It wasn’t that she chose badly, or liked jerks. She didn’t. But there were two issues working against her. One, men didn’t ask her out that often, and when she did ask out a guy, he’d often admit her profession scared him. “Do you have any idea how terrifying it is to approach a woman who sells sex toys?” one guy had said. He hadn’t lasted long. The other issue was that she had a notorious habit of speaking her mind, and, it turned out, that didn’t always work for the guys she had dated.
“You intimidate me,” Scott, her ex, had told her, when he’d said sayonara the same night she’d been planning to ask him to move in with her. “You’re fun as hell, but I can’t see myself getting serious with an alpha female.”
Ouch.
She’d bristled at the designation. “Alpha female?” she said with narrowed eyes. “What are you talking about? That’s a term for a dog.”
“You’re great at business, Case. But your relationship skills are kind of lacking. You never let me decide anything. You want to be in control of everything. You want to make all the decisions, from dinner to movies to what position in bed.”
“I didn’t hear you complaining about any of those positions when we were in them,” she pointed out.
“It’s not hard for a guy to get off,” he said in an admonishing tone, and the message was loud and cruelly clear—I’m not into you in the bedroom.
Later, after the soreness at being left again had abated, and after she’d turned a few hairbrushes into projective missiles lobbed at the door, she was able to call a spade a spade. She did like control. She did enjoy picking and choosing, whether they went to an art gallery or a film, and she absolutely loved telling a man how she liked it—harder, faster, there, right there, don’t stop. What was so wrong with that? Hell, this was the field she worked in. She marketed sex toys, for goodness’ sake. Her days, and her late, late nights were spent finding new ways to communicate all the joys her toys could deliver. And yet, something about Scott’s condemnations had stung because they’d hit home. They’d touched down and felt true. She was an alpha woman. Strong and confident, driven and ambitious, and absolutely unafraid of saying what she wanted. It scared some men. It scared most men.
Good thing she and Grant were communicating then about business. She could be as direct as she needed to be.
“What do you think about such a partnership? We’re keeping the toy under wraps until we roll it out later this summer with our key retail partners, and I’d very much like to have Entice as one of those partners,” she said, then took a drink of her French martini as she waited for his response.
He draped his arm across the back of the royal blue couch, tracing a line absently with his fingertip. The thought briefly flicked through her mind of him running that same finger against her shoulder, her neck, her leg . . .
“I’ve often thought we’d make good partners,” he said, with a slight quirk of his lips, and a certain look in his eyes. A look that almost said there was an undercurrent of interest. Then he wiped his hand across his brow, as if it had gotten too hot in here. “And now you come to me with this sultry talk of a LolaRing,” he said, clearly enjoying the naughtiness of their professions. “What’s a gentleman to do?”
God, the man was a flirt, and such a fine specimen. The head of his company, surely he wasn’t one of those guys who’d be bothered that she was strong-willed, that she was in love with work. Because she was in love with love, too. She was a believer in happiness, in possibilities, in two people who fall madly in love. The kind of love her brother had with Michelle. The kind of love she was determined, bad luck be damned, to find.
She leaned her head back and laughed. “Then what do I need to do to get your bras and panties in bed with my hot new toy?”
He laughed, a sexy rumbly sound. “Why don’t you let me tell you how I see this working?”
“Please do.”
His eyes seemed to light up when she said please.
As they discussed all the possibilities of working together, she could taste the sugary-sweet flavor of a deal coming together. She wanted this one badly; she’d been chasing it for months.
And then, there it was at last—he extended a hand. “Let’s make my lingerie customers even more satisfied,” he said, as he wrapped his fingers around hers. Excitement coursed through her and she wanted to pump her fist, to shout a victorious yes to the sky. Instead, she tamped it down. She knew how to behave like a grown-up.
“I’m thrilled, Grant. Truly thrilled.”
“As am I. However,” he said, and her heart dropped because words like however had a way of tanking deals, “we need to wait a month to dive in. I’m going to be in Vietnam for most of June visiting my factories, and then Hong Kong for business, and I want to personally oversee our partnership. Which I can do properly when I return.”
Ah, well that wasn’t such a bad however. “I like that idea,” she said with a smile.
“I want to give this my full attention.”
“I would love that, too.”
He reached for her hand, and gently pressed his lips to her skin. Holy hell. Her insides fluttered from his touch. “You are a brilliant woman, Casey. I love how you pursued this deal. Your ideas and plans have been fantastic. It’ll be a pleasure to work on the business of pleasure with you.”
“That’s my favorite kind of business.” She held up her glass in a toast.
“I’ll work on the papers and send them over to you, so everything will be signed before I leave.”
“Excellent,” she said as he took a drink.
Then she noticed his glass was empty, and she signaled the bartender for another round.
When she turned her attention back to Grant, the flirty look was absent. Instead, he stared at her, an intense and somewhat chiding look in his inky blue eyes. “I like how you operate in business. But now I want to focus on other things, and as we do, you should let me order another round. I’d like to be the one to do the . . . ordering,” he said, taking time to enunciate that last word. The way he said it made it sound suggestive, a hint at something other than drinks.
“Ordering?” she said carefully.
“Yes. Ordering,” he said, his eyes blazing darkly at her, kicking off a fresh wave of heat inside her.
He raised a hand, snapped his fingers, and called the waiter. “This beautiful woman will have another martini. Make hers dirty this time. And I’ll have a gin and tonic.”