danced—lithe and gentle then furrowed and defiant.
“All it takes is the right man, Mr. Mitchell.”
Lucky me. “Something tells me that you usually get whatever it is that you want.”
“No. I work for what I want.” Mackenza tapped on my desk. “And I’m good at what I do.”
“You’ve yet to bring me a coffee. Don’t expect a raise.”
Her eyes trailed over my body. “I should say the same for you.”
She’d eroded the last of my patience.
“You flatter yourself,” I said.
“You want me.”
“There are many things I want you to do—the least of which is to subject me to any additional misery after hours.”
“Has the Panty King met his match?”
And there it was. The true conflict.
Mackenza didn’t care about coffee or answering phones.
She disliked the business model.
“You hate the lingerie that much?” I asked. “It’s only a little lace and satin. Nothing wrong with looking sexy—especially when the product isn’t meant to stay on for very long.”
She dug her fingernails into the arm of the chair. “Sex is not going to salvage this company.”
“Who said anything about salvaging?”
“What are you talking about?”
Wasn’t it obvious?
“I’m not trying to save this company,” I said. “I’m trying to sell it.”
The girl bolted up, nearly tripping on her over-turned chair.
“Sell it?” The words tumbled from her innocent lips.
Mackenza didn’t understand anything about business.
And, apparently, her father hadn’t told her all the dark and dirty secrets required to run a company.
No wonder she was so damned naïve.
“What did you think this merger was about?” I asked. “That’s what LACE Industries is. A vehicle for sale. I’ve bought out three small lingerie and women’s shapewear companies in order to create a new cohesive product line focusing on luxury lingerie. I absorbed the first company as they had tremendous operational efficiency with factories in Malaysia. I seized the second to eliminate competition and condense the market. And I merged Maxwell Intimates into the fold because, historically, this company has a reputation for extreme brand loyalty due to outstanding quality. Your business is the perfect launching point for a new luxury lingerie line in a market which, thanks to my intervention, has limited competition.”
“But we aren’t a lingerie company!”
“Had I not intervened, you wouldn’t be a company at all,” I said. “Before I invested my own capital, Maxwell Intimates had no available credit lines and was drowning in debt. The company loses money every month, and your father put a staggering amount of your family’s personal wealth into the general fund just to pay salaries.”
“Because my father cared.”
“Because your business was dying. Had he not agreed to the merger, the only thing you might’ve hoped for was bankruptcy and disgrace. Now, you have a chance. We build a lingerie empire and seduce investment and media presence, and we can sell LACE Industries to
the highest bidder for a fortune so vast it should be a sin.”
But Mackenza refused to submit.
I almost admired it.
“You’ve only worked in the fashion industry for two years,” she said. “You don’t understand it.”
It’d been years since the last time I’d been underestimated.
It was a refreshing sort of nostalgia.
“It doesn’t matter the industry,” I said. “Fashion. Software. Defense. Energy. They all run on money, and your company has none. Sex sells, and it will rally stock prices and generate interest in the brand. Maybe then we can sell before Maxwell Intimates destroys what’s left of your family fortune.” I smirked. “If nothing else, it might let you stay in that borrowed penthouse.”
“Don’t you dare.”
“With that sort of money, you could bounce from country club to country club, searching for some pompous jerk living off of Daddy’s trust fund with more money than brains who’d be willing to tolerate a brat like you.”
Her voice lowered to a hiss. “You have no idea who I am or what I want in this world.”
“And I don’t care.”
Wrong answer.
Mackenza could fit in my pocket, but she’d make my every step more uncomfortable than the last.
“I’ll make you care,” she said. “I will sacrifice everything for this company to succeed. I will work every hour of the day if it means we stay solvent.” She slammed a hand on her binder. “That’s why I spent all weekend creating this business plan—so we could have something other than lingerie to present to the board.”
I said nothing as I lifted the binder from the desk and dropped it into my garbage, ending the ridiculous charade.
It made me an enemy for life, but at least she was pretty.
What a damned waste.
The woman was vibrant. Gorgeous. Determined and intelligent.
I wanted her. More than I’d wanted any other woman in my life.
If only she wasn’t such a frustratingly obstinate brat.
I’d either throw her ass out in the street or roll with her between my sheets.
The choice was hers.
“This company is mine,” Mackenza said. “I know what it needs—not you.”
Her confidence pitted my stomach.
How could one woman possess such sincerity in her words but venom in her will?
“How are you so sure?” I asked. “Of yourself. Of what you want?”
“Because this is who I am.”
She answered immediately. Didn’t have to think. Didn’t need to make lists. Consult experts.
Fly to a remote cabin in the middle of the Rockies for a weekend of silence and solitude to find answers that never came to questions I was too chickenshit to ask.
“This is the only thing I want.” Mackenza gestured toward my chair. “Ever since I was a little girl, I knew I was meant to carry on my grandfather and father’s legacy. This company is rooted in my family’s past…and I’m its future.”
Christ.
She believed it.
She believed in herself, what she wanted, and where she belonged.
And, in my silence, I revealed too much.
A smile peeked from the corners of her mouth, twitching with delight.
“Don’t tell me the great Cameron Mitchell, Panty King, doesn’t understand that?”
I didn’t, but I wouldn’t admit it.
“I’ll make this easy for you, Mackenza.” I met her victorious gaze. “I am in charge of this company. If I decide to sell, it will happen. And I will not hear another word from you about it.”
