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Jared, who had been raring to get the presentation nailed and over with, nodded congenially as if that were the greatest idea in the world.
“You’re planning on stepping back over the next few months and transitioning, then?”
Davide nodded. “But I will still be very involved. My son is nothing if not ambitious and aggressive, but he’ll need guidance.” He shot Jared an amused look. “You’ll like him. He likes to win as much as you do.”
Jared smiled. “Not a bad trait.” But his eyes were blazing with a plan. Four or five more hours of endless rehearsal? She almost groaned out loud at the thought. She might kill him first.
“I should say goodbye to a guest,” Davide observed, “then I think I’m going to turn in. I’ll see you in the morning for breakfast.”
Bailey couldn’t imagine anything better than bed. It was 2:30 a.m., her feet were killing her from the heels, she was jet-lagged, and the mental exhaustion of maintaining such a perfect facade all night, of using the French she hadn’t practiced in years, had fried her brain. And then there was Jared, who moved silently beside her into the house like a quiet, lethal animal ready to strike.
She stayed quiet because taunting the animal was never a good strategy. And she’d slipped during that dance. Had gotten caught up in him for a split second before she’d walked away.
She didn’t think that was helping their harmony.
The hallway stretched long and silent ahead of them. Jared stopped in front of her door, turned the handle and pushed it open. She came to a halt beside him, tension raking over her as she risked a look up at him. Latent, unresolved antagonism stretched like a live wire between them, Jared’s penetrating stare making her shift her weight to the other foot. Away from him.
She pulled in a breath. “I shouldn’t have said wh—”
Her heart sped into overdrive as he leaned forward and braced a hand against the wall behind her, his intent, purposeful look stopping the breath in her chest.
“Add the yoga idea to the deck, Bailey. Blow it out big and make it sing. And don’t ever, ever run a strategy by a client without my approval first. Or you’ll have the shortest tenure an executive at Stone Industries has ever seen.”
He had removed his hand from the wall, stepped back and slammed his way into his room before her breath started moving again. She stood there, frozen for about five good seconds, then closed the door behind her. She backed up against the wood frame and finally let a triumphant smile curve her lips.
She had won. She had forced Jared Stone to acknowledge her ideas had merit. Not only had merit—they were going to present them to Davide Gagnon.
The smile faded from her lips, adrenaline pounding through her, licking at her nerve endings. Just now, outside that door, for a split second, she’d been convinced Jared was going to kiss her. Worse, for a fraction of that second, she had been unbearably excited by the idea.
Pulling in a breath, she wiped the back of her hand against her mouth. Since when had she become a fan of Russian roulette? Because surely that’s what tonight had been.
With her own career at stake.
She might want to start thinking up alternative strategies.
CHAPTER FOUR
BAILEY WOKE UP full of “piss and vinegar” as her mother would have said, ready to attack the presentation, slot in her yoga idea and rehearse it until it sparkled. She pulled on shorts and a knit top, her mouth curving at the thought of her colorful mother. She may have limited her exposure to the family who’d turned her out when she’d started dancing, stripping as her father had bitingly referred to it, but it didn’t mean she didn’t have some good memories of her childhood.
She’d often spent Saturdays sitting on one of the worn, ripped leather chairs in her mother’s hair salon rather than face the uncertain mood of her father—who could be even-keeled if he hadn’t drunk too much that day, or downright mean if he had. She’d finish her homework, then sit fascinated as her mother’s less-than-polished clientele talked about men, other women in an often catty fashion and anything else on their mind they felt needed to be aired. Eye-opening and illuminating conversation for a ten-year-old, to be certain. She’d made sure she didn’t miss one juicy detail.
Unfortunately the glow hadn’t lasted. As she’d gotten older, it was her mother’s quietness she’d noticed. How she would listen but not talk much. Smile but not really. And she’d wondered if her mother knew what she knew. That her husband was not only a violent drunk who couldn’t get over the loss of his high school football glory, but he’d also been unfaithful to her while on the road selling vacuum cleaners across the state. Bailey had answered one too many phone calls at home while her mother was working from a supposed “customer” named Janine not to put two and two together when her father subsequently ordered her out of the room and a hushed conversation ensued.
