The next few days were a whirlwind of activity, and frankly, Arlie was grateful for the distraction. Her arrival in the vast convention hall was like a metaphor for what her insides currently felt like. Cavernous, scooped out, full of empty echoes.
Samuel had successfully avoided her entirely since he’d fled from her suite like he was being pursued by a pack of wild dogs.
Not that she could blame him. What had happened between them was disastrous in every way, particularly in light of his revelation about company romances.
But then, Samuel had made it abundantly clear that their having a romance was nowhere in the cards. One life-changing night of the best sex she’d ever had, yes.
Any kind of lasting connection, forget about it.
She hadn’t given herself much time to think about it. Thinking seemed like an extremely dangerous thing to do right now. Her meeting with Taegan was scheduled for this evening, and Arlie intended to disappoint.
And then there was the matter of Mason.
With Samuel conspicuously absent at all the Kane Foods’ meetings and mixers, she’d found herself chatting with Samuel’s carefree twin instead. At each and every event, he’d been nothing but warm, attentive, and ridiculously charming.
Fun. Light and playful.
Everything his brother was not.
At last night’s dinner, he’d offered to come early to keep her company at the booth this morning, where she was tasked with personally curating the displays of Kane Foods’ staggeringly diverse offerings.
She’d been intensely focused, pawing through an entire box of high-fiber cereal to find a handful of perfect flakes, when Mason arrived, paper coffee cups in hand.
“Sustenance,” he said, offering her an easy smile.
Arlie set down her pair of tweezers and gratefully took a cup. Lifting it to her lips, she was surprised when the familiar aroma of her favorite vanilla-cinnamon latte drifted upward. She looked up at Mason. “How did you know?”
He grinned at her, taking a sip from his own cup. “As much as I would love to take credit, I texted Charlotte.”
“Ah,” Arlie said, everything making much more sense. “Charlotte is kind of amazing.”
“She definitely is.” Popping the white lid from his cup, Mason blew the column of steam away from the liquid.
“And kind of a knockout,” Arlie added, stealing a covert glance at him.
“I suppose,” he said, shrugging. “If you like that whole naughty librarian kind of thing.”
“Do you?” She hadn’t meant to ask this question. But some irritatingly hopeful part of her had to know if there was a chance that Charlotte’s ridiculously obvious crush on Mason Kane had any hope of being reciprocated.
“Miss Banks,” Mason said, mimicking Samuel’s stiff formality with alarming precision, “I’m not sure that’s an entirely work-appropriate question.”
“Since when has that mattered to you?” Arlie aimed her best “we’re all friends here” conspiratorial smile at him.
“A good point well made, Miss Banks.” He took another sip, glancing around them as if he feared the CIA might be watching. And maybe they were. Arlie wouldn’t put it past Parker Kane. “Charlotte is incredibly capable, obviously lovely, and totally off limits.”
“You forgot completely enamored with you.”
Shit.
She hadn’t meant to say that either.
But the abrupt shift in Mason’s features made it entirely worthwhile. He didn’t seem like a man easily surprised, but this right here was a complete and total revelation.
“Charlotte?” he asked, handsome features an unconvincing mask of feigned surprise. “What makes you think that?”
The fact that he wanted to know spoke volumes. In Arlie’s experience, people only asked this question when they hoped the answer was true.
“Please,” Arlie said. “She can barely look at you.”
“Since when was that an indicator of interest?” Mason swirled the contents of his cup.
“Since shy girls landed on the planet,” Arlie said.
Another dazzling grin. “I never would have guessed.”
“Would you have guessed that she writes romance novels?”
Shit.
Arlie had been sworn to secrecy, and she was flagrantly dishonoring the pact. She wasn’t sure exactly which part of her was hoping for a happy ending for Charlotte when her own was completely out of reach.
“Romance novels?” Mason asked, his eyes keen with interest.
“Yup,” Arlie nodded. “Exceptionally well-written. And very...passionate.”
