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The backhanded compliment made her draw in a breath. Sent a rush of color to her cheeks, heating her all over. She’d asked for it. She really had. And now she had to go.
“Here,” she said, shoving the letter at him. “Consider this my response to your manifesto. And believe me, this was draft two.”
He curled his long, elegant fingers around the paper and scanned it. Then deliberately, slowly, his eyes on hers, tore it in half. “I won’t accept it.”
“Be glad I’m not filing a human rights suit against you,” she bit out and turned on her heel. “HR has the other copy. I’m giving you two weeks.”
“I’m offering you the VP marketing job, Bailey.” His words stopped her in her tracks. “You’ve done a phenomenal job boosting domestic sales. You deserve the chance to spread your wings.”
Elation flashed through her, success after three long years of brutally hard work overwhelming her, followed almost immediately by the grounding notion of exactly what was happening here. She turned around slowly, pinning him to the spot with her gaze. “Which member of your team advised you to leverage me?”
If she’d blinked she would have missed the muscle that jumped in his jaw, but she didn’t, and it made the anger already coursing through her practically flammable. “You want me,” she stated slowly, “to be your poster child. Your token female executive you can throw in the spotlight to silence the furor.”
His jaw hardened, silencing the recalcitrant muscle. “I want you to become my vice president of marketing, Bailey. Full stop. You’ve earned the opportunity, now take it. Don’t be stupid. We’re due at Davide Gagnon’s house in the south of France the day after tomorrow to present our marketing plan, and I need you by my side.”
She wanted to say no. She desperately wanted to throw the offer back in his face and walk out of here, dignity intact. But two things stopped her. Jared Stone was offering her the one thing she’d sworn she’d never stop working for until she got it—the chance to sit on the executive committee of a Fortune 500 company. And despite everything that he was—an impossible, arrogant full-of-himself jerk—he was the most brilliant brain on the face of the planet. And everyone knew it. If she worked alongside him as his equal she could write her ticket. Ensure she never went back to the life she’d vowed to leave behind forever.
Survival was stronger than her pride. It always had been. And men having all the power in her world wasn’t anything unusual. She knew how to play them. How to beat them. And she could beat Jared Stone, too. She knew it.
She stared at him. At the haughty tilt of his chin. It was almost irresistible to show him how wrong he was. About her. About all women. This would be her gift to the female race…
“All right. On two conditions.”
His gaze narrowed.
“Double my salary and give me the title of CMO.”
“We don’t have a chief marketing officer.”
“Now we do.”
His eyes widened. Narrowed again. “Bailey…”
“We’re done then.” She turned away, every bit prepared to walk.
“Fine.” His curt agreement made her eyes widen, brought her swinging back around. “You can have both.”
She knew then that Jared Stone was in a great deal of trouble. And she was in the driver’s seat. But her euphoria didn’t last long as she nodded and made her way past Mary’s desk. There was no doubt she’d just made a deal with the devil. And when you did that, you paid for it.
CHAPTER TWO
BY THE TIME newly minted CMO Bailey threw herself into a cab twenty-four hours later, bound for San Jose Airport and a flight to France, the furor over Jared Stone’s manifesto had reached a fever pitch. Two feminist organizations had urged a full boycott of Stone Industries products in the wake of what they called his “irresponsible” and “repugnant” perspective on women. The female CEO of the largest clothing retailer in the country had commented on a national business news show, “It’s too bad Stone didn’t put this much thought into how he could balance out his board of directors, given that the valley is rife with female talent.”
In response, a leading men’s blog had declared Stone’s manifesto “genius,” calling the billionaire “a breath of fresh air for his honest assessment of this conflicted demographic.”
It was madness. Even now, the cabbie’s radio was blaring some inane talk show inviting men and women to call in with their opinions. She listened to one caller, a middle-aged male, praise Jared for his “balls” to take the bull by the horns and tell it like it was. Followed by a woman who called the previous caller “a caveman relic of bygone days.”
“Please,” Bailey begged, covering her eyes with the back of her hand, “turn it off. Turn the channel. Anything but him. I can’t take it anymore.”
The cabbie gave her an irritated glance through his grubby rearview mirror, as if he were fully on board with Jared’s perspective and she was the deluded one. But he switched the channel. Bailey fished her mobile out of her purse and dialed the only person she regularly informed of her whereabouts in case she was nabbed running through the park some night and became a statistic.
“Where are you?” her best friend and former Stanford roommate, Aria Kates, demanded. “I’ve been trying to get you ever since this Jared Stone thing broke.”
“On my way to the airport.” Bailey checked her lipstick with the mirror in her compact. “I’m going with him to France.”
“France? You didn’t quit? Bailey, that memo is outrageous.”
And designed for shock value. She shoved the mirror back in her purse, sat back against the worn, I’ve-seen-better-days seat, and pursed her lips. “He made me CMO.”
“I don’t care if he made you head of the Church of England…. He’s an ass!”
Bailey stared at the lineup of traffic in front of them. “I want this job, Aria. I know why he promoted me. I get that he wants me to be his female executive poster child. I, however, am going to take this and use it for what it’s worth. Get what I need, and get out.”
Just as she’d done her entire life: clawed on to whatever she could grasp and used her talent and raw determination to succeed. Even when people told her she’d never do it.
She heard Aria take a sip of what was undoubtedly a large, extra-hot latte with four sweeteners, then pause for effect. “They say he’s going to either conquer the world or take everyone down in a cloud of dust. You prepared for the ride?”
Bailey smiled her first real smile of the day. “Did I ever tell you why I came to work for him?’
“Because you’re infatuated with his brain, Bails. And, I suspect, not only his brain.”
Bailey frowned at the phone. “Exactly what does that mean?”
“I mean the night he hired you. He didn’t start talking to you because he detected brilliance in that smart head of yours. He saw your legs across the room, made a beeline for you, then you impressed him. You could almost see him turn off that part of his brain.” Her friend sighed. “He may drive you crazy, but I’ve seen the two of you together. It’s like watching someone stick the positive and negative ends of a battery together.”
She wrinkled her nose. “I can handle Jared Stone.”
“That statement makes me think you’re delusional…. Where in France, by the way?”
“Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat in the south.”
“Jealous. Okay, well, have fun and keep yourself out of trouble. If you can with him along…”
Doubtful, Bailey conceded, focusing on the twelve-hour flight ahead with the big bad wolf. Admittedly, she’d had a slight infatuation with Jared when she joined Stone Industries. But then he’d started acting like the arrogant jerk he was and begun holding her back at every turn, and after that it hadn’t taken much effort at all to put her attraction aside. Because she was only at Stone Industries for one thing: to plunder Jared Stone’s genius and move on.
The master plan hadn’t changed.
Traffic went relatively smoothly for a Friday afternoon. Bailey stepped out of the cab in front of the tiny terminal for private flights, ready to soak up the quiet luxury from here on in. Instead she was blindsided by a sea of light, crisscrossing her vision like dancing explosions of fire. Camera flashes, her brain registered. She was stumbling to find her balance, her pupils dilating against the white lights, when a strong hand gripped her arm. She looked up to see Jared’s impossibly handsome face set in grim lines.