As a teenager, the glow had disappeared completely. What did it matter if her mother treated her to hot rollers on Saturday, if on Monday the clothes you wore to school were falling apart? When no one wanted to hang out with you because you were the epitome of poor uncool?
The memories floated in the window of her beautiful Cap-Ferrat suite, in blinding contrast to her current circumstances. She pressed her lips together, secured her hair in an elegant pile on top of her head, a hairstyle her mother would have called “hoity-toity,” then made her way downstairs to join Davide and Jared in the breakfast room. The two men were discussing a trip into Nice to visit an art gallery. Davide stood, brushed a kiss across both of her cheeks and held a chair out for her. “Would you like to come with us, ma chère? The Chagalls are phenomenal.”
“It’s tempting,” she responded, taking a seat. “But no thank you, I have work to do.”
Jared murmured a greeting. She slid him a wary glance as she reached for the coffeepot. He was freshly shaven and annoyingly edible in a pair of jeans and a T-shirt that hugged his muscular chest and shoulders in all the right places. And more relaxed this morning if the softer edges of his face were anything to go by. She poured herself a full cup of the strong French brew. He’d probably been up at five doing his Buddhist meditation thing. Rumor had it he’d spent three months as a college dropout in India studying with a Zen master, and practiced it regularly. She’d even heard some of the engineers moan that Jared was on another tangent with his simplicity-inspired principles and they might never leave the lab with an end product if he didn’t back off.
She removed her gaze from all that drool-inducing masculinity and focused on buttering a croissant. Rule number one when it came to her new strategy of handling Jared. No drooling. At all. Ignore him completely.
He and Davide took off to Nice in one of the Frenchman’s vintage sports cars. Seduced by the spray of the waves and the chance to be outdoors, Bailey settled herself on one of the terraces overlooking the ocean, slid on some sunscreen and set to work building her slides.
By early afternoon, she had fleshed out her ideas into a compelling global strategy to catch consumers where they spent their free time. The kiosks to sell Stone Industries’ wearable technologies—pulse monitors, odometers, fitness watches—onsite at yoga studios was only the first niche she was proposing. She added in examples of other health and fitness environments it could replicated in, reviewed the slides, then called it done with a satisfied nod.
This was her chance to shine. She’d forced Jared’s hand in allowing her to include her ideas, now she had to make them worthy.
Turning her face up to the sun, she allowed herself a bit of downtime until the men came back.
* * *
Jared returned from Nice in his best mood of the week. He had bonded with Davide over their mutual love of art and managed to convince him that no, he was not dangling over the side of a cliff at Stone Industries with the board ready to cut him loose. He had also gone a long way to convincing him that there was little danger of long-term fallout from his manifesto with female consumers. People had short memories. Stone Industries would come out with its next big product and women would flock to it for its cool factor as they always did. And all of this would be a blip on the radar of a soon-to-be successful partnership.
The only thing that was messing with his superior mood was the email he’d gotten from his head of IT earlier this morning about the leak of his manifesto. It had literally stopped him in his tracks to discover after a cyber-chase of epic proportions, the email hack had been traced to the servers of Craig International. Which could only mean that Michael Craig, one of his most vocal critics on the Stone Industries board, was behind it. Had meant to bury him at a time of weakness. And for that, he decided, mouth set, stomach hard, as he went outside in search of Bailey, he would pay richly. He had never liked or trusted Michael Craig, had never felt they were playing on the same team. He would use this opportunity to get rid of him.
A growl escaped his throat as he headed toward the ocean-side terrace. You didn’t mess with a man’s lifeblood. That was way, way over the line.
He found Bailey on the terrace in a sun chair, laptop on her thighs, eyes closed, face turned up to the sun. Davide had gone on about how much he liked her on the drive to Nice. Not surprising after last night, but what had caught him off guard was that the collector of women, who’d lost his wife to illness at forty-five, had been focused not on Bailey’s looks, but on her intelligence. Her creativity. He loved her—that much was obvious.