Mason’s knuckles went white as a fish belly as he lifted the coffee to his mouth. “Speaking of passionate, how was he?”
Arlie coughed, grateful she’d swallowed before latte foam could spray from her lips. “How was who?”
“Paul Martine.” Mason slouched against one of the towering walls of the twenty-foot-tall display. “My spies tell me he’s notoriously temperamental.”
Relief swept like a cool breeze across Arlie’s stinging conscience.
“Well, he didn’t disappoint. But I think his assistant is going to need some serious therapy.”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t be there. I had a last-minute emergency to take care of.” A shadow passed over Mason’s features, gone as quickly as it had arrived.
“Not a big deal.” Arlie shrugged. “Samuel stepped in.”
“That sounds like him,” Mason smirked. “How did you like Willow Creek Villa?”
“Pretty amazing,” Arlie said. “Only your father seemed surprised to see me there.”
“And by surprised, I’m guessing you mean he reacted like he’d just found a rat in his vichyssoise?”
Arlie blinked up at him. She hadn’t expected that Mason was at all familiar with this side of his father, as much as she’d watched him lavished with attention.
“Accurate description,” she admitted.
“You can’t let that bother you. Since Mom died, it’s like he wants to personally snuff out every bit of joy in the world.”
“I don’t remember him being especially pleasant before that.”
“He wasn’t,” Mason said, looking as thoughtful as Arlie had ever seen him. “Forgive the trite metaphor from my favorite subject, but they were like a mixed drink. Mom was the soda and Dad was the scotch. She made him lighter, palatable. Smoothed his sharp edges.”
Arlie understood more about that dynamic than she would have liked.
“Speaking of,” Mason looked furtively around, withdrawing a flask from his pocket. He lifted it to his lips then offered it to Arlie.
If Samuel was a lost boy, then Mason was Peter Pan.
“It’s two thirty in the afternoon,” she said, glancing down at her phone. Only to find a new message from Taegan.
You better have something good for me.
“Conference rules,” Mason said. “Some of the attendees come from India and Japan. It’s already tomorrow there.”
Not wanting to compromise their growing bond, Arlie took the flask and brought it to her lips for a quick tug.
Bourbon.
And good bourbon at that. It scalded a smooth, hot channel of brightness all the way to her empty stomach, suffusing her limbs with a pleasant, warm heaviness. She handed the flask back to him just as her phone began to ring in her pocket.
Fearing it was Taegan, she reached down to retrieve it, her stomach flipping when she read the name on the screen.
“It’s Kassidy,” she said to Mason, searching for a spark of recognition. “My best friend from high school?”
Without a word, Mason swiped the phone from her and answered, pressing the icon to set it on speaker. “If it isn’t Kassidy the brain Nichols.” He paused, lifting a mischievous eyebrow. “I’m corrupting your friend.”
There was a beat of silence on Kassidy’s end, through which Arlie could actually feel her friend sifting her mind’s considerable database.
“I’ve been trying to do that for years, Mason Kane,” Kassidy said. Arlie thought she detected a hint of flirtation in her tone. “She need bail money yet?”
“Not yet,” Mason said, “but the day is young. Congratulations on your boutique, by the way. Marlowe tells me there’s a line of desperate Philadelphia housewives down the block on any given Tuesday.”
“What Botox and a butt lift won’t give them, I will.”
“Now there’s ad-worthy copy right there. Let me know if you’re ever in the market. Kane Foods needs more smart people.” Mason winked at Arlie.
“Duly noted.” Kassidy gave him a polite laugh. “Say, is Miss Arlington Banks at liberty to speak?”
“She is and she shall.” Taking the phone off speaker, Mason handed it over to her.
With an apologetic smile, Arlie held up her finger to indicate she’d only be a moment. She stepped away from the booth so she could have a degree of privacy.
“Hey, there,” Arlie said, trying to sound like a woman who definitely hadn’t had illicit sex with one of the Kanes recently.
