Eight

Arlie totally hated this.

All this luxury. All this opulence.

Or so she tried to convince herself while enveloped in what she could only assume were twenty thousand count Egyptian cotton sheets that felt like melted butter on her freshly shaved legs.

It had begun the evening before with the first-class flight arranged by Charlotte Westbrook. Despite an apologetic text from Mason that he’d have to catch a later flight, a suited and booted chauffer bearing a miniature whiteboard with KANE neatly printed on it had been there to collect her. The final coup had been the butler who’d met her at the Kanes’ personal quarters at Willow Creek Winery and escorted her to a room overlooking the sloped terraces of vineyards carved into the sprawling green hillside. It had a four-poster bed. A not-so-mini bar stocked with full-size bottles. A soaking tub the size of a small swimming pool.

Yep.

Definitely hated this.

She told herself that she missed the familiar comfort of her shoebox of an apartment overlooking an ally and a frequently overflowing dumpster. The patch of ceiling in the bathroom that was always mysteriously damp. The iron maiden of a closet.

As she had when she’d been little more than a girl wandering openmouthed through Fair Weather Hall, Arlie felt a familiar stab of wonder that this was how the Kanes lived every day.

Just as she had when her mother had begun working as their chef.

Their home had been nice enough. A neat suburban ranch that more than accommodated her, her mother and her father.

It had been reality. Screen door, backyard, seasonally decorated porch and all. The warm, happy place her family had returned to at the end of each day.

Happy, at least, where Arlie and her mother were concerned. An entirely different story had unraveled when her father came home from his long hours at the Midvale Steel plant.

It always started out okay.

Her mother cooking dinner for them long after the Kanes had already eaten, been bathed and tucked into bed.

A homey table spread for the three of them.

But as the night wore on and her father downed more and more beer, the conversation inevitably shifted to how what they were eating for dinner surely didn’t measure up to whatever her mother had fixed for “those goddamned Kanes.”

Arlie’s mother always did her best to diffuse his bitterness, assuring her father that she both disliked the Kanes and that her real life was here, with them.

As much as it pained her to say, Arlie had doubted this a time or two.

Because she herself had been to the Kanes’ estate and couldn’t imagine any reality where her mother would prefer the small suburban house ruled over by her father’s tempestuous moods.

And here she was as an adult, having the same conflicted thoughts. This only further served to foster a theory Arlie had held throughout the duration of her adult life. Home wasn’t a place. Home was a state of being. The place you grew up in also grew up in you, whether you were Arlie Banks or Samuel Kane.

Speaking of the Kanes, Arlie was set to meet Mason in the kitchen in exactly ninety minutes. With a sigh of regret, she peeled herself out of the downy layers of bedding and padded barefoot into the bathroom, turning on the multi-headed marble shower while longingly eyeing the bathtub.

If she made it through this day without a potentially career-ending mishap, she promised herself an hour-long soak with the lavender bath salts in the basket full of goodies perched on the side of the tub.

After a quick shower, she slid into the fluffy bathrobe hung on the gilded hook outside the shower door and seated herself at the vanity.

For no reason she could say, she spent a little extra time smoothing on her foundation and powder, sweeping on eye shadow, and lining her eyes with the taupe eyeliner that conjured the sable rings around her irises. She stopped when it came time to apply lipstick.

Brushing the tips of her fingers over her lips, she surrendered to a feeling of awe. Samuel’s mouth had been in the places she now touched. His tongue had stroked along the seam she now traced with the blade of her finger.

And how he had kissed her.

The control that governed every aspect of his life dissolving as something wild rose to the surface, threatening to drag her down, down into the inferno of unexpressed passion burning beneath his mannered calm.

Something in her had longed to answer that part of him. To meet it and stoke the flame until it engulfed them both. Consequences be damned.

Blowing out a frustrated breath, she selected a nude matte lipstick and slicked it over her lips.

To wardrobe.

