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She looked so vulnerable, so tiny beside him when some of those guys must have been twice her size, it made his skin burn just thinking about it.
“What were the rules on personal contact?”
Her gaze skipped away from his. “To make the really good money, you had to do private dances.”
“Lap dances?”
“Yes.”
He’d never had a lap dance. He’d watched his groom-to-be buddy have one and hadn’t felt any desire to do that with a stranger. Hadn’t seen the sexiness in it. His buddy had, though. He’d loved having the beautiful girl intimately plastered across his lap.
“Was this,” he asked Bailey, his voice a little on the rough side, “all done with or without clothes?”
Rosy color stained her delicate cheekbones. “We had to wear bottoms. We wore two, in fact. I’m not even sure why. It might have been more of a fashion statement.”
The thought of Bailey dressed like that, dancing on a guy’s lap, had him asking, “Didn’t it bother you, doing that?”
“Of course it bothered me,” she snapped. “It wasn’t Sunday school, Jared. It was a job—a very lucrative job where men paid me a lot of money to take off my clothes. And maybe if I hadn’t had to worry about money my entire life, hadn’t had to wear hand-me-downs every day to school, I would have chosen differently. But I didn’t have that luxury and I wanted to make a better life for myself.”
Point taken.
She looked out at the sea, the sun slanting over her alabaster skin. “Most of the men were fine. Most of them respected the line and didn’t cross it.”
“Except for the ones like Alexander.”
She looked back at him, the remnants of a memory in her eyes. “Do you know what he said to me that night in my dressing room?”
He was pretty sure he didn’t, but he nodded anyway.
“He said he would respect my hard limits.”
Jared’s hands clenched into fists by his sides. “You stay away from him in Paris,” he said harshly. “I don’t want you interacting with him.”
She nodded. “I will.”
He didn’t want Gagnon anywhere near her. He was also sure he never wanted a man to raise a hand to her again. Put a hand on her. Ever.
He raked a hand through his hair and blinked against the sunshine breaking through the clouds as they stepped down onto the beach. Absorbed the uneasy feeling in his gut as he worried he was seriously losing his edge. Protecting Bailey against Alexander Gagnon was a given. The rest of it—the urge to keep her for himself—that was something he could never, ever do. He wasn’t even sure where such a crazy thought had come from.
CHAPTER EIGHT
AN UTTERLY BRILLIANT, rock-solid presentation under their belt, Jared and Bailey landed in Paris on Sunday night after a quick hour-and-a-half flight north from Nice in the Stone Industries jet. A car picked them up from the terminal and whisked them into the city, lights sparkling from every vantage point as dusk fell.
Jared studied the play of color across the Seine as they neared their hotel in the Left Bank, thinking the City of Light was so much more appropriate a descriptor than the City of Love. For one thing, he thought, mouth twisting, love was a myth perpetuated by all the romantics of the world. Secondly, there was no city as gorgeous as Paris at night.
He watched Bailey once again play twenty questions with their driver, asking him about the city landmarks.
I don’t know what love is, she’d said. I’ve never had it so how would I? I’d settle for a man who respects me. A man who tells me the truth. One who wants me for who I am.
He pursed his lips and stared out at the elegant facades of the historic buildings that lined the river. Bailey was everything a man in his right mind would want in a woman. Intelligent, stunningly beautiful, interesting and desirable… How had one not snapped her up, pushed his way past that impenetrable facade? Tapped into that wistfulness she kept hidden so well? Had the life she’d led made her bury it that deep?
He put it out of his head as the car whipped around a corner and pulled to a halt in front of their elegant old hotel. It was exactly that vulnerability, the fact that she was untouched, that was going to keep him a hundred paces from her at all times if he knew what was good for him.
Their takeoff spot had been delayed in Nice, which meant they had less than an hour before they were due at the dinner that had been organized for them and their Gehrig counterparts. Enough time to check in to their hotel, change and go. Jared left Bailey to shower and dress in the suite that adjoined his and did the same.
