“Tell me something,” she began in her boardroom voice that he should not find so sexy.
“Sure. I’m an open book.” He spread his hands wide, earning a small, less-than-amused smile. She needed to drink more. Maybe her Gage-proof armor would fall off along with her inhibitions.
Once, they’d talked about everything under the sun and he’d enjoyed hearing her thoughts and soothing her through her angst. Just like he’d enjoyed being her mentor, shaping her, guiding her.
Maybe you hope to fall into that role again, with the hero worship and Pygmalion overtones, hmm?
Yeah. He did. And she needed his help to find the leak. Needed him. So what? Seduction and strategy, then. All of that worked together to get him the formula. Where was the harm?
“Why the interest in my formula?” she asked point-blank. “Other than the song and dance about how I owe it to you. For real. Why? You’ve expanded your retail reach enormously over the past five years and you just landed that endorsement deal. Something must have prompted you to show up on my doorstep.”
“That’s a fair question,” he acknowledged, impressed that she’d done her homework on his company. And that’s why he chose to answer her honestly. “It’s simple really. My target consumers are starting to pay close attention to things like bar-fight scars and wrinkles. So I launched my own product. I don’t want any competition.”
“Gage, there are a hundred wrinkle creams on the market. Your competition is legion.”
“No.” He caught her gaze and held it. “There’s only one person who’s my equal.”
“So this is a pride thing.” Looking away, she sipped the glass of wine the waiter had placed in front of her and murmured her appreciation for the red blend. “You can’t stand it when a competitor is primed to beat you.”
He might as well be made of glass when it came to Cass and that was sexy, too. Dang if he could figure out why he was so drawn to her when all he should care about was whatever got him that formula.
Ignoring his own vile glass of headache in a bottle, he grinned because it would be pointless to argue when she clearly saw the truth. But that didn’t mean they had to dwell on it.
Gage slid a palm across the table and captured her hand before she could prevent it. “Don’t think of me as your competition, not tonight.”
She glanced down at their joined hands but didn’t snatch hers away. He could tell she was contemplating it, though, hopefully because she also felt the electricity between them—and it was working to loosen her up.
“But you are. Always and forever. We sell similar products or you wouldn’t be here. Nor would you have been my mentor. Competition is not something you can will away.”
“Maybe not. I can, however, ban all business talk until later. Then we’re just old friends reconnecting. Like I told you in your office.”
He had the distinct impression she didn’t loosen up easily these days. If there was any competition going on tonight, that was it. And he didn’t intend to lose this particular contest.
“I’m curious,” she said, her gaze back on him but not nearly warm enough for his taste. “I never see you at trade shows. My email address is easy to locate on Fyra’s website. If you have such an interest in reconnecting, why haven’t we done so before now?”
A hot prickle walked across the back of his neck as he instantly recognized a spring-loaded trap, ready to close around his leg if he moved the wrong way. An unsettled feeling bled through his chest.
And in the end, he was the one to pull his hand back from hers, suddenly uncomfortable with the contact.
“I hate trade shows. They’re stifling. And they’re always on weekends when I’m...busy.”
That had sounded much dirtier than he’d intended, especially when lately, his weekends had consisted of giving Arwen a bath or taking her to the lake so she could have fun practicing her pointer skills.
Cass watched him without blinking, silently waiting on him to stop stalling and get to the meat of her question, which was basically designed to force him to admit he’d developed an interest in her in order to get his hands on her formula.
Maybe it had started out as a little of both—seducing her to ensure she remembered what she owed him. He wasn’t a saint.
But at this moment, he really did want to be a friend. None of her other so-called friends seemed to realize how brittle she was under her super-CEO costume. Someone had to banish the shadows of fatigue and uncertainty in her gaze. Give her a safe place to let her hair down, which would preferably be in his bed, like she’d once done.