On any normal shoot, she would have showed up in her favorite jeans, sneakers and a tank top. But something about Willow Creek inclined her toward polish.

She selected a simple black sleeveless shantung sheath. Formfitting, but not overtly attention-seeking. Sweeping her hair into a long, loosely romantic braid to keep it out of the way, she paused to examine herself in the full-length mirror.

She would do.

The screen on her phone lit up. She bent down to remove it from the charger and her stomach flipped when she saw the name on the screen.

Taegan.

Thumbing open the locked screen, she read the text.

Knowing that her iPhone would send Taegan a read receipt, Arlie typed out an equally brief reply.

And she had been.

She had, in her bag, a file she’d managed to pilfer from Charlotte’s desk and make copies of while she had been taking notes in a late meeting. It felt like the proverbial albatross, a heavy, rude thing slung around her neck, dragging her toward the earth.

Every time she glanced down at her bag, the same question immediately returned to her.

Was she really capable of doing this?

She hadn’t yet been able to answer that question for herself.

Taegan’s reply came swiftly.

Arlie’s scalp prickled as a fizz of adrenaline further sped up her erratic heart. Taegan not only knew Arlie would be at Supply Side West, she knew she’d come early to visit the vineyards.

As she stood in the well-appointed foyer of a room she had no real right to occupy, a very unattractive idea unfolded in Arlie’s mind.

Perhaps she wasn’t the only employee of Kane Foods Taegan Lynch had been grooming to her service.

Glancing down at her phone again, Arlie saw that she only had four minutes to make her way to the chef’s kitchen the concierge had pointed out during the tour last night.

Tucking the zip bag containing her tools of the trade under her arm, she deposited the brass room key and her cell phone into her pocket before sprinting off to meet Mason in the kitchen.

She got as far as the main hall when, rounding the corner, she collided with Parker Kane.

He made an exasperated sound, stepping back and dusting his ghost-gray suit jacket like he’d just been accosted by a soot-soiled street urchin. “Why don’t you watch where you’re going?” he thundered.

“I’m sorry,” she said, attempting to conjure a brightness and enthusiasm that seeing him had sucked out of her. “I’m afraid I was just in a bit of a hurry.”

Arlie forced herself to look him in the eye, remembering how she’d once been afraid Parker Kane’s gaze would turn her to stone.

Perhaps she hadn’t been entirely wrong.

His cold blue eyes bore into her, freezing her to the spot.

“I knew you had been invited to participate in the events, but I wasn’t aware you would be staying at the family quarters.” His features reflected the revulsion of a man addressing a cockroach.

Aware that an uncomfortable amount of time had passed, Arlie opened her mouth, horrified at the pathetic jumble of words tumbling past her lips like a bag of dropped apples.

“I... Mason said since we’d be doing the photo shoot here—”

“Photo shoot?” One silvery eyebrow rose. “I didn’t authorize a photo shoot.”

A fine sweat bloomed on her forehead, a single cold bead of moisture crawling down her ribs. She wasn’t just a deer in the headlights. She swallowed the stone in her throat, attempting to square her shoulders.

“Samuel said—”

“Of course.” Parker Kane’s jaw hardened, his lips forming a flat, disapproving line. “Samuel seems determined to undermine my authority on all matters. He failed to ask for authorization for the photo shoot just as he failed to ask for authorization in hiring you. Had I been offered my rightful opportunity, I would have declined on both counts.”

Arlie’s heart fell from her chest and landed in her guts with a sickening splat. At the same time, a small blue flame of rage flickered at the base of her skull, fanned by years of simmering resentment. “Why is that?”

The Kane patriarch waited as a white-jacketed staff member pushed a tray of sliver-domed dishes past. “Your reputation precedes you, Miss Banks.”

For one terrifying moment, Arlie considered the possibility that, with his considerable knowledge and influence, Parker Kane had somehow learned of the circumstances of her departure from Gastronomie.

“I’m not sure what you mean.” A rusty fishhook cast into the ocean of her doubt.