“You kissed him, didn’t you?” The accusation stung in Arlie’s ear.
“Absolutely not. Mason and I—”
“Not Mason,” Kassidy said. “Samuel.”
How did she know these things? “Technically, he kissed me.”
“What else?” Kassidy asked.
“What do you mean?”
“What else did you do?”
Arlie could feel the first fine beads of sweat springing out on her forehead. Suddenly she was transported back to the principal’s office, the cracked, faux-leather bench biting into the backs of her thighs.
“I...well...” she sputtered, her cheeks growing hot and red.
“Jesus tailgating Christ. You slept with him?”
“Again, technically—”
“Are you actively out of your goddamned mind?”
“Look, it’s not like I planned on this happening. I ran into Parker Kane the other morning and he was a complete ass to me. Then Mason didn’t show at the photo shoot and Samuel stepped in and the photographer wanted to use us as models and he was holding me and it brought back us kissing on the yacht and—”
“You kissed Samuel on the yacht five days ago and you said nothing to me?” Kassidy’s voice had taken on the steely edge that Arlie recognized as part anger and part calculation. “Since when did you keep secrets from me?”
Guilt crushed Arlie’s chest.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t even know who I am anymore.” Her throat tightened as tears thickened her voice, stinging in her eyes. Glancing around the corner, she saw Mason looking in her direction. Arms folded, an expression of concern on his untroubled features.
“You’re my best friend.” These words were a rescue buoy, a life raft, tossed out by the one person in the world who had once known everything about her. “You’ve been through a river of bullshit lately and you’re going to come out clean on the other side.”
Arlie chuckled through her tears in spite of herself. “You stole that from Shawshank Redemption.”
“Is there someone better than Morgan Freeman to humanize a desperate situation?”
“Thank you for making a joke.” Sniffing, Arlie dabbed at the corners of her eyes. “I really am lucky to have you in my life.”
Kassidy made a rude noise. “Save that sentimental crap. When you get back, I want details. Length. Girth. Technique. And next time—”
“There will be no next time.” As she said it, the memory of Samuel’s cool, impenetrable visage floated through her mind. How stupidly hopeful she had been, waking to find him in her bed. Believing it had meant as much to him as it had to her. How quickly and effectively he’d made it clear that she’d been wrong.
“Mmm-hmm.”
“Really, Kassidy. This could be very bad for both of us. In a lot of ways.”
“Bad is what makes it good.”
God, was she right about that.
“Look,” Arlie said. “I need to get back to the booth.”
“Grope Mason for me.”
“Somehow I think that would only serve to further complicate my current situation.” Arlie nodded at a passing conference attendee who seemed overly interested in her tear-stained face.
“You seem to like complicated.”
It really was irritating, this ability of Kassidy’s to be right all the damn time.
“I better go,” Arlie said. “I love you.”
“Love you too.”
Arlie disconnected, holding the phone against her chest, trying without much success to return her heartbeat to normal speed.
“Everything okay?” Mason appeared at her elbow, flask in hand, eyes curious.
“Is anything ever really okay?” she asked.
Mason lifted the flask in her direction. An inexplicable tide of gratitude swept through her as she accepted it and took a greedy pull.
“Completely essential as part of convention survival,” he said. “At least until cocktail hour.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“As long as higher calculus isn’t involved.” Retrieving the flask, Mason took a nip as well.
Arlie paused, knowing her question came from a place inside her she didn’t especially like. A hurt, aching need for validation born directly of Samuel’s stinging rejection.
“What was it you liked about me in high school?”
Watching Mason’s smile unfold was a little like witnessing a sunrise.
He tucked the flask back in his pocket and leaned against the wall next to her. There was something so incredibly surreal about looking at a face so like Samuel’s, and so completely different.
“You’re going to force me to admit something very unflattering about myself.”
“I couldn’t imagine that such a thing exists.” The bourbon had made Arlie bold and more relaxed than she could remember in a very long time.
