Seductive Reasoning

by Cheryl Gorman

Kate could barely listen to Ms. Lander’s summary of their appearance on the show the week before. She’d been perfectly fine before Seth Fallon waltzed into her life and screwed everything up. She had plans, big plans, to take her designs to the national level. Kate Summers Lingerie Inc. She was going to be a household name like Martha Stewart and Victoria’s Secret. Her family was finally going to see her and her business as something important, something valuable, and not just a girl who sold underwear for a living.

  “Please welcome Ms. Kate Summers.”

  Kate jerked her attention from her thoughts back to the set. All she needed to do was slip back into the routine of her life before she’d met Seth, and then she could move forward. She smoothed her hands over her dress and tried to push back the rush of misery battering her heart.

  Ms. Lander’s gaze darted from the audience to Kate. “I wanted to thank you for coming back on our show. I am disappointed that Dr. Fallon didn’t bother to show up. We will need to confirm your statement of what happened and compare it to his.

  “Now, can you tell our viewing audience what happened? Did he change his mind altogether, or did you two have a falling out? I’m assuming this past week turned out to be more about intelligence and logic than about stardust and sexy nights. Am I correct in that assumption?”

  Time to put on her game face and go ahead with the show. If Seth wasn’t going to show up, she would make the best of it. There was a check waiting with her name on it. Why did the thought of claiming that check make her feel sick inside? Her victory was hollow now without Seth to share it with her. Only it wasn’t her victory, it was his.

  To prepare herself, Kate reached for a glass of water that sat on the table in front of them and sipped. She set the glass back on the table and exhaled a deep breath. “Professor Fallon and I both had an agenda as the week began. I was determined to seduce him, and he was determined to resist me.”

  “And?” Ms Lander’s voice sounded eager. “Please tell us what we’ve been waiting to hear. Were you successful in your seduction, or was Dr. Fallon successful in convincing you that a person’s mind and intelligence are most important?”

  Kate forced a smile. “Maybe a little of both.”

  “Could you be more specific? After all, we have twenty-five thousand dollars to give away.” Ms. Landers shifted in her seat and gestured toward the chart resting on the easel. “Perhaps you’d like to tell us about some of your experiments.”

  Kate rose from the sofa, walked to the graph, and pointed to the top line. She explained their findings briefly as she ran her finger across the steadily climbing lines. “We did get some unexpected responses and reactions.”

  “What do you mean by unexpected?” Ms. Landers asked.

  Kate tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Well, a few of the more conservative male customers experienced a bit of shock and surprise at some of the garments their wives and girlfriends tried on for them.”

  Kate paused and smiled. “I remember specifically this older couple who came in. They were perhaps in the mid to late sixties. She was bent on reviving their sex life. The poor guy laughed nervously and turned beet red. I thought he was going to have a stroke over what she had chosen. But a day later, she dropped by with a wink and a smile. Guess that hot pink teddy was just the ticket.”

  “That’s very interesting, Ms. Summers. It certainly sounds like people of all ages shop at your store.”

  “Yes. You’d be amazed at the enormous interest in lingerie.” Kate returned to her chair, and Ms. Landers turned her attention to the studio audience. “Would any of you like to hear about the actual experiments they performed?”

  The audience shouted with a resounding yes. “Ms. Summers, tell us about the very first time you tried to seduce Dr. Fallon.”

  Kate squirmed in her seat. She didn’t want to talk about the little lap dance she did for him in the kitchen, or the lingerie she’d shimmied her body into for his eyes only. She didn’t want to share her desire for him when she’d slipped into that pale, white gown and had his eyes bugging out.

  And certainly not what happened afterward. What had passed between them was far too intimate, far too personal to discuss on television. Discussing it in a public forum was inappropriate and would cheapen what they had shared. No way was she going to share with them the moment her poor heart slid hopelessly into love with him.

  But everyone was waiting for her to respond. She had to say something. Damn Seth for leaving her in the lurch this way. She was a businesswoman. She persuaded, she convinced and informed her customers about lingerie and astrology with the facts, with a book of love poems and information on their particular sign.

  She could do the same thing here. “We went about the process in a very logical but romantic manner. I modeled some of my creations; we talked about his overall reaction and plotted it on the chart.”

  Ms. Landers leaned forward. “Miss Summers, would you care to elaborate on your statement? What were some of his reactions to the lingerie?”