“I’m sure you don’t.” He inclined his head, the ambient lighting overhead glinting off the frames of his designer glasses. “It suffices to say, like mother, like daughter.”

Arlie didn’t know what bothered her more. That he had the nerve to say this to her directly, or that he was as right about her as he had been wrong about her mother.

Yet even in the wake of her outrage, a warm tide of relief eased her shoulders away from her ears.

He didn’t know the half of it.

“As pleasant as this conversation has been,” Arlie said, glancing at her phone, “I’m late for the unauthorized photo shoot. If you’ll excuse me.” She pushed past him, doing her best to mimic the give-no-shits hauteur she’d frequently seen her best friend employ.

Legs shaking, she walked across the main hall with its cathedral ceiling and plush Persian carpets, ducking down the hallway bedecked with Dutch Masters with their gilded milkmaids and luridly sexy still lifes of delicate tulips and glossy tumbling fruit.

Had she known exactly what would be waiting for her in the kitchen, she might have paused for a moment to practice some deep breathing.

Paul Martine, the photographer whose images she had worshipped since she was old enough to reach the lifestyle rack in her local bookstore, stood squinting behind a camera anchored on a tripod.

He uttered a directive in rapid French to the black-clad assistant hovering by his elbow. She hurried off just as Paul peeked over the camera, noting Arlie’s arrival.

“You are the food stylist?”

Arlie nodded, her mouth suddenly dry. “Yes,” she said, shifting the strap of her tool case on her shoulder. “I’m Arlie Banks.”

She held out her clammy hand, wishing like hell she’d paused outside the room to swipe it on her dress before entering the kitchen.

Paul shook it briskly, decisively, as his eyes the color of aged tobacco scanned the kitchen.

“But where is Mason Kane? I was told he was to be directing this shoot, oui?”

“Oui,” Arlie echoed. “That was my understanding as well.”

As quickly as she was able, Arlie reviewed the details of their preproduction call. They were to shoot Willow Creek winery’s cabernet, chardonnay and relatively new claret. Ericka had signed off on food being present as an offset. The winery’s manager had been tasked with finding bottles with perfect labels and had agreed to source the appropriate glasses. Before boarding her plane, Arlie had put in calls to several artisan bakeries and a fromagerie all too eager to supply photogenic wedges of Gorgonzola and Brie for a shoot that had anything to do with the Kanes.

Mason had overseen all of this.

And now, no Mason.

Arlie dug her phone out of her pocket and checked to see if she’d received any messages.

She had.

A brief but very apologetic email from Mason.

“I’m afraid that Mason won’t be joining us,” Arlie said, part of her still not quite comprehending that she was actually talking to the Paul Martine.

“Merde!” Paul dug his hands into his thick crop of salt-and-pepper hair, and it somehow fell right back into place. He paced the length of the kitchen, the clack of his black ostrich-skin cowboy boots echoing in the cavernous space.

Having exactly one semester of college French, Arlie could make out the words light and tomorrow and cloudy hidden like Easter eggs among a florid cascade of elegant curses.

“Would you give me just a moment?” she asked.

Martine waved her away like he might a mosquito.

Pulling up the contacts on her cell phone, Arlie looked down at the name, and taking a deep breath, pressed the call button.

He answered after 1.5 rings.

“Samuel Kane,” he said.

As if he didn’t have her number saved in his phone.

As if he hadn’t wrapped his fingers around the back of her head and angled her neck so he could pillage her mouth less than forty-eight hours before.

“Hi. This is Arlie.”

Silence spiraled out between them.

“I’m terribly sorry to bother you. It’s just...I’m here with the photographer and I got an email from Mason and it seems he’s going to be unable to make it.”

“Fuck! I’ll be right there.”

The line went dead.

She told herself it was nervousness, not excitement, that had set a sudden swarm of butterflies loose in her middle.

Martine’s assistant returned with a hesitantly penitent smile and a steaming demitasse of espresso, which Paul took without looking.