“Our father didn’t believe in anything as frivolous as an allowance. So if you didn’t work, you didn’t have money to spend.”
“Sounds like him,” Arlie said, trying to keep the bitterness from creeping into her voice.
“Well, Samuel always worked and was unwise enough to keep part of his stash in his sock drawer. Enterprising lad that I was, I would make occasional raids to help myself to his resources.”
“You stole?”
“I like to think of it as self-authorized loans.” Mason rewarded her with a mischievous sideways grin. “Anyway, it was on one of my covert entrepreneurial excursions that I happened to discover a sonnet written to a certain someone.” A subtle lift of his eyebrow and incline of his head let her know in no uncertain terms who that someone was.
Her.
Samuel had written a sonnet to her.
“And thus we come to the unflattering part. I knew damn well Samuel wouldn’t summon the stones to make a go for you, but thought that maybe if I did, he might be galvanized into action. Given his lifelong dislike for my general person.”
“Let me get this straight. You were never really interested in me?”
“I mean, of course I was. I was a teenage boy and you were an attractive and available female. But no, our being an item wasn’t my primary motive.”
She wasn’t sure if it was the afternoon booze or the swirling array of flashing lights and colorful flags of the booths around them, but Arlie began to feel a little dizzy.
Several portions of her personal history had now been rewritten over the past couple weeks.
“Well,” Arlie said, leaning back against the wall in a mirror of Mason’s posture. “That’s a surprise.”
“I’m full of them.” He glanced out into the maze of booths.
“Which is why I was never quite able to figure out why you’re your father’s favorite. No offense.”
“None taken.” Mason was quiet for a long time before he continued.
“When someone looks up to you, wants to be like you, at some point, you actually have to decide whether that admiration is deserved.
“For my father, I think it was easier to make Samuel feel like he didn’t measure up than to admit that deep down, my father knows he isn’t the kind of man anyone should try to emulate.”
Arlie let this sink in, feeling a twinge of pity for the boy Samuel had been. For the pain and disappointment he must have endured.
“As to my being the favorite,” Mason continued, “I don’t think I actually am.”
“I’m going to need you to elaborate on that,” she said.
“He doesn’t praise me because he truly thinks I’ve earned it. Or defend me because he really approves of my behavior.”
“Then why does he?” Arlie asked.
“Because it’s easy. When he looks at me, he doesn’t see a better version of himself. A man he wanted to be and isn’t.” This was not at all how Arlie had imagined this conversation going. “Have you ever talked about this with Samuel?”
Mason laughed. “What are the chances that Samuel would be interested in my assessment of his relationship with our father? Or with anyone, for that matter?”
“I don’t know,” Arlie mused. “You’re the closest thing to a mirror he has. And for what it’s worth, you’re a lot more insightful than you like to let on.”
The brightness of his countenance dimmed incrementally. “Sometimes it’s easier to let people believe that they know you.”
“I used to think I knew Samuel,” Arlie said, unsure why she was dumping all of this in his lap. “Apparently I was incorrect.”
“What makes you say that?” Mason nodded to a group of ever-seductive booth babes that various companies employed for the purpose of luring onlookers.
“Millhaven Foods.” Ever since Taegan had dripped this particular poison into her ear, Arlie couldn’t evict the story from her head.
“Who told you about that?” Mason asked.
She briefly debated giving him the full rundown of everything that had transpired between her and Taegan, but the very idea of it made her want to crawl under her bed. “That’s not especially important.”
“Did this person also tell you that Samuel personally paid for the college funds of all four Millhaven siblings out of his own pocket?” Mason asked.
Arlie blinked at him, this information nearly rocking her off her sensible ballet flats. “No, they didn’t happen to mention that.”
Mason rounded the corner and strolled back toward the area where she’d been diligently sorting through her cereal earlier. “Did they tell you he established a Millhaven scholarship at Harvard?”
“Also no.”
