Victory thought about this for a moment, frowning. “Well, why don’t they decide to make me a member?”
“Doesn’t happen like that,” Lyne said, smiling. “It’s a private club. No women and no minorities. You might not like it, but that’s the way it is.”
“Isn’t that illegal?”
“How?” Lyne asked nonchalantly, secure in his position. “It’s not an official organization. The government can’t regulate how you pick your friends.” He shrugged dismissively. “For these guys, women are people you fuck, not people you do business with.”
“That’s disgusting.”
“Is it?” he asked, raising his eyebrows. “That’s the way it is, though. When are women going to understand that you can’t change the way men think?” He stood up, rattling the ice cubes in his glass. “Speaking of which . . .” he said suggestively.
She emitted a short laugh. If he thought he was going to get her into bed after that little speech, he was wrong. She got up and went to the phone, and asked the butler for another round of vodka tonics.
“Seriously, Lyne,” she said. “What if I wanted to make a billion dollars? How would I do it?”
“Why would you want to make a billion dollars?” Lyne asked, raising his eyebrows in amusement.
“Why would anyone? Why would you?” Victory asked.
“Because it’s there,” he said passionately. “If you’re a man, it’s the ultimate thing you can do in life. It’s like being a king or a president. Except you don’t need to be born into it and you don’t need to be elected. You don’t have to convince a bunch of losers to like you enough to elect you.”
Victory laughed. “But you do, Lyne, you just said so yourself. You said the only way to become a billionaire was to get accepted into the club.”
“You’re right,” he said. “But we’re talking about maybe ten people. If you can’t get ten people to support you, you really are a loser.” He paused. “Can we go to bed now?”
“In a minute,” she said, studying his face. What would it be like to be Lyne Bennett? she wondered. To be so confident about your place in the world, to feel like you were entitled to take whatever you wanted . . . entitled to think as you pleased, to live in a world where no one ever imposed limits on what you might do and how much money you were allowed to make . . .
“Darling,” she said, walking past him and deliberately sitting down on a maroon silk-covered ottoman, “what if I wanted to make . . . well, not a billion dollars—obviously I’d never get into your club. But several million, say . . .”
“What have you got?” Lyne asked, beginning to take the discussion seriously. Lyne could always be diverted by talking about business, and sometimes Victory used this as a device to joggle him out of a sour mood. But this time, she really wanted the information.
“I’m not saying it couldn’t happen,” he said. “But it’s like Monopoly, exactly like it, which is something women never seem to understand. It’s a game. You need properties the other guys want—and I’m not talking about Mediterranean Avenue either. You need Park Place or Boardwalk . . . That’s what I’ve got, you see? In the cosmetics business, I own Park Place.”
“But you don’t actually own Belon Cosmetics, Lyne,” she pointed out. “Do you?”
“That’s semantics,” he said. “For all intents and purposes, I do. Not the whole thing, but a decent amount. Thirty percent. That also happens to be a controlling interest.”
“But you didn’t start the game owning Park Place,” Victory said, smiling. “You’ve said it yourself: You started with nothing. So you must have had Mediterranean Avenue once.”
“Well, I did,” he said, nodding. “I started with a distribution business years ago, when I was just out of college in Boston. I distributed a small line of cosmetics that some old lady cooked up in her kitchen. Of course, that old lady was Nana Remmenberger and that face powder became Remchild Cosmetics . . .”
Victory nodded eagerly. “But don’t you see, Lyne? I’ve already got my Mediterranean Avenue . . . my company, Victory Ford Couture . . .”
“No offense, but that’s small potatoes, Vic,” he said. “Fashion businesses like yours, well, they operate on a shoestring and go out of business just as fast.”
“But I’ve been in business for over twenty years.”
“Have you?” he said. “What are your profits? One, maybe two hundred thousand a year?”
“We made two million dollars last year.”
He looked at her with renewed interest. “That’s enough to get investors to bite. To get someone like me to put some cash behind you so you could increase production and sell more clothes.” He finished his drink and put his glass down on the side table as if he now really was going to go to bed. “Of course, the first thing I’d try to do, what any good businessman would do, is to make the best deal for himself and the worst possible deal for you. In other words, I’d try to hobble you,” he said, slipping his arm around her shoulders to lead her out of the room. “Basically, I’d want to take your name and take away all of your power. And it wouldn’t be because you were a woman. I’d do exactly the same thing to any man who came to me with that kind of proposition.”
Victory looked up at him and sighed. And that, she thought, was exactly why she’d never do business with him.
She squiggled out of his grasp and stopped in front of the small elevator that was across the landing from the staircase that led down to Lyne’s master bedroom suite. “But surely not everyone’s as cutthroat as you, Lyne,” she said teasingly. “There must be some way to get investors without giving up all my control.”
“ ’Course there is,” he said. “If you can make people think that the company is about to take off—make them think it’s an opportunity to make money without a lot of risk—then you call the shots.”