Free The Tycoon's Captured Heart by Elizabeth Lennox

have to do with anything?”
    He smiled slightly.  “It makes a woman walk differently.  I don’t know what it is,” he said as his eyes moved down her figure, or whatever he could see of it from over the table, “but a man can tell when a woman is wearing sexy underwear.”
    The waiter arrived just at that moment and Scarlett’s blush intensified.  “Got it.”  She turned her attention to the waiter who was looking as if he hadn’t heard anything odd at the table.  He politely told them the specials for the day, then wrote down Scarlett’s order, and then Grayson’s, before slipping away to leave them in private once again. 
    “It isn’t like the guy is going to see my underwear,” she mumbled to herself.
    “Good,” he told her.  “But that isn’t the point.”
    “How can a man tell when she’s wearing granny panties or something sexier?”
    He shook his head.  “It isn’t the difference between granny panties or something different.  I’m talking about the stuff that women buy specifically for seduction,” he explained, leaning closer and holding her gaze.  “I’m talking about the stuff that a woman wears when she’s trying to get a man to notice all of the special parts of her that make a man and a woman different.”
    “How do you know the difference?”
    He shrugged, still not releasing her gaze.  “It’s in the way she walks, the way she moves.  It’s in her eyes.  There’s just a sparkle there, a different look that lets a man know that he’s going to be lucky that night.”
    She licked her lips, thinking about the bra and panty set she’d seen in a store window last week. She was getting over there to buy it tomorrow!  “And what if he isn’t going to get lucky?”
    He chuckled.  “It keeps a man guessing, doesn’t it?  That’s part of the allure of being a woman.  She has to keep a man guessing, maintain that mystery so that he’s never really sure about her.”
    “Is that what you like?”
    He laughed slightly.  “Oh, there’s something nice about a sure thing, but the chase, the conquest.”  He nodded his head.  “Yeah, that’s better.  Makes a man feel like he’s accomplished something by winning a woman’s hand.”
    She almost laughed at his comment.  It was so typically alpha male.  So like the man sitting before her. 
    After that, they talked in generalities and no matter how much she tried, she couldn’t get him back to the subject of his likes and dislikes.
    The following evening, she was right back across from him.  “Better dress, by the way,” he told her, his eyes skimming down her figure in a black wrap dress with a pretty, delicate gold chain around her neck. “You need different jewelry though.”
    Scarlett’s hand flew up to her gold chain, wondering what could possibly be wrong with the necklace.  “What’s wrong with this one?” she demanded. 
    “Nothing.  If you were meeting your girlfriends for drinks and girl chat.  Or maybe for a client.”
    She leaned back, sipping her martini.  She was trying to be bold and hoped that the alcohol would help.  “But not when I’m trying to entice a man?”
    He shook his head, sipping his scotch as he looked at her over the rim of his glass.  “How did the client like that new living room you did last week?” he asked, changing the subject. 
    They fell into their old patterns of conversation and, on the one hand, Scarlett was relieved that they were still friends.  But she was also frustrated because she had no idea how to get him to think of her as a girlfriend.  She was back to being friend zoned and she was sick of it! 
    The next night, one more romantic restaurant but this time, she met him there, having a client meeting until the last minute.  Or that was what she’d told him when he’d called to make the arrangements.  In reality, she just wanted to get this whole dress thing right. 
    This time, she was wearing a red dress that clung to all of her curves.