But then, during most of the years of their acquaintance, Samuel had been little more than a walking hormone.
The woman seated across from Samuel could just about reduce any grown man to that state. Though her waist was every bit as slim as it had been when she’d sat in front of him in sophomore Shakespearian English, dangerous curves now filled out her tailored skirt and blouse.
Mason Kane was a dead man.
One look at Arlie, and Mason was sure to break their father’s only hard-and-fast corporate rule: No. Company. Romances.
“I can certainly see where creative difference could be an issue,” Samuel said, fully aware he’d hesitated a beat too long in his reply. “That shouldn’t be a problem here as I believe you already know our chief marketing officer. My brother, Mason Kane.”
“Is that so?” Surprise shaved a metric ton of worry from Arlie’s face, briefly revealing the ghost of the girl he had known.
“It is,” Samuel said. “In fact, he was supposed to join us for—”
“Well, if it isn’t Arlie Banks.”
Samuel glanced up sharply as Mason swept into his office trailing expensive aftershave and lame apologies in his wake.
“Don’t shoot.” Mason slung his Louis Vuitton briefcase down on the table and raised his hands in supplication. “I got stuck in traffic.”
Right, Samuel thought. If traffic was code for leggy blonde several years his junior.
“So glad you could grace us with your presence,” Samuel quipped, not bothering to rise from his chair.
With the entitlement of a man who took what he wanted without asking, Mason reached over to a chair at the four-top table and swung it closer to Arlie’s than Samuel would have liked. Shucking off his suit jacket, he tossed it haphazardly over the edge of the desk. “What’d I miss?”
Perhaps because Arlie had known them both since they were teenagers, Samuel wondered how they looked to her side by side now. They were identical twins, but in reality, the habits acquired in their thirty years on the planet had begun to sand away some of the similarities they had once shared.
Where Samuel’s chiseled physique was a testament to the precisely calibrated gym routine he pushed through for exactly sixty minutes every morning, Mason had the casual musculature of an avid pool party attendee and the glowing tan to match. The sun had also been at work on his brother’s hair, gilding casual waves always in need of a trim.
Arlie seemed to appreciate the effect, given how she furtively moistened her lips with the pointed pink tip of her tongue and recrossed her legs in Mason’s direction.
Samuel bit down on his irritation. This was, after all, exactly what he’d wanted.
Wasn’t it?
“How long has it been?” Mason asked, running a hand through his wind-tousled hair as he turned toward Arlie.
“Twelve years,” she answered, picking at an invisible thread on her skirt. “Give or take.”
Twelve years, five months, ten days. Not that Samuel had been counting. It just so happened that the last time they’d seen Arlie Banks was the night of their high school graduation, an occasion that loomed prominently in his memory.
It was the one and only time in his life that Samuel Kane had leveraged his identical twin status to pretend to be his brother.
For reasons he dare not think of while Arlie Banks sat across the desk from him.
“How is it that you don’t look a day over twenty?” Mason leaned forward, pretending to scrutinize Arlie’s features.
Samuel suppressed an eye roll. There was no math to calculate exactly how many times he’d seen his brother employ this particular line in restaurants, bars, executive receptions, the coat check line at Vetri Cucina.
“As charming as this stroll down memory lane is,” Samuel said, “perhaps we ought to ask Miss Banks questions that actually pertain to her qualifications?”
“Miss Banks?” Mason mimicked. “Awfully formal for someone who’s seen you naked.”
A less cerebral, self-possessed man might have leapt the desk to throttle his brother with his own Armani necktie. Samuel could have lived another thirty years without remembering that particular humiliation belonging to the evening of their sixteenth birthday.
Clearly, Arlie’s memories of that night were just as vivid, if the rabid roses blooming in her cheeks were any indication.
“Oh, lighten up, Sam-Mule,” Mason said, employing the much-loathed nickname he’d saddled Samuel with after a regrettable debate team trip during their freshman year. “We’re just catching up.”
Pressing the tip of his index finger to the corner of his twitching eye, Samuel cleared his throat and sat up straighter in his chair. “In any case, Kane Foods International has decided to branch out into the health and wellness industry and, as a part of that effort, we’ll need to employ a significantly different marketing angle than we’ve heretofore—”
“What my clearly anal retentive brother is attempting to say is that we need someone to make it look like we haven’t been mostly peddling liver-fattening confectionary since the mid 1800s.”
“Kane Foods has been responsible for supplying families with quality goods since 1834,” Samuel began.