  Kate sipped some more water. “Dr. Fallon’s reactions were fairly typical and unsurprising. He reacted the way any normal, healthy heterosexual male would to seeing a woman in sexy lingerie. His temperature rose slightly, his pulse sped past its normal rate, and his heart picked up rhythm.”

  Ms. Landers smiled and her eyes lit with mischief. “Oh, come now, Miss Summers. Surely you can be a bit more specific.”

  Kate twisted her hands together in her lap. “Let me make something very clear. What happened between Dr. Fallon and me wasn’t about winning or losing. There was no agenda, there was no win, lose, or draw. There was only the two of us, and it honestly had nothing to do with money.”

  Anxiety churned through Kate’s stomach. She bit her lip, lowered her chin for a moment, and then brought her gaze back to Ms. Landers’. “Now, I have the brass ring in my hand. I can feel it. The dream I’ve been reaching for is within my grasp. All I have to do is admit the truth.”

  Ms. Landers smiled, her eyes alighting with glee. “The truth that you seduced him?”

  She sighed. “I put in years of work on my business. I started small and it wasn’t easy to find a reliable sub-contractor, set up regular shipping schedules, and implement new designs in addition to keeping the old ones.

  “Not to mention bookkeeping, adhering to a budget, and running the shop itself. The hard work didn’t bother me; I loved every minute of it. Creating something from nothing was exciting for me and fulfilled me in a way I never thought possible. I’ve learned a lot since I started the company, but I must admit I learned more this past week from Dr. Fallon than I ever thought possible.”

  “Do you mean in or out of the bedroom?” Ms. Landers asked.

  Both. But she couldn’t say it on the air. “I was fascinated by his thought processes and how his mind works. I even attended one of his lectures at the university. Dr. Fallon has a gift for teaching and a respect for astronomy.” She just wished he had enough respect for her to actually show up. Kate was dying inside, little pieces of her at the time. Humiliation slowly chipped them away. Would there be nothing left of her pride by the time this show was over? She paused for a moment, gripped her hands together, and squeezed. A realization floated through her brain and invaded her heart. Men had pride. A lot of pride. So much so that sometimes their ego got in the way.

  Was Seth not here because he just couldn’t face his failure? She knew how much the bet meant to him and how much he had riding on the money. “I know how much his project meant to him, and I want more than anything for him to realize his dream. He’s worked just as hard as me, if not harder. But sales have picked up since our last appearance on the show. E-mail orders are coming in so fast I can hardly keep up with them. There’s no telling what might happen after tonight. The possibilities are endless.”

  She tried to look excited and heartened by hope and prospects for the future, but inside she really felt hollow. She wanted Seth to have that bright future, to reach each and every one
of his goals, to finish his project and gain the recognition in the astronomical world he wanted so badly. “What I’m saying, Ms. Landers, is that nothing happened between Dr. Fallon and me. He was the Rock of Gibraltar, and no matter what I did, no matter how hard I tempted him, I could not get him to go all the way.”

  A kind of collective gasp of shock swelled from the audience and resonated on the air. Ms. Landers shook her head and gazed out over the audience. “Well, you heard it here, folks. All of that sexy lingerie wasn’t able to convince this professor to take the plunge, so to speak.” The audience snickered at her choice of words. Ms. Landers turned back to Kate. “Miss Summers would you agree then that--” Ms. Landers jerked her head to the left of the stage. She shifted in her seat and sat up straighter. “Well, here is the Rock of Gibraltar now.”

  The audience erupted into a cacophony of whistles and applause. Seth walked onto the set, his gaze firmly fixed on Kate. His nerves were calm; he no longer dreaded being in a social forum, and his tie didn’t feel like a hangman’s noose. Kate had done that for him.

  Outside, a storm brewed. Thunder, hard and ominous clamored through the air of the studio and mingled with the reaction of the audience. A jagged ball of hot pressure seared his gut, but it had nothing to do with nerves and everything to do with Kate.

  He settled next to Kate on the sleek, leather sofa. He curled his fingers around her hand and clung. She’d twisted her hair up into a messy knot on the back of her head. Her neck, pale as a swan’s, beckoned him. He knew the silkiness of her skin, how she felt, how she responded when he touched her. He knew the scent of her and how Kate’s unique vanilla perfume grew stronger, more pungent when she was aroused.

