“Fine,” Samuel said.
“Miss Banks.”Mason bowed, imitating Samuel’s formality from her interview this morning.
They stood there facing each other after Mason’s departure, the twelve years that had elapsed evaporating as Samuel morphed into the helplessly tongue-tied teenager he had always been in her presence. He desperately tried to remind himself of the models he’d bedded, the companies he’d bought and sold, the billions he’d made.
All of it reduced to a heap of ash by her shy smile.
“You really don’t have to,” Arlie said preemptively. “Introduce me around, that is. I know that inviting me to come tonight was kind of Mason’s idea.”
“Yes,” he said. “It was.” After Samuel had suggested it to him.
“Those were investment bankers?”
Samuel watched as Arlie sipped from the champagne flute, the knuckles of her hand white, her lips flushed a vivid raspberry-red.
“Yes,” he answered, trying not to think of how she’d taste if he kissed her at that precise moment.
“And the negotiations are going well?” she asked.
“So far.”
“Are you seeking funding for the nutrition and wellness division expansion that you mentioned this morning?” The question was labored, her tone edged with conversational desperation.
Seeing Arlie’s eyes etched with discomfort he knew he’d caused, Samuel felt compelled to slam his head against the nearest state cabin door.
He wanted to tell her everything.
To tell her how, when they were teenagers, he would write out lists of conversation starters, only to find himself completely helpless every time she entered the room. To explain that, in college, he’d forced himself into every public speaking and debate class his heavily loaded schedule could handle, simply to learn how to speak to other humans. To practice making the vivid world in his head manifest through words. He wished he could show her how hard he had tried not to be as tongue-tied as he was now.
Instead, he settled for, “Yes.”
Arlie’s lush mouth flattened into an irritated line. Draining the last swallow of her champagne, she plunked it without ceremony on the empty tray of a passing waiter.
“Look,” she said. “I’m exceedingly grateful for the opportunity to work for Kane Foods, but it’s obvious you don’t particularly want me here tonight. I’m not particularly thrilled either, but here we are. We can either pretend to have a conversation, or I can excuse myself and get the hell off this boat. Which will it be?”
Anger darkened her irises from cobalt to sapphire, her cheeks flushing beneath the flaxen waves that Samuel longed to drag his fingers through.
“You can’t,” he said.
“Oh, believe me, I can.” Raising herself to the full height on heels Samuel had been imagining fastened behind his neck, Arlie aimed a challenging gaze up at him.
“No.” Samuel inclined his head, jerking his chin toward the red-carpeted dock behind her. “You can’t.”
The Dolce Vita had set sail.
Despite the stab of fear tightening her stomach, Arlie pasted an artificially bright smile on her face before turning back to Samuel. “Well, I guess you’re going to have to talk to me then.”
At that precise moment, Mason’s hearty laugh rose above the general throng, followed by a chorus of female tittering.
Someone who had spent less time studying Samuel might have missed the subtle hardening of his features. “It appears so.”
Flagging down a passing server, Arlie retrieved another flute of champagne.
“For you, sir?” the server asked, looking to Samuel.
“No, thank you.”