He had showered and was pulling on his shirt when a knock came at the connecting door. He strode over and pulled it open, finding a fully dressed, toe-tapping Bailey on the other side. Her gaze moved over his chest, down over the muscles of his abdomen in a caught-off-guard perusal that couldn’t be mistaken for anything but total appreciation.
It made his vow to avoid anything that constituted lust between them snag in his throat.
“I just need a tie,” he muttered, turning around and putting distance between them.
Bailey walked in and strolled to the Juliet balcony to look out at the lights. “It’s so beautiful at night.”
Jared did the buttons of his shirt up. “One of my favorite cities in the world.”
“Which you will never enjoy on your honeymoon because you’re never getting married. How sad for you.”
“How forward-thinking of me,” he retorted. “I can bring my girlfriend here instead of paying for divorce proceedings.”
Her throaty laugh did strange things to his stomach. “You think you’re so tough, Jared Stone,” she murmured as she turned around. “But you’re really not. You know that?”
He elected not to respond. She was in white tonight, a simple classy knee-length dress that made the most of her curvaceous figure, hair up in a sleek chignon that left her beautiful neck bare. His strict no-virgin policy should have shielded him from the desire to bury his mouth in the exposed hollow between neck and shoulder. Unfortunately, his body wasn’t following his strategic plan.
Biting out a curse, he whipped the tie around his neck and tied it with the quick efficiency of a man who hated that particular accessory. He was not having her.
Bailey surveyed him with a critical eye. Walked toward him with a purposeful movement that sent his pulse into overdrive. He yanked in a breath as she came to a halt in front of him and pushed his hands aside.
“Your tie is crooked.”
As disheveled as his mind.
He kept his hands by his sides while she undid the tie, set it back around his neck and retied it, her technique smooth and flawless. Her perfume drifted into his nostrils, the curves he was almost going crazy not touching so close he would only have had to take a step to feel her against him.
“How did you,” he murmured roughly, “learn to tie a tie so well with no lovers in your life?”
She pursed her lips as she finished it off. “Etiquette training.”
“Etiquette training?” He stared at her as if he hadn’t heard right. “As in Pygmalion?”
She smiled. “If you want to put it like that.”
“Why?”
Rosy color stained her cheeks. “I grew up dirt-poor with no idea of how to function in society, Jared. I was a stripper. Where was I going to learn what to say over a business dinner? What fork to use? I might have gotten an MBA, but it in no way prepared me for any of that. So I had someone teach me.”
“Right.” His heart contracted. Just a bit.
Every time he built a wall against her, she disarmed him. She said something like that and reminded him just how vulnerable she was under that tough exterior. It made him want to hold her and never let go.
“Jared—” She bit her lip and stared up at him and God help him, he almost snared that luscious mouth under his and did what he wanted to do. But that was absolutely, definitely not happening. Not tonight when he needed his wits about him. When he needed to win this deal.
“We need to go,” he announced abruptly, stepping back. “We’re already late.”
The hurt he seemed to be a professional at putting in her eyes gleamed bright. He ignored it and shoved his wallet into his pocket.
“The car’s waiting. Let’s go.”
* * *
The seafood restaurant on the Rue de Rivoli was packed with people on the warm, steamy Paris night. The maître d’ led them to the chef’s table at the back of the restaurant with its much-in-demand view of the bustling, sparkling kitchen in which white-coated chefs worked in symphonic precision.
They were the last in the group of seven to arrive. Their competition, John Gehrig, the CEO of Gehrig Electronics, rose to introduce himself, his wife, Barbara, and his vice president of marketing. Gehrig was a warm, friendly Midwesterner in his early fifties whom Bailey couldn’t help but instantly like. As was Barbara, who was utterly charming as his feminine counterpart, and apparently whip-smart as Gehrig’s legal counsel.
She moved to greet Davide, then Alexander, who was superbly dressed in a gray suit and navy shirt and drawing more than one set of female eyes as he stood. He bent to press a kiss to each of her cheeks, the touch of his lips sending an involuntary shiver through her. “You look outrageously beautiful,” he murmured in her ear as he brushed the other cheek. “Unfortunate Stone had the pleasure of escorting you.”