“That’s because Samuel went to great lengths to keep his efforts secret after he learned exactly what our father’s plans for the company were.” Mason retrieved his coffee cup and lifted it to his lips.
Arlie wasn’t certain how to feel about this information. After what had transpired between them in the hotel room, she had reminded herself of this every time she began to feel the stirrings of regret. A longing for that conversation to have ended differently.
Making a monster of him had been her best hope at survival.
And now this.
“I appreciate your sense of familial loyalty, but if this is some sort of misguided bid to redeem your brother, I’m afraid it isn’t going to work.” Lifting her tweezers from the silky gray surface of the counter, Arlie examined the flakes in her keep pile, finding one the proper shape and shade to add to the bowl.
“I wasn’t aware he needed redeeming.”
“Let’s just say that pretty much every single encounter I’ve had with Samuel has ended badly.” Technically not a lie. Not the complete truth either.
“Do you think there’s any chance that he might still have feelings for you?”
Mason’s words were like a sucker punch to the gut. And it stung to know that she wished the answer was yes. “Would it matter if he did? I was under the impression that your father vehemently disapproved of company romances.”
A sly smile curled up the corners of Mason’s mouth. “So you’re saying that if my father weren’t against company romances, this information would matter?”
Arlie’s cheeks flooded with stinging heat. Tricky bastard.
“No,” she said. “I’ll admit to having a teenage infatuation once upon a time, but—”
Mason laughed. A sound so rich, warm and contagious that she had to fight to keep a straight face. “Watching you invent excuses to walk past the library was my actual hobby for three years.”
“Look, a lot has changed since then.” Which was the understatement of the century.
“How about this?” he said, taking another slurp from his white cup. “Samuel’s been a cold, bossy dick to you ever since you started. Isn’t there even the smallest part of you that wants to see how he would react if he thought that you and I were actually an item?”
Oh, the part of her wasn’t small.
“Maybe,” she admitted.
“Okay,” he said. “Hear me out. My brilliant teenage plan had one fatal flaw.”
“And that would be?” Arlie asked.
“You weren’t participating.”
“I don’t follow.” She paused, the pointy silver tips of her tweezers hovering above the cereal pile. She hadn’t expected this question.
“As long as he didn’t think you were interested in me, he had no reason to intervene.” Mason walked around the long, rectangular high-top table where they’d later be plying potential customers and investors with free booze and alluringly packaged samples. “Should he get the idea that you might return my affections...” He trailed off.
Mason’s enthusiasm was nothing if not infectious. “How would you propose we do that?”
Glancing stealthily from side to side, he stepped close to her, his finger warm beneath her chin as he tilted her face up to his.
She had to admit, for the briefest of moments, she could comprehend Charlotte’s fascination. Mason was an unreasonably attractive human. Extravagantly indulgent. Fireworks in February. Flash and dazzle and blindingly bright solar flares.
Mason ran a thumb over his lips. “We pretend.”
“And what would the end goal be for this particular game of pretend?” she asked, butterflies slam-dancing in her stomach.
“One of two things is going to happen. A, Samuel cops to the fact that he’s had a thing for you since we were kids. Or B, we revenge-annoy the ever-loving shit out of him. Either way, sounds like a good time to me.” He wiggled his eyebrows lasciviously.
Arlie wasn’t especially proud to admit that her preferred outcome would be C, all of the above.
“Mason Kane.” She held out her hand for him to shake. “You have a deal.”
Instead, he threaded his fingers through hers and swung her hand by his side as he would if they were happy couple, out for a walk.
Arlie looked at him, eyebrow raised in question.
“Practice makes perfect,” he said.
“That’s such a Samuel thing to say.” A subtle pang of sadness constricted Arlie’s chest.
“Our supplier appreciation event at Fort Funston is this evening. Any chance you’d like to come help me navigate those treacherous sand dunes?”
“I’d be delighted,” Arlie said, surprised to realize that this was true.