AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“So you shut me out?” She pressed her lips together, the insecurity, the hurt she’d felt over the past few days, sitting like the devil on her shoulder. “I’m no expert but I’m pretty sure this is where we’re supposed to lean on each other. Be there for each other.”
His mouth tightened. “I’ve been trying. You push too much, Bailey.”
The stubborn tilt of his chin, the forbidding line of his mouth, did her in. “I know you heard me say I love you on the plane, Jared. You ignored it completely.”
He shook his head, his face losing color. “I told you I don’t make promises I can’t keep. It isn’t in my DNA. You knew that.”
He could have said anything, anything but that and she might have been okay with it. But a cop-out like that? It made her chest feel so tight she couldn’t breathe. Because it wasn’t enough anymore. Not when she’d handed him her heart.
She nodded sagely. “Now there’s the honesty I need. Because I’ve decided I can’t do this, Jared. You asked me to open up, to trust you. Well here I am. And if you can’t do the same, I think we should end it now.”
His gaze flashed. “You’re using this as an excuse to end things before it’s started.”
She shook her head. “This is me not wanting to be another casualty of the cult of Jared. I guess it’s not in my DNA to expect anything less than everything.”
“Bailey—” He reached for her, but she shook him off, stalked to the door and left. Enough of this emotional roller coaster.
* * *
Jared was debating whether to go after Bailey when Mary stuck her head in his office. “Alexander Gagnon is on the line.”
He cursed. If there was a person he did not want to talk to at this moment in time, it was Alexander. However, as the fate of his company lay in the man’s hands, he had no choice but to.
He shut the door, walked to his desk, sat down and took a deep breath. Then he hit the blinking line.
“Gagnon.”
“Bonjour, Stone.” Alexander’s smooth, silky voice slid over the phone line. “Good news for you. We have decided we would like to offer Stone Industries the partnership.”
The rush of satisfaction that ran through him at Gagnon’s words was swift and sharp. But the burn that stung his eyes, the tremor in his hands as he pressed them against his desk, came from a deeper place. A place he’d been loath to acknowledge. He would have walked, he’d been prepared to walk, but this was his company. To restore what he’d built with his heart and soul to its former brilliance—he wanted it with every fiber of his being.
“Thank you,” he rasped. “I’m very happy to hear that.”
“This is dependent, of course,” Gagnon said, “on Project X being exclusive to our stores.”
“Certain product lines, yes, but not all.”
“We can come to some kind of an agreement on that, oui. We will need to work very closely together in the beginning. The planning will be key. I want Bailey in Paris for quarterly meetings. How is your beautiful CMO, by the way?”
Jared sat up straight. “Bailey is not part of this deal, Gagnon.”
“So vehement,” the Frenchman chided. “I merely want her brain. What are you going to do, Stone? Marry her? That would certainly keep the dinner conversation interesting.”
His blood bubbled dangerously close to the surface. He thought he might, actually. Want to marry her. Watching her walk out of his life could do that.
He stared viciously at the phone. “Send the contract over, Gagnon. And forget about Bailey in Paris. You’ll have Tate Davidson, my VP.”
He ended the call before he said something to trash the deal. Sat back and tried to digest. He was overwhelmingly relieved to be walking into that board meeting tomorrow with Maison in his pocket. Michael Craig’s massive abuse of his expenses as CEO had been splashed across the news this morning in a carefully executed plan to discredit him and oust him from the Stone Industries board, thanks to a friendship Jared had with a high-placed reporter at a daily newspaper. Everything was falling into place. But it was Bailey who occupied his head. He’d had to put that clause in her contract. He was running a multibillion-dollar company. He didn’t put someone whose ability he’d questioned into a C-suite position without a backup plan.
His chin jutted out, his resolve fierce. Except she was right. He’d promised her the job. The clause should have been about performance. Instead he’d been intent on manipulating the situation to his advantage. That was the real truth. He’d been running as fast as his legs could carry him the last few days.
Bailey was right.
His time in the Caribbean had been mind-altering. Just as terrifying as he’d anticipated. His father was a shadow of his former self; old, suffering from debilitating diabetes and wanting his son to know the truth after reading his manifesto. It had not just been his marriage that had brought him to his knees, his father had told him, but his lack of faith in himself. His inability to follow his dreams. But Jared, he’d counseled, a wisdom in his eyes that seemed out of place in such a weak, frail man, had done just that. He had followed his heart, and that’s all a man could do.
You cannot, his father had warned him, take on my legacy, or you will destroy yourself.
Achingly honest, frighteningly intense, his conversations with his father had nearly undone him. Had left him shaken and angrier than ever at himself. He should have done more. He should have done something sooner. He should have been braver.
The burn in his eyes brought a hot glitter to his vision. He was not his father. He knew that. And Bailey wasn’t his mother. He had spent the flight home thinking about the two of them, how very different they were. His mother was brittle, power-hungry, content to live life on the coattails of each successive powerful man she conquered, whereas Bailey was strong in a beautiful, courageous way. Independence personified. You could see how much she cared in her eyes just now. Funnily enough, what he’d thought would never work for him was now the only thing he knew would. To have a woman that strong. His equal.
I know you heard me say I love you on the plane, Jared. Why hadn’t he had the courage to tell her? He loved her. Of course he did. He’d been half on his way that night in Nice when he’d learned the truth of her. Fully so after the night she’d given herself to him. And all he’d done since was deny it.
He leaned back and stared at the ceiling. He’d broken Bailey’s trust with that clause. The one thing sure to drive her away. And even though he’d had his reasons, they seemed blindingly inappropriate right about now. Not when she was everything he’d never known he wanted.
An idea that might be the product of his jet-lagged brain or pure brilliance, he wasn’t sure which, entered his head. He wasn’t letting her go. Not a chance.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
WHEN BAILEY HAD LEFT Las Vegas for California, a freshly minted business degree in her pocket and a lifetime of wisdom garnered from her very real job and her less-than-ideal family background, she’d thought she had it all figured out. Rely on yourself, don’t expect too much and keep your eye on the ball, and you’d get where you were going. That mentality, she decided, driving to work the day after that scene with Jared, would have served her well if she’d actually employed it with her boss as well as the job. If she hadn’t let herself fall in love with a man with a heart of stone. But somewhere along the way, she’d allowed herself to believe, to want far more than her destiny had ever been when it came to him. And suffered the glaring truth of her life-learned rule: wanting more than what you were destined to have was a recipe for heartbreak.
She peeled herself out of her car and walked into her favorite coffee shop in San Jose. Their argument hadn’t really been about the clause. It had been about her loving him and being afraid he would never return it.
The lineup of slouchily dressed students, computer nerds and suits was three deep on either side. She chose the typically faster one and tapped her foot impatiently on the faux hardwood floor. Maybe Jared was right, maybe she was running. Maybe it was just easier that way when you wanted what you couldn’t have.
The line finally cleared. Christian, the jean-clad, scruffy-looking barista who served her every morning, gave her a curious look as she slid a bill toward him. “Didn’t expect to see you here this morning.”
“Because this morning is any different from the last five years?” Her attempted humor came out bitter and unattractive. “Sorry,” she winced. “Bad morning.”
He pushed his funky glasses farther up his nose. “Have you read the paper this morning?”
She shook her head. That was part of her Americano ritual after she’d triaged her email. “Why?”
He yelled her order to the barista mixing the drinks. “It’s been the talk of the place this morning. You should get on that.”
She lifted a brow. “Anything in particular I should be looking for?”
“You’ll know it when you see it.” He pushed her money back at her. “Drink’s on the house, by the way. You look like you need it.”