  “I’m glad you finally made it, Dr. Fallon,” Ms. Landers said. “We’ve been discussing the week that you and Kate spent together, and she just admitted--”

  Seth held up his hand to stop her. “Please Ms. Landers. I have something I’d like to say here. Now. To Kate and to this studio audience.”

  “By all means, go ahead, Dr. Fallon. We’re all ears.”

  Kate stared at him. A mixture of surprise, hurt, and confusion swam in the green of her eyes.

  She smiled. “I didn’t think you were going to make it.”

  Her sweet sexy voice whispered over him, caressed his nerves and stroked the love he held in his heart for her like skilled fingers on the strings of a violin. In just a few days, she’d managed to turn his life upside down. “I had a little errand to run first. I’m sorry you thought I walked out on you.”

  Last week he’d felt mostly lust, but now love overwhelmed him. He still wanted her more than he needed to breathe, but touching her, making love with her, did so much more than alleviate the sexual tension that always arced between them.

  She settled his soul.

  Kate held his vulnerability in her hands and wiped away his fear of revealing that deep emotion to anyone.

  She leaned toward him, the gentle sway of her body so familiar now his heart ached. Her vanilla scent clouded his mind. She lifted her hands and smoothed them over the lapels of his jacket. “You look nice.”

  Kate’s simple compliment pleased him. He wanted her, needed her to be proud of him. But most of all he needed her to love him.

  Seth enclosed her hands in his and brought her fingers to his lips. He kissed each of her knuckles in turn, savoring the taste and texture of her skin. “Thanks. You look beautiful.”

  Kate slipped her hands from his. The softness of her skin enveloped him and he knew that the feel of her touch would never leave him.

  A fleeting smile rippled over her mouth. Her eyes, full of emotions Seth found difficult to read, studied him for a moment. “You know, Seth, a week ago I was really looking forward to appearing on the show again, but tonight I wished I didn’t have to go through with it.”

  Seth’s heart leaped as it had when he was a child on Christmas morning when he’d found a shiny new telescope next to the tree. Could she mean that she actually cared for him, maybe even loved him? Could she be about to tell him that winning the money wasn’t all that important now?

  Why couldn’t he pretend that nothing important had happened between them? Because it had. Making love with Kate had set his world on its end and had meant everything to him. “Why didn’t you want to go through with it? You’ve won.”

  Seth heard a collective gasp from the audience and from Ms. Landers.

  Doubt filled Kate’s eyes. “Have I? I’m not so sure.”

  “Really, Dr. Fallon. That isn’t exactly the story we--”

  Before she could finish, Seth rose from the sofa and dropped to his knees in front of Kate. So much for being logical, he thought, or organized. Seth drank in the sight of her, the perfection and pale beauty of her skin, the sensuous curve of her mouth. He wanted to taste her once more, to hold her, to kiss her sweet, soft mouth and reveal his heart to her. But would she believe him? Would she trust him?

  Seth lifted her hand and held it between his. “Kate, I don’t know how or where it happened over the past few days, but I need you to know that I am hopelessly, completely and crazily in love with you. No matter what happens after today, I don’t ever want to be without you in my life.”

  He dug in his pocket for the box and opened it. He looked at the ring than back up at Kate. “I stopped to pick this up from my mother. It’s been in our family for generations. My grandmother wore it, and then it was passed to my mother. Kate, will you marry me?”

  Applause rose to a thundering crescendo. People flew to their feet, they clapped, they whistled, they cried. Women and men hugged each other. Kate looked down at Seth with tears in her eyes. The ring was a round emerald surrounded by diamonds. The band was rose gold and shown tawny and beautiful in the light. Kate’s heart swelled with so much love she could hardly hold it in. “Yes, my darling, I will marry you.”

  Seth leaped from his crouched position on the floor, scooped Kate into his arms, and kissed her like he’d never kissed her before. Then he wrapped her in his arms and held her against him with her feet dangling off the floor. Through her haze of tears and joy, she saw her mother and Aunt Pandora holding on to each other at the back of the studio.

  He’d given everything up for her. He’d sacrificed his dream and he never stopped believing in her. They’d come full circle. Seth set her back on the floor and held her face between his hands. “Sweetheart, let’s go home.”