I raised a hand, savoring the blessed moment of silence she bestowed upon me as she rallied her temper.
“If I ask for your opinion, you may give it,” I said. “Until then, you have only one priority this morning.”
“And what’s that?”
“You will leave this office and find the nearest Starbucks. You’ll give them my order and bring it back while it’s still piping hot. You will then set it on my desk…” I tapped the corner opposite my computer. “Right here. You will do this every morning. And, until I’m sure you can comprehend simple instructions, you will have no other business with the company. You will not be privy to any phone calls, emails, meetings, or decisions. Do you understand me?”
All too well.
Mackenza stood, meeting my gaze with all the subtlety of a grenade with a pulled pin.
I practically heard the ticking.
“I take my coffee black,” I said.
“All the easier to pour yourself.” Mackenza seethed with a silent rage. She strode to the door, sneering as she turned back to bless me with one last vision of her lovely curves before storming out of my life forever. “Get your own fucking coffee.”
5
Mackenza
Family loyalty made a girl do stupid things.
Pounding on Cameron Mitchell’s penthouse door in the middle of the night was one of them.
No matter what Cameron planned to do with Maxwell Intimates, nothing was worse than the heir-apparent tantruming because their temporary CEO was too arrogant to realize that he’d made a terrible mistake.
The company needed me more than ever…
And they needed me to tell The Panty King where to shove his coffee beans.
I rattled my fist against the door until my knuckles turned raw.
Then he answered.
Wearing only black silk pajama pants.
This was a bad idea.
Why did this man have to be so damned handsome all the time?
The pajama pants made him look like less of prick…while showing it off. The material hung low on his waist, revealing tightly packed muscle on muscle—from his perfectly chiseled abs to the pointed V leading down deeper beneath the silk.
The man had more money than God. Did he also need a Herculean body?
He towered over me in the doorway—a veritable wall of meat and masculinity. The intensity of his gaze prickled me with goose bumps.
I’d make this quick for my own sanity.
I shoved a box into the thickness of his chest and attempted to ignore how his pectorals twitched.
“What the hell is this?” Cameron asked.
I wouldn’t ask for an invitation into his home, but I wasn’t about to grovel in the middle of the hall.
“This is a Keurig Machine.” I deliberately averted my eyes from his hazelnut stare. Too little, too late. I’d already imagined how it’d feel to stroke my fingers against his hardened jaw and his shadow of a beard. “Push a button. It’ll make the coffee for you.”
Cameron possessed a captivating laugh he only used at my expense.
I pushed passed him and welcomed myself into his home. Anything to get away from the vision of his tensing muscles and bare chest.
“Are you that opposed to doing your job?” He shut the door behind me. I shouldn’t have watched. Even his back rippled with muscle. “It’s just a cup of coffee.”
I corrected him with a wag of my finger. “No. It’s demeaning.”
“I could think of far more demeaning things you could do.”
No doubt.
And if the universe cared about me at all, it’d banish those mysterious, sensual images from my mind.
I turned away, surveying Cameron’s penthouse.
What in the world was I doing here?
His home was every bit as extravagant, garish, and expensive as my own temporary apartment, except his lacked character. Sure, he was a man who enjoyed the finer things. Vintage wines lined his chilled glass cabinet in a tight stack. The art on his walls flashed splashes of burgundy between the stark Roman columns—a decoration that plagued the architecture of the entire building. A crystal chandelier bounced golden light over his entryway, dazzling the entrance with a diamond-like elegance.
Anything and everything he could find to boast of his wealth occupied his space.
Never knew a billionaire could be that ins
ecure about his own damned fortune.
Still, I could overlook arrogant tackiness. It was the rest of his penthouse that made no design sense.
Cameron overwhelmed his spaces with a variety of eclectic, personal artifacts from his varied and wild travels throughout the world. Newspaper articles. Pictures of him. Knickknacks and collections. His penthouse was a record of his every notable achievement, from his liaisons with celebrities, his business ventures with other billionaires, and mementos from his exploits in every field. Science. Computers. Defense. Business.
He’d framed his ice axe, goggles, and carabiners from his climb of Mount Everest. Next to it, the picture he took from the international space station. Beyond that, a scientific article which credited him with being a part of the expedition crew which had discovered a new type of tubular worm on the bottom of the ocean.
Aptly named the Mitchell Worm.
He’d turned his penthouse into a museum. Every available space had been converted into an art exhibit. Bokongo masks. Mayan pottery. Paintings and other artwork that had somehow escaped the Louvre.
This man had been everywhere, done everything, and conquered every industry.
But there he sat—drinking a beer straight out of the can while wearing his fancy pajama pants, studying a coffee table littered with his laptop and dozens of folders, papers, and glossy images from our catalog.
Why was he working so late?
And why did he care so much about Maxwell Industries that he’d sacrifice his entire night on work that could be done in the office?
He followed me as I surveyed his trinkets and art, though he dismissed the fantastic artifacts and accomplishments with an impatient glance.
Like he didn’t even care about his own monumental achievements.
Then why place them in such a prominent setting?
I hated how much this man intrigued me.
“What are you doing here, Mackenza?”
He had a thin scar slicing over the right side of his abdomen.
Strange. I couldn’t imagine a man as powerful as Cameron Mitchell suffering from appendicitis.
“You made such a wonderful exit from my office—storming out in defense of all those principles and values,” he said. “I’d hoped that’d be the end of it.”
Cameron had a raw form of charisma as annoying as a hangnail caught on a rough piece of fabric.