Page 20 of Secret Heir For The Billionaire Twin

"I don't."

That surprises him. Not visibly — Daniel doesn't do visible — but there's a half-second delay before he responds that tells me exactly as much as a raised eyebrow would on anyone else.

"You're staying for the introduction."

"I'm staying for the introduction."

"Any particular reason?"

"Adrian handled the last three profile requests we turned down. I'd like to see who's asking before we decide whether to turn this one down too." It's a reasonable answer. It's even mostly true. The company hasn't sat for an unrestricted feature in longer than I can remember, and the fact that this one made it as far as a scheduled meeting instead of a polite decline from legal means someone upstairs decided the risk was worth taking, and I'd rather understand why before it becomes irreversible. Adrian is good at people. He is not always good at knowing which people are dangerous specifically because they're good at their jobs.

Daniel studies me for a second longer than the answer requires, the way he does when he's deciding whether to push. He doesn't push. He just nods, makes a note I don't ask about, and heads for the door.

"Ten o'clock," he says, more to himself than to me.

"I'll keep your calendar clear after."

"You don't need to do that,"

"I'll keep it clear anyway."

He's gone before I can tell him not to bother a second time, which is exactly how Daniel operates when he's already made a decision he doesn't feel like discussing. I let it go. I have a board memo to finish before ten, and I use the next hour and a half the way I use most hours in this building — head down, half my attention on the work in front of me and the other half running some quiet, low-level calculation about the rest of the day I'd rather not name yet.

At ten minutes to ten, Adrian's assistant pings my calendar with a room change — his office instead of the small conference room near reception, which tells me he's decided to make this feel less like an interview and more like a conversation, which is exactly the kind of instinct that makes him better at this part of the job than I'll ever be. I finish the paragraph I'm on, save the file, and head down the hall without any particular urgency, because I've already half-decided I'm only staying long enough to shake a hand and let Adrian do what Adrian does best.

I hear them before I reach the door. Adrian's voice, easy and warm in the way it always is with people he's decided he likes, and a second voice underneath it that I don't immediately place — lower than I expect, steadier, without the practiced brightness most people bring into a room like his. I don't hear the words. Just the rhythm of it, unhurried, like whoever's on the other end of that conversation isn't in any particular rush to impress anyone.

“Julian. Do you have a minute?

"For you?" I say, when Adrian calls my name through the open door, letting just enough dry amusement into it to remind him I have better things to do than referee his meetings.

"I suppose I can spare sixty seconds."

I mean it when I say it. I stop meaning it somewhere between the doorway and the center of the room.

She's stands up as I enter and the first thing I register, before I've even had the chance to decide I'm registering anything, is the way she's holding herself — spine straight, chin level, the specific posture of someone who has walked into a hundred rooms exactly like this one and refused, every single time, to be made smaller by them. She's tall, five-seven, maybe, an inch or two more in the heels, but she doesn't need the height. She commands the space the way people twice her size usually fail to. Long legs, the kind that make an ordinary skirt look deliberate instead of professional. Dark hair, brunette, falling past her shoulders in a way that looks effortless and almost certainly isn't. And when her eyes find mine — blue, clear, direct, entirely unwilling to be the first ones to look away — something in my chest does something I don't have a professional word for.

I notice more than I have any right to notice in a business meeting, and it irritates me instantly, sharply — the specific irritation of a man who prides himself on control discovering that his own attention has slipped its leash without asking permission first. There's a scent in the air as I close the distance toward her, something clean and floral, faint enough that I might have imagined it if I weren't standing this close, and I catalogue that too, against my own better judgment, filing it away in the same part of my mind I usually reserve for actual problems.

"Julian," Adrian says, "this is Sophie Callahan."

"Ms. Callahan."

I don't offer my hand immediately. I look at her instead, longer than strict professionalism requires, because some part of me wants to see what she does with it — whether she'll fill the silence the way most people do, out of nerves, or hold it the way she's holding everything else in this room. She holds it. There's a flicker of something in her expression, there and gone too fast to name, but I register it anyway, and I find myself, absurdly, wanting to know exactly what it was.

"Adrian tells me you're the one asking the difficult questions," I say.

"I'm the one asking the real ones. Difficult is a matter of who's answering."

It isn't flirtation. I'd know flirtation; I've had enough of it directed at me over the years to recognize the shape of it; the practiced tilt of a head, the strategic pause. This isn't that. This is something closer to a challenge, delivered flat and even, and it does more to hold my attention than anything remotely practiced could have managed. I feel the corner of my own mouth do something I don't authorize.

"Fair," I say, and offer my hand.

Her handshake is firm. No hesitation in it, no attempt to soften herself for my benefit the way I've watched dozens of people do in this exact spot, over this exact desk, over the years. Just a clean, professional grip, in and out, nothing lingering about it at all, and I am, infuriatingly, aware of every second of it anyway.

"Julian doesn't usually do interviews," Adrian says, and there's genuine surprise in his voice, the specific tone he uses when he's narrating something he didn't expect to be narrating.

"You must have made an impression already."