“Mason’s brother, Samuel, is coming.” To Arlie, it sounded like an apology she wasn’t certain she owed. In her past life, neither the chief marketing officer nor the chief executive officer would have had anything to do with the photo shoot itself after their directives had been doled out. But then, the Kanes, or at least Samuel, seemed to have a far more hands-on relationship with the daily operations of their empire. His instructions had been as direct as they were odd. The photo shoot absolutely, positively, was not to start without Mason present.

She set her bag on the marble counter and began to unpack her tools.

Nitrile gloves to handle the glasses. A spray bottle. Glycerin to mix with water to create the effect of condensation for chilled white wine. A travel bottle of dish soap, should the red wine need assistance with the bubbles that often appeared when freshly poured. Wooden skewers, should the bubbles require encouragement to form attractive gatherings. Sheets of muslin, and white and black foam core boards for taming and sculpting the natural light that Ericka had been absolutely insistent upon in their preproduction meeting.

Arlie couldn’t ask for better windows.

Or a better room, for that matter.

The pure, gilded light of the rising sun poured in from floor-to-ceiling panes overlooking the stepped rows of meticulously attended vines.

On the other side of the kitchen, Arlie recognized the gleaming expanse of the black-lacquered, chrome-handled La Cornue Château Supreme oven. Half of her wanted to forget the shoot altogether and prostrate herself in front of it.

Samuel arrived a mere five minutes later, looking impossibly handsome and exceedingly irritated.

She wasn’t sure if it was the fact that he was on family turf or that she’d caught him on the fly, but Samuel had forgone his customary coat, wearing instead a crisp, deep blue shirt the color of the summer sky before a storm. The sleeves were rolled up to the elbow, revealing the sloping lengths of muscle on his forearms. Jeans were too much to hope for, Arlie knew, but the European-cut dark gray slacks he wore revealed the powerful topography of his legs just as well.

The temperature in the room seemed to rise by a few degrees when Samuel’s eyes found hers. It could have been her imagination, or wishful thinking, but she could have sworn his lips softened ever so slightly, the barest crinkle teasing the corners of his eyes.

Then as quickly as they had landed on her, they moved to Martine. Samuel almost looked relieved to have a direction to walk in that didn’t involve Arlie.

“Samuel Kane,” he said, holding out his hand.

Martine shook his hand briefly before dropping it with a sound of disgust.

“I come all the way from Paris on a red-eye flight and nothing is ready. Nothing!”

A hot flush crept into Arlie’s cheeks. Being made to look inept in front of Samuel was right up there with recreational flaying on her list of Fun Things to Do. “I’m not sure I understand,” she said. “The bottles are right there. And the food pairings we discussed—”

“Are useless without the models.”

Arlie blinked, aware that her face must have had an almost comical look of confusion. “Models? There were no models discussed in preproduction.”

Martine motioned to his assistant, who handed over a folded sheaf of papers. “It is right here. I received an email with the details.” He slapped it down on the marble counter.

Arlie reached for it, but Samuel got there first. He unfolded the papers and read, his expression inscrutable. With a grunt of disgust, he balled up the papers in his fist and shot them into the trash. “You’re just going to have to change your plans, Mr. Martine.”

Arlie elbowed Samuel, widening her eyes in an Are you out of your mind? look.

Famously temperamental, Paul Martine had been known to walk off set if the sparkling water on his extensive rider wasn’t the right temperature.

This was her first official project, and she badly needed this win.

“I think what Samuel was trying to say,” Arlie said, reaching for the paper bag containing bread from the local bakery, “is maybe we could just focus on the wine itself? I have some lovely rosemary focaccia here and I could make a charcuterie board. Those are trending on Instagram.”

Martine wasn’t listening to her.

His assistant had leaned in, whispering something in his ear that made his bushy eyebrows rise in surprise. They stepped back, both of them looking at her and Samuel not unlike prize truffles at the Alba World Auction.

