He took a beat before responding. He liked to take his time, it seemed. He wasn’t in a rush.
“Interesting,” he said, his smooth voice a perfect complement to the jazz music that piped through the bar from the overhead speakers, as a handful of waiters and bartenders refilled the drinks of nearby patrons. It was only four in the afternoon, but Happy Hour had started early, and Grant had insisted they take their meeting to his favorite watering hole. “Such a better location for the conversations we’ll have about silk, satin and vibration, don’t you think?” he’d said with a flirty wink when his receptionist had shown her to his office, a corner suite in a nearby building with a view of downtown through its floor-to-ceiling windows. But she’d barely caught a glimpse of his 9-to-5 habitat because he’d placed a hand on the small of her back, and guided her down the elevator, around the block, and through the cranberry-red wooden doors of Velvet. The establishment was bathed in low lights and cool music, and had an upscale ambiance with its couches that were stitched from the same material as the name.
Casey hadn’t let the switch in venue throw her off. Nor had she let herself be affected by her long-simmering attraction to the man. He was only a few years older than her thirty-two, and ever since she’d met him at a conference a year ago, she’d let her mind wander from his crystal blue eyes to his dark, close-dropped hair, to the way he wore a suit so damn well. Not to mention that accent. That Big Easy, Southern drawl that would likely sound delicious if he spoke low and sexy in her ear. Then there was the way he wore a shade of mystery, and chased it with a dash of intrigue.
But she pushed all those other thoughts of him into the far corners of her mind. Because business was business was business. They’d been talking about the “synergies” between their two companies since they’d met—they were both purveyors of pleasure, after all. They were a natural fit, she reasoned, especially since she’d been guiding Joy Delivered down an expansion road in the last year and a half since her brother Jack had stepped down as CEO. Though she and Jack had founded the company together several years ago after she’d graduated from business school, he’d run the ship until the woman he fell in love with was offered a job in Paris. The romantic that her older brother was, he’d given up his post and moved overseas to be with Michelle. Their wedding was at the end of the month.
Joy Delivered had already been thriving when she became the woman in charge. Under her care she’d turned it into an even bigger and more profitable business with her new focus on partnerships with like-minded companies. She’d been relentless in her pursuit of success since taking on Jack’s role. She wanted to prove to the business world and to herself, frankly, that she could guide the company as well as he had.
Being a woman had never held her back, but she knew she had to work that much harder. When Casey wanted something she went after it passionately, with everything she had. It was ironic that the strategy had worked well at her company, but her approach hadn’t gone as swimmingly in her rather dismal personal life. A string of bad luck in relationships trailed behind her. Yup, laugh it up. She was the Sex Toy Princess who didn’t get any action beyond the battery-operated kind.
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.