Corner Office Confessions

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.

Anything for me yet?

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

Working on it.

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.

See you soon. Enjoy Willow Creek.