“Yes,” Martine said decisively. “Yes, you will do. Powder.” He snapped his fingers and the assistant scurried off.

“I’m sorry,” Arlie said. “I’m not sure I understand.”

Martine ducked behind the tripod, swinging the lens in their direction before pressing the shutter release. Glancing down at the preview screen, he nodded brusquely. “Handsome husband, beautiful wife. Yes. Ça marche.”

“Oh,” Arlie said, realization finally crystallizing in her mind. “Oh, no. We’re not—”

“Out of the question,” Samuel echoed, sounding even more alarmed than Arlie. “Absolutely not.”

“Cecile,” Martine called. “We pack the equipment.”

“Wait!” Arlie shot Samuel a pleading look, hoping to telegraph exactly how much this chance meant to her.

Samuel sighed, his broad shoulders sinking with his exhale. “These are only to be used for international advertising campaigns, you understand? Foreign markets only.”

“Of course,” Arlie agreed hastily, exhilaration sparkling through her like champagne bubbles As she launched into action. In fifteen minutes, she’d set the scene. A table on the balcony outside the kitchen. Chardonnay for her, cabernet for him, a dropper full of distilled water helping to banish the inkiness and tease out the deep garnet tones. Between them, a rustic cutting board with architecturally arranged cheeses, a tumble of fat, glistening figs.

Arlie leaned in, adjusting one of the stems with a pair of tweezers.

“Enough,” Martine snapped. “We lose the light.”

Samuel sat with a Kleenex tucked into the collar of his shirt, Cecile patting his forehead with a blotting sponge.

Arlie had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling. She couldn’t remember if she’d ever seen a man look more miserable.

“Behind the table. Go.” Martine pointed toward the bistro table overlooking the sloping fields of the vineyard.

Cecile liberated the Kleenex and ushered them over, posing them like oversized dolls.

And there they were.

Face to face. Samuel’s arm around Arlie’s waist, his mouth hovering a mere five inches away, sunlight slanting through their glasses, held mid-toast.

Fighting to keep breath in her lungs, Arlie compelled herself to meet his gaze. “I think she missed a spot,” she said, hoping to puncture the tension thickening the air between them.

Samuel didn’t respond, didn’t smile. His breathing quickened, feathering her cheeks.

Dizzied by his nearness, the scent of his skin, Arlie anchored her fingers in the fabric of his shirt.

“Closer,” Martine demanded. “You are in love. You cannot wait to kiss her.”

Samuel dropped his head until she could feel the warmth of his lips mere centimeters away from hers. Her belly felt heavy, her heart pumping blood to the deepest parts of her as a sympathetic ache woke between her thighs.

God, she wanted this man. Wanted to feel his weight on her.

In her.

“Oui, oui, oui!” Martine snapped erratically. “Donne-moi plus!”

Give me more.

Oh, yes, please, God. Give me more. Give me everything.

Give me you.

Reckless, breathless, Arlie lifted her chin so her lips grazed Samuel’s. That first delirious taste of him. Coffee-laced, intoxicating.

Samuel pulled back abruptly. The startled look in his eyes mirrored her own shock.

The photo shoot. The photographer. The assistant.

What was she doing?

She didn’t know. And for the first time, she didn’t care. She just needed to be nearer to him. And if pretending to be a happy couple was the vehicle, she would drive it. All these months of fear and scarcity. Of doubt and despair. She wanted this one good thing. Selfishly and without apology.

His lips skimmed over hers in answer. Hesitant. A question.

This?

Us?

Then Parker Kane’s image rose up in Arlie’s memory, his look accusatory and knowing. Those cold blue eyes reducing her to the one fact she couldn’t outrun.

He wouldn’t want you if he knew.

A surge of nausea rocked her on unsteady feet. Feeling like she’d been punched in the stomach, Arlie backed away, leaving Samuel staring at her in confusion.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry. I need to go.”

Arlie grabbed her bag, shoving her tools into it before darting into the hallway, her phone and the incriminating message on it burning her like a hot coal.